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Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism
“Reading Scratched gave me the feeling of standing very close to a blazing fire. It is that brilliant, that intense, and one of the finest explorations I know of what it means to be a woman and an artist.” —Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend and Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction In this bold and brilliant memoir, the acclaimed author of the novel Museum Pieces and the collection Mendocino Fire explores the ferocious desire for perfection which has shaped her writing life as well as her rich, dramatic, and constantly surprising personal life .
In the decade between age twenty-seven and thirty-seven, Elizabeth Tallent published five literary books with Knopf, her short stories appeared in The New Yorker, and she secured a coveted teaching job at Stanford University. But this extraordinary start to her career was followed by twenty-two years of silence. She wrote —or rather published— nothing at all. Why? Scratched is the remarkable response to that question. Elizabeth’s story begins in a hospital in mid-1950s suburban Washington, D.C., when her mother refuses to hold her newborn daughter, shocking behavior that baffles the nurses. Imagining her mother’s perfectionist ideal at this critical moment, Elizabeth moves back and forth in time, juxtaposing moments in the past with the present in this innovative and spellbinding narrative. She traces her journey from her early years in which she perceived herself as “the child whose flaws let disaster into an otherwise perfect family,” to her adulthood, when perfectionism came to affect everything. As she toggles between teaching at Stanford in Palo Alto and the Mendocino coast where she lives, raises her son Gabriel, and pursues an important psychoanalysis, Elizabeth grapples with the ferocious desire for perfection which has shaped her personal life and writing life. Eventually, she finds love and acceptance in the most unlikely place, and finally accepts an “as is” relationship with herself and others. Her final triumph is the writing of this extraordinary memoir, filled with wit, humor, and heart—a brave book that repeatedly searches for the emotional truth beneath the conventional surface of existence.
In the decade between age twenty-seven and thirty-seven, Elizabeth Tallent published five literary books with Knopf, her short stories appeared in The New Yorker, and she secured a coveted teaching job at Stanford University. But this extraordinary start to her career was followed by twenty-two years of silence. She wrote —or rather published— nothing at all. Why? Scratched is the remarkable response to that question. Elizabeth’s story begins in a hospital in mid-1950s suburban Washington, D.C., when her mother refuses to hold her newborn daughter, shocking behavior that baffles the nurses. Imagining her mother’s perfectionist ideal at this critical moment, Elizabeth moves back and forth in time, juxtaposing moments in the past with the present in this innovative and spellbinding narrative. She traces her journey from her early years in which she perceived herself as “the child whose flaws let disaster into an otherwise perfect family,” to her adulthood, when perfectionism came to affect everything. As she toggles between teaching at Stanford in Palo Alto and the Mendocino coast where she lives, raises her son Gabriel, and pursues an important psychoanalysis, Elizabeth grapples with the ferocious desire for perfection which has shaped her personal life and writing life. Eventually, she finds love and acceptance in the most unlikely place, and finally accepts an “as is” relationship with herself and others. Her final triumph is the writing of this extraordinary memoir, filled with wit, humor, and heart—a brave book that repeatedly searches for the emotional truth beneath the conventional surface of existence.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published February 25, 2020
91 people are currently reading
2830 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Tallent
28 books72 followersElizabeth Tallent's short stories have been published in literary magazines and journals such as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's Magazine, The Threepenny Review, and North American Review, and her stories have been reprinted in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize collections.
She has taught literature and creative writing at the University of California, Irvine, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the University of California, Davis. She has been a faculty member at Stanford University since 1994.
She has taught literature and creative writing at the University of California, Irvine, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the University of California, Davis. She has been a faculty member at Stanford University since 1994.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
September 24, 2020
I hate the star system. I've chosen two stars because they indicate that the book was "okay". That's the description I would use for this memoir. It doesn't seem right for me to call it "self-indulgent", especially since it's a memoir so what else could it be? But there are memoirs that are stories of survival, memoirs that are celebrations of family, memoirs that are revelations of past incidents that carved one's future, etc. In fact, there are probably styles of memoirs for every different sort of person out there. This one just didn't appeal to me. I found the part that dealt with her mother's reaction to motherhood fascinating. I found her lengthy meditations on her own life...lengthy. People struggle with many and varied issues. Perhaps for me it comes down to this: Reading about someone's struggle with perfectionism in a period of time when the world is falling apart just didn't seem like a critical activity I wanted to engage in. That's the best I can do. If you're issue is perfectionism, you might like this. My issue is also perfectionism and I didn't.
May 26, 2020
This was a difficult read but I'm very glad I read it. Perfectionism is toxic and Elizabeth Tallent does an exceptional job in sharing the difficulties it has caused in her life in addition to her writing. Much of this memoir is exquisitely written, although there are some sections where I found myself lost in very long, complex sentences and had to read a section over several times to get my bearings. I learned quite a bit about myself from reading this and for that I'm grateful. 4 1/2 rounding up to 5 stars.
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March 16, 2020Professor Tallent was one of my favorite writing professors. It was great reading her memoir and understanding where she came from.
April 8, 2020
***Goodreads Giveaway Win***
Now I know what people mean when they say a book seems MFA workshopped. This book was MFA workshopped within an inch of its life. I could tell the writer put in a ton of effort to each sentence; to each word but somewhere she the lost the story. What she arrived at was words that sounded pretty went strung together but made zero sense to the reader.
