A personal essay should be iconoclastic. "Against Love." "Against Nature." If the essay just wants to affirm "received truth," it's going to be boring, like a bad watercolor on a coffee mug in an airport gift shop.
Alice McDermott knows the rules, so she opens her essay by deflating Emerson. She suggests that, when Emerson told Whitman, "I greet you at the start of a long career," he was being silly. There is no "start" to a writer's career. A writer does not "make progress" -- everyday is square one. Every laptop screen can be a source of "rookie anxiety."
McDermott has a talent for surprise. She next tells a tale about having been nominated for a National Book Award for "That Night." There was a sense of calm in the room, because everyone *knew* the prize would go to Toni Morrison for "Beloved."
The winner's name was called. It was an obscure novelist -- for a book that is (now) utterly forgotten, "Paco's Story." Toni Morrison shrugged and approached McDermott's table. She said, "Ah, fuck 'em."
We expect McDermott to be high-minded, compassionate, so her final story is delightful. In a panel setting, she is asked what she makes of Goodreads reviews. Everyone knows that Goodreads is a mixed blessing at best. The work of criticism requires thought -- you have to consider what the artist's goal is and you have to build from that initial question. But Goodreads doesn't require thought. You can pick up "War and Peace" when you're hoping for "It Ends With Us" -- and, since Tolstoy does not give you what you long for, you can feel empowered to assign a one-star rating. And that's acceptable. McDermott -- tired, cranky -- forgets to be magnanimous. She tells her interlocutor that Goodreads is nonsense. "It's like someone approaching you and asking, Why aren't you taller?"
Effective writing has to seduce a reader -- and that's what McDermott does very well. She is continuously startling. So that there is a wish to keep moving through the end of the essay.
It seems unfair that she can do this work *alongside* her career as a novelist.
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