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The Beautifully Worthless
a novel in verse by
Ali Liebegott
Praise for The Beautifully Worthless
"Going on the road with Liebegott is a breathtaking experience. This hybrid
work--half prose, half verse--is about a queer girl who, accompanied by
her cranky Dalmatian, Rorschach, flees troubled love in Brooklyn. Her
destination: existential release, and perhaps emotional solace, in Camus,
Idaho. There is in fact no Camus (she misread the atlas: it's Camas)--but
it's the journey that matters, not the destination. Seedy motels, spooky
caves, endless miles of desert, vast halls of slot machines, a crush on a
sweet-natured teenage boy, a spell in a mental institution, a strained few
days with her family, profound sadness and giddy wit: the physical and
emotional landscape of Liebegott's odd odyssey, crisscrossing America in an
earnest search for self, is truly exhilarating. The prose parts--letters
written to her lover back in Brooklyn--are the narrative backbone of The
Beautifully Worthless. But it's the poetry--vivid, haunting, and visceral--that elevates this debut from innovative to original, from imaginative to
memorable."
—Richard Labonte,
Book Marks
"Want Something Edgier?
"Consider Ali Liebegott's The Beautifully Worthless, a novel told in verse and letters to the girlfriend left behind, about a dyke on the road with her Dalmation, between New York and a dreamed of town in Idaho. It's a postmodern odyssey through Amerika, filled with heartbreak, longing, cute boys, un-cute cops, warm beer, cheap eats, longing (did I say that already?), and all the stresses of a solo wild-ride road trip. Oh, and a few familial visits, a bit of a breakdown, and some lock-down time in various institutions. Many readers will know Liebegott's poetry from her days with the notorious Sister Spit's Ramblin' Road Show."
—Carol Seajay,
Books to Watch Out For
"Is there really a town called Camus, Idaho? In Ali Liebegott's new novel in verse, The Beautifully Worthless, not only does such a town exist, but so do a New York waitress and her trusty Dalmatian, Rorschach, as well as love and quotidian inertia and a lot of good writing. In this road story, a queer girl and her dog take on the task of observing America, an effort that reviewers say comes off with surprising tenderness for a country so tough. We're inclined, in this instance, to believe the press materials, which promise a gritty, Tom Waitsian scene: 'an American landscape filled with ex-girlfriends, cute boys, a mysterious cave, mental institutions, sports radio, warm six-packs, roulette wheels, murder sites, Dairy Queens, and pineapple-upside-down cakes with family in Vegas.'
"Liebegott's spare, eloquent lines ('Who doesn't get found/ is left unplucked from their stagnant life/ like a penny in the dirt of a dustpan?') have impressed plenty of stars in the indie publishing pantheon--notably poet Eileen Myles and novelist Michelle Tea, but author Joan Larkin as well, who says on the publisher's Web site, 'Her witty, compassionate voice haunts me like no other.'"
—Hiya Swanhuyser,
SF Weekly
"For us, the hopeless.
"The Beautifully Worthless started as a poem, a series of lines beginning with 'I wish'. Ali Liebegott knew early on that The Beautifully Worthless was an epic in that it was about a journey, but it wasn't about getting to a place, it was more about wishing for one. The journey in her novel is to find a place without pain, in her own words 'an excavation of depression'.
"It took Liebegott over six years to write The Beautifully Worthless. She started writing it while working on her graduate and undergraduate degree simultaneously at Sarah Lawrence College, and waiting tables five nights a week. Liebegott, like Eileen Myles and Michelle Tea, read her work across the country with Sister Spit's Ramblin' Road Show. Now at 33, Liebegott lives in San Diego and teaches adults GED and ESL. She would be mad at me if I didn't say that she also loves ducks.
"Liebegott says about 90% of the book is autobiographical, 'to play it safe mostly so she doesn't go to jail for loving a 15-year old boy', but also because everything she writes is embellished because writers can't help but fictionalize life. It is clearly not a memoir. The book is a novel in verse, bringing to mind Ann Carson's Autobiography of Red. One of the reasons that this book feels so important is that the narrative structure is not at all linear, and the combination of letters, poetry and prose make it feel closest to portraying the mind and memory of the character. Traditional narratives can sometimes fail because of their forced starting and end points, made to imply a great change or shift in subjectivity. The structure of this book is the trip itself, each place creating a new experience or triggering a memoir or sparking points of reference, the shift or change being more subtle, because it is masked in the narratives circularity, but equally profound and much more real.
