Daily Chai

Fascinating tales of therapy

If you've ever been in therapy, thought about going into therapy, had a friend in therapy, or a friend who you thought needed therapy ... well you get the picture. In an age where we all have at least a cursory familiarity with Freud's theories of psychoanalysis and our language is peppered with psychobabble like "processing" events and "getting closure," we've pretty much all been touched by therapy, whether we realize it or not.

Which is why I think so many people would enjoy Love's Executioner, by Stanford Professor of Psychiatry Irvin Yalom, who provides a rare view from the psychiatrist's chair as he works with patients struggling to lose weight, confront death, mourn losses or just mend broken hearts.

The title, in case you are wondering, is the title of the first story in the book and refers to Yalom's own reticence in working with love sick patients. He explains:

I do not like work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection. I hate to be love's executioner.

Sounds rather grim, I agree, but the outcome of that particular story for which the book is named will probably surprise you as much as it surprised Yalom. The great thing about this book is how Yalom is again and again challenged on his own assumptions, surprised by his patients and forced to learn the lesson over and over again that there is no such thing as a text book case in psychotherapy. It's also interesting to see how he is forced to explore his own issues through his patients.

30% good advice; 70% silliness

How Not To Look Old does have some good advice, though much of it is stuff that the resonably style-minded woman might figure out on her own, like how dark red lipsticks are just not flattering over 40 and how highlights around the face soften the appearance of wrinkles. It even contains a few bona fide tips, like the recommendation of a certain primer that supposedly works wonders under foundation. (Need to check that one out!) And, it argues against facelifts, which the author maintains, serve only to make you look like you are old enough to have a facelift, since "young people don't do that."

But I am surprised by the generally great reviews of this book, which all in all is more one long recommendation for sporting a slim, long blonde haired look, than for looking young, whoever you are. Now, I, like the author, don't believe so much in aging gracefully. I think that women who let themselves go gray before their time are making a mistake -- at least usually. And I think that it's better to try to appear youthful than to embrace your wrinkles and extra fat and dowdy clothing. In essence, I see no problem with fighting age. But I also believe that you can do this without looking like the author herself on the cover of the book ... a lovely look she has, but I don't think you need to become a clone of her to fight age. I think that while maintenance is important, looking young is more about finding your personal style than on following her all of recommendations, including no hair bands and no ballet flats, which after a while start to sound sort of random.

Even stranger, right after she condemns dark hair and hair without bangs, she includes a picture of Demi Moore, complete with her straight long and very dark hair, in a "young and hip hall of fame" in the back of the book. And right after insisting that Uggs are out for anyone over 40, she offers a photo of the book's models, all of them mothers over 40, and guess what? Two of the three of them are wearing Uggs.

Oh and guess who else she includes in her Young and Hip Hall of Fame? Oprah. Don't suppose Krupp had any ulterior motive there.

Have garage sale, change your life

Feng Shui is such a tired topic that I hate to recommend anything having to do with it. I haven't Feng shui'd my house (could never imagine that) and I have a hard time believing that a certain object placed in a certain corner of my house will make all the difference in my love life. Besides, almost every Feng Shui book I've ever paged through seemed to scream that it was written by some unintuitive, unimaginative person who was so eager to get a contract for a book that would have an evergreen shelf life in a groovy new-age store that he or she lifted all the basic tips out of another, already published book on Feng Shui.

I did say almost every book. When I think of all the influential things I've read in recent years, two Feng Shui books by Karen Kingston rank up there, much as my intellectual self hates to admit it. Whenever I take the time to clean under my couch or clean the receipts out of my wallet, I am reminded of Kingston's book, "Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui," which focuses not so much on the different corners of your home as on all the stuff you hold onto, often unnecessarily, and what it says about you. Old love letters from someone who broke your heart? Throw them out. Old clothing you paid a lot for but haven't worn in years? Give it all away. Now.

Kingston says it's all about creating a positive relationship with the space you inhabit and making room for good, new things to flow in. We can't really explain how it works, but we seem to intuitively know that it does, whether we are hoarders, emotionally clutching onto something from our past, or minimalists, which in its most extreme form can signal an unwillingness to have the good things that arrive in our lives stick around.

What keeps edgy people up at night?

Beth Lisick is a reasonably well known Bay Area writer and even though I was not personally familiar with her work, when I found her new hardcover in a store in the Castro recently, the name rung a bell and the bio on the book jacket was compelling enough to me that I ... purchased one of her older books, "Everybody Into The Pool," now out in paperback.

It's a memoir of sorts. A collection of essays about her life from her admittedly upper middle class childhood to her ascent/descent into the edgier life of Mission warehouses and one night stands, aspirations to lesbianism, dive bars and the dive bands that play in them. Much of it is quite well written and, in fairness, many of the descriptions of Bay Area culture were right on. It kept me going.

