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left_coast_justin 's review for:
No Hurry to Get Home: A Memoir
by Emily Hahn
Emily Hahn is a highly sympathetic narrator and an excellent journalist. I have long been a fan of authors who publish in The New Yorker, and Hahn provides a great example of why. There are plenty of publications out there that feature the flashy, the experimental and the latest thing, but if you want rock-solid use of English to provide an in-depth look at interesting topics, you could do worse than this book. Here we find about a dozen of her essays published between 1947 and 1996 -- highlights of quite a remarkable career.
All the skill in the world won't help much if you have nothing interesting to say. The first three essays, which describe growing up in Chicago, sneaking out with boys and eventually going to college, are quite readable but weak in subject matter, and I wouldn't have stuck it out for an entire book. But once she gets to college, when her ambition to see the world far outweighs her ambition for family and prosperity, the book becomes not only highly readable but very interesting as well.
A couple of things prevented these essays from being truly stellar, however. As befits a New Yorker essayist, she is more concerned with facts than with dissection of what the facts might mean. Also, many of these appear to have been written as reminiscences of events long past. Together, these two factors lead to a lack of immediacy that sometimes seems puzzling. The general tone of the book is cheerful, and she describes a date with a boring man with the same breezy tone as being caught in an air raid in Shanghai in which over a thousand people were blown to pieces. Of course, with the perspective of time, the terror she likely felt has mellowed. Some would consider this lack of emotion a strength, but I actually appreciate more feeling in essays -- your mileage may vary. (Try to find a copy of Miah Arnold's essay You Owe Me, which I first read here here, for an example of my preferred essay style).
Minor quibble. Emily Hahn should be as well known as Amelia Earhart or Bill Bryson, because she's had a more interesting a life than both and is a far better writer than either. I'm really grateful to Candi for alerting me to this one.
(note added June 2021): Just one fun little tidbit in a book packed with them: When Hahn had a baby, her mother introduced her to a young pediatrician who lived in the neighborhood, a guy named Benjaman Spock.
All the skill in the world won't help much if you have nothing interesting to say. The first three essays, which describe growing up in Chicago, sneaking out with boys and eventually going to college, are quite readable but weak in subject matter, and I wouldn't have stuck it out for an entire book. But once she gets to college, when her ambition to see the world far outweighs her ambition for family and prosperity, the book becomes not only highly readable but very interesting as well.
A couple of things prevented these essays from being truly stellar, however. As befits a New Yorker essayist, she is more concerned with facts than with dissection of what the facts might mean. Also, many of these appear to have been written as reminiscences of events long past. Together, these two factors lead to a lack of immediacy that sometimes seems puzzling. The general tone of the book is cheerful, and she describes a date with a boring man with the same breezy tone as being caught in an air raid in Shanghai in which over a thousand people were blown to pieces. Of course, with the perspective of time, the terror she likely felt has mellowed. Some would consider this lack of emotion a strength, but I actually appreciate more feeling in essays -- your mileage may vary. (Try to find a copy of Miah Arnold's essay You Owe Me, which I first read here here, for an example of my preferred essay style).
Minor quibble. Emily Hahn should be as well known as Amelia Earhart or Bill Bryson, because she's had a more interesting a life than both and is a far better writer than either. I'm really grateful to Candi for alerting me to this one.
(note added June 2021): Just one fun little tidbit in a book packed with them: When Hahn had a baby, her mother introduced her to a young pediatrician who lived in the neighborhood, a guy named Benjaman Spock.