“Victor and I have very different definitions of what constitutes a clean house. Victor’s definition involves absolutely everything perfectly in its place (except for the eight thousand wires and extension cords sticking out from every electronic device in our house, which are all apparently invisible to him). It also includes all of this happening magically, without him actually ever being involved in the cleaning at all (except for the one time when I ran into the living room because I thought I heard him doing whip-its, but turns out he was just spraying furniture polish”.
I read Jenny Lawson’s latest book “Furiously Happy” and thought that I have to pick up her first book as well. You find the quote above sort of confusing and still wonder what “whip-its” are? You are not alone. The entire book is written like this. With footnotes explaining words she comes up with. I have read somewhere that Lawson is compared to David Sedaris but she is definitely not a Sedaris alternative. I love David Sedaris. 😀
Lawson is funny. No doubt and I did have to laugh at points. But her way of writing made me dizzy. She is jumping all over the place; explains this and that and comes back to another explanation – then throws in a word like “Snausages”. She tells stories about her childhood, about her high school years and how she met her husband Victor. She also writes about a lot of arguments she has with him (like calling him while driving around in her car being lost and she thinks the GPS is haunting her so she did not take it). Say whaaaat? Yes, it is that bizarre. While reading her book I thought that she does have potential to be a comedian but it seems she is so disorganized and all over the place. She mentions her editor a lot who pointed out that she cannot write certain passages the way she did but Lawson still kept them as she wrote them. Okay, this is funny once. But more than that… not really! It just seems her stories don’t come together in a way.
Overall I would say that initially she is funny but then the stories get boring. It also seems that she just sat down, wrote something and published exactly that. And the entire book reads like that. Many times I thought, “No way, she actually did not just write this”. Also, to me it seemed that many chapters were just fillers. She filled pages with post-it notes to her husband. This book should not be called a memoir – or mostly true memoir. She simply wrote about moments of her life all mixed up with no real guideline. She writes something like “OKAY, so you liked this because you are still around. Fuck but why are you still here? You want to know how I did this and that? Or do you want to fucking leave? It is up to you….” And this goes on and on. Horrible!
Footnotes are fine but footnotes and explanations all the time are irritating. Also, as mentioned earlier, the editor’s tips on how Lawson should rewrite certain chapters. Over and over! Annoying! Do you know who The Bloggess aka Jenny Lawson is? Check out her blog here. I have browsed through her website a couple of times so I am familiar with her writing style. To me it seems that she just copied and pasted her blog into a book. Lawson explains that she is crazy and she does just whatever she wants; which is fine. Most of the time she writes something and then she has this urge to clarify instantly what she just said. If you would ask my husband he would tell you that I love to exaggerate. Lawson does it so much that it was exhausting to read and finish this book. She writes that “I was attacked by a bear last night!” You think: “Holy shit, no way….. how could this happen?” But what she really meant was that “I saw a stray dog behind a tree.” I would love to hear your thoughts if you read Jenny Lawson’s book “Let’s pretend this never happened”. Feel free to share your opinion.
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