anne lamott: traveling mercies

[toddhill]

Hope this is the right place to post this. I just finished reading Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, and it was a most delightful read. She takes you into the nitty gritty of life that most people won’t talk about and affirms what it is to be human, makes me feel ok and even good to be human, with all of its imperfections, struggles, and failures. Her writing style is fantastic. I often dislike modern writers because their writing is so poor it steals all the attention. Ms. Lamott’s writing steals the attention once in awhile but it’s because she comes up with some really good ways to say things. She uses word pictures and analogies and similes, but not to excess like some other modern writers I’ve read. And her word pictures ring true. Toward the end she writes about her fear that she’s lost her vision for writing: “I couldn’t remember the point anymore; a lot of rewards had come my way, but I felt like a veteran greyhound at the racetrack who finally figures out that she’s been chasing mechanical bunnies: all that energy, and it’s not even a real rabbit.” In another place she writes about her son’s art: “He surrounded his castle with the men he has nightmares about, men with guns, men who will hurt or save him; and he surrounded his castle with monsters made of Styrofoam and seaweed. His art springs out of bubbling underground necessity, as if he’s somehow dipping himself into the river that gave him life; he’s making dream material visible. I watched him carefully. He was making art because he has to, and because he’s brave enough to try and make contact, right there on the edge of madness, where he dreams.” This book is non-fiction, autobiographical, but I know she’s written some novels. Has anyone read any of them? What were they like? Thanks, Todd