Now I know what people mean when they say a book seems MFA workshopped. This book was MFA workshopped within an inch of its life. I could tell the writer put in a ton of effort to each sentence; to each word but somewhere she the lost the story. What she arrived at was words that sounded pretty went strung together but made zero sense to the reader.
February 29, 2020
This is a deep dive into the author’s life and struggles with perfectionism, which is more destructive than many realize. The book is a little difficult to read but there are some excellent insights into the author’s issues that kept her from completing and publishing for two decades. Some of the issues hit a little too close to home, but I’m glad I gave this a shot.
January 12, 2021
I don’t know. A very good writer, who by her admission of the perfectionism that discouraged her to interrupt her writing for 20 years, also helps identify just what makes her writing so good: precision, sharp observation, exhaustiveness. But while her life is interesting - wild and bohemian, poorly planned, ultimately secured by her own writerly achievements and ability to find safe harbor with sympathetic strangers - it at times becomes tedious. Some of the more interior, analytic passages made me realize that reading about someone’s therapy experiences is a bit like listening to someone talk about their child’s nap schedule or their day of fishing out on the lake - it’s really only interesting if you also have a child who can’t sleep or have planned a day of fishing on that same lake.
I admire so much about her writing and her ability to conjure a scene, a place, a time, a state of mind etc but she often refused to provide satisfying closure after building to the climax. I feel like if you’re going to tell your story, you need to tell us about the loose ends. What happened with her first husband, a man I could only admire and sympathize with by the end? What happened with her second husband, her beloved therapist who she describes naked (including the veins of his penis) but then ditches without much explanation? And how exactly did she end up marrying the woman from the antiques store after all that? We get only vignettes of shopkeeper charm in that prelude.
AND. . .WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED IN THE REST STOP PHONE BOOTH?
Ultimately, the fact that she dropped the phone booth story completely - the most exciting, mystifying and scary anecdote in the whole book - just at the height of its precisely wrought tension felt perverse, like she was mercilessly manipulating the reader with her writerly wiles. I wonder why she did this. It wasn’t the only example of her reader-abandonment, but it was the most heinous. It was as if abandoning the story was her way of ditching the reader before we could leave her. She does admit to having abandonment issues, after all. . .
I admire so much about her writing and her ability to conjure a scene, a place, a time, a state of mind etc but she often refused to provide satisfying closure after building to the climax. I feel like if you’re going to tell your story, you need to tell us about the loose ends. What happened with her first husband, a man I could only admire and sympathize with by the end? What happened with her second husband, her beloved therapist who she describes naked (including the veins of his penis) but then ditches without much explanation? And how exactly did she end up marrying the woman from the antiques store after all that? We get only vignettes of shopkeeper charm in that prelude.
AND. . .WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED IN THE REST STOP PHONE BOOTH?
Ultimately, the fact that she dropped the phone booth story completely - the most exciting, mystifying and scary anecdote in the whole book - just at the height of its precisely wrought tension felt perverse, like she was mercilessly manipulating the reader with her writerly wiles. I wonder why she did this. It wasn’t the only example of her reader-abandonment, but it was the most heinous. It was as if abandoning the story was her way of ditching the reader before we could leave her. She does admit to having abandonment issues, after all. . .
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 25, 2020
After an incredibly promising start, publishing 5 critically acclaimed books and nabbing a prestigious professorship at Stanford, Elizabeth Tallent published nothing for 22 years. This memoir is her reckoning with the perfectionism that has both made her and plagued her. What results is a brilliant and enriching examination of the facets and faces of perfectionism through a woman’s life from her very birth to present day.
March 26, 2020
It feels mean to criticize an author who writes to explain why she couldn’t write a book for 22 years due to perfectionism. Part I had such a meandering beginning that I couldn’t get my bearings until this sentence: The summer my mother told me the story of how she had not been willing to take me I was nineteen. We learn how the author’s in utero scratches marked her as imperfect and that her mother refused to hold her at the hospital as a newborn. Later we get more on this key incident: While she [her mother] was alive there was never a moment when I could have asked why she told the story to me and what if anything she hoped would come of having told it. Even though it was never discussed between mother and daughter, it's the origin story at the center of the book.
Part II has some of the best writing as Tallent describes 1950s suburban America as an incubator for replication, imitation, and suppression of individualism: The daylight absence of the men, the fathers, imbued the suburb with the suspense of desertion. Every blade of grass in every lawn was waiting. Every wife was waiting, every dog with pricked ears was waiting, and each blade of grass, each wife, each dog and child, whatever else they did, held still. This part also has a section on perfectionism as a trait that again, I thought could have gone earlier (a theme for this review): When other afflictions overwrite reality with fantasy—alcoholism, or addictions to gambling or sex—their self-destructiveness is bleakly acknowledged, but perfectionism’s rep as ambition on steroids remains glossy: it can present not as delusion, but as an advantageous form of sanity. ... A supposedly surefire means of pleasing a job interviewer is to answer What is your biggest flaw? with I’m a perfectionist.
