Life As We Know It: A Collection of Personal Essays from Salon.com [Paperback]

Jennifer Foote Sweeney (Editor), Jane Smiley (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 21, 2003

"...these essays are jewels of the unexpected, and in introducing them, I don't want to steal any of their surprise. Suffice it to say that family life...is alive and well, but it is not like anything you ever read about before in your life."

-- Jane Smiley, from the foreword

The nuclear family peaked in 1960 with 45 percent of the American population. Many decades later, the tidy ensemble is rare. Relationships, baby making, sex, dating, divorce -- they aren't what they used to be. But the mainstream media keeps the reality of American life a secret, only leaking the occasional tidbit to remind us that those in "unconventional" configurations are a sad anomaly to be pitied or ignored.

Life As We Know It offers proof in its most engaging form -- the personal essay -- that the big guys have got it wrong. This collection of blunt, lyrical, and often very funny work from award-winning Salon.com tells the true stories about how we live -- of hustling fertility drugs, losing a child, hating dad, and coming to terms with a parent who was the voice of "Frosty the Snowman" on TV. First-time writers and critically acclaimed authors like Amy Bloom, Kathryn Harrison, Susan Straight, and Benjamin Cheever, plumb the familiar to deliver portraits of moments, seasons, and eras that we recognize or long to understand.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This brazen and confidant collection from Salon.com's "Life" column features revealing expositions on the complexities, tensions and nuances of contemporary life. Writers share their personal experiences and ruminations with an emotional and intellectual honesty and aplomb, creating the feeling that one is sneaking a peek in some stranger's diary. Hank Pellissier relates, with touching humor, the story of impregnating both his wife and a lesbian friend and the emotional turbulence the pregnancies evoke. In "Saucy Soccer Moms," Matthew DeBord divulges his secret longings not for the stick-thin supermodels most men desire, but for the middle-aged mom who spends her days driving her kids to after-school activities and striding purposefully down the aisles of the local supermarket. The authors express themselves eloquently and passionately; even those readers who don't share the everything-goes attitude expressed in these 39 essays will appreciate their honesty and intelligence.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Jennifer Foote Sweeney was a correspondent in the Los Angeles and London bureaus of Newsweek, a national writer for Newhouse News Service, and a reporter for metropolitan newspapers before becoming editor of Life at Salon.com. She lives in northern California with her husband and two daughters.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 319 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press; Original edition (October 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743476867
• ISBN-13: 978-0743476867
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #513,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ...and Life As I Know It, too, February 24, 2004

By 

Melissa A. Fischer (Columbus, OH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Life As We Know It: A Collection of Personal Essays from Salon.com (Paperback)

There is something beautifully eerie about the accuracy with which "Life As We Know It" depicts the rhythm of existence and its inherent jarring; one emerges from reading with the sense of having lived more years than chronologically accurate, or at least of having gained the experiential wisdom that would come with those years. This "collection of personal essays" is indeed personal; I had to bind the thing with a rubber band after reading it (something I've never done to a book before), as if it were my own raw material to be shared only when I'd come to terms with its truths.
The "Life" section at Salon.com- the source of this collection- claims some of the finest essayists of the genre, as this small volume demonstrates. Inciting outrageous laughter as well as speechless indignation, "Life As We Know It" elucidates some of the most joyful and most painful, rarely shared yet universally occurring experiences. These stories are for anyone to claim; you will feel that you own some of them. As for the stories you hold: you just might learn to claim more of those, too.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars salon.com, November 2, 2009

By 

Margaret S. Mitchell (Pittsdord NY) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Life As We Know It: A Collection of Personal Essays from Salon.com (Paperback)

My husband is a great fan of Salon, I got this for him for his birthday, he loves it!

5.0 out of 5 stars The most frequently read book on my shelf, August 15, 2011

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Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be "Sarah" (Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life As We Know It: A Collection of Personal Essays from Salon.com (Paperback)

The essays in this collection revolve around the ideas of love and family like the planets revolve around the sun: some are closer to the ideal than others, but they all give in to the pull of gravity; they all acknowledge its due. Titles range from "Reproductive as a Rabbit, Abstinent as a Nun," "I Miss Lesbian Reproductive Sex," and "Born to Pop Pills" to "A Matter of Life in Death" and "A Mother Without a Child." Some made me laugh, some creeped me out a little, and others made me cry. You'll meet a woman who sees her ex-husband for the first time in thirty-five years, another who is married to a man she met when he was in prison (and where, in fact, he's spent most of their marriage), the man whose father was Frosty the Snowman's voice, and a woman who dreads explaining to others that her extra weight, her baby weight, is from her full-term stillbirth. It's the book I most frequently pull off the shelf; it's a gift to get a glimpse into these people's lives.

It may not be life as you know it, but these are lives you want to know.