Lamott’s ‘Plan B’ has vital warmth that will bring joy
It is completely understandable to feel that you know Anne Lamott, even if you’ve never met her. She has smeared her cranky, lovely, messy self all over her books, the novels as well as the nonfiction.
Self-effacing wisdom, irreverent spirituality, left-wing outrage, funky white-girl dreadlocks that prompt an unkind child to say, “You’re freaking me out, Octopus Head” – all are as tangible and energetic and welcome as an old friend’s embrace in this collection of essays, an addictive, funny sequel of sorts to “Traveling Mercies.”
A lot has happened since 1999, when “Mercies” was published, and Lamott, a columnist for salon.com, has plenty to say.
She repeatedly laments the re-election of George W. Bush with true-blue Democratic angst: “I have never been more paranoid in my life.” She vigilantly opposes war in Iraq, which she protests during a peace march in San Francisco.
And, on occasion, she rues the adolescence of her son Sam, whose first year she chronicled in “Operating Instructions.” He is no longer merely Sam but sometimes “Phil,” the cantankerous teenage alter ego who resists going to church and is “hairy and scary and awful.”
Lamott’s uncanny ease at applying wit, passion and self-deprecation to Big, Important Subjects – politics, religion, parenthood, alcoholism, her mother’s death after a battle with Alzheimer’s – lends “Plan B” a vital warmth that is the perfect antidote to preachiness.
She employs cheerfully loopy logic to problems, is never too shy to pray and remains brutally honest about her failings. She has no use for conventional pieties; her faith is strong but far from unassailable.
Reminded that Jesus preached forgiveness and loving one’s enemies, which includes Bush, she complains: “Why couldn’t Jesus command us to obsess about everything, to try to control and manipulate people … to stomp away to brood when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey’s Kisses in bed?”
Faith is the fundamental cornerstone of “Plan B,” whether Lamott is employing it to find the courage to let her sick dog or a good friend die with dignity; accepting with dubious serenity the cellulite on her 50-year-old legs; or starting a Sunday school for unruly children.
“We did not exclude anyone, because Jesus didn’t,” she writes. “On bad days, I could not imagine what he had been thinking.”
Her staunch liberalism is a sweet reminder that not all religious people must march to identical conservative rhythms, that there is room for intelligence and discussion and acceptance when it comes to life and all its complexities.
“Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity,” Lamott writes.
If she is right about that, we definitely owe her thanks. Just like her other works, “Plan B” brings joy indeed.