A review by conorsweetman
In the Land of Men: A Memoir by Adrienne Miller

3.0

This book felt so fragile and interior. The delicacy of Adrienne Miller's ponderings served her reflections on a childhood in Ohio quite beautifully. The way she recounted her flight, however, to an ascendant position as Fiction Editor at Esquire had such a different feel than other publishing world memoirs—where the energy and name-dropping is electric with excitement. This story, on the other hand, was a pensive reflection on who Adrienne is and what she was capable of standing against amidst the harsh world and words of esteemed American fiction writers, including David Foster Wallace, on whom her writing takes on a strange tone full of both frustration and self-reconciliation.

The benefit of coming to these stories and personalities as a latecomer to literary mythology, is that I get to hear contemporary writers reconfigure the established narratives. As if they are taking wet hands to the dusty sculptures that have been revered for generations, these writers remould the work into something that can withstand the weather of this generation's sensibilities.