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whatsnonfiction 's review for:
Horror Stories: A Memoir
by Liz Phair
This is imperfect, but ends up being pretty meaningful anyway. I would've skipped it because I really don't like celebrity memoirs even when they're celebrities I like. Also I haven't paid her newer stuff any attention in the last decade or so even though I loved her something fierce in that pivotal high school/college-age time that she reached so many of us.
The NPR writeup changed my mind because the quotes were so powerful. I don't know why I'm surprised, her songs were always like that, with some totally gut-punching lines. So it wasn't what I expected, in a good way, because it's not a musician memoir - although there are some such stories here, actually my least favorite among the topics covered. The general concept is parsing the awful things we do to each other on a smaller scale, the everyday horror stories that end up lingering longer even than the big obvious ones: "Horror can be found in brief interactions that are as cumulatively powerful as the splashy heart-stoppers, because that’s where we live most of our lives."
It made me remember why I loved her in the first place. And something I was completely unprepared for (sorry Liz, this is about me now): I even felt some little forgotten piece of myself coming back, with the thoughts or memories she stirred up, or my own horror stories that mirrored something in hers (those things that become “haunting melodies I hear over and over again in my head”); or in the events, emotions, and interactions that affected her and I could feel why so viscerally. I am so grateful for that. Whatever flaws this has, it's incredible art that can bring you back something of yourself and this did it.
She's a bit more into the woo-woo than I would imagine considering how grounded and realistic she comes off elsewhere, there are a few too many scenes on airplanes, it can be melodramatic (but like, who among us doesn't have those melodramatic moments where some emotion unexpectedly overwhelms reason and before you know it you're forever scarred by something small or stupid), and I really wish editors would go a little harder on celebrities or even big authors - I get the impression they're afraid to touch their work sometimes, and this could've benefited from some editing tweaks (can't we all just agree to banish the adding of extra letters to a word for emphasis? We're collectively better than that!)
But I was so moved by it overall. I think this'll speak to sensitive, empathic types. It's confessional, funny, silly, painfully honest even when it makes her look bad or shallow, and... strangely healing? Is that what I'm trying to describe here? I'm not sure. But a lot of it resonated, sometimes surprisingly so. I'm so glad she wrote it.
Some favorite lines out of a bunch of them:
We’re afraid we will be defined by our worst decisions instead of our best.
We can be monsters, we human beings, in the most offhand and cavalier ways.
I wrecked my marriage, and he wrecked his—essentially for nothing.
The only thing you know for sure is that you can’t go back the way you came. You must go forward, or sideways, or up, or down; anywhere except home again, because that’s not your home anymore. You are temporarily homeless. Losing love can turn you into a ghost in your own life. You go to all the same places, do the same things, but you’re not really there. You’re surrounded by friends and family, people with whom you intimately belong, but because your heart is broken, you listen to their laughter and conversation as if from a great distance.
Time will refasten what’s come unmoored inside you.
The NPR writeup changed my mind because the quotes were so powerful. I don't know why I'm surprised, her songs were always like that, with some totally gut-punching lines. So it wasn't what I expected, in a good way, because it's not a musician memoir - although there are some such stories here, actually my least favorite among the topics covered. The general concept is parsing the awful things we do to each other on a smaller scale, the everyday horror stories that end up lingering longer even than the big obvious ones: "Horror can be found in brief interactions that are as cumulatively powerful as the splashy heart-stoppers, because that’s where we live most of our lives."
It made me remember why I loved her in the first place. And something I was completely unprepared for (sorry Liz, this is about me now): I even felt some little forgotten piece of myself coming back, with the thoughts or memories she stirred up, or my own horror stories that mirrored something in hers (those things that become “haunting melodies I hear over and over again in my head”); or in the events, emotions, and interactions that affected her and I could feel why so viscerally. I am so grateful for that. Whatever flaws this has, it's incredible art that can bring you back something of yourself and this did it.
She's a bit more into the woo-woo than I would imagine considering how grounded and realistic she comes off elsewhere, there are a few too many scenes on airplanes, it can be melodramatic (but like, who among us doesn't have those melodramatic moments where some emotion unexpectedly overwhelms reason and before you know it you're forever scarred by something small or stupid), and I really wish editors would go a little harder on celebrities or even big authors - I get the impression they're afraid to touch their work sometimes, and this could've benefited from some editing tweaks (can't we all just agree to banish the adding of extra letters to a word for emphasis? We're collectively better than that!)
But I was so moved by it overall. I think this'll speak to sensitive, empathic types. It's confessional, funny, silly, painfully honest even when it makes her look bad or shallow, and... strangely healing? Is that what I'm trying to describe here? I'm not sure. But a lot of it resonated, sometimes surprisingly so. I'm so glad she wrote it.
Some favorite lines out of a bunch of them:
We’re afraid we will be defined by our worst decisions instead of our best.
We can be monsters, we human beings, in the most offhand and cavalier ways.
I wrecked my marriage, and he wrecked his—essentially for nothing.
The only thing you know for sure is that you can’t go back the way you came. You must go forward, or sideways, or up, or down; anywhere except home again, because that’s not your home anymore. You are temporarily homeless. Losing love can turn you into a ghost in your own life. You go to all the same places, do the same things, but you’re not really there. You’re surrounded by friends and family, people with whom you intimately belong, but because your heart is broken, you listen to their laughter and conversation as if from a great distance.
Time will refasten what’s come unmoored inside you.