Nancy Mairs (1943–2016)

This was one of the books Martine Leavitt mentioned in a VCFA lecture on Voice. I found it interesting and, in some parts, incisive and painfully accurate. She straddles writing and academe in familiar ways, so I was sort of depressed about this also, since a lot is familiar: the hollowness of most academic writing and thought, the artificial distinctions between "real" inquiry and story-writing, etc. It was also a bit disheartening, though predictable, to see that some of the problems I think I face alone are really shared -- the quest to unify a life, navigate gender prisons, etc are largely structural (disheartening because they won't relent in my lifetime, I guess). Those insights are won my the fact that Mairs knows her theory, but also brings the passion of a writer determined to place her own life at the center of the writing, "keeping it real."… (mehr)

I appreciate Mairs' clear prose, socially just theology, and frank explorations of American culture. Why, then, did these essays not pop? My favorite is "Enough is Enough," a probing look at the beliefs behind our relationship to money. We need more people showing us how we work from attitudes of scarcity and teaching us to live from a sense of our tremendous abundance. Yet even this essay veered away from the conundrums presented by our attachment to material things into the less controversial topic of our relationship to people. I guess I wish Mairs would dig deeper into her subjects rather than skittering off to something new.… (mehr)