Anne Lamott discourses on hate
NONFICTION
Everybody loves Anne Lamott.
Well, OK, so maybe if you’re a Republican, you like her only a little bit. But that still leaves twothirds of us. My favorite book of hers is “Bird by Bird,” but that doesn’t count because that is every writer’s favorite book on writing.
So next is “Traveling Mercies,” Lamott’s first book on faith. It’s for people who believe but don’t know what they believe. In it, Lamott explores faith and leads us through the challenges and pitfalls with insight and a sense of humor, mostly liberal. Lamott followed “Traveling Mercies” with half-adozen other books on religion, some incisive, some, well, not so much.
Now comes “Almost Everything: Notes on Hope,” which I put into the incisive category. It’s not as snarky as previous Lamott volumes — there is not a single mention of Donald Trump, for instance, although it’s easy to figure out he’s “the main politician I’m thinking of … . He was raised afraid and came to believe that all he needed was a perfect woman, a lot of money, and maybe a few more atomic weapons.”
That’s in her discourse on hate, one of the main themes of the book. People are overwhelmed with hate and fear today, she writes. “The country has felt more stunned and doomed than at any time since the assassinations of the 1960s and the Vietnam War. … I was becoming insane, letting politicians get me whipped up into visions of revenge, perp walks, jail. And this was satisfying for a time. But it didn’t work as a drug, neither calming nor animating me. There is no beauty or safety in hatred.
“No one can take this hatred off me,” she continues. “I have to surrender it every time I become aware of it. This will not go well, I know. But I don’t want my life’s ending to be that I was toxic and self-righteous.”
Canyoureallyputhate aside? “Well, about 40 (percent) of the time,” Lamott claims. One advantage: Not hating is the best revenge.
As in her other books, Lamott writes about her family (most of them alcoholics) and friends, mistakes and miracles, death and dieting. Entwined with such weighty subjects is Lamott’s faith in God and her belief that love and kindness, hard as they are to achieve, pretty much conquer everything. Well, at least 40 percent.
Lamott is known for her pithy remarks, and “Almost Everything” does not disappoint. Here are a few:
• “Help is the sunny side of control.”
• “Almost everybody hates the spokespeople for the NRA.”
• “I view death mostly as a significant change of address.”
• “Redwoods are one of God’s vanities.”
• “Death is not the enemy. Snakes are.”
• “My good ideas for other people so often seem to annoy them.”
• “I have been addicted to the (bathroom) scale … which is like needing Dick Cheney to determine my value as a human being every morning.”
• “Always carry a handful of (Hershey) Kisses in your backpack or purse to give away. People will like you more.”
In a troubled world in which, like Lamott, we are all trying to come to terms with bitterness and hate, thatlastbitofadviceis well worth the price of the book.