"Liebegott's mention of 7-eleven coffee and an apartment strewn with old matchbooks made me feel at home by the end of the first page. The main character, who is nameless (Liebegott refers to her as 'the poet' or 'the waitress') leaves Brooklyn and sets off with Rorschach, her Dalmatian, to find a place called Camus, Idaho that came to her in dream. The poetry is interspersed with postcards home to her girlfriend Lamby from points along the way. At the beginning of the novel we naively think Camus exists, we want to believe it's different there because we are looking for a place to end up. We quickly realize it doesn't.
"At the end of a description about her dream of Camus, Liebegott writes:
'Regardless, it was the good kind of dead-like if a lucky few
stumbled upon a cave in the middle of their rainy, jobless city,
but not just the luck of finding a cave, but the word
that doesn't exist for what goes beyond luck,
when around one wet and dripping cave corner
their feet stop short, and they see a blue-green pool
cupped in cave-hands, and held out to them.'
"Early on her way she finds this cave, both literally and figuratively. In a very funny and somewhat sad scene she find herself pulling over after seeing a crudely painted sign that reads CAVE. She finds an androgynous young teen named Peter working in the CAVE OFFICE, and in her search she lets herself believe that the cave and this boy hold some sort of future for her. She begins a series of letters to him that continue throughout the book. Even though she has an enormous sense of shame about her obsession with a boy she hasn't said more than a few words to, Peter quickly becomes her false hope, a lover, a sidekick. Through letters she asks him to be her friend, she asks him for a job at the cave office, she asks him to go with her to a gay bar in Boise, Idaho. Peter is her hope for a new clean beginning, a break from her messy relationship and infidelities back home, but through the letters we see how quickly this relationship is like all the rest in that it becomes tainted and destructive, even if just played out in her head.
"There are stories that haunt her on her drive across country, like the lesbian hikers who were murdered, or the woman archeologist who committed suicide. At one point Liebegott writes about how in the world without her girlfriend she can be anyone, a tomboy or a farmer, but seen in context, as a dyke, she is someone most of the world wants to see dead. This sense of fear is an underlying paranoia that follows her at all points along the way.
"The fear of the world outside has her stacking chairs against motel room doors because she is convinced that the female desk clerk wants to kill her. There are visits to casinos, time logged in with Court TV and cheap prime rib dinners. Towards the end of the novel time and space seem to fall apart in the section 'Years Later Montrose, Pennsylvania.' Even though it's years later, this section is almost about a time before the trip in her truck to find Camus. It is in this section that the real language of depression seems to take over, making it so time itself can't be linear because the language and structure are echoing the emotional experience. It only makes sense that this section precedes a trip to Las Vegas to see her family. We weave in out of time spent in jail, more letters to Peter, trips to mental hospitals and the death of her grandmother, which is maybe the most beautiful description of a hospital waiting room I have ever read.
"The dedication page of the novel reads quite simply 'for us, the hopeless.' I find myself thinking about this dedication page throughout my read of Ali Liebegott's The Beautifully Worthless. This book is for anyone who has ever struggled with the big D, but this book is also for anyone that knows what it's like to have week old lunch meat floating in a cooler of melting ice in their car, or anyone that feels that they can relate to animals more than other humans.
"While I find myself identifying immensely with the main character, I wonder exactly what she means by hopeless and if I fall into that category. Maybe it's the codependent in me, but by the end of the book, I'm not sure I believe hope has completely disappeared for Liebegott either. Anyone who can title a section of her book TIMES I WAS SUICIDAL WHEN THE SUN MADE ME FEEL BETTER hasn't totally lost it. I wonder if what Liebegott means by hopeless is the fact that you can never get anywhere if the place you are going to is imaginary, meaning the place you want to get to has no pain or despair. It's the journey itself that is beautiful, maybe worthless only to those with expectations. In a sort of Zen way, it's not about where we end up; it's about all the points in between that got us there. The cave, the truck stop shower, the hamburger grease on your T-shirt. Liebegott reminds us to find the value in what's worthless. She writes, 'In high school as a prank, someone crazy glued a penny over every single lock and keyhole so none of the doors could be opened and the school was shut down for the day. I always thought that was smart. I love how much it takes to destroy a penny.' Of course a penny is monetarily worthless, people throw them away, but we can also make wishes on them or use them to shut down high school and what could be better than that? We just have to find a new use for the things we thought useless and remember to keep wishing, after all that's how this book started.
