The Liars' Club

[mallorys_camera]

In other news, I had a perfectly pleasant, low-key Thanksgiving in which I did nothing but eat, draw, and read The Liars' Club, a book about which I'd been curious because it always pops up on lists of the Ten Best Memoirs of All Time.

These days I'm more into writing a memoir than writing a novel since memoirs sell more reliably. I wish, of course, that I'd fucked my father or had a passionate Sapphic fling with my half-sister since I'm not at all sure that the ramblings of a failed middle-aged businesswoman in and of themselves make compelling reading. ("Why we look alike!" I breathed reverentially as Francesca and I compared labia minora in a mirror…)

Although to be sure I can't quite figure out what's so compelling about Mary Karr's life either. So her mother was crazy, BFD – my mother was even crazier plus since she didn't drink I didn't have the consolation of knowing it was the alcohol talking when she'd abandon me on street corners, telling me my father would be along in 10 hours or so.

Karr's prose, on the other hand, is really first rate. Hard to read though – at least, hard for me to read. I'm a lazy reader; I race through every book I read pulled along by the story. I don't pay much attention to the words on the page, in fact I dislike stylized writing in which the words themselves extort so much attention that they throw me out of the story.

Karr's writing is very stylized. The Liars' Club is as dense as a 320 page poem which makes sense – Karr was a poet before she was a prose writer: By dusk we were on the spaghetti freeways looking for Highway 73 home, and I kept cutting my eyes between my window, where the new glass skyscrapers going up just slid past, and the small rearview mirror, where Mother's eyes were still eerily blank. Nothing showed in those eyes but the road's dashed white lines, which seemed to be flying off the road and deepest part of her pupils, where they disappeared like knives.

Central image of the book is the various reflections in people's eyes, it's the connective tissue as it were. And I found myself wondering about Karr's process here – do the images pour out of her on the first draft? Or they conscious manipulations of the text that appear around draft 3?

The Liars" Club reminds me a lot of White Oleander, another book I didn't like at all while I was reading it but which has stayed with me in the years since.

Comments

[bel-ebat.livejournal.com]

god, i love mary karr. except i read her memoirs out of order, starting with cherry, which i think made a big difference. i don't know if i would have gone out of my way to read another of her books if i had started with the liars club. i liked it, but i feel as though that is at least partially because i was already sucked into her as a person- i wanted to hear the other part of the story. i'm looking forward to her new memoir coming out soon (i think december? if not already?) about her first marriage

i also love a female's perspective of industrialized texas- esp. one who considers herself as much an outsider to it as an insider. i eat it up.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's right! You're both Texas gals! I don't know Texas at all -- I spent one Christmas there a billion years ago when I was dating the heir to a tugboat fortune. I felt... displaced.

Cherry's the next book on my night table. I'll give it a whirl on your recommendation. It's not that I don't like Liars' Club. In some ways, I revere it -- it's that well written. It's just that it's so hard for me to read, it demands my full attention which I give only reluctantly to anything these days.

[wailaki.livejournal.com]

White Oleander! Thanks for reminding me. I felt somewhat haunted by that book, and the way she writes, to the point of NOT passing it on. Hmmm, there it is in my bookcase.....maybe time to read it again. Sometimes I just like to read books for the exquisite poetry, even if I could care less about the story. Lonesome Dove is like that for me.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Interesting! Lonesome Dove didn't have much poetry for me -- in fact, that's why I like Larry McMurtry so much -- he's such a prosaic writer.

White Oleander made me want to make shadow boxes.

PS

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

If you haven't read Mary Karr, you should. I think you'd like her.

[wailaki.livejournal.com]

Did you see the movie? The one thing that stands out for me is the collection of suitcase/shadow boxes. In fact, it had such an effect on me that I have been collecting "things" to put into boxes, as well as the boxes to put them into, ever since. All in my storage unit...for now.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw the movie. It was kind of eh for me. Would have liked to see what a European director could have done with it.

[wailaki.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. Michelle Pfeiffer kind of sucked all the oxygen out of the air with her "look at me I'm a star playing down-and-out" performance. But those suitcases! I've rented the damn movie twice just to look at them again. Sort of a teen aged railroad bum's version of stay-at-home with his mommy Joseph Cornell (whom you must never denigrate in my presence because I adore him and all his quirky, pederastic twisted celestial parrot boxes). One of these days I will begin my project, having gathered everything there is to gather. Of course, I will need a warehouse to lay it all out.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I like Joseph Cornell actually. Although me being basically a kitsch & National Enquirer kinda gal, I like

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I like Joseph Cornell actually. Although me being basically a kitsch & <I>National Enquirer</I> kinda gal, I like <a href="http://www.craftychica.com/blogs/projects/labels/shrines.php" target="new"Kathy Murillo's </a> better.

[bel-ebat.livejournal.com]

displaced' is a good word for how i imagine you would feel here! my own father, who once found living in this state academically interesting and amusing is finally very worn from it. mary karr's part of texas is much more legitimate than mine- to other texans, at least. el paso is so far away from any other place- even small towns- in texas that we have more access to mexico and new mexico. when i went to school at texas tech in lubbock for a year (which also gets a mention in the book...) everyone thought i was very foreign and glamorous and that i had a european accent. before they found out where i was from, though that often didn't deter them because they'd just forget after i told them. this even happens now, in austin. it's part of the reason i started talking so much about the drug lords of my childhood- to imprint something about the location into everyone's brains. it only sort of works. everyone just walks away with the idea that i'm far richer and more mysterious than i actually am. :/

i do think you should try cherry, though. the drug aspect of it was what hit home to me about it most- the way she even first fell into tripping, etc. and then the way it evolved. i seem to recall that i felt it was more in tune to that than it actually is to texas. also,i feel like her writing style grows between liars' club and cherry, but i don't know if that's just my imagination. there was about 2 years between when i read them, which might mean a bigger difference in my reading style than in her writing style.