If you remember correctly, this is what happened with James Frey. After A Million Little Pieces, I was one step short of tattooing his name on my bicep. Then Bright Shiny Morning hit, and there I was, ready to avoid his gaze if I saw him on the street in the following weeks. You would think that I had learned my lesson from this experience and would guard my heart more carefully the next time. But Sloane Crosley disarmed me just as easily, the little minx. The literary equivalent of one wonderful night together and I was ready to call her my soulmate. But to give myself a little credit, Crosley's first collection of essays, I Was Told There'd Be Cake had everything a girl could look for – humor, emotion, reality, ceaseless sarcasm and mocking. It was the George Clooney of social satire books. Unfortunately, How Did You Get This Number didn't quite live up to the first-date hype. Yeah, we still had a good time. I laughed. But I also spent a bit of it awkwardly looking at my watch, or pushing my food around my plate.
The second date started out rocky, and wavered between 'good' and 'okay' for the remaining eight essays. It had some wonderful high points, some embarrassing low points, and a lot of so-so in between pages. But overall, it didn't live up to the expectations that Crosley's first book left me with. Perhaps it's my own fault, for falling in love so fast. Maybe I should get to know books and their intentions better before I trust them with my heart.
I Was Told There'd Be Cake was beautifully effortless. The hilarious stories and jokes seemed to tumble accidentally out of Crosley's mind and onto the pages. Reading each essay was like watching a stand-up comic at his best - they were vivid, lively, and incredibly entertaining. But mainly, they were impressive because they seemed inherent. Crosley came across as charismatic, eccentric, and a Mad Hatter sort of genius. But she's not quite as charming in How Did You Get This Number? The stories are still funny, and Crosley's hijinks are still quirky. But the prose is more lumbering. Its like that same stand up comic running out of material. She's reaching farther and working harder to make the audience laugh.
Maybe Crosley caught “I'm funny and I know it disorder”, which can be deadly for humor. Think about it. Perhaps you're a natural jokester, and you've always considered yourself the jester of your group. Whether you make the jokes for your own benefit or for the benefit of those around you, one thing is always true – you want other people to think you're funny. You stay creative, constantly on your toes, for that reason. The second someone tells you you're funny, you start to slip. Your head gets bigger and your list of material gets smaller. Why keep working so hard? You're already funny. And if you're funny once, you're funny forever. That's a rule, right?
When her book sales started soaring, America made the mistake of letting Crosley know just how funny she is. So suddenly her sneaky, self conscious jokes have changed shape. They have morphed into something much more obvious, something laborious and tiring. Where we had quippy one liners or creative observations, we now have paragraphs with semi-colons and parenthesis, explaining a maze of puns and metaphors. The humor is still there, but its different. Its lost some of its charm and innocence, as well as its attractive effortlessness. And a lot of its appeal.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the book. In How Did You Get This Number?, Crosley travels farther out of her comfort zone than she did in her first collection of essays, both emotionally and physically. She travels – to Paris, Alaska, and, in a whim of childhood fantasy, plays the old “spin the globe and pledge to travel wherever your finger falls” trick and ends up in Lisbon, Portugal. Many of the essays are still laugh-out-loud funny, like If You Sprinkle, where we get to enjoy a Mean Girls-esque mental revenge on an elementary school rival from Crosley's past. I was rolling on the floor when this former queen bee ended up crawling beneath a dirty bathroom sink in order to keep her drooling niece from playing with mace.
But what made the book even more enjoyable for me were the rare moments of real emotion. Crosley dares to lift the funny-girl curtain and let the reader get a glimpse of her other sides, and its incredibly rewarding. In Lost in Space, it's hard not to sense her shame when Crosley describes her mother's disappointment in her intellectual fall from grace. As a child, Crosley was ahead of the curve. She was advanced for her age group and her mother celebrated her genius, considering putting her in a special school and mapping out her future presidential campaign. But as she grew up and her development fell to the level of her peers and, eventually, below it, her mother couldn't cry 'genius' anymore. Eventually, they both had to deal with a\the truth – that Crosley had a learning disability that kept her from being able to comprehend simple things like ScanTron tests, maps, and analog clocks. The story hits its pinnacle when she gets lost shopping with her father in a large market.
“It was the indignity of it all that bothered me. Consequence-wise, the experience of getting lost is not the end of the world. Unless you do it imprudently, veering toward poorly lit parking garages and uncovered manholes nothing terrible beyond tardiness is going to happen to you. But that's the thing. A learning disability doesn't exactly qualify as an emergency. It's a subtle problem for everyone except the person that has it. Standing in the middle of the aisle with the shoppers buzzing around me, I told myself I would trade breaking a bone just once rather than continue with a lifetime of this crap. Because at least with a broken bone you get a cast or a sling. People see your problem coming. But how do you explain an eighteen-year-old trapped and teary-eyed in front of a pile of season gourds? Where is her excuse?”