Part III has Tallent emerging as a writer and parent, describing her path through therapy, marriages and jobs, to her current career as a writing teacher where she’s “learned to extend a welcome to mishaps, failures, rifts, smudges, to effortfulness in general, to what I’d call, in talking with my students, process, is to conceal a thousand, ten thousand, eruptions of repudiation.” And ultimately, she's learned to “try to love this incarnation.”
Ironically, my response to this book was mostly organizational: why is it ordered in such a non-linear fashion? - which maybe reveals my perfectionist streak. :-)
Part II has some of the best writing as Tallent describes 1950s suburban America as an incubator for replication, imitation, and suppression of individualism: The daylight absence of the men, the fathers, imbued the suburb with the suspense of desertion. Every blade of grass in every lawn was waiting. Every wife was waiting, every dog with pricked ears was waiting, and each blade of grass, each wife, each dog and child, whatever else they did, held still. This part also has a section on perfectionism as a trait that again, I thought could have gone earlier (a theme for this review): When other afflictions overwrite reality with fantasy—alcoholism, or addictions to gambling or sex—their self-destructiveness is bleakly acknowledged, but perfectionism’s rep as ambition on steroids remains glossy: it can present not as delusion, but as an advantageous form of sanity. ... A supposedly surefire means of pleasing a job interviewer is to answer What is your biggest flaw? with I’m a perfectionist.
Part III has Tallent emerging as a writer and parent, describing her path through therapy, marriages and jobs, to her current career as a writing teacher where she’s “learned to extend a welcome to mishaps, failures, rifts, smudges, to effortfulness in general, to what I’d call, in talking with my students, process, is to conceal a thousand, ten thousand, eruptions of repudiation.” And ultimately, she's learned to “try to love this incarnation.”
Ironically, my response to this book was mostly organizational: why is it ordered in such a non-linear fashion? - which maybe reveals my perfectionist streak. :-)
April 16, 2020
First book in a long time that I had to go back and reread sentence after sentence—making sure I understood the structure, where the verb was hiding. It is beautiful, a triumph. A meditation on mental illness. A poem dedicated to the fleeting details of identity.
February 26, 2020
Memoir as make it stop,
audacious in conceit, the dizzying, dragging minutia,
of a life lived grasping for metaphors.
audacious in conceit, the dizzying, dragging minutia,
of a life lived grasping for metaphors.
February 18, 2020
I find it hard to review memoirs because it feels as though I'm judging someone's life and life choices. That's doubly the case here because this is really the story of how Tallent struggled and continues to struggle with perfectionism, which is more destructive than many realize. Is she blaming her issues on her mother, who refused to hold her immediately after her birth because of a small scratch? Was she imprinted as an infant? Perfectionism took a huge toll on Tallent, who was unable to complete and publish anything for 22 years. This is at times a challenge to read but she offers interesting insight into her issues. Thanks to edelweiss for the ARC. For Tallent fans who have been waiting a long time for new work.
February 7, 2025
4.5 ☆☆☆☆ I really liked it.
This is a memoir, yes, but it is also a very helpful dissection of perfectionism: what it really is, what it disguises itself as and how it destroys you. For me it served as a warning as well: do I want to spend twenty years not creating anything simply because it is not perfect? Do I need twenty years of self-abuse masquerading as productivity before I can find balance? The author actually lived through this TWENTY YEAR struggle before finally writing this book and I've clearly been on that same path for a while. I recommend this book if any of this resonates with you, it is wonderfully written.
Some quotes that spoke to me:
This is a memoir, yes, but it is also a very helpful dissection of perfectionism: what it really is, what it disguises itself as and how it destroys you. For me it served as a warning as well: do I want to spend twenty years not creating anything simply because it is not perfect? Do I need twenty years of self-abuse masquerading as productivity before I can find balance? The author actually lived through this TWENTY YEAR struggle before finally writing this book and I've clearly been on that same path for a while. I recommend this book if any of this resonates with you, it is wonderfully written.
Some quotes that spoke to me:
"...a paradox of perfectionism is its nurturance of haphazardness, disarray, and negligence. In perfectionism a task can be done two ways: flawlessly, or not at all. The charm of not at all lies in yielding to the guilt-infused sensuousness of procrastination. Letting things slide is an erotics of dread. If you haven't even made a start on some task facing you, there's zero change of your having done it badly–according to a perfectionist (il)logic, you're blameless, and since blameless is your preferred psychic state, you don't mind generating a fair amount of chaos to sustain it."
"...perfectionism's rep as ambition on steroids remains glossy: it can present not as a delusion but as an advantageous form of sanity. The advantage lies in perfectionism's command of the sufferer's energies, its power to intensify, focus, motivate. Its exalted goals are likewise treated as plusses. [...]the trouble a perfectionist gets into can be hidden. The materials necessary for her to damage herself are readily available between her own ears. Perfectionism offers self-sufficiency within affliction."
"...interest proved to be the best possible antivenom for perfectionism–perfectionism is in a sense the failure to be interested in things as they are, or people as the are, the mortal loneliness of perfectionism originates in its blindness to what is right before one's eyes."
