"Self-Help" by Lorrie Moore (published 1985)

The title of Lorrie Moore’s book of short stories, Self-Help, is especially striking today when being happy and carefree is pretty much “advertised” to us, not only by self-help books but by a constant flow of signage posted on social media (particularly motivational quotes), also as images of normalcy are shown to us as those being full of smiles and radiating positivity (shown especially by magazines and on television). There is also the influx of artwork with inspirational sayings on them plastered all over our walls. Restaurants and dance clubs have wanted us to “drink and be merry” for ages.

Though I’m pointing this out, I’m not saying I’m exempt from this at all; I post “motivational” quotes on my Facebook page all the time and have a piece of fake ancient stone nailed to my bathroom wall that reads: “Faith is the essence of all things, Hope reflects our inner courage, Love conquers all”. (But does this ever turn you off? Don’t you sometimes want to be OK with being sad or angry or psychotic? Cynical? They will tell you “it’s OK to be sad or angry or psychotic”. Do we really *need* these reminders? Can we do without them, figure things out by experience?)

What Moore’s Self-Help does is reveal what’s underneath all of this – which I don’t think can be called a façade – but underneath this struggle to attain a particular kind of peace within ourselves – what *is* it that happens on the way? The world keeps filling us in on what a happy life entails, but what this book does is an act of subversion. Moore tells stories of characters that try to control themselves and their gut instincts and then fail, or else characters that throw away the act of controlling their inner emotions and desires completely and delve headlong into life as it comes to them, reacting and adapting to environments in ways that destroy themselves and sometimes the people surrounding them. This is important: the failure of the act of trying to be a certain way always leaves room for a bit of knowledge that this specific person/character truthfully lived *their* life and also found an intangible piece of themselves along the way. Moore’s book is a reinvention of self-help through well-crafted fiction.

That being said, Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help is tragically funny. The book is comprised of nine short stories. The first is about a young girl experiencing an affair with a married man and the banality of the experience, as well as the very real attempt of the young girl to remain indifferent to the situation, while still holding her lover’s interest. The result of this: awkward moments. Moore’s description in one scene: “When he is fast asleep upon you, in the middle of the night, send your left arm out slowly toward the nightstand like a mechanical limb programmed for a secret intelligence mission, and bring the ski garb picture back close to your face in the dark and try to study the features [of his wife] over his shoulder… slip carefully out, like a shoe horn… and go to the closet… stare at the clothes… look at the shoes… they are like small cruise missiles.”

In the second, Moore tells the story of a another young girl’s experience during the events leading up to her parent’s split; how she once saw her father as this perfect human being, so talented and so funny, and then that perception slowly changing over time, as her father, for whatever reason/s, loses his fondness for her mother (perhaps she becomes less interesting to him because of his artistic endeavors). Her mother starts to lose her mind. Moore writes of this: “When your parents divide, you, too, bifurcate. You cleave and bubble and break in two, live two lives, half of you crying every morning on the dock at sunrise, black hair fading to dusky gray, part of you travelling to some other town where you teach school and tell jokes in an Italian accent in a bar and make people laugh.”

“The Kid’s Guide To Divorce” is the perfect follow-up to the previous story. At only two pages, this story offers the alternative reaction to parents going their separate ways. A little girl entertains herself and her mother as they watch movies and shows on television. She feels cozy, she can be goofy. She is safe and secure. Her mother is her best friend. But what after this evening of R&R with mother? Moore lets us think on that by capturing the scene so perfectly and ending with a goodnight.

“How” means: how is it that you leave your lover who you have loved? Especially someone who adores you? The time it takes to finally do it is forever. A sadness lingering before the urgency to do it becomes a reality. Imagination takes hold. Moore writes: “Dream about rainbows, about escapes, about wizards. Your past will fly by you, event after event, like Dorothy’s tornadoed neighborhood, past the blown-out window. Airborne… wave hello, good-bye…”. So *that* is how.

Each story is as good or even better than the previous. One about a woman’s planned suicide after she discovers she has cancer. There are voices of acceptance as well as of dissent. What does she do? Another story is a timeline of events concerning specific experiences with *your* mother, going backward from after she has already died. Moore writes as if these were universal, and adds actual happenings like “The Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered” (1947). Then Moore writes a story about another separation of lovers, a completely different story, with completely different sentiments and hurdles. The second to last is a story of not wanting to become a writer but then doing it because it’s enjoyable, even if others don’t get it. You move onward. The last: an overweight mother deals with a cheating husband by stealing money from her company and then doing something unimaginable. But, before this: her escape into nature without a care in the world, and at the end, the best present.

These stories are astonishingly real. Sometimes we are alone in our minds and Self-Help is an exercise in sharing different fears. Lorrie Moore is a powerfully personal writer, and by the end you should be able to smile at the world with a sense of connection.