Anne Lamott: Traveling Mercies

Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird and the newly released Tender Mercies. (photos BA)

If you write and your first draft is too long, boring, and narcissistic, you may be on the right track. Anne Lamott describes her experiences as just that, so at the very least, you have illustrious company. Lamott was brought to Chico on February 25 by Chico Performances to talk about her new book, Traveling Mercies, and about her writing, motherhood, and faith.

Lamott's writing is characterized by a startlingly honest voice. She says right out loud what others may only think in private. A good example is a story about a vacation on a Mexican beach based on her inner dialogue. To the predominantly female audience, which filled up nearly half of Laxson Auditorium, she related a familiar conflict between self-image and public image, between self-confidence and insecurity: Her first thought was that she was beautiful, but she was afraid that other people might "note that my bottom appears to be making a break for freedom from the confines of my swimsuit." But she still liked her sturdy dimpling legs and thighs, and "decided, in fact, on the way to the beach, that I would treat them as if they were beloved elderly aunties." As she and "the aunties" walked along the sand, Lamott imagined, "I could feel the aunties beaming as if they had been held captive in a dark closet too long like Patty Hearst, freed finally to stroll on a sandy Mexican beach."

The full story of the aunties can be found in Traveling Mercies, a collection of her experiences with faith. The book grew out of her writing about faith in about fifty essays written over two years and published in the Web-based magazine Salon (www.salonmagazine. com). She said, "My essays fell so far short of what I hoped I was going to be working on, and it always does. That's the secret to life. Your work is going to fall so far short, and you just have to get over it and get on with your life." She certainly has.

Lamott grew up in a hip, radical household with atheist parents. She explained that her father had an unhappy childhood as the son of Presbyterian missionaries. "We all agreed not to believe in God out of deference to his painful childhood," said Lamott. But Lamott did believe in God, although she hid this fact from her parents. "As a child, " she said, "I believed when I said hello in the silence and the dark, someone heard. And that, if I said hello again, I could hear somebody saying hello back."

She came out as a Christian in an earlier book, Operating Instructions. Lamott insisted that she had no great theology, although she did share the two greatest prayers she knows: "Help me, help me, help me," and "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Lamott never intended to be a Christian and was concerned about how others might react. "All of my friends are left-wing atheists and agnostics," she explained. "I thought I'd be kicked out of the tribe, and I'd be rejected all over again. It will be like seventh grade." The receptive audience in Laxson certainly didn't have rejection in mind as they listened, laughed, and lined up to get their books signed in the lobby after her talk.

BA