And . . . done

I finished Lit (again) last night and have come to the same conclusion I did the first go-round: it's so well written, beautiful in parts, but it's also choppy and exhausting.  What I guiltily enjoy most about Karr's writing is her long passages about her mother (moreso in The Liar's Club and Cherry).  This is when she is most outrageous and hilarious, but also poignant.  In Lit, Charley sobers up and cooks briskets and while she's still saucy and inappropriate, she's more mature (at age 80).  In short, it's a let down.  I felt the same way after hungrily reading all of Ruth Reichl's memoirs.  Reichl's mother, like Charley, tends toward the insane and inappropriate, but in her latest memoir, Not Becoming My Mother, Reichl makes peace with her mom's bi-polarism.  It's not the raucous ride of botulism we find in her first memoir, Tender At The Bone and while I'm happy for Reichl, it's just not as much fun.

Does that make me a voyeur of the reality show mentality?  Or borrowing a headline from NPR (about Olympic figure skater Joannie Rochette): is this the "fine line between empathy and voyeurism"?  http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/02/joannie_rochette_the_fine_line.html

Truth is, healthy relationships rarely make interesting literature, but whack-ass, drunken, sociopathic families are hi-lar-ious.

Waking up

I'm halfway through Lit (for the second time).  Midway through birthday season (my son's birthday was last week; my daughter's is next week), I've been distracted away from the task I've assigned myself on this blog - to read, write, and write about reading.  But, I'm back now baby!  And as I speed my way through the middle of Mary Karr's tumble into alcoholism, I realize that I wasn't just overcome by family priorities, I was also procrastinating from reliving the middle of this book, the section entitled "Self Help."

This section is painful.  There is no other way to describe it.  I read as a helpless bystander, unable to prevent her descent into drunken stupor, horrified that she drove her child around with two beers tucked in her coat and another sidled next to a juice box in her purse.  But as I re-read this section something that Sarah said as a response to a previous post screamed in my head: yes, Karr is naval-gazing and self-involved . . . because she's an alcoholic.  Not until we reach Chapter 21 ("The Grinning Skull"), when Karr attends her first AA meeting, does she have any form of self-awareness and humility.  Not that she spends the first half of the book gafawing about her drunken exploits.  Quite the opposite.  She seems embarrassed and apologetic that she was such a terrible insert noun (mother, wife, teacher, writer, etc.).  In Chapter 21 she actually talks about a light coming on (an allusion to the title, perhaps) while she listens to other alcoholics talk about their disease at the church basement meeting.

We're asleep most of the time, I once heard the writer George Saunders say, but we can wake up.  In that instant, for no reason I can discern, I wake up  (p. 190).

As she laughs at the horror stories of her new peers - a woman in a Chanel suit admits drinking straight from the carcass of a frozen turkey where she had hidden a whiskey bottle, a man tells the meandering tale of two botched suicide attempts, one of which exploded him into a neighbor's yard, singeing off his eyebrows - Karr realizes that she is laughing in good company at "the specter of human frailty" (p. 192).  This is significant because she is for the first time not wallowing alone in self-pity and hatred, and also because she is able to laugh about mistakes.  It's the first step in her recovery, despite her resistance to the spiritual nature of the meetings and her mistrust of the group's kindness to her, a virtual stranger.  I believe Karr was self-pitying to a degree, but she is telling the story of who she was and who she was was a messy narcissist.  If I remember correctly, she continues to make mistakes and feel like a wreck for a good part of this section of the book, but simultaneously, she attempts to make real, lasting changes.  By the end of the book, I believe she is truly humbled by her journey and her success.

As a side note: when I saw Karr read from this manuscript in 2003, she was a model of humility.  I was drawn to her scathing wit and her unpretentious attitude about her successes.  She spoke to the small auditorium filled to bursting with students and professors like we were hanging at the coffee shop, or bar for that matter, trading stories and one-upping each other.  There was no scholarly jargon, no haughty air of superiority, and a whole lot of laughter.  When she signed my book she wrote, "To Amy: Kick ass and take names."

Gonna sit right down and write myself a blog post

I'm going to mess around with the memoir list . . . again.  I do this to my students too, by the way, when I change my mind on assignments and rewrite the syllabus repeatedly.  They love it, really they do.  I picked up The Lonely Days Were Sundays (essays on being Southern and Jewish), but it's very academic and historical, not as warm and fuzzy as I'm used to.  I just couldn't acclimate and coming off of Elizabeth Gilbert, I need a kindred spirit.  Instead, I'm turning my attention to Mary Karr's Lit.  Although I just finished reading Lit a month ago (and rather enjoyed it), it is getting a lot of positive press and may be up for a National Book Award.  It's a timely book to re-read and comment upon for that reason, but Karr (as many people who know me well will attest to) is a literary idol for me.  In this weird age of instant virtual connections, I am actually able to interact with her (although I choose not to) on her Facebook page (that's how I know she's a National Book Award contender).  As I re-read and respond to Lit, I'll keep an eye on Karr's FB page and see what awards stack up in her corner.  Should be interesting.

Lit is the third installment of Karr's memoir trilogy. (The Liar's Club and Cherry were the first two books, the former garnering Karr many critical accolades.  Both of these books are worth reading.  The Liar's Club ranks as one of my favorite reads and re-reads.)  It follows Karr through college, grad school, early teaching, marriage, motherhood, publishing, and most of all alcoholism and recovery.  Lit is a raw-ass book that does not paint a pretty picture of addiction; but, that's Karr's thing.  She makes the reader squirm with painful details and memories then rallies with a salty sense of humor. The title is a double entendre for her publishing successes and her years spent blotto with a tumbler of whiskey on her balcony.

So, that's the plan.  After Lit, I should have Shalom Auslander in my sweaty little paws ready to devour. And yes, it's not on The List (but it should've been).