Reports of Her Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
April 24, 2017 6:48 AM   Subscribe

Emily Gould covers author Cat Marnell in her piece Cat Marnell is Still Alive for NY Magazine. Gould writes "There’s always a fine line between appreciating the art that someone’s making out of her fucked-up life and feeling like your attention makes you complicit in her self-destruction."

The NY Times echoes that sentiment in a book review of Marnell's new book How to Murder Your Life. In her review Tales From the Personal Essay Industrial Complex, Anne Helen Petersen writes, "Marnell treads a knife edge between glamorizing her own despair and rendering it with savage honesty."

Cat Marnell for Janexo
Cat Marnell for Vice
Previously

Both Gould and Petersen make it a point to mention their own forays into the "first-person industrial complex" (as Gould refers to it). In Reinventing Emily Gould from NYT, Ruth La Ferla writes, "Indeed, a case could be made that Ms. Gould’s warts-and-all brand of self-exposure anticipated a wave of confessional writing that paved the way for “Girls,” Lena Dunham’s quasi-autobiographical hit on HBO."

The Hairpin Jia Tolentino interviews Anne Helen Petersen on her departure from academia (and the Hairpin) to write for Buzzfeed. Petersen says "There’s this internet myth that you have to make this low-hanging cheap fruit in order to subsidize the “real” reporting/writing that no one reads, and that those “real” writers should never have to worry about the fact that no one reads them."
posted by CMcG (37 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Remember this woman the next time you hear about the need for diversity in the entry-level jobs of the publishing industry. "Pay your dues and get shouted at by Anna Wintour," my ass.

I guess it's refreshing to see a young woman writer treated as a monstre sacre rather than a dude, but it's still terrible. Myself I am not the target for hard-party memoirs, so I suppose I must defer to others there.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:30 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


Great collection of links and context! This is one of those weird little worlds where I'm interested enough to want more than a TV show or an essay but I'll never have the energy to dive in with both feet. FPP like these really help me navigate these little in between areas.
posted by midmarch snowman at 7:34 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Marnell has become an object lesson in how differently drug use is handled by the media when it's a white person versus pretty much anyone else.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 7:34 AM on April 24, 2017 [23 favorites]


From the first link:

even her glancing observations are writerly and insightful: “He’s so serious in such an endearing way,” “He has the craziest eyes, second to the National Geographic cover lady.”

...writerly and insightful? Those?? I...guess that helps me calibrate Emily Gould's recognition of talent, then.
posted by theatro at 7:54 AM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]


Marnell’s beauty — undiminished by years of disordered eating, cigarettes, and an erratic sleep schedule

That's kind of enabling bullshit - all that stuff takes a toll, on your skin, for example, no matter who you think you are.
posted by thelonius at 8:02 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


I read an excerpt of the memoir and was underwhelmed. She seemed to think the story was in itself sufficiently shocking to be riveting (it wasn't), and there was nothing particularly striking about the presentation. Maybe Mary Karr is an unfair comparison for a younger writer, but it did leap immediately to mind.
posted by praemunire at 8:13 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Also, this, ugh: "She believes in paying your dues, taking unpaid internships"

Yeah, when you're born into a wealthy family, these are easy things to advocate.
posted by praemunire at 8:18 AM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]


She sounds like a clusterfuck- but an entertaining one. I was less impressed with Gould's slightly smug tone - she alternated between solicitous , jealous and whatever attitude you get to have when you are comfortably on the right side of the social behaviour line.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 8:26 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


If you have the resources to hit bottom and then detox in a nice place every few years, why not keep doing what you do for as long as you can?

Because eventually, instead of bouncing back like a rubber ball, you hit the pavement with a thud and crack like an egg.
posted by mikeh at 8:43 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


The main article linked was such a bizarre read because I had never heard of this woman. And yet the author acts as if she were a mega-star who barely needs to be introduced. And yeah, I get that she is famous in certain circles - enough to get a half-million-dollar book advance - but it just made for a disorienting read.

