From the top shelf of Ling Ma: 'Windowlight' by Ann Nietzke Issue #40

By Ling Ma
Published: August 1st, 2009 | 12:00am

Windowlight by Ann Nietzke

PUBLICATION: 1981

WHAT’S IT ABOUT? After fleeing the Midwest, a newly single divorcee begins a solitary life in her adopted home of Venice Beach, Los Angeles. From the seclusion of her window, she observes the lives of the boardwalk’s winos and residents, revealing more about herself and her past in the process.

CONTEXT, PLEASE: After being published by little-known Capra Press, Windowlight won the PEN/USA West Award for Best First Fiction. Nietzke, a journalist who wrote for Cosmopolitan and Playgirl, went on to publish other better-known works, but Windowlight remained on the cultural radar, eventually being republished by Soho Press in the ’90s.

READ IT FOR: Confessional, shadow-dappled monologues that cast moody, hypnotic spells and spiral a little further out of control each time. After a while, they take on such staggering scale that they could rival Norma Desmond’s pontifications any day.

OPENING: ”I already know who he is — know his name, even — from seeing him on the boardwalk so often. He is one of the hard-core winos who changes out at the pagoda at Westward and Ocean Front Walk.”

MIDDLE: “Things fall apart and you move to California — it’s taken for granted, an American cliché. You read Joan Didion, and then maybe things fall apart for you, and you begin slouching towards Los Angeles.”

CLOSING: ”I pull out of the parking lot, turn back up the alley, and give Mr. Fluffy a goodbye wave.”

IF WINDOWLIGHT WERE A SONG, IT’D BE: Cat Power’s “Moonshiner” (Moon Pix), for its slow, sensuous female vocals set against simple accompaniment of repetitive percussion and drowsy guitar twangs.

WHY I LIKE IT: Though the prose sometimes runs a bit purple, the first-person voice is so electrically charged — with melancholy, lust, anger, or any combination of emotions — that it’s hard to tear away.

YOU SHOULD READ IT WHEN: You have no idea where you’re going or what you’re doing. When you’re waiting for friends to show up at Happy Hour on a blisteringly hot summer day.