Lorrie Moore is a risk taker for sure. I was surprised that "Willing" was her, or her editor's choice as the first story. I don't have to tell you what "they" say about first impressions, only that mine was, "I have to read how many pages of this? This is for people who like movies starring Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Aniston, and that adaptation of that memoir that was so overrated starring Julia Roberts. Not my bag, baby." Cliches abound.
By the end, however, I warmed up to some of Moore's characters - and even liked some of them. The nameless mother, for example, who sang The Animals' song "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" to her hospitalized baby son in "People Like That Are the Only People Here", the meta-narrative of her battle with his cancer, struck me. The ending, too, felt more honest. "There are the notes. Now where is the money?"
So how did Moore persevere? I think it's because she was shameless, in some instances. Perhaps I am biased or hyper-aware, but I saw the crazy cat lady (I am one myself) embodied in some of Moore's characters. Bert and the "flourescent voodoo" to which he was subjected in "Four Calling Birds Three French Hens" made me cry, recalling memories of lost pets and already scared to death one of one day bidding adieu to my little Tarragon, only one and a half years old.
Jack Kerouac, in "The Town and the City" claimed that each character was just another facet of himself. One of my friends once asked me to try to explain obsession - why it happened when it happened. The immediacy of my own response surprised me. "Identification." If you sense common ground, even with a total stranger, then strange connection occurs. Resist as I might have wanted to at "Willing", I kinda like Lorrie Moore.
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