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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
Upon first seeing Horror Stories by Liz Phair, I thought of how this was going to be a roller-coaster of a book told in the fashion of an in-your-face, rip-snorting recounting of loud and audacious tales from a wild rock and roller. How wrong I was and what a pleasant surprise it was to read the pages of this memoir and to discover the book was not at all what I thought it would be.
This is not a rock and roll book that spills the beans on the career of a performer like Liz Phair. It also is not the writing or storytelling of an adult with the personality of an immature twenty-year-old while being stuck in the past. This memoir is not about the spilling of stories to shock and titillate the reader while the reader hopes to somehow live vicariously through the life of a celebrity.
It is instead a thoughtful recounting of events in a person's life, of whom just happens to be a rock and roll celebrity, and what the person has learned from these events and hopes to share with others in a meaningful way. Phair's writing is open, frank and sincere and is devoid of a reluctance to write of personal aspects of her life that others sometimes avoid. Along the way she deftly passes on to the reader what her experiences have taught her about life, both from the start and until the end. After reading Horror Stories, I am confident to predict that many will see Liz Phair differently than prior to reading the book.
She does not apologize for being successful and a celebrity, but aptly describes how celebrity and physical attractiveness can both impede and enhance a person's life and when doing so does not come off as being arrogant, superficial or insincere. Though she does not apologize for her celebrity, she does apologize for behaviors in her past that may have hurt others.
The chapters on her pregnancy and birth of her son and preparing for old age were especially poignant.
Liz Phair also writes an introduction to the memoir that successfully sets up what follows so the reader will establish appreciate her words even more.
This is not a rock and roll book that spills the beans on the career of a performer like Liz Phair. It also is not the writing or storytelling of an adult with the personality of an immature twenty-year-old while being stuck in the past. This memoir is not about the spilling of stories to shock and titillate the reader while the reader hopes to somehow live vicariously through the life of a celebrity.
It is instead a thoughtful recounting of events in a person's life, of whom just happens to be a rock and roll celebrity, and what the person has learned from these events and hopes to share with others in a meaningful way. Phair's writing is open, frank and sincere and is devoid of a reluctance to write of personal aspects of her life that others sometimes avoid. Along the way she deftly passes on to the reader what her experiences have taught her about life, both from the start and until the end. After reading Horror Stories, I am confident to predict that many will see Liz Phair differently than prior to reading the book.
She does not apologize for being successful and a celebrity, but aptly describes how celebrity and physical attractiveness can both impede and enhance a person's life and when doing so does not come off as being arrogant, superficial or insincere. Though she does not apologize for her celebrity, she does apologize for behaviors in her past that may have hurt others.
The chapters on her pregnancy and birth of her son and preparing for old age were especially poignant.
Liz Phair also writes an introduction to the memoir that successfully sets up what follows so the reader will establish appreciate her words even more.
In the stories that make up this book, I am trusting you with my deepest self. We spend so much time hiding what we’re ashamed of, denying what we’re wounded by, and portraying ourselves as competent, successful individuals that we don’t always realize where and when we’ve gone missing.
How foolish we feel in those rare instances when the fog dissipates, the path is clear, and we see our hapless footprints wandering around all over the place. Those are the resolute moments, the sober morning-after reflections when we plant our feet facing in the direction we wish to go and vow never to deviate from honesty, empathy, and inspiration.
I’ve yet to experience Liz Phair. I’ve not listened to Exit in Guyville, which feels somewhat shameful. I can’t remember it.
What I will remember is this book.
Phair writes in frank and straightforward style while saving her flair for short and punchy sentences that ring true of humanism and care for others. Still, she’s not solipsistically hagiographic in her writing; she’s human, she fucks up, she exposes her vulnerabilities.
