On Lorrie Moore

If you studied fiction in the 1990s and/or 2000s, you probably read a lot of Lorrie Moore. After Jesus’ Son, no book was assigned to me more frequently throughout both undergrad and grad school—in different parts of the country, by professors with otherwise irreconcilable tastes—than Moore’s 1998 collection, Birds of America. Then there were the heavily anthologized hit singles: “How to Be an Other Woman” and “How to Become a Writer” (both from her 1985 debut, Self-Help); “You’re Ugly, Too” (from 1990’s Like Life); “Dance in America” and “People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk” (both from Birds). Moore was one of those writers who—like Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver, and Alice Munro before her—at a certain point you simply had to walk away from, if only to have half a chance of eventually reckoning with the work on your own terms.