RaveChicago Review of BooksThere is an almost obsessive (in a good way) focus on what it means to wish to be perceived in a certain way by others, as well as what it means to be hyper-aware of that tendency in yourself, on the conflict between the desires to be seen and at the same time, to escape being seen, and furthermore, to escape the painful self-consciousness that arises out of the awareness of that conflict. There is a constant, almost painful sense of struggle in this book, which is echoed in its very structure, between those varying impulses ... the use of tangents creates the illusion of a lack of deliberateness on the part of the author, as if the essay is like a car that, encountering some obstacle, must take an unexpected detour ... Throughout The Word Pretty, we encounter a mind in near-constant constant tension with itself, a restless intelligence that craves the respite of a sort of \'meaning-freeness\'—a site in which meaning is present but also resists analysis, so perhaps more of a \'beyond-meaning-ness\'—that is reminiscent of the physical body’s need for sleep ... What I love about Gabbert’s book is the way it embraces the idea of uncertainty ... but in the end...all the individual essays feel meaningfully connected, like the balls on the pool table. Although the pattern they form may appear to be random, the leave has been cleverly chosen, and the shot goes in.
