Scratched

November 15, 2019
A fiction writer explores the causes, and consequences, of her desire to be perfect. Tallent (Creative Writing/Stanford Univ.; Mendocino Fire: Stories, 2015, etc.) makes her debut as a memoirist with an intimate examination of her quest for perfection, which has dogged her since childhood. Perfectionism, she writes, "is set apart from other forms of trouble by the inflamed genius of its self-abuse and its pleasurableness." It tyrannizes her by "dangling before me flawless elizabeths who would transcend limitations lightly, with every hair in place": a fantasy woman with the power "to intensify, focus, motivate." To those who do not suffer it, perfectionism can seem like "ambition on steroids," but Tallent is ever aware of its debilitating effects. Early success as a writer caused her to feel "quickened self-consciousness, elevated standards" that led to an inability to write for more than 20 years. Sentences she created "written in pursuit of transcendence were dull. For the sake of perfection I took a voice, my own, and twisted until mischance and error and experiment were wrung from it, and with them any chance of aliveness." Seeking the sources of her obsession, Tallent learned that her mother, also a perfectionist, refused to hold her newborn daughter because she saw a scratch near the infant's eyelid--self-inflicted in utero--that aroused her revulsion. Nineteen when her mother disclosed this, Tallent felt relief at knowing, at last, "a necessary piece of my life." Besides causing inhibition, self-doubt, mistrust, anxiety, and depression, perfectionism is characterized by self-absorption--"the failure to be interested in things as they are, or people as they are"--a trait that unfortunately focuses the narrative too narrowly on its wounded protagonist. As she portrays herself as a girlfriend, wife, bookstore clerk, analysand, and writing program director, Tallent admits that among her shortcomings was a tendency to judge others harshly "with perfectionist righteousness." The author's prose is dense, precise, and often lyrical, but the relentless energy of her long sentences and pageslong paragraphs sometimes feels overwhelming. A candid, sharply etched self-portrait.

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December 15, 2019
Fiction writer Tallent (Mendocino Fire, 2015) begins her first memoir with her own birth: seeing her first baby, Tallent's mother refused to hold her, let alone nurse her as she'd planned. Tallent's perfectionism may have started there, with the scratched face of her baby self that so unsettled her mother. Searching her past for the acceptance-seeking memories of her childhood and young adulthood, Tallent fashions a tender shadow of the often-terrified person she was then. As life does, it intrudes on her quest for perfection, granting unconditional love in the form of her first husband and directing her away from graduate study in archaeology and towards a typewriter instead. Tallent published four lauded books in the 1980s and 1990s, but this is not a memoir about that; readers meet her again as a Stanford professor and the divorced mother of her young son, grasping for the root of her perfectionism and its stunting effects on her writing. Tallent's personal literary endeavor contains many wildly evocative passages and breathtaking sentences, making it a must-read for lovers of writers' memoirs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2020

Tallent (Mendocino Fire) is insightful on the challenges of living with perfectionism, a disorder related to meeting a personal standard that is often unattainable, particularly to an outside observer. The perfectionist mindset believes others expect them to be perfect and will be highly critical of them if they don't meet these standards. Tallent had a great deal of success early in her career, publishing five books and placing several short stories in the New Yorker. She secured a teaching position at Stanford University's prestigious creative writing program. Yet her perfectionist nature would prevent her from publishing anything else for more than 20 years. She describes perfectionism as set apart from other disorders by the "pleasurableness" in the self-abuse. Perfectionism also gave her something to fall back on when she felt lost, providing a toxic form of identity. VERDICT An original perspective on the perfectionist personality. Recommended for avid readers of memoirs.--Gary Medina, El Camino Coll., Torrance, CA

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019

Between the ages of 27 and 37, Tallent published five literary titles with Knopf, plus numerous stories in The New Yorker. Then she published nothing for 22 years--until the PEN Faulkner finalist Mendocino Fire finally appeared in 2015. In this formally inventive memoir, Tallent examines a long, roadblocking history of perfectionism by juxtaposing herself as a young mother, her unloved child self, herself as a loving mother, and her son Gabriel. Much anticipated by the cognoscenti.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.