When Rachael Kay Albers was shopping around her book proposal, the editors at a Big Five publishing house loved the idea. The problem came from the marketing department, which had an issue: She didn’t have a big enough following. With any book, but especially nonfiction ones, publishers want a guarantee that a writer comes with a built-in audience of people who already read and support their work and, crucially, will fork over $27 — a typical price for a new hardcover book — when it debuts.
It was ironic, considering her proposal was about what the age of the “personal brand” is doing to our humanity. Albers, 39, is an expert in what she calls the “online business industrial complex,” the network of hucksters vying for your attention and money by selling you courses and coaching on how to get rich online. She’s talking about the hustle bro “gurus” flaunting rented Lamborghinis and promoting shady “passive income” schemes, yes, but she’s also talking about the bizarre fact that her “65-year-old mom, who’s an accountant, is being encouraged by her company to post on LinkedIn to ‘build [her] brand.’”
Mitch Ammons knows his story could have ended like the stories of so many buddies from his darkest years—with an obituary. Instead, the longtime addict changed course in a manner that is, without hyperbole, beyond belief.
It’s tough to fully grasp the scale of this turnaround until you see Ammons run—to see him metronomically cruise 4:50 miles for more than an hour or to watch him push himself to the brink of consciousness in an interval session at sunrise. Then you can absorb the way he embraces suffering—relishing the revelation of what his body can do while immersing himself in pain that must feel like a cosmic body rub compared to waking up every morning in opiate withdrawal.
The very term “concept” is difficult to define. A good rough idea of what it means is that concepts are all the properties, examples and associations we think of when we use, hear or read a word. For instance, the concept of “birds” might include the following: they have wings and can fly; blackbirds are a good example of them; and we associate them with nests and animals in general, among other things. Concepts are different from dictionary definitions, which are rigorously determined and specific (and usually need to be learned). When we use language in everyday life, however, our concepts are central to what we actually mean.
This is the success of Spectral Evidence: Pardlo’s sensitivity, emotional intelligence, and insistence on an embodied (distinctly not spectral) treatment of race and womanhood. It is not just a book about racialized/gendered violence and its inheritance. It is not just about our national identity and the ways it is bound up in that violence. Spectral Evidence is about the self, the way it works, and the ways these histories are inscribed upon it.
Technology’s ubiquity throughout the collection only serves to better highlight the humanity depicted and examined within it.