Monday, January 31, 2005

The Oldest Story There Is

These are the last two paragraphs of today's review of the book mentioned below that appears in Salon.com. It was written by Rebecca Traister. You can get a free pass to Salon every day by watching an add which is a bit annoying but you don't have to look at the thing for very long. I love how Traister sees through the fact that this girl just feels so horrible about herself and trying so hard to make it stop. Been there, still suffer with it. Trying to stop.

"But in her tale there lies a larger pattern. Throughout "Smashed," Zailckas periodically lays off the hooch, then starts drinking again. It's a favorite syndrome for women. We quit eating, quit drinking, quit smoking. We quit talking to toxic friends, quit being sluts, quit being prudes. There is power in self-abnegation, deprivation, in foot-stamping "Nos!" But we're always falling off our wagons: drinking too much and loving immoderately, handing control to people and substances that make us feel bad about ourselves, until once again, we clamp down and punish ourselves for having given in. It's a cycle that marks and damages almost all of us, whatever our chosen poison.

Booze happens to be the skeleton on which Zailckas has hung her narrative. She insists it wasn't just a convenient way to sell her book, and I believe her. But if you boiled the alcohol off of "Smashed," you would have a story of a girl struggling with the fact that she feels terrible about herself and her place in the world. The oldest story there is. "

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