And the way the author talks about her appearance made my skin crawl.
posted by lunasol at 8:46 AM on April 24, 2017 [10 favorites]


She looks like a cross between Elizabeth Wurtzel and Tara Reid

This is sort of the opposite of Tyler Cowen's oft-deployed "self-recommending" concept.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 9:00 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I generally find addiction memoirs fascinating, but this one unnerved me in some peculiar way I couldn't pinpoint until I stumbled across a review that described it as a stellar example of euphoric recall -- in short, an aspect of active addiction in which memories of drug abuse are wreathed in pleasure and the addict actually derives pleasure from recalling his or her usage.

I think that goes far to explaining why I felt so uncomfortable as I read this memoir. Unlike many retrospective accounts, this one makes the reader feel complicit in an addiction that (by Marnell's own account) is still ongoing, albeit to a lesser degree. If I had ever struggled with addiction myself, I imagine the reading experience would have been downright nauseating.
posted by mylittlepoppet at 9:04 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


I got tired of this hot-mess-perpetually-on-the-verge stuff after reading Moe Tkacik's third-or-so drunk blog post on Jezebel, which was fairly early on.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:08 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


If you have the resources to hit bottom and then detox in a nice place every few years, why not keep doing what you do for as long as you can?

It implies that, once you "have" resources, there is no further question about what might be the right or wrong thing to use them for. You have them, might as well dump them into a bottomless pit.

I used to try to follow, y'know, the literary scene a little or whatever (like an idiot). More recently, I console myself that the judgment of history won't particularly care what we think is important or quality today, and neither should I.

Speaking of the personal essay-industrial complex, I just listened to this Scumbag podcast about the hunger for certain kinds of confessional narratives.
posted by grobstein at 9:23 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I generally find addiction memoirs fascinating

I don't, with a couple of exceptions: Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life, which isn't really a normal recovery memoir, it's more about growing up in Brooklyn and becoming a journalist, it's just that he was drunk most of that time, and David Carr's Night Of The Gun. But there a bunch that I haven't read.
posted by thelonius at 9:25 AM on April 24, 2017


These kinds of memoirs always remind me of Chris Morris' Second Class Male/Time to Die articles, to be honest.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:28 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


I generally find addiction memoirs fascinating

I don't, with a couple of exceptions


I think it was Caroline Knapp's memoir (Drinking: A Love Story) paired with her friend Gail Caldwell's memoir (Let's Take the Long Way Home - as much about their friendship as addiction, though they were both in recovery) that hooked me on the genre. I'd recommend them both over Marnell's, though of course the appeal is very different. HtMYL is a (deliberate) trainwreck experience.
posted by mylittlepoppet at 9:30 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


Caroline Knapp's memoir (Drinking: A Love Story)

I hear a lot of good things about that book - thanks, I'll check it out. I know it's helped a lot of people in early sobriety.
posted by thelonius at 9:33 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Knapp's book is very good; it introduced me to the concept of YET (You're Eligible Too).
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:39 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Everybody loves a trainwreck.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:50 AM on April 24, 2017


I adore Anne Helen Petersen and wish her the best. There should be a bot that automatically posts the link to her interview on all of the AskMes about academia.
posted by kimberussell at 10:03 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


Kaitlin Phillips' reviews How to Murder Your Life in the current issue of Bookforum as well:
Only someone who mainlines heroin and Vogue can truly party-report herself ... What to wear to buy "four ten-dollar baggies of brown flakes that had been drizzled with phencyclidine, then left out overnight to dry"? "I was full-on homicide-victim chic in a Tsubi minidress covered in laser-cut stab holes and fake bloodstains."
I read it last week—the review, not the book—and thought immediately of Edie Sedgwick. For anyone wanting a re-boot, Cat Marnell seems to be it.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:12 AM on April 24, 2017


The book is also far from messy — her control of style and tone is impressive, as is her wry self-awareness.

