I love when writers make funny and sweeping generalizations about our species, but some of the ones in this essay just seemed so reductive and essentialist that I found myself offended on behalf of ladies who share my sexual orientation--and those who don't. Daum's estimation of herself in this essay A few defensive disclaimers: Daum's estimation of herself in this essay reminded me just slightly of Ariel Levy's description of a female chauvinist pig, but without most of the misogyny.
Those disclaimers aside, I love Meghan Daum. I think her writing is whip-smart at the level of the sentence and in what she chooses to talk about and what she tells us about those subjects. I also happen to agree with her about lots of things: So while this collection of essays is not as perfect as my five-star rating makes it out to be, it's pretty damn close.
I devoured the whole thing in a couple hours which I am currently regretting. Dec 10, Amy Thibodeau rated it really liked it. I related to many of Meghan Daum's essays and there was some genuinely lovely writing in the book. I didn't really connect with the material in any kind of emotional or lasting way, though I enjoyed reading it. The essay about being a fake lesbian was weak and filled with stereotypes.
It just stood out as a t I related to many of Meghan Daum's essays and there was some genuinely lovely writing in the book. It just stood out as a turd that someone should have had the sense to edit out. Apart from that, this was a smart collection. Jul 02, El rated it really liked it Shelves: This is an integral part of my personal mythology and I'm sticking to it. When I read Meghan Daum's sentence above it was like a lightbulb went off because, damn, here's someone else who gets it.
This collection is comprised of ten essays of a variety of personal situations, starting with the death of her mother and en This is an integral part of my personal mythology and I'm sticking to it.
Book Review: 'The Unspeakable' By Meghan Daum : NPR
This collection is comprised of ten essays of a variety of personal situations, starting with the death of her mother and ending with the author's own medically induced coma in during a particularly sudden and freakish bacterial infection ravaged her body. There's not a lot, it seems, that Daum won't share with her readers and that, alone, will make many readers uncomfortable. Is it common to admit that you don't feel much as you watch your ailing mother dying, and that afterwards you feel a sense of relief? Is it abnormal to care more about dogs than most people? If so, I too am guilty.
How do people feel when a woman admits that she does not like to cook and will not cook? Still in the 21st century people in my experience balk at that admission. Most controversial, it seems, is the essay entitled "Honorary Dyke" which begins: There was a period in my life, roughly between the ages of thirty-two and thirty-five, when pretty much anyone who saw me would have assumed I was a lesbian. But the essay, like much of her writing, is almost tongue-in-cheek, even in some of her sweeping generalizations and awful stereotypes. I read it as she knew she sounds ridiculous and she's making fun of herself for it.
I can see how it can rub readers the wrong way, and I'm not in any position to defend Daum considering I don't know her and am not a lesbian myself, so it's not my place to say if Daum's essay is or is not offensive. Except for the honorary title she has given herself for this essay, much else of what she discussed was not unfamiliar to me. I too get fascinated with people, even other women, and I want to know everything about them Perhaps that makes me uncool too.
Daum writes with an honesty that I feel most writers struggle with. Occasionally it comes across as a bit uncomfortable, such as in "Honorary Dyke", but other times it's refreshing because, shit, I'm not alone in my desire not to have children! She writes about her experiences past and present in an often humorous manner, making her seem like an accessible author, someone I might want to shoot the shit with if I ever met her in person, or was forced to play charades with her. Since I just turned 40, her reflections on life and being middle-aged spoke to me a stupid amount more than I would have liked, but that's how it goes.
If I died now, I'd die young.
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Everything else, I'm doing middle-aged. It is, in my opinion, not as good as the other essays in this collection - rather, it was the one that I was unable to make a connection with, though maybe that says more about my inability to be a difference maker than anything else. I love Didion, and this is really my first experience with Daum, so the jury is still out on that one. But Daum does have the same biting honesty that I have seen in Didion's writing, so maybe there's something to that.
She looks at pop culture and what is happening in the world with some distance while also recognizing how and when these things impact her own life. Or when her own life impacts what is going on around her. I mostly liked this. I look forward to reading more from Daum. Her name has come up once or twice in other books about writing essays that I've read in the past six months to a year, so now it's nice to be able to put her work to her name.
It would be about craving silence while also wanting to hear everything. It would be about wanting to be alone and yet wanting to be in love. It would be about one of life's most reliable disappointments, which is that your audience, no matter how small, is always bigger than those who actually understand what you're saying. Nov 21, Dan rated it really liked it. I really struggled over whether to give this three or four stars, but ultimately I went with the higher rating because when Daum embraces her theme she shines. And mostly I wanted to give it three stars for two pieces: Oh, right, still don't care.
Those aside—and yes I understand that writing about one's musical heroes and pets is perfectly legitimate, but that doesn't make it any less of a turn-off for me—the ideas in The Unspeakable were generally strong, approaching brave.
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Sadly, Daum is no Solnit, which is not to say she's not a skilled essayist in her own right. Her real strength lies in her ability to cut through the schmaltz. With a couple of exceptions see above , Daum never settles for the sentimental, and even in those weaker pieces she's capable of pulling out some smart observations. In the dog one she says something to the effect of losing a pet hurts more than losing a loved human person, and she backs it up.
That's the kind of thing I wanted from this book. I wanted the "unspeakable," the unvarnished truth. The final essay, the one about her nearly dying from a rare bacterial infection, is an excellent example of this kind of thing. You expect some kind of lesson, some kind of building out of the mythos of passing, but Daum delivers just the opposite. For me, she says, in that instance, dying would've been easy, as simple as flipping a light switch. What's more, the experience didn't necessarily lend gravitas to those big ticket parts of life family, friends, etc. The event was merely that, an event.
