Outgrowing Lorrie Moore

Days after reading Lorrie Moore's latest collection Bark—and still lugging it around with me, because it gave me a disquieting conundrum that very much needed solving—I ran into Petra. We talked about a great many things, about cabbages and things, and she saw Bark, and she asked me how it was. I let loose everything that I had love about it, and even more lengthily about why it hurt me so. Petra laughed, asked, "Sasha? Have you outgrown Lorrie Moore?" I let that one sink in. And then I had to nod. I had outgrown Lorrie Moore. [Continue reading.]

“Life is sad. Here is someone.”

Benna looked back at her knees feeling that she'd been made, forever and for now, like her marriage vows, stupid with loneliness, bereft of any truth or wisdom or flicker of poetry, possessed only of the wild glaze of a person who spends entire days making things up. Story of my life these days c/o [...]

The problem with beautiful women

Words to live by, from Anagrams by Lorrie Moore: The problem with a beautiful woman is that she makes everyone around her feel hopelessly masculine, which if you’re already male to begin with poses no particular problem. But if you’re anyone else, your whole sexual identity gets dragged into the principal’s office: “So what’s this [...]

elsewhere || “The Missteps of Lorrie Moore, Literary Hero” at POC-Metakritiko

My review of A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore is up on the Metakritiko section of The Philippine Online Chronicles. It's part of an [bleep]-word essay called "The Missteps of Lorrie Moore, Literary Hero," and has been divided in two because we want to be considerate of the TL;DR crowd. Aherm. So. The [...]

marginalia || A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore

Tragedies, I was coming to realize through my daily studies in the humanities both in and out of the classroom, were a luxury. They were constructions of an affluent society, full of sorrow and truth but without moral function. Stories of the vanquishing of the spirit expressed and underscored a certain societal spirit to spare. [...]

marginalia || Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore

I fell in love with Lorrie Moore when I found her short story “How to Be an Other Woman” in an anthology of love stories. There, by pure accident (I was scouring the library shelves, just because), I fell in love. She just blew me away—her language, her quirkiness, her ability to sucker-punch your right [...]