"So where is it you end up if the place you are going is imaginary, if what we have is seemingly worthless? The last lines of the book tell us.
"'We look to where it should be,
find nothing but the outline of a small town grocery
and now with almost no breath of light left
we look down on our hands.'
"We end up as writers. We use our hands to make the book. In conversation, Ali tells me, 'This book is for the group of people that go, whether the place exists or not.'"
—Amra Brooks,
Index
"One of the recurring images in this endearing book is that of the penny--worthless (practically), yet impossible to just ignore or throw away. So it is with the footloose narrator, who refuses to live a throw-away life, in spite of herself.
"Comparisons to Adrienne Rich's poem, 'An Atlas of the Difficult World,' are inevitable, since both works cover some of the same ground; Liebegott acknowledges such by quoting from the Rich poem. But while Liebegott shares Rich's astonishing gift for imagery, she also gives us something Rich rarely (if ever) does: humor. It has been pointed out, and bears repeating, that Liebegott can be heartbreaking one moment, funny the next. Here is a poet who is not only the real thing, but also the complete package.
"My only question about this book is, can it really be called a novel? I ask this, not in the spirit of carping, but because the book is rich enough to provoke some lively discussion on this topic. I hope Ali Liebegott joins in; I'm dying to hear more of her voice."
—Wayne Courtois,
author of My Name Is Rand
"I remember going to see David Wojnarowicz reading from Close to the Knives and thinking that never again would I experience a reading of such power and such vast seismic changes of mood and register. And until two weeks ago, I still thought so. Then I went to see Ali Liebegott and had the same kind of earthquake experience all over again. She's insanely talented, it's mad.
"If any of you enjoyed Anne Carson's 'novel in verse,' Autobiography in Red, I imagine you will like this book too. It is coming out of the same impulse, to find the lyric heart lurking inside narrative and to display it, to glory in it, to foreground that which is ordinarily hidden. The Beautifully Worthless criss-crosses the USA, like Close to the Knives, like Kerouac, desperately seeking out everything occluded and driven, a frenzy of seeking frozen into poetry. The sequences late in this book are written in language as stately and magnificent as the Psalms (King James version).
"Before this reading I wasn't very aware of Ali Liebegott and now I'm like Saul after Tarsus, I've seen the light and I'm here to spread the word. Whatever we were looking for, all the basic reasons we are drawn to reading, for escape, for commitment, for pleasure, for passion, she's got them good, like fever."
—Kevin Killian,
author of Shy
“In Ali Liebegott’s America, disillusion and heartbreak, innocence and hope travel hand in hand. Love troubles the lonely landscape like a kind of wild prayer. Liebegott’s letter to the world is a true original. Her witty, compassionate voice haunts me like no other.”
—Joan Larkin,
author of Cold River
“Countries are made by epic poems, I mean national memories start this way. The Beautifully Worthless is a poem (or a novel) from the wide and lost country of a queer girl on the road with a dog. This girl goes everywhere, and she knows what America is all about because of her exquisite and heartbreaking vision. When this creaky Empire is over, know that someone watched it fall as she (and Rorschach) drove through and told the story. Ali Liebegott’s The Beautifully Worthless is an outrageous act of kindness.”
—Eileen Myles,
author of Skies and Cool for You
“Ali Liebegott is just what the world of books needs—a voice laden with serious heartbreak and total hilarity, that takes on the absurd and somber struggles life dumps in our laps with the perfect mixture of reverence and insanity. I do believe she is a genius, and The Beautifully Worthless a stunning, memorable first book.”
—Michelle Tea,
author of Rent Girl
release: February 2005
lesbian fiction/poetry
softcover, 5.5X8.5
152 pages, $12.95
0-9746388-4-6
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