|
Sandra
Tsing Loh isn't an easy writer to read, let alone love. In
her latest book, Mother on Fire, the author and public
radio personality writes IN ALL CAPS instead of italics, jumps
from tangent to tangent like a speed freak with ADHD, and
rambles neurotically about seemingly random details without
ever seeming to return to the initial point. She writes, essentially,
like an over-caffeinated blogger with a flair for the theatrical.
The results, as one can imagine, are a bit frightening, but
those patient enough to endure the chaos will find that there
is a method to the madness.
Mother
on Fire documents Loh's life as the parent of two young
daughters and her attempts to find a proper elementary school
for them in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. Sadly
for Loh, the abject failure that is the Los Angeles Unified
School District runs all of the public schools in the Valley,
and the LAUSD is not a good place to send children with any
semblance of potential for future success (mind you, I say
that as a product of the LAUSD myself).
Loh writes
in an informal but self-deprecating tone, describing in detail
exactly how frazzled and high-strung she is. The approach
works to an extent, allowing the book to seem like an overlong
conversation with a friend. The problem, though, is that these
conversations meander too much. Loh spends a great deal of
time discussing matters unrelated to parenthood or wandering
off on tangents that happened in unspecified portions of her
past.
Even
while discussing parenthood, Loh seems to forget that her
focus is on finding her daughter a suitable kindergarten,
not drawing diagrams about breast feeding. After considering
using her NPR connections to secure a place at a good school,
she begins recalling an afternoon spent as a guest speaker
at the college where she teaches. There, she launches into
a tirade about her own successes and failures as a performance
artist, essentially frightening her audience out of their
naïve goals for success. Somewhere in that half-mad mess,
there is a point related, however tenuously, to parenting,
but whatever it was feels irrelevant as the chapter chugs
on.
But even
when Loh does stay on topic, her narrative feels far too fake
for a memoir, and her frenzied pitch makes her writing grating
and gimmicky. Her oddball cheerfulness seems a little manic,
while facts and conversations with others are blatantly embellished
in order to facilitate storytelling and convey introspection
(Loh acknowledges as much in the Author's Note). Though this
sort of dialogue rewriting was quirky and thoughtful in A
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the conversations
in Mother on Fire are too straightforward and too immediate
to read like artistic license, so the passages become jarring
and feel a little amateur.
About
halfway through the book, Loh addresses the one event for
which she became notorious: the uncensored use of the f-word
in a prerecorded segment of her radio show, The Loh Life.
The incident, which occurred three weeks after Janet Jackson's
infamous wardrobe malfunction, led to Loh's firing and incited
a great deal of media fury, seemingly all in her favor. Here,
Loh's roles as a mother and breadwinner come together and,
almost magically, calm her prose. Her narrative slows and
steadies, first reflecting her dejection and defeat, but later
reflecting her coincidental windfall. Even her embellished
dialogue seems believable once she settles down.
Inadvertently,
Loh reveals what is perhaps the crucial flaw to her book.
Her writing style mirrors the emotions she is recalling at
any particular moment, allowing her readers to feel exactly
how frantic or defeated she felt. But in coercing her readers
into a sense of immediacy and empathy, she paradoxically makes
observations about the situations that only time and distance
can provide. As a result, the written Loh seems a little too
self-aware while the authorial Loh seems self-indulgent.
Considering
the thickly shmeared layers of creative license, Mother
on Fire seems to aspire for the same artistic consideration
that many popular memoirs are given. For the sake of artistry
and introspection, facts in memoirs can be skewed and life
can be fictionalized, so long as the authors acknowledge such
blatant changes. The problem, however, is that Loh is no Dave
Eggers; her Average Jane approach is simply too everyday.
She is, instead, in closer company with Danny Wallace, whose
stories are more straightforward than Eggers's but equally
effective. Loh shoots for but misses a middle ground, attempting
to be as accessible and humorous as Wallace but as inventive
as Eggers. She isn't by any means a bad writer, but if she
had only turned down that half-crazed tone and adopted a more
truthful everywoman approach, she would have a much more effective
story.
(August,
2008)
|
