The Elizabeth Monthly is now Oubliette
...or, "How I learned to stop worrying and love the rebrand"
I decided to migrate from TinyLetter to Substack for a number of very boring reasons, and while I was at it, I thought I might like to change the name. Elizabeth Monthly was a very funny name to me because it was the exact name a 9-year-old might choose for a one-sheet digest written in Comic Sans and distributed to a subscriber base of grandparents and cousins. I am nothing if not self-effacing. But I feel that the name may have run its course and now I’d like to move my newsletter in a direction that’s a little more mature, inquisitive, and perhaps (if you’ll forgive some dreadful influencer jargon) intentional.
So I went with Oubliette.
What is an oubliette? I have my 10th grade European history teacher, Mrs. Dickerson, to thank for introducing me to the concept. It’s a medieval dungeon shaped rather like a bottle with a narrow opening and a wide base, the point being that once you’re inside one, it is inescapable. Oubliette, from the French word oublier, meaning “to forget,” is, in the words of Hoggle from Labyrinth, “a place you put people…to forget about ‘em.”
So why have I named my newsletter after a medieval prison? The short answer is, I’m not sure. The word is very potent for me and carries a lot of different meanings and pathways to interesting concepts. It’s a prison, which makes me think of “a prison of one’s own making.” How might we entrap ourselves in old habits, in negative feelings, in bad relationships? It’s a place we put people and things we want to forget. What repressed memories, feelings, fears, and bugaboos are we hiding in deep caverns within ourselves? Have the pathways to these dark and forgotten places totally grown over, or can we find our way back to them? It’s a place to put people and things we want to forget…and yet it’s also a place to preserve things. Putting someone or something in an oubliette ensures they stay put. How do we preserve memories or feelings by locking them up inside ourselves? Or could an oubliette be a good thing? A place to hide, to slip away to? A dark, contemplative pit not unlike the one Toru Okada goes into in Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle?
I think an oubliette is all these things and probably dozens more, so I’m using it as a catch-all for what I hope this newsletter will be: A regular descent into burning topics, obsessions, flights of fancy. I promise to keep to my monthly (or, let’s be honest, less than monthly) posting schedule. And I promise to entertain and (hopefully) enlighten, the newsletter like a delicious chocolate chip cookie with spinach blended up and hidden inside. Though, tbh, that sounds kinda gross.
New stuff:
I had the enormous pleasure of speaking to Hilary Leichter, author of the surrealist workplace comedy, Temporary, about her newest novel, Terrace Story, out now. It’s about a young family living in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn't there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. A city dweller's dream come true! But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world.
Annndddd (drumroll please):
The Bullet Swallower is available for pre-order! And not only that, but Barnes & Noble Rewards and Premium Members get 25% off all pre-orders from September 6 through September 8!
Pre-orders are so, so important because they show publishers that there is interest in a book and that they should put their marketing muscle behind it. So if you were planning on buying my new novel, (and like, you totally should) please consider placing a pre-order. It’s like a gift from your present self to your future self. By the time January 23rd rolls around you will have forgotten you bought the book, and so when it comes in the mail it’ll be like a late Christmas/Hanukkah surprise - yay!
And if you’re not a Barnes & Noble shopper, it’s also available at Amazon, Bookshop, and your local indie.
Thanks for reading and may we all stay clear of any hidden prisons, that is, unless you really want to enter one.
xoxo,
Elizabeth