I was fortunate to see Sloane Crosley earlier this year (speaking about her latest novel, Cult Classic, which I’ve read but yet to review… I’m very behind on reviews). Anyway, she was as funny in real life as she is on the page, and her second essay collection, Look Alive Out There, confirms exactly how funny she is on the page.
Crosley’s humour is self-deprecating, and relies on the very particular situations she has found herself in (as opposed to taking shots at the world in general). Although I found the essays to be of a consistent standard (high), there were standouts. A Dog Named Humphrey recalls Crosley’s guest appearance on Gossip Girl (best show, and I will not be taking questions at this time); Up the Down Volcano, about a poorly planned adventure in Ecuador; and Cinema of the Confined, which focuses on her diagnosis with Ménière’s disease, which she describes as something that ‘…sounds like a pastry but is the opposite of pastry…’. Her doctor says,
“I’m doubtful you’ll go deaf deaf.”
I didn’t want to go any number of deafs.
“It could be worse,” he said. “It could be cancer.”
This was not the first time Dr. Goldfinger suggested I appreciate my place on the mortality spectrum… The expression doesn’t go: “At least you have some portion of your health.”
As always, one essay rises above them all, and in this collection it was Relative Stranger, in which Crosley explores her uncle’s former career in porn. This story could have easily fallen into an uncomfortable heap, but she takes an unexpected angle – Crosley knew (via family legend), that Johnny had pursued a career in porn as a way of finding a girlfriend. At the time, Crosely was questioning her own romantic choices and writes –
So I have come to see Johnny the same way sadistic parents make their children smoke an entire pack of cigarettes if they catch them smoking one. I want to stare into the face of a single man, forty years my senior, who’s been looking for love in the most unlikely place imaginable. I am in search of well-earned wisdom, of someone to smack me out of my habits. Like a vaccination, I am hoping that by immersing myself in an extreme version of my problem, I can be cured of my problem.
It’s probably unfair to lean entirely on the funny. Crosley is also wonderfully observant and insightful. The essay titled The Grape Man, is a beautiful tribute to her neighbour, Don, who tended her apartment block’s garden and fervent grape vine (which ultimately obliterated Crosley’s window), and with whom she struck up a friendship of sorts. Don dies, and Crosley reflects on the difficulty of mourning someone you don’t really know (in my line of work, this is called ambiguous grief). Incidentally, Crosley and Don had discussed the way New Yorkers ‘handle’ death prior to his passing, and he observed precisely what she found herself grappling with –
“They don’t know how to mourn for people they only sort of know. It’s too abstract for such an opinionated culture. That’s why 9/11 was such a mess.”
After Don’s death, Crosley discovers that he meant much to many people and that her friendship with him was not singular. And this realisation brings mixed feelings –
I never heard a single visitor in Don’s apartment. I never ran into him on the street accompanied by anyone but himself. I never saw him with more than one bag of groceries in his hand. To live alone can be a glorious thing. Between jags of crippling loneliness and wretched TV, it’s an education in self-sufficiency, self-actualization, and self-tanner. But it’s possible to have too many rooms of one’s own.
Overall, Crosley makes humour and finding topics for essays seem effortless. I’m quite sure it’s the opposite but readers reap the reward. Sign me up for whatever comes next.
4/5
…by the time you’re an adult, the question “Want to go skiing next weekend?” actually sounds like “Want to go bungee jumping using this old dental floss I just found?” The big selling points for ski trips, or the ones most regularly paraded out for my unskilled benefit, are mugs of warm liquid. Wait. Let me get this straight: While all my friends exercise, bond, and embrace the outdoors, my reward for a hard day of solo snowman crafting is more hot chocolate? To what do I owe this glut of me-time? Maybe later, when I grow bored of lying on rugs, I can wander into town and spin postcard racks. No, no winter sporting expeditions for me, thank you.
As part of the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge, I’m comparing the Belfast summer and Melburnian winter. The results for the day I finished this book (July 10): Belfast 12°-19° and Melbourne 12°-17°.
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‘Ambiguous grief’ is an interesting description and quite a handy one. I wonder if you’d apply it to celebrities who make such an impact on our lives – David Bowie, Tina Turner and, more recently, Sinead O’Connnor, come to mind. It seems a little different as there’s an element of mourning lost youth in there.
I probably should have added ‘disenfranchised grief’ in there as well – that applies more accurately to the grief we feel when celebrities die (and people who we have a slight or tenuous connection with, or if the grief isn’t validated by society eg. when a man dies and the woman he has been having an affair with for decades doesn’t have a place at the funeral). Ambiguous grief applies when we don’t have a body (eg if someone goes missing) or if we have a body, but the person has changed (eg. a dementia diagnosis). Without giving away the details of the short story, both of these types of grief apply in The Grape Man.
I was tested for Meniere’s disease when I was diagnosed with tinnitus, because it is one of the symptoms. The audiologist was reasonably sensitive about it, but there’s no sugar coating the fact that Meniere’s is a horrible ailment to have. (Tinnitus is also associated with a whole lot of other horrible things like brain tumours so it is important to get tested thoroughly if you ever have it.)
My tinnitus, fortunately, is just tinnitus and not a symptom of anything else, but I haven’t forgotten how anxious I was, and (because, of course, I Googled it) I feel very sorry for anybody who has got Meniere’s disease.
There’s actually a whole section where the author talks about googling Meniere’s, which reads as very funny, but at the same time captures her panic. Must admit, I am a great googler of symptoms, which my GP is well aware of. She usually says, “What did Google say?”when I visit, to which I reply, “You tell me what you think first, and I’ll tell you if you’re right.” 😀
Ha ha!