Aug 9 Fog, Kathryn Scanlan

Review: Aug 9 Fog by Kathryn Scanlan

It is difficult to put into words the feeling the reader is left with when closing this book. The prose is affecting and deeply lyrical, melancholy saturating the text.

This text derives from a diary that Scanlan found. She manipulated the text, cutting and rearranging, to create the narrative as it appears in the book. When I think about the process of creating this book that Scanlan went through, I imagine myself in her shoes. The language would become electric and living, something that pulses across the page and demands to be read and altered. I could easily imagine myself becoming neurotic over a project like this one that Scanlan took on.

While some could find this artistic liberty with cutting and rearranging to be hurtful to the integrity of the text, I see it in a completely different light. This book is an exercise in language and deciding what language is most integral to an underlying story. I’m sure that this diary was much longer and that certain bits of language repeated often. In some cases, such as this text, repeating language isn’t necessary to convey emotion. One time is enough. I love seeing this text as experimental and a deep study into prose as poetry.

The end product that Scanlan created is mind-blowing. There is poetry in the everyday and emotions brewing deeper than words. The author of the journal lives a mundane life, yet the reader sees themselves in her. I couldn’t help but imagine the 86-year-old narrator as my own grandmother. As this is a universal experience (having a grandmother), this draws the reader even more intimately to the experience that Scanlan presents us with.

This book also shows us that there is a poet inside each of us. Some of the lines are beautiful and just needed Scanlan’s eye and expertise to bring its beauty to the forefront of the work. It amazes me that an older woman wrote lines such as these when just jotting down information about her daily life. Take this line for instance: “D. out tormenting the weeds” (82). Language gives writers a new way of describing an ordinary instance and helping their readers see the mundane in a brand new way. I couldn’t have enjoyed this text more. It made me think aesthetically, emotionally, and experimentally as a writer.