Mal ,'The Message'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
is a level of such staggering self-involvement that they're completely blind to the consequences of what they write, or to feel any sort of empathy for their subjects.
Aaaand, after many failed attempt to describe the genre that bugs me, you just did.
I think the major difference between them and me is a level of such staggering self-involvement that they're completely blind to the consequences of what they write, or to feel any sort of empathy for their subjects. But the bones of it are the same.
I think the major difference between you and them is that you have a sense of humor and it shows. I get the impression that you're far closer to Sedaris than to any of the aforecomplainedabout writers.
You'd call your writing "candid," Allyson?
I do.
On another kind of journalism altogether:
When a Man Dies in a Sex Act with a Horse -- What's a Reporter to Do?
Allyson, I think your writing definitely springs from your subjective experience but it's not really confessional in the way people were criticizing.
Your writing is bracing in its undiluted venom and snark, while streaked with hopefulness and appreciation and community. It's not cringe-making at all.
Was there cute waitstaff at Buca Di Beppo, Perkins? I mostly remember frowning. It didn't seem like we were expected to have fun.
I remember one very pretty boy. I also remember you frowning, but that may have been at the overdone cheerfulness and not the expectation of fun having.
Allyson - don't know if the bones really are the same . But even so - bones are not all there are to either a person or an essay. Let's put it this way - every play Shakespeare wrote just polished up some hackneyed old plot widely know in the England of his day. Now not comparing you to Shakespeare, (sorry) - but compare Shakespeare's Macbeth to the one in Holinshed’s Chronicles. A lot superficial similiarities, but no freakin comparision.
Something you have to live with; any type of writing you do, there will be somebody doing something superficially similar. If the somebody is a bad or unethical writer, you cannot let that fact make you crazy.
When you see an unfamiliat number on ID (and no message was left) OR someone calls and immediately hangs up, what do you do?
I ignore. But, I do have a friend who will call numbers back that she doesn't recognize because she is completely self-absorbed and wants to know who else is absorbed with her.
Confessional writing tends not to be very ironical, despite its putative self-awareness. Anthropological essays, written from a personal standpoint, probably a very different kettle of fish.
Personally, I tend to avoid Sedaris, because all of his personal essays seem to be about his own humiliation, and that is about as not-funny as humiliation-comedy on television. But some examples of cool (but not especially confessional) personal essays I've read:
There's a lot of material out there that benefits from the personal/odyssey perspective. "My journey into ____, and what cool things I have come to report about it" has a long and honorable tradition.
My take of your writing was that you were being actually candid, Allyson, and that was the point. If you're dressing it up in self-consciousness and oh-lordie-me, then you're achieving the "candid" of which I was complaining.
If that is indeed your goal or your effect, you're a lot better at it (or worse, I guess) than Olen or Waldman, because I couldn't tell.