Lit

A really great read. Mary Karr doesn't spare herself as she writes about her descent into alcoholism and her long crawl to sobriety, but she does take every opportunity to highlight any humor there was to be found in her situation (sometimes very dark humor indeed).

Her sharp but affectionate treatment of AA meetings reminded me of some of David Foster Wallace's descriptions of the program in Infinite Jest, where the characters hilariously acknowledge that the behavior that is being asked of them is absurd, undignified, embarrassing, they don't want to do it, but they do it anyway because they know it is saving their lives. Then a bandanna wearing David Foster Wallace made his appearance in Karr's memoir, and I thought, “of course.” The two met in AA.

Mary Karr's struggle for sobriety is entwined with her spiritual journey to Christianity, and as an adult convert I was especially interested in that part of the story. She's very matter of fact about her scepticism and her reasons for getting baptised in the Catholic church (her kid was getting baptised, she liked the particular church they had found), but then once she had committed herself she jumped in with both feet, undertaking the spiritual exercises of Ignatius under the direction of a nun.

From this memoir I learned that Mary Karr is one tough, funny woman who is becoming more loving through grace and the help of an impressive array of people who love her.

Two memoirs. One poetry book. One writing book. Yes, it was a Mary Karr week.



My Mary Karr reading frenzy all started quite innocently. I took a writing class last summer at Inprint in Houston. Our teacher told us Mary Karr was coming to Houston in September. I spontaneously decided to buy a ticket, vaguely remembering that I'd read her first memoir, Liar's Club, back twenty years ago or so. When the date of Karr's reading approached, I was exhausted by all the beginning-of-the-year stuff we teachers experience but I remembered a book was included in the price of the reading, and I didn't want to miss out on picking up that book. So I reluctantly decided to go. When I googled the address of the reading, I was surprised to see that it was being held in a church. Must not have been able to book the Wortham for that night, I thought.



I was wrong. It was no accident that Mary Karr was at Christ Church Cathedral, an Episcopal Church in downtown Houston, built in 1839; all her readings were being held in churches.

I was intrigued. An author in a church. Imagine that.

Mary Karr was fascinating. “I was a strange child,” she told her audience at the reading. “I was not a happy child. But there was something about reading memoirs that made me feel less lonely.” Karr shared her new book, The Art of Memoir, and suggested that through our stories we manufacture a self. “Writing a memoir is like knocking yourself out with your own fist,” she told us.

All her books, Karr explained, could be summed up: “I am sad. The end.”

In her life, Karr survived her alcoholic and dysfunctional parents to become an alcoholic and dysfunctional parent herself. And somehow she broke free of all that, mysteriously embracing both writing and the Catholic Church.



Mary Karr is a little older, a little less functional Texas-rooted me. Like me, she has both the redneck-storytelling people and the salvation-through-reading people in her family tree.

That was enough. I raced home from the reading and put everything I could find of Mary Karr's on hold at the library. I was amazed to find that not only were all three of her memoirs at the library, but that I could also check out and read one of her books of poetry.

I'll just tell you that her books are mostly “I am sad.” But, happily, there is a little more there before “The end.”

Beautiful writing. Sad stories. And redemption. Mary Karr.