Cool Calm And Contentious (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
Overall a fun, funny read. Markoe is at her most successful when she's telling stories about specific experiences like being a wallflower at the S&M ball ("I could buy one of those mini nurse/go-go dancer uniforms just like the ones the Red Cross nurses all wore that time a hurricane hit a brothel and everyone had to take refuge in an S&M dungeon.") or being belittled by her narcissistic mother (“If I can’t criticize you, what are we supposed to talk about? The weather?”). I was less fond of her pieces waxing on celebrity culture or imagining conversations with her dog, and myself slugging through the end. But overall it was a witty, charming collection, with great self-deprecating one-liners on her ambitions to achieve diary fame like Anne Frank (overlooking the Holocaust and Nazi bits) or dating Dave Letterman while she was on his staff ("Sure, you’d heard people say, 'Don’t shit where you eat,' but that never made sense because the way you saw it, every good restaurant has an excellent restroom.") The old saying is that comedy is hard. And that's true. But I think what is even harder is to be funny and smart. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on television are both funny and smart. Sarah Vowell writes essays and books that are funny and smart. I'd put Merrill Markoe in the same category as those folks. This is a collection of essays on widely varying subjects. They're almost all funny (which shouldn't surprise anyone who has followed Markoe's career) and several are very moving as well. The essay on her relationship with her mother is a real highlight. And the one her early sexual experiences in college uses humor to reveal serious and deeply personal details in a moving way. Quick read but a good book and I'd recommend it.
What do You think about Cool Calm And Contentious (2000)?
Her essays about college and sex pack a real emotional punch. Much else is filler...
—angel
Six-Word Book Review:Once loved Letterman, now dogs. Connection?
—badtzrockz
Awful, awful, awful. I quit reading about 70 pages in.
—saad
