Bird by Bird

I'm glad I read the book, I never would have finished it if it wasn't assighned, I'm not sure that I would befriend Anne Lamott if given a chance. Much of Lamott's advice on writing seemed slanted toward aspiring memoirists, and this is the form in which Lamott herself seems most comfortable working in. She is at her most entertaining when recounting one of her many total emotional collapses under the pressures of writing and of regular life, unfortunately her accounts of periods of emotional stability tend to suffer from preachiness, forced whimsy, and smug self importance. On page 193 Lamott is told by an editor "you have made the mistake of believing everything that has happened to you is interesting," and this is a bitingly accurate critisism of Lamott's writing style. Nearly every chapter contains a forgettable anecdote concerning the mundane behavior of her entirely ordinary son.

My most serious gripe with Lamott concerns her account of publishing a written homage to the deceased infant child of a pair of friends, presented on page 190 as an example of "writing as a gift to others." I am sure that Lamott was sincere in her intent to honor the brief life of this child in creating this piece of writing but I still feel that appropriating this tragedy for material was ghoulish and innapropriate. When a person tells a story they take ownership of that story; this is sometimes completely justified, such as the story of "my time in North Korean prison," or even "my asshole alcoholic dad" (although there are those among as who would flinch at putting that last one to paper and our reluctance to do so does not make us any less of writers then those who would not hesitate to throw their family under a bus for the sake of art or vengance.) I do not feel that Lamott was justified in telling the story of her friends dead child. Through making the story her own by putting it in her own words, however eloquent and well intentioned they may be, she is stealing something from the suffering family of the doomed infant.

I realize I have been quite hard on poor old Anne Lamott, so I will close by saying that her weaknesses are the weaknesses of the memoir genre and that her writing comes alive when she discusses her deceased father. Notable for it's failures as much as it's successes, Bird by Bird contains lessons useful for anyone whos burns to put words to paper.