And the question is: How great a sinner must one be, to write a compelling autobiography?
So a book like this has three things going on: Pearls, Swine, and Slop. It’s a pigsty of a thing, all mashed together bits of memoir and remembrance, deep-thoughts on the mundane, rounded out by random essays on random events tied together by the merest thread of a conceit: This happened to me and it’s kinda spiritual.
That was too harsh. My apologies. I enjoyed traveling with you, Ms. Lamott. Mercies, please. So, let me break it down a little more.
Pearls: Anne Lamott has some very winning observations here. Some great descriptions. Shares some hard-earned lessons about forgiveness and overcoming and keeping on. Some seriously good stuff, especially as she walks the tightrope between pissing off the Conservatives with her big “L” lefty take on all things social and political, and pissing off the Liberals with her insistence on conforming to a pretty old-school orthodox take on Christianity. (I probably just pissed off all of you by invoking unfair stereotypes of all of you, but time is of the essence. Mercies.)
Swine (aka “The Naughty Bits” or “The Fun Parts”) : There’s a lot of good little vignettes of adolescent kicks and starting-to-rot 60s experimentation that eventually dries up and devolves into crusty old lonely alcoholism. (To be explored, literarilly, in a moment…)
Slop: This is the only place where I’ve really got a real beef with the book. It’s pretty cut-n-pasty and could have used an editor a little less enraptured with Anne’s direct line to the sublime. (But who am I to argue? Would my private moments be any more meaningful to anyone else? Doubtful.)
Back to the original question: How great a sinner must you be to write a compelling autobiography?
Seems they come in three types: There’s the memoirs about your troubles. Then there’s the self-gloat about your accomplishments. And finally the best of both worlds: Troubles overcome, while you achieved anyway.
I suppose that Anne hits number three with her balance of brain cells lost vs. books published. But is it enough? I just don’t know. For instance, have I sinned enough to ensure a convincing expose? I’ve made my share of mistakes while attempting to grease the bumps in the road while driving alone during a dark night of the soul, been through therapy to work it out, got better, etc. But am I unique? Or at this point do we all have enough pictures of dumbness on facebook to make the point moot? Maybe the point is that exceptionally bad behavior isn’t all that exceptional. Maybe that should be the boring part of the book instead of the hook. Maybe we should all take a little longer to blog about the Traveling Mercies than the trash we’ve all got to dig our way through. Maybe Anne is right.
(And, just maybe, I should give up my insistence on using “There’s” as a contraction of “There Are.” But that just how I was raised. Along with Nucular. Now that’s some fertile soil to mine for the memoirs! Let’s get typing!)
This book was assigned reading for a “women in Christianity” (or something like that) class I took back in college. And I don’t remember much about it except that it left a distinctly unpleasant taste in my mouth. I just didn’t like it. And the way the class as a whole was taught kinda made women’s studies seem like a bunch of hogwash…I don’t know if that has anything to do with this book, but I just thought I’d chime in my semi-agreement about the less-than-stellarness of this book. Now, wasn’t that edifying? (erm…nevermind)
Highly edifying indeed! Although most of my lady friends really disagree with me on this one, and I’ve have to retract some of my opinions as being the product of my testosterone-driven emotions instead of clear and precise literary thinking.
If this one would have come up at my little non-Liberal Arts College, I’m sure it would have been laughed out of the classroom. Way out.
I might give “Bird by Bird” a try though — I’ve heard it’s better and more concrete while being less ambitious. We’ll see…!
I was looking at some amazon.com reviews for this book to help refresh my memory, and I found one 3-star review by user “teknon” to be right on. Following is the conclusion of his review:
I think it’s fair to say that pretty much everyone will find something to relate to in Lamott’s recollections, and few are better than she is at the craft of writing. But if you’re looking for wry stories of domestic crises, read Erma Bombeck instead; she’s funnier. If you want a spiritual autobiography, try David Brainerd or Julian of Norwich; they’re theologically meatier. If your quest is a tale of life’s adversity overcome imperfectly, I’d recommend C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed. But if you want somewhat witty autobiographical essays by a neurotic left-coaster whose theology seems to have come straight out of a blender, look no further than Traveling Mercies.
Now that was funny (and hard to argue with.) It all comes down to that old fact that “the making of many books will never end.” Time is short, books are many, and when I feel that my time has been compromised by a book in need of a good editor I feel a little bitter. But that’s just me being self-centered: Art for art’s sake is where it’s at. And to hit a home run, you’ve got to swing the bat a few times. God bless the batter. May God bless me if I ever get to step up to the plate.
(I really hate sports analogies.)