Art and Identity in Patti Smith’s “Just Kids”

It’s taken me years to pick up Patti Smith’s memoir “Just Kids.” Now that I’ve finished it, I’m wondering why I waited so long. Like Smith’s poetry and music, her memoir is beautifully composed but incisive, leaving a lasting impression on the reader.

The book has a straightforward structure. Smith starts with her childhood and moves from adolescence into adulthood. Growing up for Smith seems like a continuous run of artistic explorations. From an early age, Smith becomes fascinated with the individual’s ability to create art and captivate the attention and imagination of an audience. A childhood trip to the Museum of Art in Philadelphia has a profound impact on her:

But it was the work in a hall devoted to Picasso, from his harlequins to Cubism, that pierced me the most. His brutal confidence took my breath away… secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

As a young woman from South Jersey, Smith makes the common trek to New York City. When she arrives, in 1967, she can hardly contain her stoke. She visits lots of bookstores and hangs out in parks and coffee shops in Greenwich Village, just like I did when I first moved to NYC.

It’s during this wandering period when Smith meets Robert Mapplethorpe. The two become inseparable, each inspired by the other to explore different artistic themes and media. Their relationship is the crux of this memoir, which works because their enduring connection is a beautiful thing.

When Smith meets Mapplethorpe, he’s struggling to accept his own sexuality, struggling to find a place in the world for his artistic expression.

He wasn’t certain whether he was a good or bad person. Whether he was altruistic. Whether he was demonic. But he was certain of one thing. He was an artist. And for that he would never apologize.

Together, Smith and Mapplethorpe weave their way through the thriving art rock scene of late 60s/early 70s New York. They move into the Chelsea hotel together, which Smith describes as being, “like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe. I wandered the halls seeking its spirits, dead or alive.”

Blog Hop: My Writing Process

This is me taking part in a “blog hop.”  

Here’s how it works: writers/bloggers answer the same four questions about the process of writing, then we invite more bloggers to participate. By the end of the year, the goal is to have as many bloggers as possible riffing on this same theme.

The whole #MyWritingProcess endeavor seems like one part chain letter, one part self interview, one part shameless self-promotion and one part supporting other writers. I’m taking part because my friend and awesome writer Shelby Settles Harper tapped me. An alum of the Johns Hopkins University master’s in writing program, where I’m studying, Shelby is an all-around great writer and literary thinker who blogs at “Worth the Writing.”

So, on to the questions...

Q: What am I working on?

Well, like always, I’m working on a whole lot of things at once. I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my second novel Fremdheim for about 18 months now. By the end of summer, I hope to have it ready to go as I search for a new agent and publisher.

I just finished a short story based on my first trip to New Orleans. While at the W Hotel lobby, I met a gravedigger, who took me around to some remote and derelict cemeteries. The story has been simmering for years, but I finally got it down on paper for my “Identity in Literature” class at Johns Hopkins. Hopefully, someone will find the morbid chaos of this story interesting and agree to publish it.

I’ll soon be traveling in South Africa for the first time. I’ll be surfing some cold, sketchy breaks, roaming around in nature, camping out in the wilderness, tasting some wines. So, considering this will be the most epic trip of my 30 years, I plan on writing a lot about it. I have long been a fan of South African wine, and I look forward to my tastings and tours with some great producers. Surely, I will return with many a blog post to work on. I also plan on writing a kind of surf adventure travel piece I hope to submit to some sports and travel publications.

Q: How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My novel Fremdheim is, like Broken Bones, “fiction,” but it’s based on my experience of a specific time and place. As a skeptic son of evangelical missionaries, I had a lot to unpack when my parents decided to leave our Jersey Shore home to Kyiv, Ukraine to tell the people there about Jesus. I ended up at a missionary kid boarding school in Germany’s Black Forest, and Fremdheim is based on that experience.

