Truth and Beauty: A Friendship

[lightreads]

Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Okay, I'm gonna come out and say something earnest here, in a short break from the usual foul-mouthed cynicism. I think books ought to have courage; I think memoirs, out of all books, must have courage. And this one doesn't.

This is supposed to be the story of a twenty-year friendship between two women writers, but in reality this is just a book about Lucy Grealy, the girl who lost most of her face to cancer, the eventual darling of the New York literary scene, the heroin addict. The cowardice starts there, letting this book be about Lucy, who is dead, about how larger than life and brilliant and fucked up she was, because that way Patchett never really has to tell us much more than the executive summary of herself. But it doesn't stop there. This is a book about a really long, complicated friendship, where one party clearly had serious psychological problems (Borderline Personality Disorder, at least based on this narration – seriously, you can go down a freaking checklist). It's hard to explain what I'm pointing at when I say this book lacks courage. It talks about Lucy's neediness, her clinginess, her bursts of demanding infantilism, but it's in this weird, belligerent way that says, see, I'm telling you all this to show you just how much I must have loved her. Not I loved her, so I can tell these stories now that she's gone to grieve and remember and be truthful.

Like, for example, there are a half dozen pieces of evidence scattered throughout the book that Lucy was a . . . let's say fabulist. In parts of her nonfiction, and in parts of her life. And Patchett just tosses this stuff out there and doesn't touch it, not once. I don't want to piece together evidence from a friendship/memoir/fragmented biography – I want the evidence, and I want Patchett's thoughts on it, I wanted honesty about this part of Lucy, too, along with how she submitted herself again and again to abusive surgeries. I don't want diamond clarity – that's a weird thing to want from a memoir – but I do want . . . more real participation. Reflections on Lucy that reflect Patchett, too. Something that wasn't an entire book of an apology. Something braver, because you know the most summary, cursory part of this book? The few flat lines at the end, after Lucy overdoses. This is a book all about Patchett's grief, and yet, at the last, she hides her face.

Courage. Not something easily found in grief, but I have high expectations.

Still. Lucy's excerpted letters were beautiful.

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Comments

[magdalene1.livejournal.com]

Ha, I think Joan Didion set the bar so high for a grief/memoir, no one knows how to scale the wall.

[ecaterin.livejournal.com]

Courage is one of my must-haves in *any* book. There has to be a sense of utter honesty - with compassion, even forgiveness, but NOT with apology, or I'm just not interested. Courage is what holds my interest the most. It's the foundation of nuance, you know? You can't examine the morally gray or the infinite catalog of human failings+human triumphs in character without that honesty. If you're dishonest, you'll gloss over these things and now? The story is mush :P

Ursula K. LeGuin has got to be the most honest author I know - and she's been my favorite author for 20+ years as a result :) The books where she slips up are my least favorites of hers. Very few authors could take a book ostensibly about gender (Left Hand of Darkness) and make it into an honest book about two despairing, unique people, ignoring Gender Studies (TM) as the central theme) or anarchism (The Dispossessed) and make it into an honest book about that delicate boundary between science and mysticism.

She's one author I wish I could talk to before she dies (she's only a few hundred miles from me) but I'm kind of terrified by the idea of someone who sees life with the kind of utterly open-eyed compassion - terrified of what she'd see in me, you know?

Right - I'm rambling :D ITA, basically!

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

You know, when I was wandering around my living room bashing out what I needed to say about this book, the first time through I used the word "honesty," and only on reflection realized there was a different, more fitting word. Because it wasn't quite just honesty. Glad you know what I mean!

I'm reminded of that tremendous scene in Gaudy Night, when Peter and Hariet are talking about the next book she will write, and she says she wants to write something bigger, something deeper than her little clockwork mysteries. And Peter says "do it," and she says, "it will hurt like hell," and Peter comes right back with, "what does that matter, if it makes a good book," and she falls in love with him a bit more right there, because he doesn't want to protect her from that sort of clear-eyed scrutiny. *gusty sigh*