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3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
I don't know how to begin writing about how intensely this book affected me but I'll start with this: there are a few differences between me and Daniel Lavery - he is a trans man and i am nonbinary, he was raised Christian and i was very much not - and despite not sharing these two details of his life that are integral to this book, i was still bowled over with intense emotion while reading. Never have i read something that has so perfectly summed up my intense and sometimes devastating feelings about my transition and made me laugh out loud at the same time. This collection of essays is clever and beautiful and i will be thinking about it for a long time.
The audiobook is wonderfully read by the author, and the tone and timing he uses are outstanding. While I liked The Toast, I'd never fully appreciated the author's other work, but so much here is astute and incisive. His ridicule of certain opinions or mindset helped me reflect on my own, and his commentary on the Bible was some of the most interesting I have read.
I read this concurrently with [b:Gumballs|36489672|Gumballs|Erin Nations|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509164425l/36489672._SX50_.jpg|58203005], which is a pairing I recommend!
I read this concurrently with [b:Gumballs|36489672|Gumballs|Erin Nations|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509164425l/36489672._SX50_.jpg|58203005], which is a pairing I recommend!
I think I recognized the majority of this book from following Lavery’s work for many years — but it took on a different tone collected like this. Obviously a lot of it felt familiar for other reasons too, though I found myself feeling a lot of relief that I came out the other end of my own flavour of this childhood with a lot less of the Bible memorised.
I think I saw something that described this as a funny trans book, although I no longer remember *where* I saw that. It took me partway through the book to realize that the author (Listed as "Daniel Lavery" on the kindle edition I got from the library was in fact a name I had read before - I used to read him at Slate, under Mallory (and then Daniel) Ortberg.
This was not entirely a memoir, but I'm also not entirely sure what it was. There were Bible stories beyond what I knew (and I grew up somewhat churchy, although not evangelical). There were what I think were literary bits, based on the two I recognized ([a:Sappho|59712|Sappho|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1675880594p2/59712.jpg] and [b:Anne of Green Gables|763588|Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1)|L.M. Montgomery|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1656778824l/763588._SY75_.jpg|3464264]).
I'm not sure what I read, and I did put it down in the middle and got out another book, but I did come back and finish it. So I guess three stars?
This was not entirely a memoir, but I'm also not entirely sure what it was. There were Bible stories beyond what I knew (and I grew up somewhat churchy, although not evangelical). There were what I think were literary bits, based on the two I recognized ([a:Sappho|59712|Sappho|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1675880594p2/59712.jpg] and [b:Anne of Green Gables|763588|Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1)|L.M. Montgomery|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1656778824l/763588._SY75_.jpg|3464264]).
I'm not sure what I read, and I did put it down in the middle and got out another book, but I did come back and finish it. So I guess three stars?
I've read Daniel Lavery (né Mallory Ortberg) for years, religiously reading Dear Prudence and The Toast, and felt a kinship with him (then her). I recognized myself in his deep dives into literary nerdery, his self-aware insecurity, and his confident, seemingly careless writing, the type of writing most closely akin to a messy French hairstyle. Having recently cut my hair into a "casual" French bob, I can attest: looking like I just woke up with effortlessly tousled hair requires a wave spray, a volumizer, leave-in conditioner, hair oil, a session with a steaming hot flatiron, and at least six hands. Lavery's conversational writing draws in the reader, as a confidant and a friend, through what I assume is most likely agonizing over word order and selection.
After a decade of feeling such kinship, such sameness with an author, I struggled to process his transition. I felt betrayed, as if his masculinity was a personal abandonment of our perfect nerdy, literary, awkwardly confident feminist lady club.
I am not alone in this reaction, as evidenced by the very existence of [b:Something That May Shock and Discredit You|38592954|Something That May Shock and Discredit You|Daniel Mallory Ortberg|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562099384l/38592954._SY75_.jpg|60196300]. Lavery is aware of his position in the pantheon of modern feminist writers, and writes,
But Lavery's collection of essays is not, in fact, about me, or the number of other women who had relied on his position in order to maintain ours. While he is concerned about our (the readers) opinions of him, his abandonment of the nerdy, literary, awkwardly confident lady club, his friend's and family's reactions to his transition, the treatment he receives from cis-men, the treatment he receives from the barista at his favorite coffee shop, he must ultimately make the transition, and process the change of his place in the world, for himself. I am grateful for his generosity in sharing this journey with me, and for selflessly entertaining my questions with answers cleverly explored through his trademark literary and pop culture narratives. I am humbled by his willingness to explore the comi-tragedy of popping up at one's own funeral, a la Huck Finn, his gift of uncertainty of a vial of testosterone as he fulfills the nasty and unwarranted feminine stereotype of being unable to parallel park, and his vulnerability of his own estrangement from his family as he embraces his own transition.
Transitioning genders in the early twenty-first century cannot help but change the relationships a person has with others. Our narratives assume any number of unspoken features of a person based on their gender, and while the narratives might subvert those expectations, the subversions of the expectations are impactful in and of themselves. Lavery as a literary, nerdy, loveably self-conscious, feminist woman is a different person from Lavery as a literary, nerdy, loveably self-conscious, feminist man. Through religious allegory, Arthurian and Beckett narratives, and love-notes written to Steve Martin and William Shatner, he delves into this through the book, bringing the reader along for the journey of accepting, first, that he can transition, that he might, that he will, and finally answering the question he poses throughout the book, "What if you were a man, sort of?"