Here's my question: Are some people really too cool to have genuine angst, really deep fears or insecurities? Because judging from Lisick's work you'd think her troubles are all of the most superficial nature: which thrift shop to buy her clothes and coming to terms with the truth that much as she'd like to be, she really isn't attracted to women. Oh yeah, and basically bragging about how bad a mother she is, letting her little boy out in public with baby acne and a girlie outfit on, when we all know that this is a tone that is only acceptable among educated upper middle class types confident that their parenting skills are beyond reproach.

Lisick tends to get good reviews, perhaps because all of us wish that the only troubles we had were cool troubles. But this one review on Amazon really summarizes some of my own problems with the book: "Okay, so Beth Lisick is cooler than you. And she's going to pound that into you over and over again so you know it."

We all sin in our dreams

The full quote is, "We all sin in our dreams with people who wouldn't remotely interest us in our waking lives."

It's from Snow, the novel by Turkish Pulitzer Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk, which I was reading before he won the Pulitzer, honest!

Specifically, it's the fifth complete sentence on the 123rd page of the book. In case you haven't heard, there's been something circulating for sometime now advising people to pick up the book closest to them and read sentence five on line 123. No, you are not supposed to go hunting for the most impressive title in your collection, and yes, Snow was really the book closest to me the very first time I tried this, although God knows I read plenty of more shallow stuff.

I love the quote I found in Snow the very first time I tried this, that I tried it again and again with other books, but never found anything remotely as good. Full disclosure. The quote was from an older edition of Snow. I checked in a book store recently, and came up with something else that also wasn't as good.

New Collected works from author who never should have gone out of print

I am delighted to see this newly published Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, a wonderfully precise and concise short story writer whose works never should have gone out of print, but did.

Had Hempel never written anything other than In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried, she would still deserve to be a celebrated writer. As it is, she's put out a number of great stories in a series of collections, though personally I preferred her earlier work over Tumble Home, an attempt at a novel from a writer whose trademark is short short stories. It didn't really work for me.

Years ago I read a scathing review of a writer (I don't remember who anymore) who, the reviewer said, belonged to the "anorexic school" of literature. She thought she was striking and sleek, the review went (I paraphrase here), but actually, she was dangerously thin. I mention this only to make the point that Hempel, at her best, is the sort of author who can really pull off a great economy with words, and create a vast world in a few pages.

I don't usually hesitate to lend books to friends, nor do I keep track of whether they are returned to me. But years ago I lent Hempel's now out-of-print collection, "At The Gates of The Animal Kingdom," to a friend who now lives in another continent. I didn't realize at the time that even the most celebrated and gifted writers sometimes go out of print.

To describe it as "intelligent chick lit" would be selling it short

Years ago, when "contemporary women's fiction" was a label for writers like Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel and Ann Beattie, I loved the genre. But somewhere along the line, I realized that many of the new books by women writers -- or men for that matter -- were so underwhelming I regretted buying them. Crisp writing became flaccid and astute observations were replaced by cliches. One book seemed almost interchangeable with another.

These days it's much more rare for me to find a contemporary novel that really excites me, and for that reason, I'm a little -- um three years! -- behind the curve in recommending Meghan Daum's "The Quality of Life Report," a wonderful book that unfortunately is now out of print (some book reviewer I am!) but fortunately, is not all that hard to find (I found five in a friendly neighborhood used bookstore).

Brief synopsis: a twentysomething New Yorker working in publishing moves to Nebraska where she enjoys new adventures with Midwestern men, farm living and tanning salons. I know, very chick-lit sounding. But the book is much more: sharp and funny and moving, achieving what so many of these hapless successful single gal stories fail to do, by making that main character the subject of the harshest criticism when all is said and done.

Here's Daum's east coast girl main character describing her new love interest in the heartland:

He was wearing nothing but cut-off shorts and flip-flops. He carried a tank top in his hand and had a beard and wore small round glasses. My first instinct was to be frightened. But then he waved hello nonchalantly and I noticed that he looked like Brad Pitt might have looked if Brad Pitt had lived either during the Civil War times or the late 1960s. I realize this is an odd mix of genres, but this guy had them perfectly mixed. He was a sort of Jeremiah Johnson meets Brad Pitt. His blond hair had a strawlike quality. The glasses were more like spectacles. He had a tattoo of an eagle on his arm -- not a Budweiser kind of eagle but an actual eagle-in-the wilderness kind of eagle. He walked over to the beat-up pickup, took out what appeared to be a library book, and headed back toward the wooded area.

And then, after conversation ensues where she asks about the whereabouts of a jogging path and his response includes mention of the word "crick" (meaning of course, creek) and jokingly warns of the "plethora of poisonous snakes."

He was sexy in a way, in a redneck, woodsy, serial killer sort of way. ... He was interesting. Not necessarily interesting, since we'd barely spoken, but intriguing, largely due to the combination of "crick" and "plethora" and his squinty blue eyes.