Scan barcode
A review by dan1066
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
1.0
[My students] stare at me like the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest…Finally someone will raise his or her hand. “Can you send your manuscripts directly to a publisher, or do you really need an agent?”
After a moment or so, I say, You really need an agent… Most of them nod. This is why they are here: they love to read, they love good writing, they want to do it, too. But a few of the students are still looking at me with a sense of betrayal or hopelessness, as if they are thinking of hanging themselves. Too late for a refund, I tell them cheerfully, but I have something even better…
Truth is, Lamott doesn’t offer “something even better.” She does not have the patience or empathy necessary to teach. She’s like a piano teacher who rolls her eyes after a novice student plays one or two measures, pushes the student off the bench to show “how it’s done.” As the student slowly gets up rubbing their elbow, she plays and talks about how it’s agony to practice, how it’s agony to get gigs, how all these famous musicians talk to her about her gigs and talent and how it’s not enough. It eventually dawns on the student she’s not going to teach anything. You’re just what she wanted: a paying audience to shut up and enjoy her stories. She believes she is so clever when, in fact, she’s cruel. You’ll leave the lesson having wasted your money and having your dreams ridiculed.
Lamott continually bemoans how miserable the writing process is, how cut-throat. Yet, she had access to a literary agent and a patient teacher (her father) at her start. Publication was easy for her. In fact, her descriptions of her “struggles” is like a wealthy person lounging by their luxurious pool talking to their servant: “Oh, you don’t want wealth, Julio, the stress of having so much money. You want to live life day by day, enjoy a good sunrise and sunset. I saw one on my annual trip to Ibiza, stunning. But the hotel staff were so…you know, provincial. One actually hooked the keys to my Benz in the wrong spot. When this dented Volkswagon drove up, I was like, ‘Uh, that’s not mine.’”
Lamott complains about her students—her favorite adjective for them is “mewling.” She notes a group which attended her course still meet weekly to discuss their writing: “All four of them are excellent writers, but only one of them has been published at all, and that was just one article. But you know what? They love each other.” Lamott notes: “Publication is not going to change your life or solve your problems. Publication will not make you more confident or more beautiful, and it will probably not make you any richer.” Then she talks about herself, her worries, her “problems,” which, Dear Budding Writer, are just like yours…
Six or seven years ago I was asked to write an article on the Special Olympics.
I had a brainstorm: I would mail the third section off, borrow the money to fly to New York, and spend a week there, doing the line editing of the book with my editor and, at the same time, getting away from this man I was breaking up with. Also, I could collect the last third of the advance that Viking owed me and do a little retail therapy in New York City.
Last summer I got a call from a producer in New York who wanted me to fly east two days later, stay in town overnight, do her TV talk show, and fly home.
Whenever I’m giving a lecture at a writing conference and happen to mention the benefits of finding someone to read your drafts, at least one older established writer comes up to me and says that he or she would never in a million years show his or her work to another person before it was done.
One of the best writers I know has a wife…
Two other writers I know use each other.
A magazine editor recently asked me to write an essay about being a lifelong Giants fan, which I have been, but the anxiety about publication made my mind go suddenly blank.
Of course, not everyone loved my book. There were some terrible reviews…”Here’s your review from Santa Barbara,” my editor wrote on a note enclosed with it, “where people never die.”
So I started typing up the journal entries and sending them off to my agent.
Brice died that May. A month or so later I had the opportunity to write a three-minute essay for a radio show on anything I wanted, and I asked Brice’s parents if it would feel like an invasion of privacy if I wrote about their son.
And get this: Lamott gives the text of her radio essay and it’s about bringing her baby to see the body of dead baby Brice and recording his profound reaction: “He’s a good baby.” Afterwards, they go bowling. I shit you not.
So why so many five stars for this trash? I don’t know. She told us at the very beginning students wouldn’t get a refund and some felt like hanging themselves—but she’s doesn’t understand why the shiny examples drawn from her writer’s life coupled with her zany, quirky humor doesn’t dazzle and enlighten. She’s not teaching anything—she’s using the instruction process as a means to regale a captive audience about herself with a few sprinklings of clichés and pithy slogans. She denigrates her friends, the special ed population, the French, people from the south, the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, her students. Notice all her great, useful quotes start with “a friend told me” or “a black lady told me” or “my fat gay priest friend told me” or “a really great writer told me.” Sometimes she names her friends and priests, sometimes she doesn’t. The upshot is she’s pilfering great quotes or images, often without giving the authors credit. Towards the middle of her “lesson,” you begin to wonder why you can’t name a single novel she has written, can’t recall a single book she’s noted for other than Bird by Bird. She’s a hack, that’s why. She needs the money; more importantly, she needs the audience.
Now, before I sign off, I’ll save you the cost of this book by revealing Lamott’s recipe for literary success:
(1) Have a father who is a published writer.
(2) Have father die of cancer. Write about father dying of cancer and send it to father’s literary agent.
(3) Have a friend die of cancer. Write about friend dying of cancer and fill the niche of “funny books about cancer.”
(4) Don’t expect to be published and don’t entreat Lamott to read your shitty stories. Find someone else and accept the fact you will likely wallow in mediocrity but at least you’ll avoid all the stress of being a published writer like Lamott.
That’s it. There’s no “how to.” Each chapter starts with a problem a burgeoning writing likely faces, but each chapter ends with a long anecdote about what a wonderful, zany life Lamott has as a writer. She’s a waste of time.