It wasn’t the high point of my life, but I wouldn’t trade those days for anything. So I have a love-acceptance relationship with the past. I’m not bitter or angry, I’m just reflective. This chaotic past has made me who I am today, so I like to dig into it, explore it, hold it up to the light.

Q: Why do I write what I do?

I’m constantly challenging myself to try bigger and more difficult things. And writing is one of the most challenging things I know. It’s not dangerous, per se, but it’s thrilling.

As far as subject matter, my writing reflects my preference for the rebel, the punk, the outcast, and it stands in opposition to hierarchy, religion and taboo. But, mostly, I love exploring complex characters who operate within dynamic environments. I like writing about those moments when things clash, when people break down, when someone takes a risk and either fails miserably or pulls off something awesome.

Also, in a physical and psychological sense, I write because I feel a constant compulsion to do so. On some level, I write because not writing makes me feel anxious, helpless and downright crazy.

Q: How does your writing process work?

I write most (and I think best) late at night. But each time I sit down at the computer, I approach writing with a different mindset. I like to write in different physical, emotional and mental states, so I can attack a particular piece of writing from different vantage points. Sometimes I get up real early, sip way too much coffee and write for hours before doing anything else. Sometimes I hunker down in my man cave all night, typing away with metal blasting. I also love writing while traveling; it helps me gain new perspectives.

Next up on the blog hop: two friends and awesome writers, Gillian Marchenko and Addie Zierman.  

Gillian Marchenko is a writer and national speaker who lives in Chicago with her husband Sergei and four daughters. Her memoir Sun Shine Down was published in August of 2013. She is currently writing another memoir about depression. Find out more about Gillian and her work at www.gillianmarchenko.com.  

Addie Zierman (@addiezierman) is an author and blogger. She recently published her debut memoir, When We Were On Fire, which was named by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the Best Books of 2013. She lives in Andover, Minnesota with her husband and two sons and blogs at addiezierman.com.

As always, thanks for reading. Cheers!

“When We Were On Fire” - Talking Evangelical with Addie Zierman

I recently caught up with my old friend Addie Zierman to talk about her new memoir “When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over.” Addie frequently discusses her faith, family and writing on her blog, “How to Talk Evangelical.” If you’re a Christian, it’s a must-read. If you’re one of the lost, Addie’s work is still very interesting and worthy of your contemplation.

Addie Zierman. Credit: Shane Long.

Addie and I agreed to swap books. I’d read hers and she’d read my new novel Broken Bones. Then we’d chat about the experience. On the surface, it seems our books couldn’t be more dissimilar. Hers is a memoir of struggling through the American evangelical subculture, and mine is a novel based on the month I spent stuck in a psychiatric ward for people with eating disorders. But they’re both about personal struggles, alienation, self-discovery, all that good stuff. I figured this exchange could be fun and educational. Mission accomplished.

Addie and I go way back. We crossed paths in our early teens when we both attended an Evangelical Free Church in Deerfield, Illinois. She was a local girl, immersed in all the church activities, and I was the new kid. A Jersey boy, I was frustrated and depressed that my parents had chosen to abandon our beach bum haven for this bland slice of the Midwest. My father had just begun attending Trinity Evangelical Divinity School nearby. They were missionaries, “called” by Christ to spread the gospel. I felt like luggage.

Christianity wasn’t new to me when I met Addie. I was baptized as a baby at St. James Episcopal Church, a small chapel on the Jersey Shore. I have only positive memories of that church and the time I spent there. I remember the intricate stained glass portraits of the saints, the dried sponge feel of the communion wafers, the bitter red wine, Father Ken’s flowing purple robe, the gentle strength of his hand as he placed it on my head and blessed me. 

Perhaps I was too young to develop moral and philosophical qualms with the Episcopal Church, but as my parents transitioned into evangelicalism, and I entered my teens, things began to change. I became uneasy at the church Addie and I attended. I’d be listening to a pastor’s sermon and my stomach would knot up. I’d feel an intense pressure in my chest. I had to get out of there.

