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LIVINGPROOF #1: Crisis
($3.00 ppd or fair trade - but e-mail first - from Andrew Mall / PO Box 14211 / Chicago, IL / 60614 USA.
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Review by Randy Osborne
What starts out sounding like a soul-numbing hymn to consumerism, brand loyalty and popular culture takes a wistful and even lonely turn early on. In these essays, Andrew mulls the futility of spending, the abundance of junk in the world and the sadness caused by absent or unresponsive friends. More often than not, he nails it.
Passages abound like this one, describing how Andrew parted with his girlfriend after they had been together for almost five years (Andrew lived in her family’s house for several summers): “On the last day of summer our goodbyes were hurried, exactly the same as every morning. We both still had to go to work – the morning routine was unchanged. I drank my cup of coffee and ate my yogurt and made my lunch, and she did – well, she did whatever it is that girls do in the morning. I’ve never really understood all of it. I headed out the door, we shared a quick hug and a peck on the cheek and a “Call me” and I was off. I was driving back to college after work that afternoon and she was going back to her college that weekend, but it didn’t feel much different … I was saying the one goodbye that I never thought I was going to, and it really didn’t feel much different.”
Andrew brushes up against what makes personal writing like this hard – and he manages to back away just enough to make it still possible. At the end of this essay, for example, he writes that he has seen the girl “a few times” and each time their meeting has been “strange.” He won’t elaborate, he adds, because “I’m sure you can see how it might be strange.” But each meeting, he writes, has ended with “a hurried goodbye, a quick hug, a peck on the cheek and a ‘Call me.’”
It’s a nice fat chunk of reading for three bucks. Worth every dime.
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