My Misspent Youth: Essays [Paperback]

Meghan Daum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2001

Meghan Daum is one of the most celebrated nonfiction writers of her generation, widely recognized for the fresh, provocative approach with which she unearths hidden fault lines in the American landscape. From her well-remembered New Yorker essays about the financial demands of big-city ambition and the ethereal, strangely old-fashioned allure of cyber relationships to her dazzlingly hilarious riff in Harper's about musical passions that give way to middle-brow paraphernalia, Daum delves into the center of things while closely examining the detritus that spills out along the way. She speaks to questions at the root of the contemporary experience, from the search for authenticity and interpersonal connection in a society defined by consumerism and media; to the disenchantment of working in a "glamour profession"; to the catastrophic effects of living among New York City's terminal hipsters. With precision and well-balanced irony, Daum implicates herself as readily as she does the targets that fascinate and horrify her. In a review of The KGB Bar Reader, in which Daphne Merkin singled out Daum's essay about the inability to mourn a friend's death, Merkin wrote: "It's brutally quick, the way this happens, this falling in love with a writer's style. Daum's story hooked me by the second line. Hmm, I thought, this is a writer worth suspending my routines for."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Essay lovers can take heart. There's a new voice in the fray, and it belongs to a talented young writer. In this collection of (largely previously published) on-target analyses of American culture, Daum offers the disapproval of youth, leavened with pithy humor and harsh self-appraisal . In each essay, she sustains interest with a good story and pricks the reader's conscience with observations that reverberate personally, whether about the secret desires of Christian women or the stunning ease of accumulating debt while existing unluxuriously in New York City. Publishing veterans will be amused and chagrined to see their profession skewered in "Publishing and Other Near-Death Experiences"; and for a hard take on one's responsibility for mourning, there is the book's best work, "Variation on Grief." Daum's decidedly agnostic outlook sometimes makes for easy moral outs, and time may render her phrasings cute. While her main premise that many Americans live "not actual lives but simulations of lives... via the trinkets on our shelves" leaves room for disagreement, on the whole, readers will enjoy an edgy read. (Mar. 15) Forecast: Daum's pieces have appeared in traditional magazines like the New Yorker, as well as in cutting-edge venues like Nerve, and have earned her a considerable reputation as a sharp Gen-X voice. Review attention and good word-of-mouth should earn this book brisk sales.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This eclectic collection of essays delves into the corners of contemporary life, ferreting out the eccentric as well as the ordinary. Readers can identify with Daum's disdain for carpeting or her difficulty living within her means on New York's Upper West Side while working at a low-paying publishing job. On a less familiar note is an essay exploring the lifestyle of a group in California who call their communal way of life "polyamory," a brand of free love reminiscent of the 1960s. Not shy about implicating herself, Daum plunges into such thorny issues as an Internet romance and her inability to mourn a friend's death, along with her irritation at his superficial, enabling parents. A regular contributor to National Public Radio, Daum writes essays and articles appearing in major publications including The New Yorker, Harper's, New York Times, GQ, Self, and Vogue. Her work demonstrates honesty and an ability to look perceptively at herself and contemporary life. Daum's is a provocative and refreshing new voice. Recommended for larger public libraries. Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press, Open City Books (March 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890447269
• ISBN-13: 978-1890447267
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #222,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Meghan Daum is the author of the essay collection My Misspent Youth and the novel The Quality of Life Report, a New York Times Notable Book. Her column on political, cultural, and social affairs appears weekly in the Los Angeles Times and is distributed nationally through the McClatchy news service. She has contributed to public radio's Morning Edition, Marketplace, and This American Life, and has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, GQ, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and The New York Times Book Review. She lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars you must buy this book, May 7, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: My Misspent Youth: Essays (Paperback)

meghan daum is scarily perceptive, outrageously talented, and ridiculously funny. I read the essays in one afternoon and haven't stopped thinking about them since. Though other reviewers found her arrogant, i think they are mistaking her honesty for snobbery, and her obvious intelligence for disdain. Yes, she makes fun of other people (carpet owners, sci-fi geeks, and high school musicians in particular) but gets away with it because she allows us glimpses into her own carpet-owning, sci-fi-reading, oboe-playing geeky soul. If you think personal essays have to either be truncated memoirs or shrill polemics, read this book and enjoy the form at its finest.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Talented arrogance, January 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: My Misspent Youth: Essays (Paperback)

Ms. Daum is very, very good. And hopefully living in Nebraska will help make her even better. There are times in this book she hits on so on the head it's scary; there are laugh-out-loud moments, so rare to find. But her irritating moments are SO offensive as to almost (not quite, but almost) negate the good. Ms. Daum is extraordinarily arrogant, and more than a bit of a hypocrite. Yes, she is self-depracating and "points the finger at herself" and all that other good-flap-copy crap. She is indeed...too obviously so. The self-finger-pointing tends to read as something she went back on the 2nd or 3rd draft and entered because she was worried she sounded too arrogant. Hmmm. Her essay on the polys was damn good, almost brilliant, until the last paragraph when her final conclusion was so hypocritical (jn the face of her previous essays) as to make me groan. Anyway, get the book; it's mostly good. But I think Ms. Daum will be much, much better after she's been around the block a few times.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Read this book in bits..., March 21, 2002

By 

Marcy L. Thompson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Misspent Youth: Essays (Paperback)

Meghan Daum is undoubtedly a skilled writer. She has a keen eye, when she uses it. She is also arrogant, a bit of a snob and very very young.

I've been enjoying her essays in various magazines for some time now, and I was interested to learn that there is a collection of her writing, so I bought the book. As I started to read, I discovered that the essays started to run together in my mind. I was occasinally stopped short by her arrogance. When I read one essay at a time, these things did not happen, and I could go back to enjoying the fluently written, nicely observed essays about not much of anything. On the other hand, when I read them in a group, the weaknesses were more evident and the effect more of a whine.

So, my advice is that if you like this kind of thing (smooth writing, essays making much of very little), you may well enjoy this book. I just urge you not to take the edge off by reading it all at once.