Dear Alex Lemon,

You are a bad boy. I can tell because I've seen your sleeve tattoos on the Scribner YouTube videos in which you're discussing your memoir Happy. You've got bad boy hair in those videos, too, black and slightly spiky, like you didn't try too hard but you still look good. A little, you know, dangerous.

It's obvious you were a cool kid growing up. Of course, I already knew that because your memoir opens with your freshman year at Macalester College before your first stroke, back when you were doing cool kid things like partying, playing sports, and slaying girls. But unlike most cool kids who grow up to be shallow adults pining for their glory years, you've taken an X-ACTO knife to your past, carving out the scope of your identity. Your memoir deals with not only your shocking physical trauma and personal darkness but, perhaps more importantly, it exposes all the strange, beautiful ways people love one another.

Plus, you've got a poet's tongue that surges through your prose (making for my favorite kind of prose). This makes sense, since you've also published two books of poetry, Mosquito (Tin House Books) and Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed Editions). But this is not to say your words are all abstractions or flower metaphors, not a chance in hell coming from a guy with sleeve tattoos, surely. I'm talking about the kind of precise poetics that do what all good writing, especially nonfiction, should do: deliver the veritable world in ripe, bloody Technicolor so that the text becomes a living organism, heaving with the author's raw energy. Alex Lemon, your language holds deep, passionate music smashed against gritty, insoluble matter. Through your book I can feel your life spark and unravel better than I could if I were watching it happen in real time.

Oh god, I'm rambling. Bad boys make me nervous.

Maybe I'll let you do some chatting for a while. Here are just a few of my favorite lines from Happy:

"A fifth to feel the buzzing, cicadas chewing through my eyes. Just this, just this, just this."

"The spring air is steamed milk and metal, and Julie's hand is delicate."

"Under the shower's cold water, blood riots through my skin. Bruises map my body."

"She's wearing the blurred face people get when they think no one's around."

"The sterile walls gleam, and I'm ashamed I'm not comatose or dead."

"Holy shit—the doctor is palming my dick in his gloved hand like he's going to guess its weight."

"Ma tugs my cheeks again, then pushes away and hops back and claps and moonwalks across the street."

Your memoir is physical, and I don't mean that because it is a story of a young body suddenly breaking down. I mean this book has a pulse. It is visceral. I felt the heat and shape of light snarl off every page.

Alex, I have to be honest. Normally I don't like bad boys. My type are the safe, nerdy boys who like to watch the Discovery Channel and will never cheat on me. But after reading your insightful, achingly honest memoir, I really, really like you. Thank you for writing this voltage line of a book.

Sincerely,

Melissa Carroll