The Liars’ Club

"It’s one of my favorite memoirs. I think she manages to capture the city that she lived in, and its surroundings, beautifully — you can almost smell the oil refineries. I don’t believe she names the city, but it’s in that east Texas, Gulf Coast area where there are a lot of oil refineries, and a lot of people who work on the rigs. So she captures that beautifully and I felt it was an honest book. I give people a little leeway on memoirs. On regular nonfiction , I have orthodox views (or somewhere between Orthodox and Hasidic probably) – but when it comes to memoirs, I don’t really expect that the sentence that is being quoted from when the person was four years old, absolutely you can go to the bank with it, but I feel it is their story. And I found hers essentially believable. She wrote another memoir, of the years that followed this one, I think it’s called Cherry. I’m not sure that’s true. There’s a book by one of the Mitford sisters, Jessica, called Hons and Rebels . That was written probably in the 1950s — so it’s a form that’s existed for a long time. What may be different about a lot of the recent memoirs is the writers are not necessarily well-known. Mary Karr is a poet and poets in the United States, you don’t even have to say they are not well known because there aren’t any well-known poets. So I think that’s one difference between a memoir and an autobiography – the person doesn’t have to be a household name to write a memoir. I’m not sure, but maybe Mary Karr’s book started that – the idea of somebody just having an interesting story."

"The book starts with Mary Karr’s recollection of her mother, this tall striking woman who seemed out of place in this small, stinky, chemical-waste town. Her husband worked in a refinery. She was an artist who dreamed of a different life but was locked down by whatever was expected of her at that time in our nation’s history and in this region. There’s a lot of rage, alcohol and guns in this book. I cannot say enough about the power of Mary Carr’s voice. It’s the kind of book you almost want to read out loud. And it’s just so Texas, so specific East Texas. It’s like I grew up down the street and went to high school with her. Liars’ Club makes the reader feel like they’re sitting at a bar with somebody who is telling them about their crazy fucking life over cocktails. It’s fantastic. The book paints a picture of how oil towns feel. My dad actually worked in oil – Shell Oil in Houston. People who work at refineries form a brotherhood. I wouldn’t go so far as to compare it to the military, but almost. Dangerous work, weird hours and lots of accidents produce a culture of people who look after each other. Women at times get left behind, either because the men are out on rigs or working in the Gulf or on the night shift. This book really captures the culture that comes from oil work."