June 6, 2020
I can't decide how I feel about this book. The premise, "a memoir of perfectionism," was intriguing (obviously – I read it), but I gained little insight into that particular affliction. I kept wanting the book to revolve around that central theme, but instead, it kept spooling out into a pretty straightforward life story, with a series of questionable choices. Often those choices were not explained as a consequence of her perfectionism, and I kept looking for those lines drawing me back to the book's stated theme. The chronology of the writer's life has so many gaps, I kept thinking I'd accidentally pressed "shuffle" on my audiobook. At the end of one chapter, she's furtively writing stories on an old typewriter in the back of the bookstore where she works, and in the next, she's taking the job as director of Stanford's writing program. Given the impetus of this book was her 20-year absence from writing and publishing, I wanted to know more about the gaps in the story.
March 11, 2020
There's some irony in the fact that I feel myself unable to capture the brilliance of Elizabeth Tallent's Scratched. So I recommend that you read the New York Times review (link at the bottom) which actually does capture it perfectly, and I will go on to describe it imperfectly instead.
I always feel that if a book does not give you want you wanted or expected at all, but manages to give you something much better because of it, it must be a very good book. Scratched definitely belongs in this category. Tallent (insert what's-in-a-name joke here) does not really discuss her twenty-two-year absence from the literary scene in that much detail. Obviously, it was her perfectionism, but she does not really engage in any specifics about this literary lacuna. What she gives us instead are brilliant, bright flashes of writing: scenes, atmospheres, people, and notions that have burrowed deeply into my brain and have become as vivid as shots from a movie. I like her choice of not going with a clearly structured, chronological narrative, and the huge missing links between settings. These choices suit her themes and they make the descriptions (she is such a keen observer) stand out all the more clearly.
It's a slippery memoir which is play-acting, cloaking itself in novelistic descriptions, leaving you a bit dazed in the most delightful way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/bo...)
I always feel that if a book does not give you want you wanted or expected at all, but manages to give you something much better because of it, it must be a very good book. Scratched definitely belongs in this category. Tallent (insert what's-in-a-name joke here) does not really discuss her twenty-two-year absence from the literary scene in that much detail. Obviously, it was her perfectionism, but she does not really engage in any specifics about this literary lacuna. What she gives us instead are brilliant, bright flashes of writing: scenes, atmospheres, people, and notions that have burrowed deeply into my brain and have become as vivid as shots from a movie. I like her choice of not going with a clearly structured, chronological narrative, and the huge missing links between settings. These choices suit her themes and they make the descriptions (she is such a keen observer) stand out all the more clearly.
It's a slippery memoir which is play-acting, cloaking itself in novelistic descriptions, leaving you a bit dazed in the most delightful way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/bo...)
July 3, 2020
I felt in tune with the author's pain when the other people wouldn't act in exactly the right way.
Then again, it could also be noted that my pleasure with this volume may also stem from my appreciation of the examination of human psychology.
Or, or, or... could it also be that Asperger's stuff? I don't think they are connected, although she does describe stroking the couch's velvet towards the end, and I am familiar with how autistic/Aspergerians have particular sensitivities with touch...
I nearly balked away from this book due to her inscribing at the end To the Lighthouse which I absolutely hated with a fiery passion and totally wouldn't have minded burning if no one saw that I was book-burning. I'm glad I didn't, though. It was worth the brief discomfort.
Then again, it could also be noted that my pleasure with this volume may also stem from my appreciation of the examination of human psychology.
Or, or, or... could it also be that Asperger's stuff? I don't think they are connected, although she does describe stroking the couch's velvet towards the end, and I am familiar with how autistic/Aspergerians have particular sensitivities with touch...
I nearly balked away from this book due to her inscribing at the end To the Lighthouse which I absolutely hated with a fiery passion and totally wouldn't have minded burning if no one saw that I was book-burning. I'm glad I didn't, though. It was worth the brief discomfort.
June 24, 2024
This book feels like immersing yourself in a sparkling sea of words, each wave shining with introspection and wit. Tallent's journey through the challenges of perfectionism is incredibly captivating. She welcomes you into her mind like a fairy tale guide, leading you through her life’s twists and turns with eloquent prose. Her struggles and victories are described with such detail that it makes you want to take your time on every page, appreciating the beauty and the genuine honesty In the memoir, the author seamlessly transitions between poignant vulnerability and lively, playful reflections. Tallent's writing captures a captivating fusion of keen intellect and lyrical elegance. It feels akin to engaging in a conversation with a sagacious, slightly unconventional friend who effortlessly crafts thought-provoking expressions, offering fresh perspectives on the world.
Her poignant portrayal of the ceaseless quest for flawlessness is deeply relatable, yet she skillfully transcends individual experiences to capture the universal nature of this struggle through her adept storytelling. Every word she uses to depict her personal journey is akin to observing a virtuoso artist meticulously at work, each brushstroke purposeful and profound, culminating in a self-reflective masterpiece. Scratched is a captivating mix of thoughts and experiences, woven together with Tallent's skillful writing. If you enjoy beautifully written memoirs that explore deep ideas in an engaging way, you'll love this book. It's a gem waiting to be found. Immerse yourself in Tallent's enchanting story.