The sweeping proclamations about God and Jesus and how we should live inspired not awe or reverence but anxiety. The doctrines and statements of faith sounded random and unreasonable. The more I actually read the Bible, the more it struck me as a mess of bad advice and shady characters. I listened to the pastors speak and I couldn’t help but think: How could they possibly know what they are claiming to know? Many a sermon drove me to the brink of a screaming fit, but for the most part I just bit my tongue, doodled on my church program and longed for the day when I was old enough to leave and never come back. As the firstborn son of new missionaries, however, I didn’t have much of a choice. So I played the part. I stepped warily around the edges of this evangelical pool, waiting. 

Addie, however, was the most enthusiastic young fan of Jesus I’d ever met. And while our feelings for the church didn’t line up, I couldn’t help but feel attracted to her passion and energy. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. She was as stoked about Jesus as I was about surfing. But, as detailed in her memoir, faith wasn’t easy for Addie either. 

Addie and I parted ways before my junior year of high school, when my parents moved to Ukraine and I attended a missionary boarding school in Germany. After high school, Addie sought out Christian colleges and churches and community groups. I wanted nothing to do with Christian institutions. Addie needed connection with other evangelicals who shared her values. I needed to connect with people who wanted nothing to do with the church. 

Today, I think it’s safe to say that Addie and I would disagree on almost all propositions about the Christian God and church doctrine. But we also have a lot in common. We both enjoy devouring good books. We both admire Jesus’ message of peace and reconciliation. And we both love honest conversation.

Henry Miller, the Evangelist of Big Sur

“Sweet or bitter, I am now convinced that all experience is enriching and rewarding. Above all, instructive.”

Henry Miller’s book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch is full of such existential musings on art and life. Here are a few more:

“Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen. What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved.”

“Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.”

Quotes like these remind me why I love Henry Miller. The man’s understanding of human desire, art and the innate human need to create is astounding. 

“Artists never thrive in colonies. Ants do. What the budding artist needs is the privilege of wrestling with his problems in solitude – and now and then a piece of red meat.”

And what better place to find solitude in the late 1950s than Big Sur, California? I’ve never been to Big Sur, which I feel is something of a crime given my love for California and rugged coastlines, but Miller is an incredible evangelist for this little corner of California. In Big Sur he tells the stories of the things he sees, the people he meets, the day-to-day things he does and the thoughts that pass through his mind. Seriously, that’s the plot. Nothing else really happens. There’s virtually no sex and only minimal drug use. If this sounds boring to you, perhaps you have not experienced the passion and power of Miller’s language.

We’re talking about Henry Miller here, so I wasn’t surprised that the book contains some serious rambling. He spills a lot of ink on a lot of tangents, and many times I found myself asking: “Miller, what’s the bloody point already?”  I was also not surprised that Miller rewards those readers who stick with him through the slow and rambling parts. There are phrases, sentences, arguments and observations that remain stunning more than 50 years after this book was published.

So, is it worth your attention? Is the ratio of boring to beautiful prose acceptable? Absolutely. When Miller hits it, he hits it hard, and the impact of his prose is undeniable.

The written word, Miller argues, should be true, real, personal and based in one’s experience and understanding of the world. “There should be fire, passion, an obsessive urge.” I’m with Miller here. Without fire and obsession I’m convinced you cannot master your craft, whatever medium you use. Miller states writing that is worthy of being called art comes only through “toil and struggle, through reflection, meditation, self-analysis, above all through being scrupulously and relentlessly honest with oneself. “

Miller offers this tip for struggling writers: “To those who protest that they are not understood, not appreciated, not accepted – how many  of us ever are? – all I can say is: “Clarify your position!” Miller, in this 404-page book, is clearly trying to clarify his own position on nature, art and community, and he does a damn good job of it.

