The Perfect Life
“Drug users and philanderers, similar to people who cut [themselves], are doing it out of deep-seated emotional pain. Raise a child in a perfect family, with parents who are themselves healed and whole and attuned to the child’s emotional needs, and, barring spontaneous organic abnormalities like bipolar disorder or autism, you would never have any “sinful” behavior to yell at.”
from Why Do People Hate Cheryl Strayed? by A. Nonymous on Medium
Don’t believe everything you read — ‘never’ is a stretch — but that’s the only contrary point I feel needs making. Indeed, it seems too many broken early lives are products of broken families. However, there are also those who have no explanation for why they’re bent — they just are. The animal fable of the scorpion riding the back of a charitable frog across a raging river, who stings the frog anyway because “it’s in my nature.”
If there was ever something called the perfect life, it doesn’t exist in this world; otherwise, we’d be living in The Truman Show
A lot of what’s stated in the article is easily agreed to — the subtitle, Is it the Pacific Crest Trail, or stick-up-the-ass morality? refers to reactions the author ran across on the Internet while looking into the story Cheryl Strayed tells in her book, Wild, though I suppose you could turn the subtitle back on Strayed if you misread it like I first did. Hmm.
What about Strayed’s story so upset folk’s equilibrium to cause such vituperative reactions? What’s the quote, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks …”? I give you Califohioan, whose link was all the author provided.
“ ‘Strayed,’ incidentally, is the last name Cheryl chose for herself upon the finalization of her divorce. She chose this name because she was a lying, cheating whore who had sex with multiple men while still married to her seemingly perfect husband, and she thought it would be incredibly clever to give herself the last name ‘Strayed’ because…wait for it…she STRAYED in her marriage.
“If you don’t hate her a little bit already, you should probably refrain from reading all future posts on this book review and go waste your money on her bullshit memoir. You’ll just love it.”
from I Hate Cheryl Strayed by Califohioan
Actually, I did refrain and thanks for the warning. Holy bat shit, Robin.
I’ll be very grateful never to meet Califohioan in real life — she does sound like a horror. It doth feel there is an entire host of snake pits on the Internet. Snakes always existed, but it took our interconnected world to bring the entire writhing mess of them into the sunlight. I seriously doubt it’s worth trying to change their minds — snakes, like scorpions, are just living up to their nature.
Generally, the mainstream press gave Strayed’s book high marks, this being back in the middle of the feast of memoirs published right and left. Fiona Zublin’s review of Strayed’ Wild in the Washington Post sticks a solid landing:
“Wild is a story about solitude, about getting away from the real world when it seems terrible and about reminding ourselves that we can do hard things. Though Strayed’s story is inspirational, it’s not aspirational — the Pacific Crest Trail won’t be lousy with hikers this season because of this book. Some memoirs make the steps between grief and healing so clear that the path seems easy for readers to follow. Strayed, on the contrary, respects mystery. She knows that her hike revived her soul but doesn’t pretend to understand, minute by minute, exactly how that happened. No epiphanies here, no signs from the gods. Just a healthy respect for the uncertainty we all live with, and an inborn talent for articulating angst and the gratefulness that comes when we overcome it.”
from review of Wild, by Fiona Zublin, published 2012 in the Washington Post.
Several reviewers picks up on Ms. Zublin’s point about uneasy paths, comparing Wild to Elizabeth Gilbert’s tale of cruising the world, Eat, Pray, Love, One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. Gilbert’s book doesn’t come out on top; she doesn’t struggle so much as she sails. So should one dismiss Gilbert as a lighter weight soul? Strayed certainly lived up to her name earlier in her life, but does that make her the better writer? Does making rash choices? I suspect Wild will age better, if for no other reason than it’s the more gripping tale — I wish Harold Bloom were still around to debate the point.
I first ran across Gilbert listening to a podcast with the ever-present Tim Ferriss, while in turn producing a blog, Glad You Asked — I should probably get a life.
And should add, this subtitling is getting out of hand, when you don’t need to read the book to get the plot. Isn’t that what blurbs are for?
Though, were I to ever receive praise similar to what Fiona Zublin grants Strayed’s Wild, I’d be ready to stop typing — I didn’t think book reviewers were supposed to be this kind.
“Strayed comes off as a total screw-up and a wise person at the same time, perhaps because she has the ineffable gift every writer longs for of saying exactly what she means in lines that are both succinct and poetic.”
from review of Wild, by Fiona Zublin in the Washington Post.
True to what A. Nonymous writes in the Medium article, Strayed hardly lived a privileged life. What had preceded her hiking into the wilderness may have been the loss of her mother she was unprepared for, but the roots of her story went back to childhood, a father who left early and a mother who easily could have been a stand-in for all the hippies who tilted at windmills. Turns out, Strayed’s father had another family. Busy man. And her mother sounds a little bit more than free spirited.
As I was reading the Medium article, a central question was Strayed’s admitted promiscuous behavior. She checked out from her husband, though she didn’t walk out on children like her father had. It’s not news women cheat anymore than it is that men do. Perhaps just a little to spice it up for the best seller list?
Juicy affairs do add the perfect je ne sais quoi. And given it’s their pastime, the French have an expression for it. Evidently Califohioan disagrees with the whole affair — double entendre intended — or she dislikes our French cousins.
Parenthetically, pull-quote linguistics can astound.
If I admit promiscuousness is unsettling to be around — unless I need characters for a novel — what does that suggest? A stick up one’s ass sounds very uncomfortable, and I don’t recommend it. I’ve certainly been around promiscuous men and women alike, and my impression is they’re going through some kind of acting out — as A. Nonymous apparently believes. But are we talking about a weekend affair, or a mode of operation? You need to start by distinguishing between the two. One’s acting out; the other is method acting.
I knew several women who were serial monogamists — and more than a few men who practiced the art. Could be a lifestyle, but the sex loses meaning surely after so many rounds with passing acquaintances. Unless you’re French. And novels would be rather flaccid without it.
Even Proust had to throw in a few scenes to convince Parisians to read his tome.
So it comes down to the dopamine question: how you get your kicks. Some like surfing and parasailing, and others are more horizontally inclined, an oxymoronic phrase to be sure. And in Strayed’s case, in the end, she chose a daunting solo challenge over addiction — and then put the whole mess to good use by writing artfully about it.
Califohioan, eat your heart out. And for god’s sake find a better pseudonym.