I remember one photo shoot I did at the beginning of my career, maybe my first or second ever. Some newspaper in Chicago commissioned it and threw a party for themselves during the session. They laid me out on a fur carpet, wearing nothing but trousers and suspenders over my nipples, while anonymous guests—strangers—sipped cocktails and watched me from the periphery. It was disturbing, like the orgy scene in the film Eyes Wide Shut. I could hear the spectators commenting, but I couldn’t see them very well, because I was under bright lights while they were in the dim candlelit recesses of the studio.
Some of my lyrics are explicit, so I’m sure they expected me to dance around and be outrageous. But I couldn’t move. I just lay there, a photo-shoot virgin, dull-eyed and mute. I was so freaked out that I retreated inside myself, disconnecting mentally from my surroundings. They were left with an empty shell of a person to work with. It was like bad sex. No one knew what to do about it. I didn’t know how to say no back then. I didn’t have a manager. I had no concept of what was normal for my profession.
The funny thing was, although I felt exploited and I hated it, it was the way my makeup looked that made me cry afterward. The makeup artist was the nicest, sweetest man, and my only ally in this upsetting situation, so I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his heavy bronzer, nude lips, and spidery fake eyelashes made me feel clownish and ashamed, like a dog wearing a cone collar or one of the last kids to be picked for a PE team. I kept thinking about how many people in the city were going to see me looking like this, and I was devastated.
There is no lack of content and Phair seems to be acute when putting words to the page, although the results are edited well; her style works with this book, that has chapters that are divided by stories that do not intertwine other than giving structure to who she is, much like bones which make up a skeleton.
I stand in my dressing room, staring at my naked body. It’s been ravaged by pregnancy: a road map of stretch marks and veins, a sullen little pooch where the baby bump was. I’m the kind of person who notices every microfluctuation in my figure. All I want is to have some control back, to feel like I am the master of my own ship so I can focus on caring for my newborn son. Yet on top of everything, I also have to contend with this stranger I see in the reflection. It’s going to take a lot of work to put myself back together again. My tits are the size of cantaloupes. All of a sudden, milk shoots straight out of both nipples, like bullets out of the fembots in an Austin Powers movie, spraying all over the mirror. I clasp my hands over my chest, trying to stanch the flow, but it squirts out between my fingers. I am horrified, and I have absolutely no idea what to do. Tears springs to my eyes. I cry out for the one person I depend on above all others. “Moooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!”
Her relationship descriptions sucked me into reading them without pause; the reflections on men, what men think, have said to her, how they’ve expected her to react, how men have harassed her, become married with her, split up from her, befriended her, remained a memory in her mind.
Some people have compared this book with Patti Smith’s writings; I disagree because Smith is quite obviously fated to write tersely as though directed by the hands of Rimbaud; Smith is a poet, Phair is not. In spite of her tongue swathed in everyday Americana, she succeeds in unapologetic fashion, and the reader is richer for it.
“Try this.”
Nate shoves a forkful of pasta into Matt’s mouth.
“It’s really fucking good.”
“Oh my God.”
Matt groans like he’s just tasted Aphrodite’s bathwater.
So, in the end, what’s it all for? Here I was feeling like a star, and being treated like a star, but what’s important in real life is doing the decent thing. It’s like Camus says in The Plague, that there’s an absurdity to the universe, and you can either do nothing or continue to push to do the best you can. And the best you can do is just do the decent thing. There’s no payoff. The good people of the world are those who, in spite of there being no payoff, do the decent thing anyway. That’s what being human is. That’s the example of a human, being.
I can remember a time when we’d stay in bed all day having sex, then throw on jeans and T-shirts and meet our friends for dinner. Now when we go out on “date night” (an awful term), I’m anxious the whole time that our son is missing me, that he doesn’t like the babysitter, that he’s crying for any one of a hundred possible reasons and can’t convey his needs well enough yet. Jim is frustrated, but he doesn’t criticize me. It’s a relief when we come home early.
The thing is, I’m on tour. I’m busy and tired. It is crucial to me that I show up for all my gigs, give my fans a performance they love, and collect my pay. Nothing—not illness, injury, or an act of God—is going to stand in my way. This isn’t some playground on wheels or bacchanalian circus in the sky. This is business, and I take my job very seriously. I don’t have time for the weather to fuck up my itinerary.