The Disintegration of David Wojnarowicz

Disturbing is not a word I throw around lightly when discussing literature. Maybe I’m anesthetized and cynical and it takes a lot to disturb me. Maybe a lot of writers avoid disturbing subject matter or just aren’t honest enough to portray the truly disturbing nature the world. Whatever the case may be, I can say undoubtedly that David Wojnarowicz’s book “Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration” disturbed me. The stories, snippets, essays and rants in this book are thick and heavy, and they’re sure to leave any reader unsettled, angry or downright sad. Take this as my disclaimer.

At its core, this book is the story of slow death from AIDS. There are a lot of suicides, far more suicide attempts, some dead and dying lovers, and behind it all hides a society that either doesn’t care or ignores the horrific disease because they think it doesn’t affect them. Wojnarowicz tackles these issues with prose that is raw, stripped bare and at times brutal. If this book reads like the journal of a dying man, that’s because it was published in 1991, a year before Wojnarowicz died of AIDS-related complications.

While the subject matter and the events recounted in this book are depressing indeed, the book itself is not. Wojnarowicz (artist, filmmaker, contrarian, gay activist, and the list goes on) is too good of an artist to leave you depressed. He tales of prostitution, drug use and alienation are laced with hilarity and poetic insight.

As a queer American, Wojnarowicz  frequently lashes out at what he calls the myth of a “ONE-TRIBE NATION.” (He puts the phrase in all caps every time he uses it, sometimes in bold as well.) This is the basis for much of his disgust with American society. He calls this myth a denial of “the fact that there are millions of separate tribes in this illusion called AMERICA.” This is perhaps his most poignant critique, a dialectic that proves useful twenty-plus years after publication. LGBT Americans have been, and in many cases still are, a minority tribe in America, a tribe with historically few allies and many enemies. This notion of American tribalism is further enhanced by elements of religious tribalism, which set themselves apart from and in opposition to LGBT Americans.

Wojnarowicz spends a lot of time blasting politicians and religious leaders (which I’m a sucker for), reserving his most venomous attacks for those who have made it their goal to oppress gays. I’ll admit, however, that Wojnarowicz’s political arguments frequently fall into the shallow end of the pool. He rants, and occasionally he analyzes, but he doesn’t offer a coherent critique. Wojnarowicz eschews labels and systems of thought, and, like a lot of his avant-garde contemporaries, he doesn’t offer specific answers. This book could easily be criticized as an incoherent and idealistic, and I’m tempted to agree. But in the end Wojnarowicz’s work is just too damned powerful, enthralling and addictive. Like much of his art, “Close to the Knives” is raw and emotive. I love his use of language, the way he strips words of any philosophical or academic pretension. He is not a philosopher, but a student of the human spirit. He understands injustice, bigotry and equality, more so than millions of homophobic Americans today.


Well, that's one way to name a chapter.

The more I read from this guy and about him, the more I like him. I won’t rehash Wojnarowicz’s entire life and career here, because that would take a book-length work. (Plus, there’s Wikipedia for that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wojnarowicz. And, look at that, I learned he was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, just up the shore from my hometown. Jersey shore pride!) The power of Wojnarowicz's work is evident in the recent hullabaloo about his film "A Fire in My Belly," which was part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. The film was attacked as being anti-Christian, and the Smithsonian caved to censorship pressure and pulled the film. The LA Times has a good summary of the film, and here's the Smithsonian attempting to explain their decision to remove Wojnarowicz's work.
Being a photographer, filmmaker, and all-around artistic soul, Wojnarowicz has quite a few things to say about art and media in this book:

“History is made and preserved by and for particular classes of people. A camera in some hands can preserve an alternate history.”

“When you buy a newspaper you are being bought.”

“Describing the once indescribable can dismantle the power of taboo.”

“When I was a kid I discovered that making an object, whether it was a drawing or a story, meant making something that spoke even if I was silent.”

“What some people call ‘pornography’ is simply a rich historical record of sexual diversity that has been made invisible in this world for centuries by organized religion.”

