I Thought There'd Be More To It

Friends,

The other day, I finished reading I Thought There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley. I mentioned it on here before and that it was a recommendation from Diana because her editor (publisher?) is watching the book rise the bestseller list as it may serve as a litmus test for how I'm Sorry You Feel That Way will be received.

My reaction ITTBC? Meh. It wasn't bad. Wasn't particularly good either. I read it cover to cover, absorbed as much as I could, and as I'm flipping back through it now, I barely remember the essays. The only one that really stuck with me was the one called "Sign Language for Infidels" where she volunteers for the buttlerfly exhibit at the Natural History Museum in New York, and during her half-assed dedication to it, inadvertently smuggles home one butterfly. It has a really interesting ending.

The other essays blend together for me. There's the one about how she might have a rare blood disease. The one where she gets roped into being a maid of honor of a girl she knows from high school. Her wanting a one night stand. And the one where one of her friends might have dropped a cherry-sized turd on her bathroom carpet. There are funny moments in there, but nothing that made me laugh out loud, and I'm trying to think why that is. I mean, shitting on someone's carpet is usually something that will make me laugh without question, but here, not so much.

And the more I think about it, my lack of laughing might have something to do with her character. She's kind of this bumbling, half-passive every woman character, who gets roped into situations then isn't very active as a result. Take the turd story. It is over a year before she says to anyone involved if they shit on her floor. Maybe I expect her to act like me, but I tell you, if someone shits on my floor, retribution and interrogation will be swift. All suspect shitting parties will be questioned, held accountable, and shaken down. Here, she just ruminates on the turd. And it isn't the ruminating that's the problem, I think it's the passivity, maybe.

Take David Sedaris for example. He's not exactly an in-your-face, confrontational dude either, and my favorite essay of his is when he is completely passive on a train in France as this American couple accuses him of being a pickpocket, thinking he can't understand them. But somehow he still seems more involved and interested in what's going on that Crosley here.

Maybe that's the issue. I really can't put my finger on it right now as to why it didn't grab me like I expected it to. Thank god this isn't a formal review. I do know that part of this feeling comes from the topics of many of the essays.

One essay, she's a bridesmaid. One she gets locked out of her apartment. One is about camp. One is about being a bad vegetarian. One about a demanding boss. Many of these essays feel like stories I'd hear at the bar from someone in the group, and then I'd forget about it quickly. They feel so common, which is at once a good thing and a bad thing. Like it's good that so many people can relate to being roped into a wedding they didn't want to be involved with (that's happened to me, too), but you got to make it so interesting and different to make me care beyond that surface level "Oh! Me too!" reaction. Many of these essays didn't deliver that for me.

Some of them were interesting, but again they lacked something, let's call it depth, that I hoped it would have. Like when she found out her mom was married before, it ends with no one really caring much about it. Well, if no one ultimately cares, is that really worth an essay? I know it's trying to show how interesting it is that no one cares that the mom had a previous husband that Crosley didn't know about...but is that true? I don't think so. If it's a personal essay, and if you are writing about something that you don't think is important to your person...why should I care? That doesn't seem right to me.

It's a nice read, not a must read. So if you got some government money to spend and want to pump the sales to give people associated with Diana more confidence about her book, then I'd buy this.

I will say after reading this, I could pump out a book like this. I got stories on par with everything Sloane wrote here. I don't have an apparently inexhaustible source of stories like Sedaris, nor have I found a topic I really want to investigate pithily like Sarah Vowell. But one book of scattershot stories from my life like ITTBC is plenty doable. I might have to work on something, see what I can do.

viva el mustache