Oeuvre rule: I am tangentially aware of Maria Bamford. I tried watching Lady Dynamite on Netflix, and as must be the case with so many other neophytes, "didn't really get what she was going for." I will need to attempt to watch again, after having read this book, because it all went down a lot smoother for me.
It's actually quite appropriate that we review this following The Perfection Trap, because Maria Bamford is a perfect example of the dangers of parentally-prescribed perfectionism. And also, the enormous success that can follow.
Throughout the book, which is probably the best memoir I've read by a comedian so far (dethroning Bossypants), she continually reminds the reader of her laziness and sheer lack of work ethic. She worked many terrible jobs, as many of us do in the service of our greater artistic dream, especially when in Los Angeles, and she was not passionate about anything except being on stage, because it was there that she felt most herself.
She does not remind the reader that she held impossibly high standards for herself and pushed herself to the breaking point to live up to everyone else's idea of what a successful comedian and beautiful person should be. She does, however, reach a breaking point, likely due to her burgeoning fame and escalating obligations as a performer. And she does emerge as a gloriously imperfect and messy and beautiful human being.
The book is unabashedly silly (see the recipes that end each chapter). While I am not a deep Maria Bamford "head," I have no doubt that she talks in life just the same as she writes on the page. The book is very funny; only occasionally does it not turn every sentence into a joke. Despite the constant "jokiness," there is so much heart in this book that it feels like the most genuine memoir almost anyone could ever hope to write.
I heard Marc Maron say on WTF that she is the best stand-up comic in decades (just today, that was repeated, and the guest agreed, she is the best in his lifetime along with Richard Pryor). That designation feels something akin to "inside baseball," or perhaps even a red herring, because she is fully aware that she is NOT FOR EVERYONE and she does not attempt to deliver your standard hour of stand-up. Granted, I have not seen her perform. This is the impression I get from the book and the other podcast interviews I have heard with her and various impressions in visual and social media that have imprinted on me. Clearly, she knows the form well, and probably could do a more "standard" hour, at a very high level, but she prefers to subvert that, and turn her comedy into something along the lines of Nanette or Swimming to Cambodia. She hasn't released films of that stature, but this is such a good memoir (I forget that it's hard to put it over It Never Ends, but Tom Scharpling is not a stand-up comedian) that it feels like the next logical step in her career. I believe that she is capable of making a great film, now that she has written a great book. Yes, it belongs on the Best Books List, along with It Never Ends.
*
The key to this book (and my heart) is radical honesty. TMI. Oversharing. I've done it in the past and learned to be wary of its results, and so I have deployed it when least likely to backfire (only lately!). I am still not perfect about recognizing if and when "loose lips [will] sink ships," but I give just about everyone a pass with this--I appreciate the effort. I appreciate when someone is willing to be vulnerable. I appreciate when they let go of their fears that I am going to judge them. It's a vote of confidence in the compassion of the audience. It's also useful to know the specifics. While we learn more and better from making our own mistakes, we can still learn from the stories that others share about their own struggles.
Bamford frames her memoir as an exploration of the cult of various 12-step groups. I am not sure if the memoir has 12 chapters but I am going to check now. And I see that I'm wrong. But there are 23 chapters and an appendix, so it's almost "symmetrical." I digress.
She begins with the Cult of Family, and a chapter each on her mother, father and sister. Her relationship with her mother is vaguely reminiscent of the relationship at the heart of Crying in H-Mart, though culturally dissimilar. From her, she inherited body dysmorphia, and the ultimately the medication that worked best. While her mother seemed unintentionally hilarious, it appears she inherited her father's sense of humor, and I can only say he reminds me a little of Parker Posey's dad:
"My dad has always prompted us to call him 'the Best Dad in the Whole World.' He calls my sister 'the Best Oldest Daughter in the Whole World.' I'm 'the Best Youngest Daughter in the Whole World.' It's reciprocal propaganda, but it's true, he is a good guy. He's always been active in our community: trying to help out with mentoring local kids, teaching English to immigrants arriving in Duluth, working with men just out of prison for domestic violence crimes. He sends me cards and cookies, he taught me to drive, he taught me how to change a tire nine times (it didn't take) and chop wood. He attended every play, every concert. All that is true. It is also true that on this trip [to Yellowstone] in the sixty minutes we were away from my mother, he broke a federal law and may have committed a misdemeanor for child endangerment." (57)
Near the beginning of the next section, she acknowledges, "The editors had some real problems with this chapter about my sister because they thought my descriptions of our relationship are too banal, too typical of sisters, not dramatic enough. That is exactly what is so bizarre about it! It is that these tiny-tiny-tiny things that go on between us feel like tsunamis of 'compare and despair.' Examples:
1. My sister always makes food for everybody. She makes a bunch of homemade food and puts it out like it's no big deal. IT IS A FUCKING BIG DEAL. Recently, she invited us on a picnic, didn't ask me to bring anything (I didn't), and yet she brought 2 (TWO) different kinds of delectable handmade sandwiches, organic cherries, salad, a cold VARIETY of drinks, AND cookies. She hauled it all to an idyllic river setting she found outside Duluth and laid it out on a blanket. At no time did she stop and say, 'HEY! YOU GUYS! CHECK OUT ALL OF THIS STUFF I JUST DID FOR YOU ASSHOLES!'