Art quotes aside, this book is not easy to read. It’s hard to listen to Wojnarowicz write about his lovers and friends dying of AIDS, his struggles with the disease, and the sobriety with which he confronts his impending death. “As far as I’m concerned, if there is reincarnation, I’m refusing to come back. Once is enough. If there is somebody you appear before who determines where and when you’ll come back – I’ll punch them in the face. Maybe that will put me on the end of a very long line for the return flight.”

I don’t believe in reincarnation, but I do wish Wojnarowicz could have lived long enough to see the progress our society has made. Surely, he’d still be pissed, rightly mocking all those bigoted politicians and preachers who belong to bullshit organizations with “American” and “Family” in their titles. But I think he would also be proud of the effort LGBT activists and their straight allies have put forth in recent years.

I don’t say this often about writers (we're an odd bunch), but I truly wish I could have met this man. He is a real artist, and anyone interested in the struggle for LGBT rights should take a good look at his work.

Like David Sedaris, Only Not as Good

While I was reading Augusten Burroughs’ “Magical Thinking: True Stories,” I asked my girlfriend what she thought of the author. “He’s not as good as David Sedaris,” she said.

The comparison is telling. Both are middle-aged, gay satirists who adopted Manhattan as home. Both write similar essays, in a similar style, about similar subject manner. So when one (Burroughs) comes on the scene several years after the other (Sedaris), I can’t help but make the comparison.

Well, now that I’ve finished “Magical Thinking,” I have to admit: my girlfriend was right. (There, I said it.) Burroughs ain’t got nothin’ on David Sedaris.

Whereas David Sedaris’ writing comes off natural, witty and effortless, Burroughs writing does not. The biggest issue I have with “Magical Thinking” is that Augusten Burroughs just tries way too fucking hard. He’s a funny guy, a decent writer, but he overdoes it again and again. He tries so hard to shock his audience with his overhyped personal confessions that all else is lost.

I don’t think he’s an inherently mean guy, but he sure as hell tries to be. This book is filled with fantasies of people who irk him getting mowed down by cars, buses, trains, etc. There is literary value in writing down such deeply personal thoughts, but Burroughs seems unable to find it. He hates everything. And not in a clever, ironic kind of way. To be honest, his disdain for everything but himself gets very boring very quickly.

If Augusten Burroughs is anything, it is king of the hyperbole. In this book, finding a live rat in his bathtub is described as, “far worse than suddenly finding yourself walking through a prison cafeteria wearing Daisy Duke shorts and a Jane Fonda headband.” I understand his sentiment about rats, but the aforementioned prison scene makes any other problem seem irrelevant by comparison.

At times, the hyperbole is so extreme that the point he is trying to make becomes meaningless. When he writes about the frustrations of losing his hair in his early 20s, I can’t exactly relate, but I try to sympathize. But when he compares going bald to dying from breast cancer, I lose interest. I’m all for making extreme jokes, but Burroughs does it carelessly and repetitively. This frustrates me (but not the way cancer would).

And despite all the interesting things that have happened to this man, frankly, he isn’t all that interesting. He lives in the west 50s, hates ironing his clothes and works at an advertising firm in Manhattan. Let me just say that if there is one more story about someone who works at an advertising firm in Manhattan, I really don’t want to hear it… unless it somehow incorporates zombies, boxing or a bank heist, preferably all three.

There’s one subject, however, that Burroughs writes about with passion and realness: his partner Dennis. When Burroughs tells me that he loves this man, I believe it. His words of love are pure and beautiful, and it is clear he and Dennis have something special, something worth writing about. This relationship features more prominently in the latter pages of the book, and the final story about Dennis is by far the best. Burroughs’ love for Dennis is so rich that he comes across as disinterested and bored when dealing with other subject matter.