Her poignant portrayal of the ceaseless quest for flawlessness is deeply relatable, yet she skillfully transcends individual experiences to capture the universal nature of this struggle through her adept storytelling. Every word she uses to depict her personal journey is akin to observing a virtuoso artist meticulously at work, each brushstroke purposeful and profound, culminating in a self-reflective masterpiece. Scratched is a captivating mix of thoughts and experiences, woven together with Tallent's skillful writing. If you enjoy beautifully written memoirs that explore deep ideas in an engaging way, you'll love this book. It's a gem waiting to be found. Immerse yourself in Tallent's enchanting story.
April 15, 2020
Painful as an exorcism.
August 19, 2023
What the absolute fuck did I just read? I'll admit that the prose is compelling and I read the book in one sitting. Liz will always have that one over on me. And look, I get the whole artsy shtick of having an unlikeable yet somehow honest main character. But that honesty is marred by a truly frustrating lack of detail or follow up on characters and concepts introduced.
The book is split into 3 parts and the first part is definitely the best. I think a lot more could have gone into just the notions of abuse, trauma, mothers and daughters, mental illness, and motherhood in general. The book provides some context for the author's trauma but her life as a serial cheater (who not only sleeps with but marries and inevitably divorces the last therapist shes ever tried to get treatment from) who upends the life of her son multiple times doesn't feel like it has a point.
I expected this to be a memoir about mental illness, a genre I am greatly familiar with. I was hoping to read a book about someone like me who has struggled with perfectionism and can articulate just how debilitating it is and show some ways she's come to terms with it. I suppose she does show how fucked up perfectionism can be, though I'd argue that she's dealing with cptsd with OCD tendencies and extremely disorganized attachment more than anything.
Personally, I think this book should never have been published. It borders on self exploitation. She may have needed to write it but she is still very much sick and 1) doesn't seem to have any remorse for her harmful actions and 2) doesn't seem to have any intention of seeking quality treatment from someone she's not having sex with. She even admits that CBT would be helpful but that she can't resist more classically Freudian psychoanalysis. Also she's got a wife now and I feel like she's trying to imply that that somehow makes her awful relationship history okay. It doesn't.
There's also two parallel stories in which as a child and then adult she gets into a strange man's car but nothing ends up happening. It's a very good depiction of the tensions of rape culture but I'm not sure what those stories have to do with anything other than her obviously desperate search for a father figure and male rescuer.
I wish this lady the best but she needs serious help and I'm embarrassed for her that she put this book out into the world.
A book that does a lot of things this book claims to do but infinitely better is Self Compassion by Kristin Neff. She even talks about how she cheated on her first husband. But, y'know, feels bad and takes accountability for it.
The book is split into 3 parts and the first part is definitely the best. I think a lot more could have gone into just the notions of abuse, trauma, mothers and daughters, mental illness, and motherhood in general. The book provides some context for the author's trauma but her life as a serial cheater (who not only sleeps with but marries and inevitably divorces the last therapist shes ever tried to get treatment from) who upends the life of her son multiple times doesn't feel like it has a point.
I expected this to be a memoir about mental illness, a genre I am greatly familiar with. I was hoping to read a book about someone like me who has struggled with perfectionism and can articulate just how debilitating it is and show some ways she's come to terms with it. I suppose she does show how fucked up perfectionism can be, though I'd argue that she's dealing with cptsd with OCD tendencies and extremely disorganized attachment more than anything.
Personally, I think this book should never have been published. It borders on self exploitation. She may have needed to write it but she is still very much sick and 1) doesn't seem to have any remorse for her harmful actions and 2) doesn't seem to have any intention of seeking quality treatment from someone she's not having sex with. She even admits that CBT would be helpful but that she can't resist more classically Freudian psychoanalysis. Also she's got a wife now and I feel like she's trying to imply that that somehow makes her awful relationship history okay. It doesn't.
There's also two parallel stories in which as a child and then adult she gets into a strange man's car but nothing ends up happening. It's a very good depiction of the tensions of rape culture but I'm not sure what those stories have to do with anything other than her obviously desperate search for a father figure and male rescuer.
I wish this lady the best but she needs serious help and I'm embarrassed for her that she put this book out into the world.
A book that does a lot of things this book claims to do but infinitely better is Self Compassion by Kristin Neff. She even talks about how she cheated on her first husband. But, y'know, feels bad and takes accountability for it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 30, 2020
I've read Elizabeth Tallent's previous short story collection Mendocino Fire and enjoyed it. I had found about this one in advance and pre-ordered it.
This is a different and challenging approach to the memoir format, jumping around in chronology and through time. The first part is interesting, written in a somewhat experimental style about the night of the author's birth from her mother's perspective, how she couldn't hold her newborn baby for 3 days, the baby "scratched" and imperfect looking fresh from the womb instilling a sort of revulsion in the mother.
Every detail is extracted and excruciated over with long, dense dense sentences that are sometimes hard to grasp.
I suppose you could see how the author would pore over the details of this first portion of the memoir, writing and rewriting until she feels that it is constructed just right.
After this portion of the book, we jump into more conventional, autobiographical territory, and I was more engaged here. I loved the vignettes of childhood and family life and a young romance and young adulthood. Really enjoyed the poetry of the language and writing throughout. The bits of the book that are steeped in nostalgia ring true and I could've read a lot more of that stuff.
