Early on, we learn that Karr’s father is an alcoholic, that, when she was young, her mother threatened to kill her and her sister with a carving knife, that she is now divorced and has a grownup son. All this, mind you, is merely background. In the foreground are a lackadaisical stint in college, a bar-tending job, Karr’s introduction to the “pre-poetry-slam oral art” of Etheridge Knight, her own beginnings as an “experimental” poet, and her falling in love with Warren, her soon-to-be husband who, in stark contrast to Karr’s blue-collar upbringing, is the scion of an influential New England family.
For readers familiar with the literature of conversion, it might be tempting to nod politely to Mary Karr’s Lit as simply one more modestly interesting tale in a long string of such stories extending back to Augustine and St. Paul. To shrug off the book in this way would be a mistake.
Two things set Karr’s memoir apart. First, she does not flinch from brutal truths about herself, not only pre-, but post-conversion. Second, she gets out of the way of her own story, allowing her narrative and its players to manifest epiphanies many writers would simply preach about.
We soon learn Karr is developing a drinking problem: “I don’t drink every day, but I find myself unpredictably blotto at inopportune times.” She gets drunk at her own wedding. Her drinking takes her to ever-new lows that culminate in a crisis best left for readers to discover for themselves.
Karr’s tale of her unfolding conversion is at its best when she describes her interactions with new-found friends and with her Higher Power.
When Joan, a new recovery friend, suggests that Karr trust her recovery group more, Karr asks, “You’re asking me to put my life in the hands of strangers who give not one real [s___] for my true well being?” Her friend answers, “They probably care more than you do,” and adds that Karr’s solutions to life’s problems often involve “buying a flamethrower.”
Describing one of her early prayers, she writes: “‘Thanks, H.P.,’ I say, but it actually shames me, for some reason, to say such a dumb thing.”
I rarely read spiritual memoirs that do not have some sort of angle: Believe this set of principles, follow that practice, or support this cause. I do not mind people having an agenda, but I always hope they contain or at least mute them. Mary Karr simply tells her story as best she can and keeps the preaching to a minimum. She has succeeded far better than most.
J. STEPHEN RHODES is a Presbyterian minister in Berea, Ky., and the author of the collection of poems, The Time I Didn’t Know What to Do Next.