As someone who is openly fascinated by Marnell and has also read her memoir, I have to respectfully disagree with Gould's above statement. Marnell's writing in the memoir comes across as very, very rushed. She will often allude to events and people that sound fascinating, but rather than exploring them, she glosses over them or dismisses them - along the lines of "but that's a story I don't have time to tell" - to the point where I feel like she, herself, doesn't really grasp what is most interesting about her life. I don't think she left out most of those details because of copyright or privacy (or drug induced memory loss, even); it came across as sheer laziness or ignorance to what stories can hook a reader. So while she may be "self-aware" that she is a drug addict and unreliable and reckless, blah blah blah, she lacks self-awareness when it comes to knowing the highlights of her own life journey. It's sloppy writing, and very sloppy editing. I think she could have done so much better but lacks the confidence, wisdom and patience to pull it off. Maybe when she is 50. I hope she stays sober and makes it to 50.
posted by nightrecordings at 10:44 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


bouncing around her living room … itching to get outside, …. She lopes … talking a mile a minute …

♫ Watch that speed freak, watch that speed freak everybody gonna go and make it every week ♫
posted by scruss at 10:52 AM on April 24, 2017


I couldn't make it to the end of the interview. I read the extract of Marnell's book and thought it was insufferable bollocks. There are plenty of people who have grown up in a life of privilege and who have had horrible personal situations, often compounded by booze and/or drugs, and who have written wonderfully about it. Marnell is not one of those people. Marianne Faithfull is.
posted by Len at 11:13 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't understand New York publishing's constant fascination with shit like this.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:43 AM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]


They are all addicts up in there, so getting one of their own to party with seems to be goal. And who doesn't love a surefire self destruct? Our culture loves people like Jimi Hendrix and Marilyn Monroe - we give much less airtime to artists who keep going.

Carolyn Knapp's memoir scared the shit out of me- I was living in Boston at the time and very much understood how easily the lifestyle could destroy you and everything you tried to build.

Ms Marnell seems like someone playing at self destruction- she knows something will pull her out of it eventually, if only to set her up for he next round of entertaining monkey on a string.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 12:16 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Our culture loves people like Jimi Hendrix and Marilyn Monroe - we give much less airtime to artists who keep going.

Right, which is why Lindsay Lohan and whatshisballs from the Libertines had became such beloved eternal figures, whereas nobody cares about Audrey Hepburn or David Bowie.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:33 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Dorothy Parker was also an unreliable New York party girl who drank to blackouts and squandered her publishers' resources, but she was interested in the inner lives of other human beings, and in the craft it took to depict them.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:41 PM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]


Putting myself less snarkily, nobody finds Marilyn Monroe or Jimi Hendrix interesting *because* of their drug use. People are typically drawn to their acting, music, etc. The fact they had died young just means that they never had to fade, become irrelevant, etc. People who had died young for non-drug reasons often receive the same treatment of eternal youth, e.g. James Dean and Aaliyah.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:41 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


I prefer Dorothy Parker as well, and I liked Elizabeth Wurtzel around her "Bitch" phase--I did like that book. But Cat? Feh. Cat has never said anything I found interesting and I think all there is to her is everyone waiting for her to trainwreck out.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:57 PM on April 24, 2017


I don't think she's a great writer but I've been enjoying her writing since her xoJane days (that whole website was a guilty pleasure for me, fun in the same way as trash TV). I will read her book though I don't expect it to be great.

The handwringing over her losing her looks leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
posted by noxperpetua at 4:03 PM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


I have no real opinion on Marnell (I didn't even know she existed before this post) and I don't follow the genre closely enough to know whether she's good or bad at it, but I am interested in questions about who this style of writing is for, what it supports/challenges and who is ultimately profiting.

People are making money off and benefitting from other people's drug addictions. They also benefit from their recovery and any future relapses. A genre that prides itself on honesty can't really distance itself from this fact if it wants to retain any amount of critical value.

I think the larger issue though, is that these narratives of excess and degeneration seem to fall into the same trap as anti-war war movies or stories about gangs/the mob. It's nearly impossible to aestheticize the horror without glorifying it in some way. So even if the goal is condemn the behavior/action, very little is done to challenge the systems and context that makes the violence and harm possible. What passes for "honest" exposure to an "ugly reality" will have little effect in a society that seems to only value things that can be aestheticized and monetized. The object itself (book, movie, article, advice column etc) is what's ultimately valued.

