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| b. 1957 - still alive |
"Every time she passes the department sign for "outgoing mail," for instance, she mutters, without fail, "I've had enough of those; I need a wan poet type.""
I love reading Lorrie Moore just because she is hideously uncool and she always makes me feel better no matter what. She makes really bad jokes and in the words of Stephen Malkmus: I'm the only one who laughs at your jokes when they are so bad and your jokes are always bad. He might as well have written that for Lorrie Moore. Now that I'm thinking about it, Pavement makes perfect background music to Lorrie Moore stories. There's that same play on words and clunky 90's atmosphere to both of them.
The characters in Anagrams, especially the central character, or really in any book of Lorrie Moore's, are on the edge of hysteria at all times or maybe only in their social interactions. The main character of this book, Benna, makes up imaginary family members to whom she talks instead of talking just to herself. At one point, I started to think the 'imaginary people' was just a nice way of saying 'people I can't believe I'm connected to' and I thought they were real in the story, but they're not and then I realized Benna ate Thanksgiving dinner alone. If you look at the book and take out the 'imaginary people' and leave just Benna alone, it becomes very sad.
Mostly, I think this book is about failed people, people who didn't make it thru their twenties into a settled-down normality. Success is what they don't have and tho it depresses them, they tell bad jokes and do goofy, childish things despite their depression.
So, yeah, I guess I would say I liked it.
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Year published: 1986. Pages: 225.
