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A review by brice_mo
Lit by Mary Karr
4.0
I love Mary Karr and how she uses her deep-fried Didionisms to deromanticize, well, everything.
Lit is not a baffling book as much as Mary Karr is a baffling person. She’s a sailor-mouthed, late-in-life Catholic convert who pursues sacred things with profane delight (or perhaps, vice-versa). This memoir follows her descent into alcoholism and her ascent into cynical saint, and it’s all told with a fleet-footed voice and a humility that’s magnetic.
At one point, Karr notes that a mentor said, “take no care for your dignity” in her writing, and it’s interesting how that plays out. I think memoirs frequently succumb to self-punishment in a way that is ultimately self-serving, but that’s not the case here. Instead, the author pointedly describes what an awful person she was—and sometimes still is—because it needs to be said. With this being an off-kilter redemption arc, Karr seems deeply concerned with avoiding any of the tropes or feel-good narrative beats that would lend themselves to proselytizing or self-promotion. Appropriately for a Catholic, it amounts to something that feels oddly sacrificial, an emptying of the self for the good of her readers.
Personally, I’m really fascinated by people who adopt a religion well into adulthood because it seems like an unnecessary complication to life. It introduces new obligations and often offers little in return. Karr seems to bemusedly write from a similar perspective, poking holes in religious belief even as she finds it impossible to resist. In fact, most of her spiritual journey is characterized by her mocking the possibility of the divine, lobbing expletives into nothingness until they begin to hit something. Forget Jacob wrestling the angel; this is Mary Karr kicking and screaming her way into faith.
It’s a take that’s as refreshing as it is remarkable because this isn’t a book about a redemption narrative; it’s a book about a redemptive interruption. It is about being surprised by one’s shifting beliefs, and while lesser authors would struggle to make it coherent, Mary Karr’s ability to shamelessly share her embarrassment feels singularly her. She recognizes that for many readers, religion will merely be seen as the mental jungle gym she needed to get sober, but for her, it becomes a trellis on which life can truly bloom.
Lit is not a baffling book as much as Mary Karr is a baffling person. She’s a sailor-mouthed, late-in-life Catholic convert who pursues sacred things with profane delight (or perhaps, vice-versa). This memoir follows her descent into alcoholism and her ascent into cynical saint, and it’s all told with a fleet-footed voice and a humility that’s magnetic.
At one point, Karr notes that a mentor said, “take no care for your dignity” in her writing, and it’s interesting how that plays out. I think memoirs frequently succumb to self-punishment in a way that is ultimately self-serving, but that’s not the case here. Instead, the author pointedly describes what an awful person she was—and sometimes still is—because it needs to be said. With this being an off-kilter redemption arc, Karr seems deeply concerned with avoiding any of the tropes or feel-good narrative beats that would lend themselves to proselytizing or self-promotion. Appropriately for a Catholic, it amounts to something that feels oddly sacrificial, an emptying of the self for the good of her readers.
Personally, I’m really fascinated by people who adopt a religion well into adulthood because it seems like an unnecessary complication to life. It introduces new obligations and often offers little in return. Karr seems to bemusedly write from a similar perspective, poking holes in religious belief even as she finds it impossible to resist. In fact, most of her spiritual journey is characterized by her mocking the possibility of the divine, lobbing expletives into nothingness until they begin to hit something. Forget Jacob wrestling the angel; this is Mary Karr kicking and screaming her way into faith.
It’s a take that’s as refreshing as it is remarkable because this isn’t a book about a redemption narrative; it’s a book about a redemptive interruption. It is about being surprised by one’s shifting beliefs, and while lesser authors would struggle to make it coherent, Mary Karr’s ability to shamelessly share her embarrassment feels singularly her. She recognizes that for many readers, religion will merely be seen as the mental jungle gym she needed to get sober, but for her, it becomes a trellis on which life can truly bloom.