The U.S. media and popular culture don't really know how to handle mental health and drug addiction (or violent crimes and war), and they're deeply uncomfortable with poverty and the poor. Which is why, I think, everything gets sensationalized and everybody involved (the author, the publishers and the audience) gets to reframe the more serious implications of their relationships to the issues in whatever ways they're most comfortable.

Like I said, I've only sampled Marnell's work, so none of the above (if it makes any sense) is a quality judgement. But I'll add, tales of debauchery and excess that focus on more 'feminine' issues (fashion, body image and the ways both relate to sex) tend to get more negative responses than those concerned with 'masculine' issues (accumulation of power/wealth, violence/physical expressions of power and the ways both relate to sex). And addicts tend get valued according class and how much their drug(s) of choice supports or challenges popular assumptions; with stories of wealthy or middle class people teetering at the edge of their class precipice getting the most attention.
posted by AtoBtoA at 4:14 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm so frustrated that I wrote Janexo instead of xoJane! My apologies!

Similarly to AtoBtoA, I do wonder why we love to hate confessional writing from women so much. I almost immediately think of Hunter S Thompson when I read about women essayist/journalist documenting their excessive drug use/abuse as a lens to color commentary about larger social issues.

I also am so glad that I found Anne Helen Petersen. I think her writing is really worth a look.
posted by CMcG at 4:20 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh and I forgot to say: I think it's a really valid point to talk about how white women get a pass on on writing about this behavior (we find it "tragic") while they're simultaneously getting a leg up in the publishing world. Given that our reading time is a limited resource (as well as space in these publications), this thread is making me thinking about all the great writing I've read from WOC journalist that I didn't post about on metafilter...
posted by CMcG at 4:23 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I, too, evaluate people and things.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:21 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


So I read the book. And the addiction stuff was somewhat interesting to me (the straightest of straight-edgers) but, as others have noted, it's pretty well-trod ground. It actually sort of faded into the background.

Instead what I got from the book is that Marnell is a perfect example of what for lack of a better word I'll call "toxic femininity". Take her bulimia. The articles have all skimmed over it if they mention it at all, but bulimia is extremely serious! But Marnell doesn't see it that way. In fact, she sees it as necessary. When it lifts for a bit after she's temporarily off from adderall she suddenly can't fit into size 25 skinny jeans... and after trying an extreme juice cleanse she literally freezes her fat away. The first few magazines she's in reinforce this frame of mind- and then when she's in a publication that doesn't (xojane), one that's "body positive, inclusive and real", she can't stand it. Magazines are supposed to have "unattainable physical ideals" and "aspirational fantasies". She literally yells at her boss about it.

All of her coworkers are women, and I do mean all. But all of the people she hangs out with outside of work are men- men who use her, take advantage of her, often hit and rape her. Women fade into the background- they're girlfriends of the men she's with, hangers-on in her social circle, occasionally annoying mother-figures. Besides a few bosses and coworkers, the only women she thinks of with genuine positivity are her grandmother and Courtney Love.

She is and has internalized every stereotype of how the world thinks women should be- prizes (to be won by men), competitors (for the attention of men), caretakers (of men)- and the funny thing is she seems so unaware of it. She calls herself a feminist, and I'm sure she thinks she is- more-or-less independent, three (or more?) abortions, high-powered career with, when she's on a high, an insane work ethic to match.

And not to armchair-psychologize about her addiction, but... The reason she can't quit adderall, besides the usual, is that she genuinely thinks she can't work without it- or be as beautiful without it (it's an appetite suppressant). She can't quit hard drugs because they're the necessary entrance fee to her hard-partying social circle. She can't quit anything else because they all support those other drugs in some way (like treating insomnia caused by the performance-enhancers). She can't quit her work or her social circle because she's got no other option, at least in her mind. (A life coach suggests a "creative" career change, Marnell laughs her off.) And there's no other world for her- except when she's (briefly) with her much-adored grandmother, taking care of menial chores in exchange for free rent. Besides a brief stint at $1000-dollar-a-day rehab, that era seems to be the most genuinely contented (as opposed to excitedly dazzled) she's ever been in her life.
posted by perplexion at 7:54 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]


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