After a moment or so, I say, You really need an agent… Most of them nod. This is why they are here: they love to read, they love good writing, they want to do it, too. But a few of the students are still looking at me with a sense of betrayal or hopelessness, as if they are thinking of hanging themselves. Too late for a refund, I tell them cheerfully, but I have something even better…
Truth is, Lamott doesn’t offer “something even better.” She does not have the patience or empathy necessary to teach. She’s like a piano teacher who rolls her eyes after a novice student plays one or two measures, pushes the student off the bench to show “how it’s done.” As the student slowly gets up rubbing their elbow, she plays and talks about how it’s agony to practice, how it’s agony to get gigs, how all these famous musicians talk to her about her gigs and talent and how it’s not enough. It eventually dawns on the student she’s not going to teach anything. You’re just what she wanted: a paying audience to shut up and enjoy her stories. She believes she is so clever when, in fact, she’s cruel. You’ll leave the lesson having wasted your money and having your dreams ridiculed.
Lamott continually bemoans how miserable the writing process is, how cut-throat. Yet, she had access to a literary agent and a patient teacher (her father) at her start. Publication was easy for her. In fact, her descriptions of her “struggles” is like a wealthy person lounging by their luxurious pool talking to their servant: “Oh, you don’t want wealth, Julio, the stress of having so much money. You want to live life day by day, enjoy a good sunrise and sunset. I saw one on my annual trip to Ibiza, stunning. But the hotel staff were so…you know, provincial. One actually hooked the keys to my Benz in the wrong spot. When this dented Volkswagon drove up, I was like, ‘Uh, that’s not mine.’”
Lamott complains about her students—her favorite adjective for them is “mewling.” She notes a group which attended her course still meet weekly to discuss their writing: “All four of them are excellent writers, but only one of them has been published at all, and that was just one article. But you know what? They love each other.” Lamott notes: “Publication is not going to change your life or solve your problems. Publication will not make you more confident or more beautiful, and it will probably not make you any richer.” Then she talks about herself, her worries, her “problems,” which, Dear Budding Writer, are just like yours…
Six or seven years ago I was asked to write an article on the Special Olympics.
I had a brainstorm: I would mail the third section off, borrow the money to fly to New York, and spend a week there, doing the line editing of the book with my editor and, at the same time, getting away from this man I was breaking up with. Also, I could collect the last third of the advance that Viking owed me and do a little retail therapy in New York City.
Last summer I got a call from a producer in New York who wanted me to fly east two days later, stay in town overnight, do her TV talk show, and fly home.
Whenever I’m giving a lecture at a writing conference and happen to mention the benefits of finding someone to read your drafts, at least one older established writer comes up to me and says that he or she would never in a million years show his or her work to another person before it was done.
One of the best writers I know has a wife…
Two other writers I know use each other.
A magazine editor recently asked me to write an essay about being a lifelong Giants fan, which I have been, but the anxiety about publication made my mind go suddenly blank.
Of course, not everyone loved my book. There were some terrible reviews…”Here’s your review from Santa Barbara,” my editor wrote on a note enclosed with it, “where people never die.”
So I started typing up the journal entries and sending them off to my agent.
Brice died that May. A month or so later I had the opportunity to write a three-minute essay for a radio show on anything I wanted, and I asked Brice’s parents if it would feel like an invasion of privacy if I wrote about their son.
And get this: Lamott gives the text of her radio essay and it’s about bringing her baby to see the body of dead baby Brice and recording his profound reaction: “He’s a good baby.” Afterwards, they go bowling. I shit you not.
So why so many five stars for this trash? I don’t know. She told us at the very beginning students wouldn’t get a refund and some felt like hanging themselves—but she’s doesn’t understand why the shiny examples drawn from her writer’s life coupled with her zany, quirky humor doesn’t dazzle and enlighten. She’s not teaching anything—she’s using the instruction process as a means to regale a captive audience about herself with a few sprinklings of clichés and pithy slogans. She denigrates her friends, the special ed population, the French, people from the south, the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, her students. Notice all her great, useful quotes start with “a friend told me” or “a black lady told me” or “my fat gay priest friend told me” or “a really great writer told me.” Sometimes she names her friends and priests, sometimes she doesn’t. The upshot is she’s pilfering great quotes or images, often without giving the authors credit. Towards the middle of her “lesson,” you begin to wonder why you can’t name a single novel she has written, can’t recall a single book she’s noted for other than Bird by Bird. She’s a hack, that’s why. She needs the money; more importantly, she needs the audience.
Now, before I sign off, I’ll save you the cost of this book by revealing Lamott’s recipe for literary success:
(1) Have a father who is a published writer.
(2) Have father die of cancer. Write about father dying of cancer and send it to father’s literary agent.
(3) Have a friend die of cancer. Write about friend dying of cancer and fill the niche of “funny books about cancer.”
(4) Don’t expect to be published and don’t entreat Lamott to read your shitty stories. Find someone else and accept the fact you will likely wallow in mediocrity but at least you’ll avoid all the stress of being a published writer like Lamott.
That’s it. There’s no “how to.” Each chapter starts with a problem a burgeoning writing likely faces, but each chapter ends with a long anecdote about what a wonderful, zany life Lamott has as a writer. She’s a waste of time.