Burroughs’ childhood memoir “Running with Scissors” is currently collecting dust on one of my bookshelves. I haven’t read it yet, and it may take me a while to psyche myself into picking it up. I understand that “Running with Scissors” is his childhood memoir, although he does refer to his childhood in this collection of “true stories.” He’ll be talking about shopping or dating and make a flash reference to his “terrible” childhood, something about his mother being insane, his own stint in some unnamed mental institution, being sexually abused. He lobs these references out so quickly, and then moves on to some other mundane topic. For me, the effect is jarring. You don’t drop a sex abuse bomb and then continue writing about buying an iron at Kmart. Perhaps his hesitancy to discuss his childhood is because he expects that his readers have already read “Running with Scissors,” but I think this book still needs more than an occasional reference to his upbringing.

His relationship with his parents is also barely mentioned: “My parents hated each other, and I hated them. I longed for them to die in an auto accident so that I could be whisked away by uniformed social workers and sent to live in a compound near a major city.” This piques my interest, but he immediately drops the issue. Yet he will write for pages about seeing P Diddy (or Puff Daddy or whatever-the-hell he calls himself) at a race track.

Perhaps this is just his style, perhaps this book is just wildly unfocused, but I had a hard time relating to his stories. They seem removed from reality, which is very odd for a collection of “True Stories.”

I hate writing bad reviews, but this book left me feeling cheated. And, damn it, I don’t get cheated without writing about it.

Now, back to some more David Sedaris.

Islam, Immigration and Bruce Springsteen

A review of the memoir "Greetings from Bury Park" by Sarfraz Manzoor

He’s an unlikely Bruce Springsteen fan, a Pakistani kid living in the blue-collar English town of Luton. But he’s quite possibly the most avid Boss nut I’ve ever heard of, surpassing even my mother and my aunt who both went to the same high school as Bruce, and my friend from the Jersey Shore who has “Born to Run” tattooed on his chest.

Sarfraz Manzoor’s love of Bruce is the one thing that gets him through his chaotic circumstances. He’s a strange kid in a strange place. Manzoor was born in Pakistan to a Muslim family, but his father was living in England to support the family. It wasn’t until years later that the rest of the family moved to England to join Manzoor’s father. Times were not easy for Pakistanis in 1980s England. Margaret Thatcher, economic stagnation, racist hatred, terrific working conditions, etc. Manzoor’s father works all the time in factories to save money for the family and relatives back in Pakistan., and his mother and sisters work for hours on end making dresses by hand for upscale London shops.

Manzoor wants to be close with his father, but it does not seem destined to happen. (To say Manzoor’s father is strict is a gross understatement, tantamount to saying that “Thunder Road” is a decent song.) The connection he seeks with his father is unattainable, so Manzoor turns to music. And music changes him. It opens his eyes to the beauty of romantic love (as opposed to arranged marriages), free expression (as opposed to religious structure). And Manzoor is at his best when describing his adolescent connection with music in general and with Springsteen in particular. After seeing The Boss for the first time in London, Manzoor tells his friend: “I had started getting sad before the end of the concert, the knowledge that it would soon be over almost ruining my enjoyment. We had spent so long dreaming of this one evening that now [that] it was over there seemed nothing left to look forward to…” Maybe this is why the next time Bruce comes to England, Manzoor goes out and buys front-row seats for six concerts in a row.

Being a music nut myself, one who has chased Social Distortion across the country, I completely understand Manzoor’s drive. There is a unique sense of belonging that comes from understanding a musician’s lyrics, feeling the beat and the guitars, and experiencing it all live among crowds of other people. The differences among the fans fade away, and all that’s left is a shared enjoyment. Manzoor, perhaps because he was fiercely sober his entire life, does a great job describing these moments of musical bliss.

Dispatches From Anorexic Hell

"Maybe maybe maybe," Marya Hornbacher writes, exhausting a list of things that could have gone differently in her life. Maybe if her parents weren’t so distant. Maybe if she had gotten professional help earlier. Maybe then she wouldn't have struggled so terribly with anorexia and bulimia. "But all this is moot. Sometimes things just go awry." That statement is as close to an epiphany that Marya ever gets in her memoir Wasted. There is no easy explanation for why she spent years of her life in anorexic and bulimic hell. Instead of offering answers, Hornbacher tells stories and asks questions. And even though there’s no real resolution at the end of this strikingly tragic and beautiful memoir, Marya’s words have a powerful and haunting effect.

