For years Anne Lamott’s book, Bird By Bird, collected dust on my shelf. Many an aspiring (or badly blocked) writer raved to me about it as the Holy Grail of books about writing. “Forget Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones,” they would say. “Anne Lamott is the shit. She’s real. She drinks too much. She’s always short on money. She’s pure.” Still, I resisted, enjoying the raised eyebrows and shocked expressions when I shrugged and said something of the blah, blah, blah cateogry.
For reasons that feel both fuzzy and synchronistic, over the weekend I broke my seal and read the book. Cover to cover, loads of hearty laughter, sick with jealousy. Now I understand what the fuss was all about, agree that in the book she’s real, drunk, broke but also exquisitely honest and human. A definitive inner hottie, too, pure and simple.
Go figure that one of my favorite chapters plumbed the topic of jealousy. I am now experiencing jealousy of that acutest kind, like a pile of burning tires, because this beautiful creation I’m slobbering over, that I might contemplate doing all sorts of evil to have as mine is not mine, will never be mine. It will always be the progeny of someone else. And it’s so unfair.
Because there was no intersection between me and this book until now, there are a few bitter pills to choke on. I’m late entering the game of finding kindred spirits with whom to gush and swap favorite passages, I missed out on Lamott’s Salon.com era, and I have a whole bunch of her other books to catch up on. Just desserts. At least this book has been added to the pile bound for France.
If you don’t have Bird by Bird, get it. This instant. I insist.
Would it make you feel any less jealous to know that not everyone liked Bird By Bird? Like, for instance, me?
I’m just not an Anne LaMotte fan. She’s all about herself, if you know what I mean. But many people adore her!
Nope, no less jealous, and it does trigger that ferocious defensiveness that rabid fans tend to have. (As in what’s so wrong with a writer’s book about her writing life being about her?) But, opposing arguments are healthy, as you well know. Rabid fans need someone to poke an air hole into their bubble now and again.
I heart her. Traveling Mercies is great. And I like knowing that her stomping grounds (Marin County) were mine for a bit, too.
True, her book should be “about” her. But it was SO self-absorbed. At least that is how it struck me! Is it my age? Possibly…….
Age schmage. It just wasn’t your bag (or book). Writing Down The Bones didn’t click for me on the first read, the second read, or the third read. Then I said to hell with it and passed it along to somebody who would love it, because obviously I was never going to.