Tag: memoir

Review: How We Live Now

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I picked this one up sometime after reading Insomniac City, also by Bill Hayes. This book is a small snapshot of New York City during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the early days of quarantining, and is both a love letter to the city and to community.

It discusses all of the things missed, with more of Hayes’ beautiful photography, and how we pang for community when it’s been unexpectedly stripped of us.

Like all of Hayes’ work I’ve interacted with, it’s sentimental and raw, honest and blunt.

I had seen some negative reviews of it from people who misunderstood what the book was about –expecting some intensive description of the COVID-19 pandemic and not one artist’s experience of it. The book is a diary in many ways and beautifully composed, written at a time when no one knew what was going on and what the future held.

Review: I’m Glad My Mom Died

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TW: Childhood abuse, eating disorders

I read this one back in November 2022 and sat on it a while. I think the issue I had, which was nothing to do with the book at all, was that people said it was funny. They remarked, favorably, on the humor and care that went into the book. I apparently just read it differently. I think anyone who was been in some of the same situations would.

First of all, I loved this book. When I picked it up I’d been in a rut and was doing this thing of reading mindlessly. I would skim books then put them down. This book, however, I read every word. I am one of those people who downloads samples of books, first chapters, before I decide to commit. I downloaded this one impulsively while being my insomnia self and within twenty-four hours I had read the whole thing.

Jeannette McCurdy carefully details a dream so many impoverished families have–that one of their kids makes it. Big. In spite of the odds. And that includes a parent who will do anything to make it happen. I was struck by the tenderness McCurdy describes her mother with, particularly in a few biting scenes—her mother’s fond joy when McCurdy becomes concerned that she may age out of her Nickelodeon stardom and happily teaches her about calorie restriction to prevent growth. McCurdy describes it as something her mother seemed to have been waiting for all along. McCurdy details some of the techniques and rules, being taught to lie to doctors and how, by her mother, to support her eating disorder. She also describes casually pulling out one of her own teeth later on.

Another stand-out scene was McCurdy firing her therapist, someone she had come to rely on and confide in who accompanied her to events as an adult to help her manage her bulimia I’m public, after a particularly emotional trigger. She simply walks off and never speaks to her again because the painful power of the trigger outweighs the benefit of her support system.

There are so many points in the memoir where you think ‘well what else can happen to her’ and I didn’t particularly find it funny at all, more like I saw that vein of humor that many of us with abusive childhoods and eating disorders adopt. 

I that what’s most significant about the book is the conversations it starts and the depiction of poverty in America that is all too common and too rarely displayed for what it is.

Review: The Mayor of Macdougall Street

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I like Dave Van Ronk. I have forever. Still, the book took me forever to read. Not because I didn’t enjoy it, I very much did, but because, as always, Dave Van Ronk is surprising.

I wasn’t expecting a chapter devoted to anarchy, activism, or the confiscation  of the term and re-appropriation of libertarian-ism quite so early on. This was stupid of me. I know who Dave Van Ronk is, after all. And I know he had things to say.

My favorite answer to that question is: Dave Van Ronk was a folk singer who was out to dinner the night of the Stonewall Riots, saw people throwing bricks and heard the commotion, and excused himself from the table to join. Famously quoted, “…I figured, they can’t have a riot without me!”

If for whatever reason you doubt Van Ronk’s intelligence, you needn’t. Everything discussed shows a highly intelligent, curious, thoughtful man who carefully plodded through his politics and his craft. These are perhaps his two most comfortable topics. He, like so many men laboring against patriarchy long before it was popular or even a term, runs into that barrier of having to define what patriarchy is without many allies. He knows that there is injustice, that he seems to be somehow benefit from the status quo, yet he wants to raise up the others around him. He believed in true equality —which is goddamn hard when you’re getting started in the 1950s as if it isn’t still hard today.

There’s a cancer of hyper individualism that sees people with amazing work lives or intellectual lives who have very turbulent personal lives. Van Ronk is one of them, a proud race of people trying to navigate the society he’s in and the values he has.

Also, his descriptions of music and honing his skill leaves me jealous. He was someone who put his head down and learned, meticulously, leaning heavily on the influences around him to be a school and not something he merely took from. 

Review: Keep Moving

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I seem to be following a pattern, or I’m being pulled by an algorithm, where I read Carrie Fisher then Penny Marshall, then Carl Reiner, and now I’m on Dick Van Dyke. It’s like a game of memoir telephone.

This was a real ‘well why not’ read; coming out in 2015, Keep Moving hits on that same vein I’ve seen in a lot of the memoirs I’ve read. Happy people live longer.

