I'm having a hard time finding something to say about this collection except that I loved it. I'll soon be picking up Like Life, I think, as well as trying to learn more about Moore herself. I'm curious to know how autobiographical her writing is, because the emotions in each story just ring so true. Of course, that's what a good writer does -- taps into the commonality of human experience and shows us that we are not alone. I really enjoyed the way Moore played with tense and point of view to tell stories, switching between past and present tense, first and second POV. And, of course, the puns. These stories are packed tightly with wit and sentiment and tenderness and tragedy and pathos and just about everything that I love in literature.---Sept. 21, 2009. Today is the kind of day that I needed a break from the office by lunchtime, so I wandered to my usual bookstore before grabbing Chinese at the restaurant around the corner from there. The waitress kept calling me Angel. "Here you go, Angel," she said as she handed me a plate of cashew chicken. It netted her a $2 tip on a $5 lunch. While waiting, I read "How to Talk to Your Mother," chosen not at random but because I had one of those obligatory phone conversations with my mother yesterday after more than a year of contact only through e-mail and the occasional message. I try to call. She isn't home. I leave a message. Maybe she responds, maybe she doesn't. This is how we passed Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas, mother's day, her birthday. I got a check in the mail around Dec. 20 — no card, just "Merry Christmas" written on the memo line. It isn't so much that we have a contentious relationship as a non-existent one, but I don't think she's aware there's a problem, and any attempts in the past on my part to discuss things has resulted in my mother breaking down into hysterical tears and accusing me of accusing her of being a bad mother. So yesterday I finally caught up with her on the phone, doing my duty as a good daughter to at least try to keep lines of communication open. It went as our conversations nearly always do — she talks about her job, her house, her latest online boyfriend (she now has one who has moved in and sounds rather shiftless). She makes a pretense of asking about my life, but when I try to tell her, I'm met with an absent-minded "Uh huh" before the moves on to tell me some pointless anecdote about one of her co-workers. This time I actually got in a good minute of talking about my own plans before she interjected with "Why don't you just come home. I want you home." To which I simply couldn't think of anything to say, or at least nothing diplomatic. It occurred to me to ask "Why?" or to tell her "Ohio isn't home. It's just where I'm from." Or to say I didn't feel like moving back 2,300 miles to make our relationship more convenient, when she doesn't even try to stay in touch with me here. I think I said something vague like, "We'll have to see how things go."Which has nothing at all to do with Moore's story, which recounts the life of a mother and daughter in a series of quick flashes, each representing a year counted down in reverse to the daughter's birth. It's a rich story for its compactness, but then parent-child relationships are never simple things.
“Meet in expensive raincoats, on a pea-soupy night.”So begins the first story of Lorrie Moore’s first book, most of which she wrote as an M.F.A. student at Cornell University. Eight words, none of which would tax the vocabulary of a fifth-grader, and yet all of the signature elements that Moore built her award-winning career on are there: the fledgling attempts at urbanity so fragile they must be spelled out (“expensive raincoats”), the perfectly failed eloquence (“pea-soupy”), and the self-canceling main character, all grounded in a mood as specific and dense as bourbon.I’m not here, Moore seems to say, but this is exactly where I might be if I were. “Last night in bed you said, ‘...I usually don’t like discussing sex, but—’ And he said, ‘I don’t like disgusting sex either.’”Moore’s writing can seem second-rate even to sympathetic readers. She is clever but not an analytical powerhouse, peppers her dialogue with some really bad puns, and cheerfully practices ignorance of any traditional notions about plot.In short, Moore embraces many of the worst tendencies of M.F.A. fiction and then seems to double down on them. “‘But does it work?’ ... ‘Have you earned this cliché?’”And yet, the accumulated effect of these stories is that of a romantic temperament that has been profoundly disappointed, and who can’t relate to that? We are all former children, after all.As funny as she can be, Moore’s vision is fundamentally tragic. It is the great ur-pun of Moore’s oeuvre that the wisecracks that she loves so much are not cracks of wisdom so much as cracks in the wisdom that her generation received from generations previous.It’s worth noting that the third dictionary definition for “joke” (after “a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter” and “a trick played on someone for fun”) is “a person or thing that is ridiculously inadequate.” “Understand that your cat is a whore and can’t help you.”The step-by-step life instructions peddled by the self-help industry to the disappointed romantics that make up 100% of the American adult population are probably most readily classifiable as the third kind of joke, but, as long as you’re reading these stories, they can very nearly almost feel like one of the other two.
What do You think about Self-Help (2007)?
Read all but the last story... maybe my expectations were a little high. I've been wanting to read it ever since my friend Terry recommended it. Gawd. That was like six years ago. And I did like the way she showed us how to use "you." The second person is so often debated in writing workshops. But on the whole, this 80s collection is probably just a few years ahead of my time. "How to Be an Other Woman" makes for a strong start: "Meet in expensive beige raincoats, on a pea-soupy night. Like a detective movie. First, stand in front of Florsheim's Fifty-seventh Street window, press your face to the glass, watch the fake velvet hummels inside revolving around the wing tips; some white shoes, like your father wears, are propped up with garlands on a small mound of chemical snow. All the stores have closed. You can see your breath on the glass. Draw a peace sign. You are waiting for a bus."I was thinking this might be a book for my ex step-mom, but ultimately decided that it could be taken personally. The reverse chronological notes of "How to Talk to Your Mother" are interesting and "How to Become a Writer" is one of those fabulous essays for any (beginning) writing workshop. If I were making my own little anthology... and the others don't come back to me. But again, I think it's a generational thing. The writing is keen and engaging.
—Suzanne
Joan, I have only read one book by Moore, A Gate at the Stairs, which was a great disappointment for me. I had heard such good things about her writing. Have you read any others?
—Joan Winnek
This has to be one of the funniest books I've ever read. Whenever I think about which pieces to foist on my imaginary classroom of writing students, "How to Be A Writer" is the first piece that pops into mind. Here's the first paragraph of my favorite story. (I think you'll be intrigued enough from just that much):How To Be A Writer, Or, Have You Earned This Cliche?First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/ missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age - say, 14. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at 15 you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom. She is tough and practical. She has a son in Vietnam and a husband who may be having an affair. She believes in wearing brown because it hides spots. She'll look briefly at your writing then back up at you with a face blank as a doughnut. She'll say: ''How about emptying the dishwasher?'' Look away. Shove the forks in the fork drawer. Accidentally break one of the freebie gas station glasses. This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters.
—Sarah