In How Did You Get This Number, we get to see Sloane as a human being with a heart for the first time. This hits me hardest in two separate stories; Lost in Space, mentioned above, and Off the Back of a Truck. In the latter, Crosley finally gives the reader a peek of her romantic life. It takes two full essay collections, but we finally get to see just what Sloane Crosley is like when she's in love. And it is just as complicated and hopeless as Crosley's character and experiences thus far would suggest – she lets herself fall for a smart young New York fella after carefully making sure that he and his long-term girlfriend had put an end to their relationship. They live happily (more or less) for awhile, and Crosley gets some of her charm back when describing her affection and slight obsessiveness for the boy. But after dating for over a year, our heroine receives a call from her boyfriend's still live-in girlfriend (not only girlfriend, but high school sweetheart – ouch) to alert her of his true character. The moment is painful, but illuminating. All of Crosley's stories are entertaining, but this one has substance. This gives us insight into her character, which helps us to further understand why she is the way she is. She doesn't show emotion because she doesn't trust. Why doesn't she trust? Well I'm sure there are a multitude of reasons, but here's one spectacular example of untrustworthy douchebaggery right here. Plus, not only does it gives us a glimpse into her soul, but the essay gives some heavy advice about relationships.
“If you have to ask someone to change, to tell you they love you, to bring wine to dinner to call you when they land, you can't afford to be with them. It's not worth the price, even though, just like the Tiffany catalog no one tells you what the price is. You set it yourself, and if you're lucky it's reasonable. You have a sense of when you're about to go bankrupt. Your own sense of self-worth takes the wheel and says, 'Enough of this shit. Stop making excuses; No one's that busy at work. No one's allergic to whipped cream. There are too cell phones in Sweden.' But most people don't get lucky. They get human. They get crushes. This means you irrationally mortgage what little logic you own to pay for this one thing. This relationship is an impulse buy, and you'll figure out if it's worth it later.”
Light Pollution is another gem. In the story, Crosley has traveled to Alaska in order to be a part of a close friend's wedding. The bridesmaids, bride, and a soon-to-be-regretful groom are on their way to a hike when a drunk driver on the road in front of them hits a baby bear on the highway. A collection of vivid snapshots follows in the next few pages – the bear laying pathetically on the asphalt, its blood spreading from its body. The bridesmaids, still piled into the back two rows of the SUV, crying to an unexpected soundtrack as their “Bear Warning Bells” (part of their Out-of-Town hospitality packages) ring sweetly from where they are tucked into their ponytails and braids. The chilling silence as one panicked bridal attendant realizes how likely it is that a momma bear will be close behind. And that cold, hollow feeling of 'I will never be able to forget this moment' that both the narrator and the reader feel when the baby bear is finally shot and put out of its misery.
“The blood goes black. Our bells are silenced. The sound of gunshots reverberates off of the tree trunks and rocks behind us. I wonder about avalanche triggers. There's a collective whimper in the car. I have always wondered what I would do it I was in one of those movies where someone gets stabbed or eaten alive while I'm in the closet or under the bed. […] Now I know. I would do nothing. I would just stare. Make a note of it and replay it later.”
Painful, awkward, fish-out-of-water moments like this are Crosley's specialty. The most touching moments of this book seem to happen when she's out of her element and put to the test. It's almost as if Crosley is afraid to express her feelings when she's within the confines of her own life. She can only be vulnerable when traveling internationally, visiting the past, or communicating with a stranger. It's frustrating, but is also a part of her charm. Yet another reason that Sloane Crosley is someone I like to read about, but who I would never want to be.
And who I probably wouldn't want to date. After our second run-in, I've found that my feelings for Crosley are lukewarm. The passion and intrigue from our first encounter have faded, and I'm starting to see some of her shortcomings. The attraction isn't as strong as it once was. But I still can't deny that How Did You Get This Number? is an experience worth having. Even if there aren't worthwhile moments on every page, those moments you can find in the book are worth the wait. So I guess I'll shuffle Crosley into my “maybe if I'm in town and I don't have a boyfriend and there's no one interesting at the bar” pile – keep the number in my phone in case there's nothing better going on, and leave the door open just in case I ever want to try again.
I like that you're not pretending to love the book just because the first one was great. I like that you're completely honest about your thoughts. You are truly a valid book-reader, and I would read anything (and everything!) you recommended immediately.
ReplyDeletePS- I'd also throw in the words 'exceptional writer' to describe you too. :)