I just had one burning question throughout the memoir. It is supposedly a memoir of perfectionism and there is lots of mention of it in the book and how the author has it, but the book never presented many examples of her practicing it in her life. The book dust jacket flap states that Tallent didn't publish any writing for 22 years and it was due to this perfectionism, but we don't get to see this in the memoir.
I would like to have seen how it affected the writing process. Did she attempt stories during this time? Was she throwing away page after page of work that she couldn't quite get right? Or was she paralyzed to even start? How did her perfectionism affect her earlier works and life?
There also didn't seem to be any evidence presented in her day to day past life. She has a couple compulsive behaviors she shares, but that's it...So I was curious as to why this was presented as a focus of the memoir.
It seemed to me that the memoir was more of a memoir about introspection, and how too much can hamper you; life and its details observed too much, a desire to capture and preserve them in language and getting stuck in your own head and thoughts.
But what excellent language she comes up with to capture these details, and I was left wanting more, so that's why I give it 4 stars.
This is a different and challenging approach to the memoir format, jumping around in chronology and through time. The first part is interesting, written in a somewhat experimental style about the night of the author's birth from her mother's perspective, how she couldn't hold her newborn baby for 3 days, the baby "scratched" and imperfect looking fresh from the womb instilling a sort of revulsion in the mother.
Every detail is extracted and excruciated over with long, dense dense sentences that are sometimes hard to grasp.
I suppose you could see how the author would pore over the details of this first portion of the memoir, writing and rewriting until she feels that it is constructed just right.
After this portion of the book, we jump into more conventional, autobiographical territory, and I was more engaged here. I loved the vignettes of childhood and family life and a young romance and young adulthood. Really enjoyed the poetry of the language and writing throughout. The bits of the book that are steeped in nostalgia ring true and I could've read a lot more of that stuff.
I just had one burning question throughout the memoir. It is supposedly a memoir of perfectionism and there is lots of mention of it in the book and how the author has it, but the book never presented many examples of her practicing it in her life. The book dust jacket flap states that Tallent didn't publish any writing for 22 years and it was due to this perfectionism, but we don't get to see this in the memoir.
I would like to have seen how it affected the writing process. Did she attempt stories during this time? Was she throwing away page after page of work that she couldn't quite get right? Or was she paralyzed to even start? How did her perfectionism affect her earlier works and life?
There also didn't seem to be any evidence presented in her day to day past life. She has a couple compulsive behaviors she shares, but that's it...So I was curious as to why this was presented as a focus of the memoir.
It seemed to me that the memoir was more of a memoir about introspection, and how too much can hamper you; life and its details observed too much, a desire to capture and preserve them in language and getting stuck in your own head and thoughts.
But what excellent language she comes up with to capture these details, and I was left wanting more, so that's why I give it 4 stars.
August 23, 2021
Entire swaths of Elizabeth Tallent's memoir read like prose poems. Her writing is lyrical and metaphorical, and it runs at a brisk pace--literaly. Tallent will write in a single graph for pages, strings of run-on sentences together for a tone that's lyrical and urgent. There's an irony there, relying on run-ons for a memoir about perfectionism. But it does give the reader a sense of Tallent's discomfort in her own skin.
I'm always struck by memoirs that leave so much unsaid. Writing memoir is the act of telling readers, "Come, be a voyeur." It's also therapeutic for the writer, yes, and there's the battle between "Be honest and detailed" and "But this is private." So I understand the desire to not, for example, dive into how Tallent's first marrage ended. And I understand the desire to give such minimal detailing on her second marriage. And maybe those details are unimportant. But as a reader, I still felt like Tallent withheld information I needed. Again, especially when we're talking about someone struggling with perfecionism--how do you not dive into details of a failure? Of something that is clearly *not* perfect?
I originally picked up this book because I'm fascinated by perfecionism. It's something I, in no way, suffer from. In fact, even though I consider myself an incredibly empathetic person, I struggle to empathize with perfectionists because it's so illogical to me. A favorite motto is "Done is better than perfect." So I was incredibly interested to peek inside a perfectionist's mind, to better understand "why" and, hopefully, to better empathize with the perfectionists I know. Tallent discusses her neurosis as just that: a neurosis. It's a disease, almost, something that shouldn't be bragged about, that hinders a life and makes it smaller than it could or should be. So many people do brag about their perfectionist tendancies that this view surprised me--in a good way. "This is something I need to fix" made Tallent's struggles more relatable than I thought possible.
Beautiful writing, gut-wrenching admissions. Highly recommended!
I'm always struck by memoirs that leave so much unsaid. Writing memoir is the act of telling readers, "Come, be a voyeur." It's also therapeutic for the writer, yes, and there's the battle between "Be honest and detailed" and "But this is private." So I understand the desire to not, for example, dive into how Tallent's first marrage ended. And I understand the desire to give such minimal detailing on her second marriage. And maybe those details are unimportant. But as a reader, I still felt like Tallent withheld information I needed. Again, especially when we're talking about someone struggling with perfecionism--how do you not dive into details of a failure? Of something that is clearly *not* perfect?