Eating disorders, Marya points out, citing a wide array of medical and psychiatric data and studies, are frequently symptomatic of other mental illnesses. But sometimes perfectly healthy people develop debilitating eating disorders. Of course, the nature of eating disorders is such that they lead to other mental health complications: depression, anxiety, mania, paranoia, insomnia. It’s a cycle of disorder. Marya is not arrogant enough to claim she can pinpoint the exact cause of her eating disorder. She tries to point to plausible explanations, but refrains from black and white answers, which gives this memoir a kind of novel-like feel to it.

Still, there are some obvious factors that contributed to her chaotic disease. Family is a huge one. She doesn't hate her parents or blame them for screwing her up, which is refreshing. Instead, she's brutally candid about her upbringing. Her parents "were perhaps less than ideal candidates for parenthood." I think it's safe to say that's a fitting description to all parents. It’s obvious to the reader here that fear of food and an unhealthy obsession with food in her parents contributed to her eating disorder. Her mother, who herself was bulimic and has always had disordered eating behavior, tells Marya: "You didn't pick up anything. You just came this way." Basically, her messed up family tells her it's all nature, no nurture. And it's clear from evidence that much about anorexic and bulimic behavior is in fact learned, not innate. Still, Marya rightfully places the weight of her own decisions on her own shoulders: "Let it be noted here that it is decidedly not their 'fault.' If someone tells you to jump off a bridge, you don't have to jump."

This book isn’t just about food or the lack thereof. It’s also a tour through the dark corners of insanity. Marya totally loses her mind for a good part of her life. She doesn’t sleep, goes days without eating, ends up binging and purging until she passes out. She gets pregnant and solves the problem by purposefully falling down some stairs. "Flush the red matter away. No tears." That’s just one of many examples of her life gone awry. Large portions of this book are clearly hard to read. It’s not easy reading of someone killing themselves slowly over the course of many years.

Of course, she ends up in more than one hospital. When she finds herself in a treatment center, she writes: "I was light years away from understanding my Issues." And she proves this to be true in the years after she gets out of treatment. She systematically starves herself again, knowing full well what it is doing to her body. It is only after her stint in the hospital that the severity of her masochism is fully realized. This woman hates herself so intensely that it’s incredible she’s alive. It seems Marya's truly in love with her eating disorder, in love with destroying her body any way she can. She squelches real love from her family and her friends, and turns all her love and attention to brutalizing herself. It's absolutely terrifying, but it's also oddly resonant. It’s like Marya is reminding us that somewhere deep inside all of us is the ability to inflict terrible harm upon ourselves. Sometimes, our desire for death can equal or surpass our desire for life.

Marya spends much of the book speaking about the learned aspect of eating disorders. Disordered behavior can be learned, through parents, through media images, cultural mores. Many people with eating disorders have larger mental health issues, it just so happens that they translated into an eating disorder. At least that's Hornbacher's take. And, I've got to say, I tend to believe her, not totally, but enough. There’s also some interesting discussion about how eating disorders tend to fall on the middle and upper classes with far higher frequency. Mayra herself enjoys significant class privilege. She quotes a psychologist’s study that found thinness has become, “an ideal symbolizing self-discipline, control, sexual liberation, assertiveness, competitiveness, and affiliation with a higher socio-economic class.”

This is part of a larger discussion of how society views eating disorders. And it’s amazing and atrocious to read about, for example, a school boy telling his anorexic girlfriend she needed to lose weight while she's literally starving to death. That our society produces males like this is disturbing.

