Tough-Guy Redemption Narratives

One thing about the exposure of James Frey’s “searing” drug-addiction memoir as a fraud: it’s produced some great writing. James Wolcott, for example:

I’m just automatically suspicious of every tale of woe that’s peddled as a tale of redemption. The whole concept of redemption seems fishy to me, another form of sentimentality. How many people do you know have found redemption? What does “redemption” really mean? It’s got a lofty religious sound, but the vast majority of people improve or worsen in varying degrees over time, and even those who radically turn their lives around or pull themselves out of the abyss still have to go on doing the mundane things we all do, often suffering relapses or channeling their sobriety and sadder-but-wiser maturity into passive-aggressive preening of their own moral goodness. Most change for better or worse is undramatic, incremental, seldom revealed in a blinding flash or expressed in a climactic moment of heroic resolve.

Indeed–this kind of writing is sort of “Nice Guy”ism for obvious assholes. Henry notes other literary counterparts. And anyone who has read the riotously funny The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature knows that he’s a master of parodying all varieties of tough-guy poseur writing, and his reaction doesn’t disappoint (and he already had Frey nailed.) [Via Feministe.]