(I have ONLY ONCE made my family dinner, though I am constantly swaggering about my self-serving good deeds. If I have done anything, you will know about it and I will have photographic proof. In my defense, I have picked up the check for family dinners and then tried to write it off as a business expense.)" (66-67)
After exploring these family dynamics, she moves onto her own personal upbringing, which includes learning violin under the Suzuki method and developing eating disorders. Living with a person that plays "twinkle twinkle little star" over and over made me realize that this was about the same thing, and I felt compelled to photograph a couple pages and send them those excerpts by text. The book should be read by anyone that has studied Suzuki violin for that chapter alone.
*
From there we move into the early 90's and Bamford's first tentative steps into the entertainment industry. Her first gig is basically cosplaying a character from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. It is perhaps worth nothing that I read the few pages detailing this while dining alone at the Black Spire Outpost at Star Wars Galaxy's Edge in Disneyworld's Hollywood Studios theme park. It was ridiculously apropos, but if you have not been there or do not know anything about it, I don't want to explain further.
And 12 pages later, in one of my favorite chapters, about Debtors Anonymous and PRGs (Pressure Relief Groups), she lists 6 suggestions she was given in 1995. Rather than excerpting the entire thing, i will just paraphrase:
1-Call everyone you know to see if you can rent a room from them.
2-Pray for the willingness to earn $2,000/month to pay for rent, food, health care, clothing and debt repayment.
3-Get a job, any job.
4-Take the CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test) to be certified as a substitute teacher.
5-Type out form letters for creditors, tell them not to contact by phone.
6-Go to Disneyland.
"I did everything they told me to except for number 6, because I am not going to Disneyland." (141)
She does not elaborate further but this was my least favorite part of the book. For one, she should elaborate further. Why wouldn't you go to Disneyland if you were in L.A.? Of course, it's expensive, and doesn't make sense for a person struggling with debt, totally, but it was 1995 and Disney had not yet instituted Genie+ and it was more affordable. You can justify a trip to Disneyland because it is the happiest place on earth. She had to go to Disneyland, at some point, and if she hasn't, I highly recommend she does. I recommend Disneyworld over Disneyland but it is cool to live in L.A. and be able to do Disneyland without shelling out for a Disney resort and staying 5-7 nights (or however long one needs to do everything there at all four parks). I stayed 4 nights at a Disney official hotel, but not a Disney resort, and spent $2,200 on the entire trip. I wanted to write an entire blog post about this trip. I am not going to turn this review into that. I am just simply going to note that Maria Bamford made a mistake by not doing #6. Because while there are many awful things about Disney, anyone that has been there cannot deny, it is as validating an experience as there is, and sometimes provides the perfect respite from the unrelenting hell that is reality for many of us.
*
The material on Debtors Anonymous is (dare-I-say) groundbreaking. I have also learned to record all of my expenditures on a daily basis. I have been OCD about this for almost 12 years. Many people will consider this too tedious, and the process of budgeting too onerous. And that very well may be fine for them. But I know, having been in somewhat dire financial circumstances, that when it reaches a critical point, this can be a very useful practice. And having attempted to write some kind of book, detailing my efforts, I am familiar with the issue Bamford ran up against:
"In addition to revealing the financial details of my book deal, I also wanted to include a profit-and-loss statement regarding my business. I argued with my editor AND my manager about this. MANY TIMES. PERSONALLY, I LOVE THIS KIND OF INFO, BUT NO ONE ELSE IS INTERESTED, ESPECIALLY THE EDITORS. If you don't care, as you were. AS YOU WERE." (149)
The next 5 pages consist of a spreadsheet that details earnings and expenses from shows in Ping Pong, AK and Jai-Ho, Belarus, and a P&L statement for the month of September 2022. The only item I question is $1,129 for life insurance. I suppose the numbers go up exponentially when one is a known quantity in the entertainment industry and/or has over $3 MM in assets, but I hope this includes health insurance premiums. I know the SAG provides for some of this, but I don't think it covers everything at 100%. In any case, I don't want to pay $1,100 a month for life insurance, but I guess if I felt like I had to, it's not a bad problem to have.
*
The next group she joined was SLAA: Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. In this chapter, the TMI and oversharing is probably something the editors loved. Bamford herself would likely appreciate this, because earlier in the chapter about her sister, she writes:
"I have only skimmed her books before feeling overwhelmed. As with all books, I pass swiftly over the text, pausing only for prurient details. From what I've been able to take in, her books are really beautiful, AND there's a great scene in one memoir where she is naked on the floor trying to have some private time to shove a hemorrhoid application up her bum and her four kids break the door down. But a lot of her writing features an experience of spirituality that I do not have, and so I tab through, alighting only upon anything foul." (68)
While this is also a great chapter, I will leave it to the reader to seek out the book and skim and pause as they see fit. The next chapter may be more interesting to address.
