Anagrams

Moore, Lorrie, Anagrams. 1986. New York: Time Warner Books, 1997. Moore is a highly successful author and storyteller. Even so, it's the rare book that can get me chuckling, then laughing, then roaring, and then suddenly bring me to tears. This is that rare book. Benna is a teacher who used to dance at clubs. She is 33, divorced, and troubled by loneliness. She has a 6-year old daughter called Georgianne, and a large woman friend named Eleanor. She meets Gerard, a "large, green-eyed man" who loves classical music, sings tenor in opera, and plays guitar at clubs. Their relationship is the focus of the early chapters, but what strikes the reader is the play with words they engage in. Moore must be a poet! She invents words that fit: "the ruckle of the toilet paper," "oxpecker," "mingy philodendra," and she produces fantastic images: "pantcuffs misironed into Möbius strips," "reading Hart Crane in an inner tube..." There are many plays on words: "vulva or B.M., names that sounded like foreign cars." "Add a d to poor and you get droop. Add a chromosome, get a criminal. Subtract one, get an idiot or a chipmunk....'You are my honey bunch' was not usually interchangeable with 'You are my bunny hutch.'" Benna tells us, "There was a period when I kept trying to make anagrams out of words that weren't anagrams: moonscape and menopause, gutless and guilts, lovesick and still louse...." she scrawls lovesick and evil sock on a table in a café, and then bedroom and boredom. I could quote from almost every page of this wonderful book, but I'll finish with "'Why are we supposed to be with men, anyway? I feel like I used to know.' 'We need them for their Phillips-head screwdrivers,' I said. Eleanor raised her eyebrows. 'That's right, she said, 'I keep forgetting that you only go out with circumcised men.'" Later, Eleanor says, "If they can send one man to the moon, why can't they send them all?" But the novel has far deeper themes than the jokes and word play. All the characters have problems and nothing turns out the way we expect. In fact, it's a heartbreaker--a big surprise, and highly recommended by this fussy reader. Five stars plus.

I once heard David Sedaris on a podcast interview say of Lorrie Moore's stories, "There's joke after joke after joke, and yet when you get to the end you're just devastated." I think that characterization may be more true of this book than of anything else Moore has written. Again and again I found myself laughing out loud while reading this book, and yet when I finished it... yes, "devastated" is exactly the right word.The book is a bit "experimental" in its structure. The first four "chapters" are really short stories, each one fully complete and self-contained in itself. These take up one quarter of the book's pages, and the fifth chapter, titled "The Nun of That," fills out the remaining three quarters. Each of the five stories features a suite of main characters who have the same names, and similar personalities and backgrounds as well. It's as if Moore were a musician performing a concert, first playing some short tunes that feature variations on similar themes and then settling in for a longer composition to conclude the performance. It's an interesting exercise in constructing a book, but a potential reader shouldn't get the impression that this book is nothing more than an interesting intellectual exercise. On the contrary, to my eye Lorrie Moore is among the most deeply "humanist" of living writers. Her focus is on the lives and feelings of her characters, and not on dry intellectual exercises. It's the deeply-felt humanity of her characters that makes her writing so delightful, and so devastating.

Lorrie Moore will be our next Nobel Laureate. When I finished reading "Anagrams" (on my Kindle) I immediately reread it. Her prose is the finest of any writer today, and the story line in "Anagrams" is intriguing, mystifying, and unlike any I have ever read. She writes with the sensitivity of a female, but with the power punch of a male. All of her books are top notch. I at once started mimicking her style in my own writing, which is the best compliment you can pay any writer. The theme of Anagrams, and a good sample of her prose: "All of life seems to me a strange dream about losing things you never had to begin with. About trying to find your glasses when you can't see because you don't have your glasses on." I took intensive notes, while reading "Anagrams" and will write a review of her book in my weekly newspaper column.

The following is a partial anagram of the book:This is a devastating book more than it is hilarious. Don't let that quote from the New York Times on the cover fool you. I expected to laugh, and I did, but I didn't expect to be gutted. If you've ever gutted a pig or a chicken before, then you know it's not a pretty process. Humans aren't pigs or chickens. We're civilized folk. I read some terrible reviews somewhere that said Lorrie Moore is only depressing, that she's one-registered (like a midnight Walmart), that life isn't that bad. And I just want to say I'm glad there are some optimists left in the world. I'm glad there are people who think, "Well, my life ain't too bad, so how could anyone else's be?" Privilege is an anagram for evil gripe, which is one letter away from being evil grape, which is one adjective away from sour grape.

I thought the story and the idea was fascinating. I was initally confused, but once I 'caught on' , I thought it was well done! It was however a little depressing I thought in terms of the decisions one makes in ones life and the consequences. Than always thinking 'what might have been ' if there was a different choice.Definitely a book you continue to think about once you have finished the last page. Many quotable pages, and loved the writers style.

I read all the authors books, always different

I can’t emphasize how much I love this book. It is so perfect and you’re a fool until you read it

aok

My fault I dare say, but I was expecting an anagram dictionary, and this is not one.