The Slippery Year
Self-deprecation is a seemingly unlimited renewable resource that helps fuel humorous personal essays. Bragging and sanctimony won鈥檛 get you very far, but self-mockery can be surprisingly transporting. Not self-loathing, but the ability to make light of one鈥檚 shortcomings.
Readers can relate and feel better about themselves. Think about David Sedaris making fun of his French; Sloane Crosley making fun of locking herself out of her apartment twice in one day; Nora Ephron making fun of her neck.
Add to that company Melanie Gideon. In The Slippery Year, she charts her deficiencies, from culinary indifference to being a timid 鈥渨uss,鈥� with endearing good humor.
Structured into 12 monthly essays that take her through a year of personal challenges, 鈥淭he Slippery Year鈥� explores Gideon鈥檚 nagging dissatisfaction with her life, a lack of wholehearted appreciation she finds all the more distressing because she recognizes how fortunate she is. But at 44, with a 9-year-old son and a marriage plagued by little more than snoring, the Oakland-based writer feels the tug of mortality and wonders why simple pleasures and lovely moments aren鈥檛 enough to satisfy her.
Gideon writes in her introduction, 鈥淥ne day when I was sitting in the carpool line waiting to pick up my son from school, it occurred to me that I had been sleepwalking through my life.... I felt empty 鈥� an unrelenting, existential kind of emptiness. By all markers I was living a happy enough existence, but somehow I wasn鈥檛 feeling it.... How had I slipped away? And most important, could I pull myself back?鈥�
It鈥檚 a feeling many readers are likely to recognize 鈥� and will be delighted to find treated with humor and heart.
Gideon, an author of young adult fantasy novels, made what she calls the A-Team when the first chapter of this book appeared (in slightly different form) in the Modern Love column of The New York Times. Its opening line is a winner: 鈥淲henever my husband casually says, 鈥楬ey, Hon, come take a look at this Web site,鈥� I know it鈥檚 going to cost me.鈥� The purchase in question is a huge camping van, and what it underscores is Gideon鈥檚 increased reluctance for adventure and her realization that she鈥檚 afflicted with 鈥渁n odd kind of claustrophobia that isn鈥檛 about the physical space I鈥檓 in, but the sheltered life I鈥檓 living.鈥�
Other chapters deal with worries about aging and insecurities about her looks 鈥� including an hilarious account of her lifelong struggle to tame her unruly half-Indian, half-Armenian hair with Japanese thermal straightening; overcoming her panic at sending her son to sleepaway camp or watching him lose at lacrosse; her neurotic need to be first in the carpool line; and losing the family dog.
Gideon derides her unwillingness to take risks, but what her book demonstrates is a brave gameness, not just for self-deprecation, but also for self-exposure. 鈥淚 look for community, yet I shy away from intimacy,鈥� Gideon writes in one of the unguarded, sincere statements she slips in among her quips and jabs. 鈥淎nd then I wonder why, despite all the fine people in my life, I am so lonely. The kind of lonely I have no right to feel.鈥�
Reaching for the moving epiphany, she occasionally slides into sentimentality 鈥� particularly in her closing chapter. She鈥檚 best when she cuts the serious with the comic, as in this deft sequence: 鈥淎n hour after your family has left the house, you love them with a piercing intensity that was nowhere to be found when you were scraping egg off their breakfast dishes. Your hope is to one day feel this way about them when they鈥檙e in the room. This is a pretty lofty goal.鈥�
As confessional writers like Ayelet Waldman (鈥淏ad Mother鈥�) can attest, it鈥檚 risky business opening yourself up to censure from what Waldman calls the 鈥淏ad Mother cops.鈥� To be sure, some will dismiss Gideon鈥檚 woes as luxury complaints. In the grand scheme of things, they are right, and Gideon knows this: People who have to worry about where their next mortgage payment is coming from don鈥檛 generally have time to fret about not fully enjoying a gift certificate to Chez Panisse.
But Gideon pretty much beats such moral militia to the punch with her tough self-criticism. 鈥淭he Slippery Year鈥� is not a long whining road but a sinuous journey 鈥� complete with skids and scraped knees 鈥� toward greater engagement with life. It鈥檚 an excursion that readers will happily share.
Heller McAlpin, a freelance critic in New York, is a frequent Monitor contributor.