Keep Moving summarizes Dick Van Dyke’s main advice; the book is an exploration of how he’s managed to live well into his 90s: a combination of optimism, changing habits when you have to, and never settling down. Perhaps it’s because I finished the book the morning of writing this, but the chapter lingering most in my brain is his conversation with Carl Reiner. Several times in the book Van Dyke considers at what point you feel old. He asks the people around him. He asks Reiner. Reiner says there wasn’t a specific time. The problem, the same problem Van Dyke describes, is that he doesn’t know when or how he got old; he was too busy. He supposes when he feels old is when he wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror and sees the evidence. But in terms of feeling old? It never occurred to him. It never occurs to Van Dyke. There’s too much to do.

Van Dyke also talks a decent amount about challenging ageism. If someone isn’t capable it’s not because of a number of years, it’s no different than anyone contracting illness or physical impairments, it’s only more likely. I have a friend in disability advocacy who ends every presentation she does on cerebral palsy , which she has; “Remember, I’m a member of the only minority group that anyone can join.” It’s an important reminder that you’re gambling with how you will be treated yourself

Review: Insomniac City

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Bill Hayes, a memoirist and photographer based in New York City, writes a charming love story to the city and details the loss of romantic partners bookending his initial move to New York and his new life as an established New Yorker.

Famously, Bill Hayes was the partner of the now passed Dr Oliver Sacks and in this book Hayes discusses leaving Los Angeles after the sudden death of an earlier long term partner to a premature heart attack, only to be swept up into a romance with Dr Sacks, their relationship and its age defying and cultural defying nature as Sack’s had been a closeted man. It then details Sack’s cancer and eventual death.

The whole relationship is documented lovingly and sweetly. Something which I lingered on in the telling was the care that Hayes put into not being bitter. Having suffered the loss of two romantic partners, his memoir beginning and ending with loss, it would be easy to see someone fall into despair. Hayes, admirably, writes from a place of love and acceptance.

What first convinced me to read the book was the description of loss in the very beginning chapters, as Hayes details the loss of his partner, Steve—-Of seeking connection and sense in a sudden, unbearable moment. Hayes struck a chord with me early on regarding the nature of grief, yet his optimism, his ability to love again and demonstrate loving again, made this a remarkably wholesome, heartfelt read.

Review: My Mother was Nuts

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I know what you’re thinking. Dany, you read another comedian memoir? Yeah, I did.

This time around it was Penny Marshall’s My Mother Was Nuts which opens with the fun story of the modern-era (now deceased) Ms. Marshall’s house being broken into by two young kids dressed as ninjas with samurai swords.

A promising opening.

It definitely grabs your attention. And unlike Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher which I read earlier this year, Penny Marshall has a lot to say about her friendship with Carrie Fisher. Carrie must have forgot to mention that while married to Paul Simon she accidentally set up her best, oftentimes oblivious, friend with Art Garfunkel who then went on to keep unwittingly inviting the famously toxic duo to the same places.

That seems to be my overall review of Ms. Marshall. She seems to stumble into being funny.

The book loses some traction midway when Ms. Marshall just begins recounting the details of her career. There’s some interesting facts about Hollywood history, particularly around her directing Big and A League of Their Own, but these are just interesting facts. It becomes almost a list of accomplishments, like she needs to make sure that you know why you’re here. I found the really interesting and insightful parts of the memoir to be just that–when she remembers to talk about herself.

There is a sense that fame and success changed Ms. Marshall, but not in the way it changes anyone else. Instead of becoming big headed or indifferent, she becomes a series of sighs. A long, unending line of ‘and, well, then this happened. What are you gonna do?’

Review: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life

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I remember a copy of Cruel Shoes that belonged to my father sitting on the bookshelf and feeling compelled to read it–in large part because my father hates Comedians. My father does not trade in Comedy, that’s my mother’s sole business, so it always struck me that Steve Martin must be somehow special.

I remember Cruel Shoes very vaguely because I was a lot younger when I read it and I remember it as sort of a sparse humorous collection of jokes or bits. It wasn’t very memorable for me, I’m sorry to say, more memorable that my father owned it.

Given my partner’s own predilection for Steve Martin, and this errant book on the shelf, I always sort of assume some mythic quality to Steve Martin. Reading Born Standing Up it is a much more genuine look at him, his career, and what informs his choices—not just throwing up jokes as a deflection. At one point after discussing his father Martin notes that if you’re required to experience pain and abuse in order to get into comedy as a business, you need not worry about his qualifications.

The book was very somber and honest, detailing how ideas were developed as well as panic attacks and hypochondria, not lingering on any one problem but always moving forward to the next thing, the next bit, which I’ve found to be a pattern in the memoirs of funny people.