I appreciate this world view and the candor Daum brings to it. I just wish she went further and more often to that territory. Stay tuned for my thoughts on this classic Didion text. If you liked this, make sure to follow me on Goodreads for more reviews!
Dec 08, Abby rated it really liked it Shelves: From essay to essay, I kept feeling like I might just share a brain with Meghan Daum. For better or worse, I feel terribly similar to her. From the thinly confessed vanity to the mistrust of our ability to mother to our deep desire for lesbians to like us to our general mediocre feelings about food to our overweening adoration for dogs, we exist on the same wavelength.
This is the way the world is in my min From essay to essay, I kept feeling like I might just share a brain with Meghan Daum. This is the way the world is in my mind, too. Overall, a robust collection from a talented writer, and I look forward to following her continued career, but with a sidelong glance, always with that undertone of a wariness that stems from excessive likeness. Dec 26, Kathleen rated it did not like it Shelves: There's so much we don't discuss, and that's what Meghan Daum wants to talk about: I respect Daum's impulse to be honest about things that she could just as well hide.
But for me the discussion, at least in these essays, is boring. Maybe that's why we don't discuss it. Dec 28, christa rated it it was amazing. It was by Meghan Daum, then a young writer who had moved to New York City after college and was living the life she envisioned for herself -- while sliding deeper and deeper into debt. It was accessible, honest and just the right amount of funny.
'Unspeakable' Gives Voice To Things We All Think, But Don't Say
I was living in my hometown in a shitty apartment complex near Target that I, a non-swimmer, had picked because it had a pool. My debt came from opting for an expensive college that looked a lot like my high school, unresolved dealings with Columbia House and the ease with which I collected parking tickets. It was further from NYC than geography would indicate. But there was something about the piece -- the compatibility of our bad ideas, the voice -- that seemed like alternate-universe me.
Daum returned to non-fiction, her forte, with a book about her Los Angeles house hunt. Daum is still super authentic, super honest and super funny -- but her topics are a bit weightier. You always expect your favorite writers to knock your socks off -- and sometimes they do -- but this was beyond. Anyway, this is probably my favorite thing I read in Feb 28, Terry rated it did not like it Shelves: I struggle to like their writing, but I fail to connect with it.
Don't ask me why I work so hard to TRY to like them. I was excited about reading this collection because it has gotten such rapturous reviews, and indeed, I found the opening essay the perfect balance of pain and cool reserve. However, the rest of the book tipped over into "cool reserve" that reads more like the ennui of a privileged i. Leslie Jamison 's The Empathy Exams: Two of her essays regard her near-death experience in that same wan way--there just is nothing more to the story than "I almost died," which, yes, of course, is affecting, but I still find it hard to read that story without thinking "Yeah, and never once did you have to worry about hospital bills, or loved ones who couldn't afford to pop onto a plane with a last-minute ticket and show up by your bedside, or worry about income lost when a significant other stays by your side for five days" etc.
There's no "there" to her stories, overall, which is what eventually tipped me from sort-of liking the collection to not liking it. And add me to the list of people who found "Honorary Dyke" by far the worst essay in the collection: I added this because Cheryl Strayed said it was the best book she read this year. Strayed wrote this in the NY Times: View all 6 comments. Dec 14, Michael rated it liked it Shelves: A very readable collection of essays, the best of which "Matricide," "Difference Maker," "The Joni Mitchell Problem" are genuinely illuminating and thought-provoking.
And the dog-lover in me connected with "The Dog Exception. Mar 31, Lisa rated it really liked it Shelves: The other essays are mostly just fine - honest and witty with a strong voice - but their impact was dimmed by my hope for another like the first. Jun 02, Megan rated it it was ok Shelves: I can't do it anymore. I got to page , but I'm going to have to give up on this book because I'm starting to hate it.
She wants to absorb these qualities from others like a leech without ever actually committi I can't do it anymore.
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She wants to absorb these qualities from others like a leech without ever actually committing to something or having any kind of personal aspirations or principles that she herself has made and stood by. I'm probably not making sense. Let me try some examples. The first few chapters were fine and dandy.
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I was enjoying her writing style and honesty, and then I got to "Honorary Dyke" and had to skip ahead after trudging through half of it. She comes across as being enamored with lesbians, not as people, but as a lifestyle. Torn from the Grave. Retrieved from " https: Autopsy band albums albums s death metal album stubs. Articles lacking sources from December All articles lacking sources Articles with hAudio microformats All stub articles.
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This page was last edited on 8 April , at But the piece is equally an exploration of their troubled relationship, and Daum is open about her grievances. But even in the book's most confessional and revealing essays, Daum circles something more universal and more vital than unseemly topics of conversation: On a deeper level, The Unspeakable is about growing up.
About growing up as a process by which we become increasingly entrenched in social norms and during which our decisions about whether to conform or rebel increasingly tilt toward the former. That's not to say that Daum's book has no edge to it. Particularly when discussing the pressures on women to get married and have kids, Daum rails against the notion that any life can be constrained by a list of socially mandated achievements.
But what makes her arguments so compelling is that they come from a place of insecurity. Daum's convictions on the matter are repeatedly pushing against her feeling that perhaps she wants the very things she once summarily dismissed. That's the conflict underlying "The Honorary Dyke," in which Daum defines her "butchness" against a cultural norm, against "the fetishistic attention paid to makeovers and diets and weddings and baby showers and enormous walk-in closets," but does so within a specific context.
Daum has, as she writes in other essays, left behind her exploratory 20s and 30s, a time when she dated broadly and casually, ran off to live in Nebraska, and tried on different sexual identities. So if she practices rebellion now, she does only as part of a settled-down life.