She points to eating disorders as social diseases, problems that are encouraged by mass media and modern American culture. "We lived in a larger world where there is also a sense of hunger and a sense of lack. We can call it loss of religion, loss of the nuclear family, loss of community, but whatever it is, it has created a deep and insatiable hunger in our collective unconscious." I understand the hunger she's trying to convey. I don't necessarily equate the innate sense of hunger in the human consciousness to the lack of anything in particular. I view that insatiable hunger as a natural byproduct of human consciousness. We're always trying to find perfection, and when it never comes, there's a sense of loss. This hunger is based on a loss of something that was never possible to attain in the first place. In Marya’s case this “perfection” was a sixty-pound, shriveled, skeletal woman.

It was impossible to read this book without having flashbacks to my own disordered history. In 2008 I nearly died from malnutrition and ended up in a psychiatric ward for people with eating disorders, which I chronicle in my novel Broken Bones. I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and a slew of other problems. Going into this book, I knew it would be a tough read. Still, I couldn’t have prepared myself for how deeply this book shook me.

It was like reliving a nightmare. It was as if some of these words had been written about my experience. I could relate so much to her story. For example, when you feel your body is worthless, it doesn't take long for you to believe that life itself is worthless. Suicide becomes a more and more attractive option the further you go. Marya grows lanugo, or, as she calls it, “fur.” And that's not too much of a stretch. It really does look like baby kitten fur, or a peach with overgrown fuzz. This is the body’s way of keeping warm when it reaches the brink of death from malnutrition. The way malnutrition spawns manic episodes is described in terrifying detail. I remember having manic episodes, and it was always shocking how bad things got so quickly.

After nearly killing myself through anorexic behavior, spending a month in a treatment center, reading many books on the subject and writing one myself, I still came across things in this book that I’d never heard before. For example, people with anorexia commonly die of broken hips. It makes sense. Brittle bones break easily, and an anorexic's body simply does not have the materials needed to heal itself. A trip or fall can put their weakened body into a quick death spiral.

On pain, she writes: "In truth, you like the pain. You like it because you believe you deserve it, and the fact that you're putting yourself through pain means you are doing what you, by all rights, ought to do." What begins as disordered behavior quickly — if not immediately — turns into masochism. Pain is the body reminding the mind that it exists. She also liked the attention that being sick brought. "You are so sick. When people say this they turn their heads, you've won your little game. You have proven your thesis that no-body-love-me-every-body-hates me, guess-I'll just eat worms. You get to sink back into your hospital bed, shrieking with righteous indignation. See? you get to say. I knew you'd give up on me. I knew you'd leave." She makes it clear that her eating disorder wasn’t as much an experiment with the limits of the body as it was a suicide pact with her own mind. “I was trying to die, in a curious, casual sort of way.” It was her only way of coping. "My only means of self-regulation was self-destruction."

Like so many women I met in the psychiatric ward for people with eating disorders, Marya grew to love the protective environment of a hospital facility. She loved being sick and cared for, and in the unit she could be sick and cared for. Her compulsive, disordered behavior was minimized in the unit, not because Marya tried to kick her habits, but because she simply couldn't harm herself as effectively when she was in the hospital. She tried, as did all the girls I met in the ward. They tried to puke when no one was looking. They tried to cut themselves. But someone always found out. Marya's health improved in the unit, but her mind was still set on self-destruction, proof that treatment can only do so much. Once an anorexic or bulimic person steps out the doors, it’s up to them to survive or die.

Marya does a terrifyingly good job at recounting the horrors of life in an eating disorder treatment center. This is where the book rings most true to me. I was in such a facility: locked doors, plexiglass windows, no mirrors, no sharp objects. It's pretty scary to wake up and know you're stuck, and Marya is definitely stuck. And she's blunt about her decision to "get well." It only came about because she was forced to get well.

What haunts me is the big hole at the end of this book: the complete lack of resolution. There is no come-to-Jesus moment. There is no epiphany. In the end, Marya marches on with her life, balancing precariously between “normalcy” and relapse. Fortunately, she has stayed on the healthy side of the cliff in recent years, enough to write an incredible and moving book.