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In her excellent manifesto Heroines, Kate Zambreno argues that there is a whole history of women-written literature that has mostly gone unrecognized: The journal, the diary, the Tumblr, the literary collage. Marie Calloway's new book What Purpose Did I Serve in Your Life is the first example of that kind of narrative that I've encountered since I read Heroines, and Zambreno's impassioned defense has undoubtedly led me to consider Calloway's work differently than I otherwise would have.

Purpose doesn't look like a normal book. Its narrative is broken up (or, alternately, stitched together) with images of e-mails, text message exchanges, Facebook chats, and photographs. Calloway endures a lot of hate for her work, and she publishes a sampling of negative comments in a central portion of the book. The words are presented on top of photographs of Calloway herself, and there's some ugly stuff: Wishes that she'd die, charges that she's only famous because she writes about sex, claims that she's a literary starfucker. One picture of Calloway drinking a cup of coffee is overlaid with the quote "slut." in huge white letters.

I suppose it can be hard to write about a writer who focuses on seemingly autobiographical stories of sex work and drama without making a value judgment about the writer. But, Jesus, if you're setting out to hate on Calloway, wouldn't it be more satisfying to attack her on the basis of her actual writing, of the statement she's making, rather than just calling her names and engaging in attacks on her lifestyle? Or maybe the problem is that they can't do that: Calloway is a strong writer. She's not for everyone,but if you read to have a visceral emotional response to a text, this is a text that you'll definitely emotionally respond to. Calloway portrays herself as an attention-seeker, as a self-hater, as a poseur: "I felt embarrassed that he knew I was from Las Vegas. Whenever anyone asked me where I was from, I always lied and said I was from Portland or Los Angeles. I felt like now I was at a disadvantage, like a hole had been torn in the image I wanted to present of myself." The sentences aren't beautiful, but they flow easily from one to the next to build a concrete image. It's a perfectly captured internal life: Contradictory, maddening, maudlin, desperate, pleased, pleasure-seeking. Maybe that's got something to do with the nasty responses Calloway generates: If you're not happy living with the mess in your own head, chances are you'll hate living with the voices in Calloway's head.