I know that books can be intimidating, okay? Although a lot of people in their twenties are still working through Kurt Vonnegut’s oeuvre and picking up Anna Karenina to prepare for the movie release, we also want to laugh really, really hard. That’s why we watch television.
But what happens when season 2 of Girls doesn’t begin until January 13? Enter: Davy Rothbart’s essay collection My Heart Is An Idiot. (Could the title be truer?) This is a collection of stories that are fitted to the short attention span of sitcom-watchers, to read during the commercial breaks, and to read while heating up a frozen pizza. I know this from experience. They are, as blurbist Susan Orlean says, “utterly engaging.”
What’s brilliant about these autobiographical stories is that they maintain a lovely balance between ridiculously confessional and self-deprecating. The writer is literally naked walking around Manhattan for the greater part of one essay. There are moments when his intentions to be alone with a girl at the expense of a friend are loathsome, but delicate and human. And a lazy habit of peeing in bottles, rather than walking to the bathroom, facilitates this great and telling moment with his ex-girlfriend, who is saying goodbye before moving across the country with her new boyfriend:
Sarah marveled at the collection of pee-filled bottles I’d amassed. “It’s absolutely incredible,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.” She sniffed the air. “I can’t believe they don’t smell.” I was ashamed, but also sort of proud, and fascinated with them myself. The range of pee color, in itself, was striking—dark, hornet gold, to pale yellow, to nearly clear. “There must be fifty bottles here,” said Sarah.
“There’s more behind the TV stand,” I confessed.
Sarah said, “Let’s count.” We tallied them up. There were ninety-nine. Sarah began to sing, “Ninety-nine bottles of pee on your wall, ninety-nine bottles of pee…” She trailed off. “I can’t believe I’m leaving you,” she said.
I picked up the song, and continued on, sadly: “Take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of pee…”
People have, in the history of the world, complained that almost all books are written about writers, who are boring and narcissistic people. Here you have a person who seems to have been pulled into writing by means of carrying around too many quirky stories, too many intrinsically American experiences, too much truth about it all.
Interestingly, these stories take place in almost every region of the country except the South. Lucky for you, the Found magazine 10th anniversary tour will bring Davy and Peter Rothbart for a signing, reading, and music on Thursday, December 6 at 5:30 here at Lemuria.
My Heart Is An Idiot by Davy Rothbart, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 2012, $25.00.
See all the tour stops this December.
Visit Jackson Free Press for Kathleen Mitchell’s interview with the author.
by Whitney
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