After a decade of feeling such kinship, such sameness with an author, I struggled to process his transition. I felt betrayed, as if his masculinity was a personal abandonment of our perfect nerdy, literary, awkwardly confident feminist lady club.
I am not alone in this reaction, as evidenced by the very existence of [b:Something That May Shock and Discredit You|38592954|Something That May Shock and Discredit You|Daniel Mallory Ortberg|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562099384l/38592954._SY75_.jpg|60196300]. Lavery is aware of his position in the pantheon of modern feminist writers, and writes,
"One of the things women do well as a group... is layer relationships one on top of the other, doubling back and reinforcing and looping multiple ties into one. In this way transitioning can sometimes feel like pulling apart an entire web, inconveniencing (at the very least) a number of other women who had relied on your position in order to maintain theirs."
But Lavery's collection of essays is not, in fact, about me, or the number of other women who had relied on his position in order to maintain ours. While he is concerned about our (the readers) opinions of him, his abandonment of the nerdy, literary, awkwardly confident lady club, his friend's and family's reactions to his transition, the treatment he receives from cis-men, the treatment he receives from the barista at his favorite coffee shop, he must ultimately make the transition, and process the change of his place in the world, for himself. I am grateful for his generosity in sharing this journey with me, and for selflessly entertaining my questions with answers cleverly explored through his trademark literary and pop culture narratives. I am humbled by his willingness to explore the comi-tragedy of popping up at one's own funeral, a la Huck Finn, his gift of uncertainty of a vial of testosterone as he fulfills the nasty and unwarranted feminine stereotype of being unable to parallel park, and his vulnerability of his own estrangement from his family as he embraces his own transition.
Transitioning genders in the early twenty-first century cannot help but change the relationships a person has with others. Our narratives assume any number of unspoken features of a person based on their gender, and while the narratives might subvert those expectations, the subversions of the expectations are impactful in and of themselves. Lavery as a literary, nerdy, loveably self-conscious, feminist woman is a different person from Lavery as a literary, nerdy, loveably self-conscious, feminist man. Through religious allegory, Arthurian and Beckett narratives, and love-notes written to Steve Martin and William Shatner, he delves into this through the book, bringing the reader along for the journey of accepting, first, that he can transition, that he might, that he will, and finally answering the question he poses throughout the book, "What if you were a man, sort of?"
I love Danny Ortberg’s writing from The Toast, Dear Prudence, Texts from Jane Eyre, etc., so I picked this up as soon as I saw the name, and had no expectations going in. It’s like, half transition memoir, half humor writing, with the memoir parts broken up into chapters separated by off-topic “interludes.” The problem is that most of the interludes just aren’t funny, and seem more like “interruptions” any time the transition arc starts to build momentum.
Maybe I am just not getting all of the references for them to BE funny. For example, I got the distinct impression that I was missing something in the interlude about the Green Knight, and I know Ortberg is a Medievalist, so I guess it’s academic humor that went over my head. I’m no Medievalist myself, but I am fairly familiar with the Western canon, so it comes off as writing for a pretty narrow audience. Texts from Jane Eyre was funny enough that I enjoyed it even when it was referencing something I hadn’t read, but here I really felt excluded from the joke.
I did like the interlude about Golden Girls, though.
Maybe I am just not getting all of the references for them to BE funny. For example, I got the distinct impression that I was missing something in the interlude about the Green Knight, and I know Ortberg is a Medievalist, so I guess it’s academic humor that went over my head. I’m no Medievalist myself, but I am fairly familiar with the Western canon, so it comes off as writing for a pretty narrow audience. Texts from Jane Eyre was funny enough that I enjoyed it even when it was referencing something I hadn’t read, but here I really felt excluded from the joke.
I did like the interlude about Golden Girls, though.
Rest assured I will come back to update this with a full review later. But in the meantime, just know it’s a masterpiece. New favorite for sure.
It's not for me, and that's ok.
My lack of a shared cultural background with Lavery makes this pretty difficult to follow. Whenever he writes unmediated by the likes of Columbo or the Golden Girls I enjoy reading, but before long I am lost again in the sea of not getting it. Even the biblical stories, which I am ostensibly familiar with, seem to hold a different and unreachable resonance for (lapsed?) Evangelical Lavery for for (very former Catholic) me.
My lack of a shared cultural background with Lavery makes this pretty difficult to follow. Whenever he writes unmediated by the likes of Columbo or the Golden Girls I enjoy reading, but before long I am lost again in the sea of not getting it. Even the biblical stories, which I am ostensibly familiar with, seem to hold a different and unreachable resonance for (lapsed?) Evangelical Lavery for for (very former Catholic) me.
came for the marilla cuthbert chapter, stayed for the evelyn waugh banana anecdote
this just wasn't for me. the made up conversations and general style don't resonate, and felt extremely cringe. i was bored, and only finished because i find having danny speaking in my ear soothing.