A review by boygirlparty
Cool, Calm & Contentious by Merrill Markoe
4.0
This collection packs a punch. Highly recommended.
The strongest chapters in this one for me were the camping/female bonding, first apartment and "Bobby" chapters. Not funny, just strong writing and strong storytelling. Her essay about celebrity-crime evolution was right up the alley of my trashy celebrity bio book club; her rules for how to spot an asshole pretty much took the words out of my mouth ("There are so many socially acceptable ways for someone to exhibit a pathological lack of empathy nowadays that this is a very easy symptom to misread. I am here to tell you that if someone is texting, Twittering, and/or checking facebook while you are talking to them, they are telling you as clearly as they can that they are an asshole. You have the right to command the full attention of the people who are sharing your immediate physical space on any social occasion. And you have the right to expect the attention they give you to be free from lengthly contact with acquaintances at other locations. This kind of behavior is analogous to channel surfing in the middle of a heart-to-heart talk or screaming out someone else's name in bed.")
"Cool, Calm & Contention" is refreshing change for me from several other female memoirs I've been reading lately (like Sloane Crosley's and Rachel Shukert's) which are written with flair by English majors but ultimately have nothing to say; while they use every hyperbole possible in telling otherwise generic stories about quitting a dead end job or being a bridesmaid, Markoe tackles storytelling about unique experiences (both funny and sad) that the reader probably hasn't shared, but Markoe tells in a way that the reader will deeply empathize with. Here's where she had a relationship with Letterman that got tucked into a time capsule and reopened in a tabloid 20 years later, here's where she was sexually assaulted at the advent of her independence, here's her rapidly disintegrating relationship with her mother, and, regrettably, here's another chapter where she absurdly anthropomorphizes her dogs.
She probably does a lot of dog writing. I probably am supposed to know who she is and who her dogs are, but I don't, so those were the most skippable parts.
Everything else was gold.
The strongest chapters in this one for me were the camping/female bonding, first apartment and "Bobby" chapters. Not funny, just strong writing and strong storytelling. Her essay about celebrity-crime evolution was right up the alley of my trashy celebrity bio book club; her rules for how to spot an asshole pretty much took the words out of my mouth ("There are so many socially acceptable ways for someone to exhibit a pathological lack of empathy nowadays that this is a very easy symptom to misread. I am here to tell you that if someone is texting, Twittering, and/or checking facebook while you are talking to them, they are telling you as clearly as they can that they are an asshole. You have the right to command the full attention of the people who are sharing your immediate physical space on any social occasion. And you have the right to expect the attention they give you to be free from lengthly contact with acquaintances at other locations. This kind of behavior is analogous to channel surfing in the middle of a heart-to-heart talk or screaming out someone else's name in bed.")
"Cool, Calm & Contention" is refreshing change for me from several other female memoirs I've been reading lately (like Sloane Crosley's and Rachel Shukert's) which are written with flair by English majors but ultimately have nothing to say; while they use every hyperbole possible in telling otherwise generic stories about quitting a dead end job or being a bridesmaid, Markoe tackles storytelling about unique experiences (both funny and sad) that the reader probably hasn't shared, but Markoe tells in a way that the reader will deeply empathize with. Here's where she had a relationship with Letterman that got tucked into a time capsule and reopened in a tabloid 20 years later, here's where she was sexually assaulted at the advent of her independence, here's her rapidly disintegrating relationship with her mother, and, regrettably, here's another chapter where she absurdly anthropomorphizes her dogs.
She probably does a lot of dog writing. I probably am supposed to know who she is and who her dogs are, but I don't, so those were the most skippable parts.
Everything else was gold.