In her introduction to this book of ten essays, Meghan Daum writes that when she was working on this book, she told people that it was “a book about sentimentality” whose pieces, she hoped, would “add up to a larger discussion about the way human experiences too often come with preassigned emotional responses” (4). She also writes that she “wanted to look at why we so often feel guilty or even ashamed when we don’t feel the way we’re “supposed to feel” about the big (and sometimes even small) events of our lives” (4-5). The book is also, she says, about “the unspeakable thoughts many of us harbor—that we might not love our parents enough, that “life’s pleasures” sometimes feel more like chores—but can only talk about in coded terms, if at all” (5-6). All of which is really interesting, and had me really excited to read the book. And I mostly liked this book (except for one essay, more on which shortly), but I didn’t quite like it as much as I wanted to.
The good: Daum is clearly smart, and she writes well. She is great at openings: with a lot of these essays, the first few lines really drew me in. And I thought some of these pieces were incredible. I loved the book’s first essay, “Matricide,” which is about the death of Daum’s mother, and Daum’s complicated relationship with her, and about Daum’s mother’s negative/complicated relationship with her own mother. I also really liked “Difference Maker,” which I’d already read in the New Yorker but was happy to reread—it’s about not wanting kids, and what Daum calls the “Central Sadness” that was a feature of her marriage at the time the essay is about (in part because her husband felt like he might want kids, or at least, might not be OK with not having kids), and about being a mentor in the Big Sisters program and then a court-appointed advocate for a kid in the foster care system. “Invisible City,” about living in LA and what it means to be at home in a city (and about going to a party at Nora Ephron’s home, and playing charades with Rob Reiner and others) was also really satisfying. And I like the bits of “Not What It Used to Be” where Daum writes about being nostalgic for her twenties, for “the abiding feeling that, at any given time, anything could go in any direction” (83). This is great:
Now that I am almost never the youngest person in any room I realize that what I miss most about those times is the very thing that drove me so mad back when I was living in them. What I miss is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life. But what I forget is the loneliness of all that. (88)
I was less impressed/interested by other essays. “The Best Possible Experience,” about being a romantic or not/marrying early or not/dating people in part for the experience of it, had moments where it was hilarious, but also felt like it was trying to do too much, in too many different tones. “On Not Being a Foodie” also had its funny moments, and I can totally relate to Daum’s idea of contentment as a goal, but the central argument about staying inside a comfort zone felt a little flat. And I really really disliked the essay called “Honorary Dyke,” which felt incredibly tone-deaf: I felt like it bought into way too many stereotypes and conflated gender expression and sexuality in ways that don’t feel at all useful to me. Daum talks about how she “counted herself among the ranks of straight women who are ever-so-slightly unstraight,” and clarifies that she’s “not talking about being bisexual,” but about being “biologically straight, culturally lesbian” (93). This apparently means not having things like “long hair, long fingernails, [or] a skilled and thought-out approach to cosmetics” (ibid.) Or not shaving one’s legs. Um. But what about lesbians who have/do all those things? And why can’t non-lesbian femaledom be a broad enough category to include women who opt out of some mainstream cultural ideas of beauty? I was also bothered by Daum saying, in regard to a relationship she had with a woman, that the girlfriend “was playing the girl part” while Daum “was playing the guy part,” without acknowledging how stereotypical the roles/behaviors she’s talking about are, or that there are relationships (queer or not) where there aren’t really male or female roles (104). Blergh.
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