Leave Me Along, I'm Reading is a great surprise

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	• Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books Maureen Corrigan Vintage, 2007 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Leave Me Along, I'm Reading is a great surprise

I just finished reading this book and, as an avid reader all my life, I was able to relate to many of Maureen's experiences. She remembers and comments on the books she was reading at different times of her life. She is funny and smart and introspective and a very welcoming writer. She has a great list at the back of the book of her favorite books by category. I plan to pick some gems from her list for future reading.

Uneven Mix of Lit Crit and Memoir

I stumbled across this the other week at the library, not realizing that the NPR book reviewer and Washington Post mystery columnist had written her own "bookie" memoir. It's a curious blend of literary criticism and personal memoir, weighted toward the former, and never quite succeeding at either. Corrigan writes the bulk of the book wearing her lit crit hat, while weaving in connections to her own life, attempting to explain how reading has influenced who she is as a person.

First, she attempts to define a new space called "female extreme adventure stories," in which the heroines are not faced with the physical challenges men often triumph over in fiction and nonfiction, but rather, with the deep emotional challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated world. This is a somewhat interesting feminist take on a lot of "classic" literature, but feels a little belabored by the end -- especially if you haven't read many of the books she uses to make her point (such as Austen, the Brontes, etc.). As someone who came of age during the rise of modern feminism, she has carried that lens with her throughout her life, and it's hard not to read the message between the lines -- that every modern woman (including herself) lives within this "female extreme adventure" narrative.

She then moves on to the mystery/crime genre, of which she is a long-time champion. She came to the genre as a way of escaping the 19th-century literature she was required to absorb during her lengthy, and apparently unsatisfying graduate work. This results in a certain inverted snobbery of the "oh look at me, I'm a PhD. candidate who's able to see the value in genre fiction" tone to her attempt to demonstrate that detective novels are one of the few literary forms that are about "work." (Thank goodness there is a real live PhD book critic to validate the value of crime fiction for us!) This is an interesting idea, but her argument for it isn't that compelling -- especially her hazy distinction between books that are about work and books that are about the culture of work. One theme she keeps returning to through the book is her blue collar background, and just how at odds that is with her NPR totebag totin', literature professor professin', book critic adult self. It doesn't come off very well -- smacking of some kind of insecurity.

Finally, she takes off on a 40-page exploration of the Catholic martyr fiction of her Irish-Catholic childhood, which she now recognizes as part and parcel of the church's inherent patriarchy. This section felt like a "master of the obvious" type analysis, although not being Catholic, maybe there is a nuance to it that I missed. By this point, I was getting sick of reading detailed analyses of books I'd never read. Which is a pity, because Corrigan is a decent writer with some interesting insights. It's just a rather long-winded struggle to get there most of the time.

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That Thing about Thanking the Waitress

I don't have much to add about the book itself -- as a total bookworm, I enjoyed it for all the reasons already noted by those who also enjoyed it (or parts of it). The only place I thought Corrigan went wrong was in those two paragraphs discussing those who scrupulously thank anyone who's serving them and those who don't even acknowledge "the help." That fact is that it's not about coming from a blue- or pink-collar background, where, as a child, Corrigan tells us, one is "taught to feel gratitude for any service done" for you vs. being a person who oozes privilege. That's a false distinction and an unnecessary stretch for an explanation of the phenomemon she describes. Remember Occam's razor. It's simply about people who were taught (or have otherwise acquired) manners vs. people who were/have not.

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Not quite what I expected

Ms. Corrigan's discussions on Detective Novels, and Female Adventure tales made me want to run out and get any book I can find in these genres. And when she speaks of her family (especially her father) one can feel the passion and sincerity in her words. But her writing is so unsentimental and irritatingly fair that I was like, "When will it all be over?" She uses phrases like "oozing priviledge," something that should make any mildly successful person feel guilty. She doesn't like it when people don't say thank you to waiters and waitresses, especially people with the aforementioned "oozing priviledge." But if you can get through this and similar baby boomer gooble-de-gook you will find she has written an intelligent book about books. (I'd like to tell Ms. Corrigan that I ,who am a baby boomer myself at 51, know working class people who are not oozing with priviledge who doesn't say thank you to waitresses either). She has such interesting incites into literary works, both old and new, that I wish she had spent more time in this area. When I finished reading the book I had the dual feeling that everything had been said, yet nothing had been said. This ambiguity persists through out the book, whenever she hints at her politcal leanings, that is.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

?It?s not that I don?t like people,? writes Maureen Corrigan in her introduction to Leave Me Alone, I?m Reading. ?It?s just that there always comes a moment when I?m in the company of others?even my nearest and dearest?when I?d rather be reading a book.? In this delightful memoir, Corrigan reveals which books and authors have shaped her own life?from classic works of English literature to hard-boiled detective novels, and everything in between. And in her explorations of the heroes and heroines throughout literary history, Corrigan?s love for a good story shines.

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