During the 1990s and early 2000s, my critique group loved Anne Lamott and read all her books and discussed them and laughed together at her humor. After that, she fell off my radar, though I still reread Bird by Bird (her book on writing) periodically. (I own two copies. Yeah, I misplaced my first one and couldn’t live without it, so I had to buy another.)
A few months ago, Lamott made an appearance at a nearby arts center, and my friend Linda emailed the critique group and suggested we go. So, Judy and Linda and I got to see her in person for the very first time. And I bought Almost Everything, her latest book.
Authors Linda Carlblom, Judy Robertson, and me
The appearance was a week after Lamott’s 65th birthday and a week before her wedding (her first wedding!), a time of great transition for her. She whined a little and philosophized a lot. She told stories about her recent life and also recapped her whole life story. We left there feeling thoroughly entertained.
A few weeks later I settled in to read Almost Everything. After not reading any of her books written since 2005, I expected to be wowed. It’s her eighteenth book, consisting of twelve chapters on different topics. (She’s also written seven novels.)
But by the time I was three-quarters of the way through the book, I was getting nervous. I expected great wisdom, but what I found was familiar stories from her old books. And you know what? This is a skinny book, only 198 pages. (Plan B, which came out in 2005, was 320.)
Thankfully, I found some of what I was looking for in the final two chapters.
Chapter 11 is about food. Here are a couple of paragraphs that resonated with me:
There is the $66 billion American diet industry whispering sweet nothings everywhere you turn. There is your family’s jealousy or mortification about your body. There is our own dispirited stance toward ourselves, designed to protect us and advance our potential. There are also the convincing voices of mindfulness, coaching us to eat slowly and to savor taste and texture bite by bite; but to be blunt, this isn’t going to happen. While I am not advocating for the school of Shovel and Stuff, to sit chewing so methodically starts to argue a wasted life.
Maybe some of us can try to eat a bit more healthfully, and walk a bit more, or wheelchair dance, and make sure to wear pants that do not hurt our stomachs or our feelings. Drinking more water is the solution to many problems. Doing a three-minute meditation every day may change your life: It is the gateway drug to slowing down. Naps are nice, too.
Chapter 12 is titled “Famblies.” Here is the opening:
If the earth is forgiveness school, family is your postdoctoral fellowship. Family is hard hard hard, a crucible. Think Salem witch trials, or Senator Joseph McCarthy and House Un-American Activities Committee, great pain from which great transformation arises. The family is the crucible in which these strange entities called identities are formed, who we are and aren’t but agreed to be. Even in what might pass as a good family, every member is consigned a number of roles intended to keep the boat of the family afloat, which because of the ship’s rats—genetics, bad behavior, and mental illness—is not as easy as it sounds. It’s the hardest work we do, forgiving our circumstances, our families, and ourselves. Parenting is hard, and so is old age. And every single teenager is hard—even twelve-year-old Jesus drove his folks crazy. (And no word at all on the high school years; like Obama.) Babies are hard. In-laws are hard. And forgiveness is hardest of all.
I was given the role of perfect child at an early age. . .
And she goes on to describe her childhood, and how it shaped the woman she became.
If you’ve never read any of Anne Lamott’s nonfiction, you could read this one book, and it would be representative of her entire body of work. Almost Everything: Notes on Hope is not a bad book, but it recycles a lot of old material.
On the basis of my disappointment with this book, I decided that from now on I’ll borrow Lamott’s books from the library.
Then a supermarket in my neighborhood held a going-out-of-business sale, and I scored a copy of her previous book, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy for $1.50. (Isn’t that a great title, by the way?)
“I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.”–Edgar Rice Burroughs
