Lit

I came to Lit having never heard of Mary Karr before I started working at her publishing house. I picked up this book because I heard her name around the office, not because of a desire to read her flavor of memoir. To be honest, as I started to follow Karr on her journey toward sobriety, I wondered if there wasn't something a little self-indulgent about the form, something a little gross about tossing you and your family's innards out into the world for everyone to see. Sure, Karr delivers an entertaining story, meticulously crafted, and in one of the most original voices I've ever read (my one nitpick: her tendency to end sentences with a preposition), but I still felt like a stranger had just approached me on the street wearing underwear over their pants. It felt inappropriate.

(Remember how I said I was a big fan of people getting over themselves? Remind me of that the next time I write off an entire literary genre, particularly one that's given us everything from St. Augustine's Confessions to Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, as "inappropriate.")

By the time I finished the book, I was, of course, eating my words, since Karr has delivered a story so brave and honest you want to call her up and thank her for it (instead, I hugged my mom). This is the story of one woman's struggle to let go of her self-hatred and become a person capable of love. That she enters the narrative plagued by inner demons proves an understatement, that she emerges from it a whole person suggests a miracle. Her story triggered in me a reaction I can only describe as religious.

That Karr dares to write about religion reveals her courage. How many literary writers in contemporary America would write about their conversion to Catholicism? It's easy to view anyone who professes faith in Jesus Christ as a cartoon character willing to vote for Sarah Palin. That kind of thinking is easy, but also lazy. If Lit does anything, it teaches us that thinking, progressive individuals can find hope, comfort, and love in the arms of the Church. Over and over, Karr recounts her wariness of religion, and her refusal to bend a knee in prayer. She's as skeptical and agnostic as anyone, until a suicide attempt leads her elsewhere. That "elsewhere" ends up being a quiet space filled with peace and acceptance, a sacred place where the adversarial voices are wiped away. Reading Lit brought me to a not dissimilar place, and for that, I am grateful.