I originally picked up this book because I'm fascinated by perfecionism. It's something I, in no way, suffer from. In fact, even though I consider myself an incredibly empathetic person, I struggle to empathize with perfectionists because it's so illogical to me. A favorite motto is "Done is better than perfect." So I was incredibly interested to peek inside a perfectionist's mind, to better understand "why" and, hopefully, to better empathize with the perfectionists I know. Tallent discusses her neurosis as just that: a neurosis. It's a disease, almost, something that shouldn't be bragged about, that hinders a life and makes it smaller than it could or should be. So many people do brag about their perfectionist tendancies that this view surprised me--in a good way. "This is something I need to fix" made Tallent's struggles more relatable than I thought possible.
Beautiful writing, gut-wrenching admissions. Highly recommended!
March 29, 2020
Reminiscent of Nelson’s Argonauts narrative with jumbled time line snippets but mostly chronological, the no quotation dialogue in italics. I guess that’s a contemporary immediacy. Brilliance here, and imperfections, but Tallant finally makes peace with being imperfect, letting her guard down , being vulnerable, which she is, painfully so, but only in accepting her imperfections is she finally safe from the world and her self. She stops scratching herself to the bone in the end. Well, I hope. Near the beginning she writes, “How much honesty is possible about a child if one is no longer that child? Does having once been her make me an authority? Can I understand her better than I can my cat? How radically would what that child would say about her existence differ from what I have said? As I write this I feel the kind of sadness known as piercing because it feels like admitting uncertainty in regard to her experience is to lose her. In contrast, to claim absolute certainty in regard to the child’s experience feels like having her. (Not being her. Having.) But I know very well that no person whose experience can be narrated with absolute certainty exists or ever did. The paradox is that to write about her with the upmost honesty I am capable of feels continually like loss; it’s only the loss of her that convinces me I ever was her.“ I found Tallant’s existential view of herself spot on in that what she describes resonates with my own experience of remembering childhood, what it was like to be that person and was that person me? I think we all marvel at that. Well, I do.
January 28, 2021
3.5 stars for gorgeous, gorgeous writing, but it was often just too much for me: like a box of really rich, decadent truffles when a caramel nut chew would have been a nice change of pace occasionally.
"Still, this offers some ideas about memoir put in a new way, for instance:
How much honesty is possible about a child if one is no longer that child? Does having once been her make me an authority? Can I understand her better than I can my cat? How radically would what that child would say about her existence differ from what I have said? As I write this I feel the kind of sadness known as piercing because it feels like admitting uncertainty in regard to her experience is to lose her. In contrast, to claim absolute certainty in regard to the child’s experience feels like having her. ( Not being her. Having.) But I know very well that no person whose experience can be narrated with absolute certainty exists, or ever did. The paradox is that to write about her with the utmost honesty I’m capable of feels continually like loss; it’s only the loss of her that convinces me I ever was her.”
And then also I just loved this brief scene:
“... the morning following the heart surgery awaiting her five years down the line, the surgeon would enter the waiting room to report She’s conscious and asking for lipstick and then stand waiting for the laugh he’d anticipated as her daughters began scrambling through their purses, comparing their uncapped shades, saying Ugh, no and She won’t think that’s red enough and In the ballpark?”
"Still, this offers some ideas about memoir put in a new way, for instance:
How much honesty is possible about a child if one is no longer that child? Does having once been her make me an authority? Can I understand her better than I can my cat? How radically would what that child would say about her existence differ from what I have said? As I write this I feel the kind of sadness known as piercing because it feels like admitting uncertainty in regard to her experience is to lose her. In contrast, to claim absolute certainty in regard to the child’s experience feels like having her. ( Not being her. Having.) But I know very well that no person whose experience can be narrated with absolute certainty exists, or ever did. The paradox is that to write about her with the utmost honesty I’m capable of feels continually like loss; it’s only the loss of her that convinces me I ever was her.”
And then also I just loved this brief scene:
“... the morning following the heart surgery awaiting her five years down the line, the surgeon would enter the waiting room to report She’s conscious and asking for lipstick and then stand waiting for the laugh he’d anticipated as her daughters began scrambling through their purses, comparing their uncapped shades, saying Ugh, no and She won’t think that’s red enough and In the ballpark?”
October 22, 2021
The author's title emphasizes "perfectionism" but I perceived this as a memoir of interpersonal trauma starting in childhood and continuing through most of her relationships in life. The author uses the magical thinking defense of assuming that if she is perfect more losses won't happen, which is the only coping response she can imagine as a child. Only when she is a mother herself does she start to accept that "everybody makes mistakes", which her own child says calmly to her when milk is spilled.
The book includes some excerpts from professional research on perfectionism and some description of therapy sessions she attends. The form of the book presents her inner conflicts. There are no chapters and the paragraphs go on for pages: a manic rush of fragmented memories expressed with beautiful literary language of elaborate details.
The book includes some excerpts from professional research on perfectionism and some description of therapy sessions she attends. The form of the book presents her inner conflicts. There are no chapters and the paragraphs go on for pages: a manic rush of fragmented memories expressed with beautiful literary language of elaborate details.
April 23, 2021
I sought Elizabeth Tallent out after discovering her short story “Favor” in my neighborhood Goodwill bin.
