Customer Reviews

Self-Help

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Lorrie Moore has long been a favorite writer of mine. Her short fiction, which has appeared regularly in THE NEW YORKER and elsewhere, is unbeatable. Her humor is sharp, her descriptive powers awesome, and her stories (almost) always feel as though they actually go somewhere.

One of the best pieces in "Self-Help" is probably the first Lorrie Moore piece I ever read. "Self-Help" was published the year I graduated from college, and I think a college friend gave me a copy of "How to Become a Writer." Note the "become" instead of "be." Moore acknowledges the process involved in writing and lets her readers know that writers are not sprung fully-formed from the head of Zeus or anyone else. Listen to this beautifully assured, resonant, yet hilarious passage from "How to Become a Writer":

"First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age--say, fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom. She is tough and practical. She has a son in Vietnam and a husband who may be having an affair. She believes in wearing brown because it hides spots. She'll look briefly at your writing, then back up at you with a face blank as a doughnut. She'll say: 'How about emptying the dishwasher?' Look away. Shove the forks in the fork drawer. Acccidentally break one of the freebie gas station glasses. This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters."

Moore likes to do that--throw in references like Vietnam, then spin things around a little so that it comes out funny. One of my favorite Lorrie Moore bits had to do with a woman who said something awful before she could stop herself--Moore described the blurted insult as being "a lizard with a hat on." Wacko as that sounds, you still know exactly what she means. That is her great gift--she makes life sound wacko and off-kilter, but you completely, utterly GET IT anyway.

I want to be loved like Lorrie Moore loves a man. Her characters say some hilarious things, but if you pay really close attention to how they feel (the way Ms Moore writes about how they feel), you'll find some of the most passionate writing going. When a Moore character falls in love, they're not fooling around (though they may be, in fact, fooling around in an extramarrital way). They mean it. And it is this passion, combined with an almost hyperintelligent wit, that makes Self-Help the terrific reading experience it is. I'm a Moore junkie ... and this book is where it all started.

For me, Lorrie Moore's short stories have always been the literary equivalant of Kristin Hersh's songs. Both of these profoundly gifted women create chilling, personal revelations that give me goosebumps. Both explore the strange and sad parts of life that keep us awake at night, staring at the ceiling and thinking "why?" And both make me want to stop writing because I will never even approach their genius. Lorrie's peculiar style of telling a story backwards is especially endearing in this debut collection of faux "advice" stories, in which she mocks the genre of self-help. Absolutely not to be missed.

p.s. Please *ignore* the review below from TGA@BIGPOND.COM.KH, as it is actually referring to Lorrie's most recent book, Birds of America (the "sick baby" story is "People Like That are the Only People Here.")

How's that for a self-help book. Moore's prose is brilliant; her style, unrefined and beautiful. I like this collection because it has the edge too much editing can kill. Read this book.

Wow. Lorrie Moore just gets it so right. These stories are piercing, exposing, pointing the finger right at the reader, yet sympathetic and just true, true, true. Moore certainly has a flair for drama, which comes out in stories like "What is Seized", but it's never gratuitious or too far-reaching. Worth reading simply for "How to Be the Other Woman" (relevent not just for any woman who has had an affair, but for anyone who has loved a man who is less than fully committed) and the wonderfully inspiring "How to Become a Writer."

Basically.....read anything by Lorrie Moore, you won't be disappointed (unless of course The Nanny Diaries was one of your favorite books).

Looking for something strong, vulnerable, funny, different, and as existentially confused as you have the pretension of imagining yourself, you find this. Here. This odd little flimsy awkwardly-colored book. It doesn't even have the snobbery of girth or weight. And, paging through the pulpy pages, you slowly start nodding. Yes. Yeah. You. Go. Girl. If we all could find a voice of pathos and verve echoing the ingenuity and authenticity of Moore's, this might not be such a miserable mess of a culture. I can't overemphasize how precious this book is. Men might admire it, but women will lift it over their heads and holler. You. Go. Girl.

This book is totally a put on your favorite pajamas, sit in your favorite chair with ice cream and read cover to cover then rush to have coffee with an old friend kind of book. I love love it. I read it every year. I discovered it around the same time I started writing and this book brings me back to that time when I felt I had so much to say but oh! how to say it. I read "Ahmal and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love" in a collection of young writers and was so touched by the lush feeling of the world she was in and the thoughts she was having. I think of that story often. I certainly recommend this book to women- it saves the cost of long-distance gosspiy, weepy, funny phone calls to old friends, and has the same warm effect.

I love Moore's writing, but this volume is inconsistent. When it's bad, it's simply melodramatic, and when it's worse, it hardly makes any sense.

However, "Self-Help" is worth buying for the wonderful "How to Be an Other Woman" which catches Moore at her best, teetering on the razor-thin border between hilarity and pathos.

"How to Become a Writer" is also worth mentioning, followed at a distance by "Amahl and the Night Visitors" and "To Fill".

Lorrie Moore is famous for her humor, her wry use of language, and her honest look into the strangeness that is at the heart of human lives. Vintage Contemporaries has just republished her 1985 book of short stories, Self-Help, in which Moore takes the how-to genre and turns it on its head. Instead of high-minded advice about happiness, success and love, Moore provides stories that outline how to become "the other woman," lay out an ironic kid's guide to divorce, and even advise the (best?) way to face the end one's life when confronted with terminal illness.

These stories gain much of their power through the imperative voice. "Meet in expensive beige raincoats, on a pea-soupy night," Moore begins in "How to Be an Other Woman." She is talking directly to us, the readers. She is giving advice, and her characters take it, and we get to see, by the actions carried out, that she is not necessarily providing a hopeful fantasy of what we might want to be, but more a roadmap of what inherently is.

These stories are now more than 20 years old, but reading (or re-reading) them again today, they are as poignant and relevant as they were in 1985. Her subject matter is timeless--love and death and relationships with mothers--and her subjects, the characters of her stories, remain witty and edgy and current.

Moore is a writer of great talent, and her mirthful use of irony is one thing that separates her from other short story writers, has even made her a writer that other writers study and mimic and revere. Almost as if, in 1985, predicting this place she would occupy in the world, she gave us in this collection the story "How to Become a Writer," in which she bluntly lays out this admonishment: "First, try to be something, anything, else." We can only thank goodness that she didn't seriously follow her own advice.

Armchair Interviews says: Check out Lorrie Moore on Wikipedia. She sold this first book of short stories derived from her 1985 thesis when she was 26. Lucky us.