I think that’s the real lesson to come away from an honest, relatively short blip of a book. Steve Martin knows his limits and what could drag him down, then turns and walks in the opposite direction.

I read Elton John’s autobiography!

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It’s called “Me” which is both on the nose and a manifesto.

I feel like if I could get books right as they come out I’d love to do a ‘I read this so you don’t have to!’ but I’m always behind the curve.

I get the distinct impression that whatever editors and ghost writers and cleaners-up-heroes came in to lend a hand had a full-time gig with Elton John. He writes the way he speaks, which is darling, and he isn’t afraid to take the piss at all. He’s aware, exactly, how he’s behaved historically and he’s determined not to be ashamed of it. The man has an excellent sense of humor and humility, particularly in the face of his addictions. I found his abusive romantic relationships, played up as a central theme of the Rocketman film, are lacking. He doesn’t linger. Elton John is all about accountability, particularly his own.

He doesn’t have a bad thing to say about one single person he’s known in his life, just a string of ‘life goes on’ sighs, occasional disappointments, but primarily a lot of gratitude. I was struck particularly by the way he reaches out to people if he’s heard they’ve had a difficult time that he can relate to– celebrities, people in the news, anyone he comes across’s story, he’s willing to be a friend. Some people may find that claim of his to be self aggrandizing or insincere, but I’d disagree. He talks about reaching out to addicts in the music industry and offering his advice and it strikes me like a lot of men of his generation I’ve talked to, a touch sad and wishing someone had done the same for them.

He strikes me as a good guy and also a bitch, which he fully agrees–not afraid to talk about his ego, his outbursts, his own ridiculousness, or the way he yells just like his mother. There is one picture that struck me which he captioned ‘George Michael wanted a somber affair and so naturally I am dressed as Donald Duck’.
The man is very self aware, and yeah, he does whatever he wants.

I found out after I’d read it that his former wife, Renate Blauel, had sued him over the book. I wondered if I had then read a changed or edited copy as it’s been on shelves for two years now. He honestly only has lovely things to say about her, and how sorry he is that she was dragged into his mess. That seems to be the big theme of the memoir —sorry I’m like this, thanks for coming.

Review: In The Dream House

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I am not sure I could tell you how much I adored this book.

In The Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado, in an agonizingly beautiful memoir about domestic violence , acknowledging the complexity and the difficulty of addressing domestic violence in same sex relationships out of fear of promoting stigmas against the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s heart wrenching, each chapter reflecting a different trope explored within the fantastical setting of the Dream House.

Machado’s abusive partner is only referred to as ‘The Woman in the Dream House ‘ and the book is written in second person, addressing the audience as Machado, bringing you into her seat of power and disempowerment, while walking through various memories and scenes that inform Machado’s growth and development into an adult and in her relationships. It was a deeply vulnerable and presumably honest exploration of Machado as you, the reader. It’s clear she’s a short story buff and she doesn’t shy from fictionalizing herself.

It is excellent, viscerally written and Machado’s style continually grounds the reader into her experience.

Review: Wishful Drinking

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Technically, this is the first book that I had finished reading this year. I have been going through a difficult time and I had this idea sprout in my head—sometime when I was reading all of those John Waters books, that I need Role Models….so naturally I went first to John Waters and then to Princess Leia.

Not because of Princess Leia, of course. While I was once a pedantic Star Wars nerd, I mentally separate the actors from the franchise. Carrie Fisher isn’t Princess Leia, she’s a punch up writer. This is much, much cooler to me. She’s someone you send a script to when you know it’s close but it ain’t gonna make it—or did, past tense, now that she’s passed on. It’s in Wishful Drinking that she shares the story about George Lucas’s intuitive costume decisions and wanting her obituary to read: drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.

My reasoning is that Carrie Fisher survived divorce and bipolar disorder and drug additions, and did so with a well known flare for humor, charm, and ‘fuck it’. I could use that sort of role model. I think anybody could.

The book is a quick 164 pages with a lot of photographs and anecdotes—this is where I noticed the trend in the memoirs I was reading. Folks stack in as many pictures as they can. Carl Reiner, whose I Just Remembered I also read early this year had a glut of photographs. It’s something both cool, reaching into history, and that I want to make fun of it. How many memoirs were you people going to write, you couldn’t cram it into one, you had to fluff it so you could get in a few sequels?

I say that lovingly.

Carl Reiner is another good role model for me. The man seemed aggressively optimistic.

But I think that’s what memoirs are best for, rooting through and finding the humanity in people and grabbing onto those traits you admire—and getting a strangle hold on them.