It is included in the 1987 edition of the Best American Short Stories. For a native New Mexican now living elsewhere (a rainy, grey skies elsewhere) her story was like a love letter from the Land of Enchantment.
At first glance I was confused/disoriented while reading her Memoir Of Perfectionism; I was afraid it was too lyrical or abstract for my taste but tried again and soon a clarity and recognition emerged so I went back to the beginning & upon rereading discovered a deeply concentrated masterpiece that not only made perfect sense to me- I couldn’t stop reading- or as CD would say; “never wish it to lay”.
It is included in the 1987 edition of the Best American Short Stories. For a native New Mexican now living elsewhere (a rainy, grey skies elsewhere) her story was like a love letter from the Land of Enchantment.
At first glance I was confused/disoriented while reading her Memoir Of Perfectionism; I was afraid it was too lyrical or abstract for my taste but tried again and soon a clarity and recognition emerged so I went back to the beginning & upon rereading discovered a deeply concentrated masterpiece that not only made perfect sense to me- I couldn’t stop reading- or as CD would say; “never wish it to lay”.
January 27, 2022
I tried but couldn’t bear to finish this one. It pains me to rate a memoir so low but this was unreadable.
First, for a memoir about perfectionism, I didn’t seem how perfectionism fit in…at all? Occasionally the author would quote a psychiatrist and I felt like that was her checking the “clinical” box but as far as the anecdotes went, they were completely unrelated and all over the place. The only exception to this was the passage about her mom at the beginning but that was about her mom! Was I missing something?
The writing was atrocious. SO overwritten and paragraphs that went on for pages and pages. My eyes were blurring.
I definitely did not find what I was looking for with this book. 2/5 and I feel like that’s generous.
First, for a memoir about perfectionism, I didn’t seem how perfectionism fit in…at all? Occasionally the author would quote a psychiatrist and I felt like that was her checking the “clinical” box but as far as the anecdotes went, they were completely unrelated and all over the place. The only exception to this was the passage about her mom at the beginning but that was about her mom! Was I missing something?
The writing was atrocious. SO overwritten and paragraphs that went on for pages and pages. My eyes were blurring.
I definitely did not find what I was looking for with this book. 2/5 and I feel like that’s generous.
March 19, 2023
I picked this book up at the grocery store in a sale bin. I thought, based on the title, that this would be about dealing with perfectionism.
Instead, I found this book to be an extremely wordy autobiography with uninterrupted paragraphs, overly detailed side stories without a common thread or followable storyline. I assumed this would be a regular run of the mill autobiography (which is fine!) with a theme of relatable perfectionism.
It’s probably just me. And frankly the book made me feel pretty stupid. I’m a full time working married mom of two in her forties in healthcare with an undergraduate degree in psych and a master’s degree in OT.
Apparently not enough education not experience to interpret/understand this…
Instead, I found this book to be an extremely wordy autobiography with uninterrupted paragraphs, overly detailed side stories without a common thread or followable storyline. I assumed this would be a regular run of the mill autobiography (which is fine!) with a theme of relatable perfectionism.
It’s probably just me. And frankly the book made me feel pretty stupid. I’m a full time working married mom of two in her forties in healthcare with an undergraduate degree in psych and a master’s degree in OT.
Apparently not enough education not experience to interpret/understand this…
July 31, 2020
Truly on the fence with this book. There were parts that were sublimely written and clearly communicated to the reader. They were a joy to read and made sense to those of us who have their own perfectionist tendencies. Other parts, however, were confusing. Marriages, divorces, a child, all seemed to run into each other without any sort of delineation. At times, the reader is left to trudge through a maze of twists and turns with no context in which to place them. This is not an easy read and most of use will not take the time to ferret out those small nuggets that make reading it worthwhile.
May 21, 2021
I was gifted this book by someone who is in love with her voice and warned that “it’s chaotic and people either love it or hate it”. You really do need to give it some time to “settle in” to her prose. Within the first few pages I thought it pretentious and jarring, but once “settled in”, no not pretentious. Chaotic, certainly, but that is, I think, what grounded it back down for me. The run-on sentences taking up entire pages I dragged my feet through in the beginning, but by the end, each clause was a layer being peeled back. Like nothing I’ve read before—if for nothing else than a study in authorial voice.
June 19, 2021
A well received and complex memoir with swirling sentences that often go on for several pages and themes that travel circuitously through time and space. A return to published writing after a long hiatus during which the author has had a successful academic career that, I hope, gave her life more to celebrate than most of her relationships did. This is a story told through a few key milestones and memories. I was moved by what was included and curious about all that was excluded. Had Ms. Tallent's book arrived without her name attached, I doubt it would have been published in its current fashion or praised so heartily. Still, glad I read it
July 6, 2022
It reads like fiction. I don't mean her life sounded fake. I meant that she's clearly attempting to tell a story. Full of literary devices to construct a scene. So involved in constructing beautiful sentences and moments that I completely lost track of anything that was happening. By the end of the book, I realized I didn't comprehend much. Chronology is all over the place. Her ties to perfectionism were so loose. Her ties to anything really... At one point, she started talking about a painting with harlequins. There was... no point. I have no idea why that was significant. Or how she jumped into other topics. Because after that, she's musing about ficus and rugs, still with no conclusion.
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