Sharp insights from a passionate practitioner and champion of memoir.
A writer known for her candid autobiographical writing about sex, trauma, and female identity lays out the tenets of her craft.
Febos takes no prisoners in this strongly worded manifesto—despite her claim on the first page that it is not a manifesto. In fact, her impassioned theses and proclamations about writing are exactly that. Proceeding from the principle that “writing is a form of freedom more accessible than many and there are forces at work in our society that would like to withhold it from those whose stories most threaten the regimes that govern this society," she turns the charge of "navel-gazing" on its head. She further points out that memoirists do not publish raw therapeutic diaries but crafted literary works with the power to change the world. Her blunt anger is understandable. “At readings I would be billed on posters as MELISSA FEBOS, FORMER DOMINATRIX, alongside my co-reader, [INSERT MALE WRITER NAME], POET." In a chapter called "Mind Fuck," Febos lays out rules for writing about sex, starting with "You can use any words you want,” and she illustrates her points with well-chosen quotes from writers like Marie Howe, Nancy Mairs, Carmen Maria Machado, and Cheryl Strayed. In a useful chapter addressing the pitfalls of writing about other people, Febos describes her own approach and practices, developed via hard experience. A section called "Mom Goggles," for example, goes right to the question many readers may have about the writer's often X-rated work: Does her mother read it? It turns out she does, along with other family members, prior to publication. The author’s exhortations with regard to craft—"every single notation—every piece of punctuation, every word, every paragraph break in a piece of writing is a decision"; "The I of [the] narrator is not the I that writes the book"—are crucial, likely distilled from her lectures at the University of Iowa.
Sharp insights from a passionate practitioner and champion of memoir.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64622-085-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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