*
Because it deals with her time as a Target spokesperson, which is basically when she starts getting paid. I did not distinctly remember the commercials, but from the one photo she includes, there was a vague recollection. It was her "big break," back in 2008 and 2009, and it is fascinating to read about the effect that it had on her emotionally--for example, when she is introduced at a stand-up gig as a "sellout." Added to that, negative news about Target and its union-busting is relayed to her, which further adds to conflicted feelings. In the middle of this is another chapter about the tragic death of a pet and her own role in it. By this point the book is building towards its denouement. In 2011, she writes a column for The New York Times and talks on the phone to the Ethicist there. An executive at Target finds the column, realizes it is her (she is asked and she lies and says it was not her) and she is not asked to return to the Christmas ad-campaign.
She then decides to invite everyone she has ever emailed to her Christmas party. By this point she owns a 900 square foot home and estimates that somewhere between 150 and 500 guests came through the party. She gets into what seems to be a relatively serious relationship and then has a pretty abrupt break-up. Meanwhile she is still a successful comedian booking gigs, and she has to go to Chicago for the next shows, and she realizes she needs to try a different medication (Lamictal, which ended up being the one that worked for me) and then checks in for a series of hospitalizations, which goes on for about 20 pages and arguably makes up the strongest part of the book.
*
There is a very brief chapter about one cult that did not work for her, and like many other things in this book, greatly touched me. This is essentially a review of Ten Days to Self-Esteem by David Burns. One of the limited books that I reviewed with an "(incomplete)" is Feeling Good: the New Mood Therapy by David Burns. It also is too long, and has too many exercises about avoiding "should" statements and turning negative thoughts into positive ones. I am sure that this works for a lot of people and that they will swear by it. It did not work for her, and it did not work for me. This chapter is a truc but clearly, it would be wrong to leave it out of the review, for it is another example of the kinship I feel with her.
*
The book goes on to detail her time doing Lady Dynamite and finally, Couples Anonymous, which she does with her partner Scott. It is similarly unsparing and relatable. I think it is inevitable that any couple is going to fight. Lately I have drawn a distinction: arguments are OK (they can even be important and good) but fighting is bad. Fighting is still going to happen, though, and part of a successful partnership is being able to accept that the other person isn't perfect, and that you aren't perfect, and that you won't always see eye-to-eye on everything, and that the partnership only survives if you can tolerate the bad times and find strength and growth in forgiveness. (Reciprocating in that is also key, I think.) The way all of this is borne out in the text is another one of the more beautiful parts of the book.
*
Chapter 23, "Obligatory Suicide Disclaimer," is the brilliant ending and amounts to a personal essay on suicide and the judgment that underlies it. While absolutely not condoning the act, she expresses total empathy for those that have done it. Yes, it is a selfish act, and staying alive for loved ones can be a powerful motivator, but it does not help anything to chastise a person that has attempted it, or may be thinking about attempting it. There are better ways to express empathy and compassion. Primarily, that is through listening. And if you are suffering, that is through talking. And if you are going through unimaginable pain and you cannot tolerate it any longer, she does not consider you a bad person that is condemned to Hell for eternity for taking your own life. The essay, however, should bring comfort to anyone and everyone, and perhaps even save lives:
"Please don't hurt yourself or anyone else. Do something else instead. Even if it's harmful! Suicide is a one-off. You can do meth at least twice without consequences! (I don't know if that's true.) Knock yourself out with a forty-ounce keg of Baileys Irish Cream and a Dairy Queen Blizzard. You do not want to miss any additions to the Dairy Queen product line! Did you know they have a FUDGE-STUFFED COOKIE now? Postmate that mess while you wait for your response team (your friend Tookie). If you cannot access these luxuries, go to the pantry. Get a jar of Skippy equivalent and finish it IN HOUSE while asking a volunteer to stand on your lower back. And use this time to try things you never thought you'd do: basic training, plural marriage, improv street comedy." (256)
There is not much more I can say that hasn't already been said above. She fulfilled her contract with this book, and wrote a beautiful one that I could appreciate more deeply than almost any other memoir I've read (and there are quite a few on this blog: Patti Smith, Kim Gordon, Carrie Brownstein, Dean Wareham, Scott Turow, Terri Cheney, Justice Stevens, Justice Sotomayor, Rick Lax, Haruki Murakami, Morrissey, Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, Stuart David, Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Robert Gottlieb, Brix Smith, Mandy Stadtmiller, Anthony Bourdain, Tara Westover, Francisco Cantu, David Carr, Lori Gottlieb, Woody Allen, Tom Scharpling, Patton Oswalt, Parker Posey, Michelle Zauner). A few of those were pretty great, and I'm not going to agonize over whether this is really better than Just Kids or Kitchen Confidential or The Night of the Gun--because it is not a SERIOUS book. Suffice to say I loved it, and highly recommend it, especially to anyone that has faced the vicissitudes of mental illness while wading into the cesspool of the industrial entertainment complex. You will find a friend in Maria.
Grade: A