I’m also a mother. My son is entering high school. I need to be there for him, to make sure he’s supervised and has someone to talk to during this vulnerable transition into adulthood. If I have to be out on the road, I’m going to make sure that my time away from home counts. I’m going to crush it every night and leave the audiences cheering. We accomplished that goal at our show tonight. We rocked the house, played the hits, unearthed some rarities. People were hanging over the balconies, singing all the lyrics. It was a total madhouse backstage.
That was only a few hours ago, and yet it’s hard to believe any of it was real now that I’m out here by myself braving the cold, dark night. The rock-and-roll lifestyle trains you to withstand extremes. One minute you’re partying in a mansion, the next you’re parked in a urine-soaked alley. But the fact that I’m determined to go through this ordeal to get back on track with our schedule goes beyond dedication. It borders on self-punishment.
I was a sham, a fraud. The world saw me as a renegade, a fearless maverick, and here I was nervous about making the one big jaunt of my day to the grocery store to flirt with a checkout clerk. This Trader Joe’s guy was paid to be friendly. It wasn’t even a challenge. I didn’t care. I needed something to make the pain disappear for half an hour, and this worked. The pot didn’t work, the booze didn’t work, but this did. I would come home from Trader Joe’s on the days I’d seen him feeling happy and attractive, like I had something to look forward to in life. Where was the harm in it? In the grand scheme of things it seemed like an innocent if embarrassing indulgence. What could go wrong?
All in all, this book is an easy read, provides some thought-worthy moments, and contains some beautiful photographs.
“Stratford-On-Guy” or “Divorce Song” invariably made it on to every mix tape/CD/MP3 I compiled for decades. I was very excited when I heard Liz Phair had a book out. The first couple of chapters left me confused. Is this a memoir? By whom? I felt no connection between the writing and her. I was ready to speed read or completely put it aside. Not everyone can be as charming as Jeff Tweedy or as brilliant as Carrie Brownstein. When I started skimming the chapter “Labor of Love,” I slowed down. There she is! This is what I was looking for: personal anecdotes and insights. I stuck with it (even if I didn’t stick with her later musical works). It isn’t 100% gold and many parts just didn’t click with me but I’m glad she wrote it.
Superb blurb:
“Every woman you know has stories as long as her arm. I bet they’ve never shared them with you, either. We feel sad and dirty when we think about them; like it’s our fault, somehow, for attracting the attention. Look hot! But don’t look hot! Love men! But don’t love men! Push boundaries! But don’t push boundaries! We can’t win. When something unwanted happens, we think maybe we said the wrong thing, wore the wrong thing, walked the wrong way, took the wrong job. Women are taught to remain within bounds or else, and the “or else” really resonates after you start to accumulate double digit traumas. But the numbers keep climbing. And we just keep hiding it. Why? Because the predators among you will screw with us and start rumors about us, cleverly crafted to sound believable. You’ll see us as tainted and unmarriageable. Or we hide it for the most typical reason of all: you simply won’t believe us. All I’m asking is that you try.“
Superb blurb:
“Every woman you know has stories as long as her arm. I bet they’ve never shared them with you, either. We feel sad and dirty when we think about them; like it’s our fault, somehow, for attracting the attention. Look hot! But don’t look hot! Love men! But don’t love men! Push boundaries! But don’t push boundaries! We can’t win. When something unwanted happens, we think maybe we said the wrong thing, wore the wrong thing, walked the wrong way, took the wrong job. Women are taught to remain within bounds or else, and the “or else” really resonates after you start to accumulate double digit traumas. But the numbers keep climbing. And we just keep hiding it. Why? Because the predators among you will screw with us and start rumors about us, cleverly crafted to sound believable. You’ll see us as tainted and unmarriageable. Or we hide it for the most typical reason of all: you simply won’t believe us. All I’m asking is that you try.“