"The neighbor you feel guilty about hating." That's it, exactly. I read Operating Instructions years and years ago to review for a small press publication. It was the first book I ever reviewed, and I thought, "Boy, good thing they sent us this book for free. I would never have paid for it." As charmed as I was by Lamott's folksy, cheery, self-mocking tone, I found her flimsy faith and intellectual shallowness irritating and confusing. I mean, I liked her, right? And yet there was no "there" there.

I felt sorry for her after that book, what with having a new baby and all and no apparent ability to make a living. "There's no way she's going to be able to publish any more books after this," I thought. "She's shot her wad."

And yet she's somehow parlayed this facile, woo-woo, ain't-I-cute-'cause-I-don't-think-too-hard persona (person?) into a viable literary career at a time when the publishing world is crumbling. She's made a career out of exploiting her life, her son and his life, and all the ancillary people who drift in and out of it, all plastered over with a patina of 12-step pablum. She's the literary world's version of reality TV.

What the fuck?

Bird by Bird made me want to commit omnicide, and I haven't looked at anything of Lamott's since—thank you for writing this, so I can continue the ban without worry. The Hitchens sounds as thorny as it should be... and you know what they say about books/covers, but just looking at the two side by side speaks volumes.

That ability to find wonder in the smallest of things or love in the smallest of gestures is something that I actually couldn't appreciate until I'd discarded the notion of a higher power. For me, it wasn't until I was able to inspect something - knowing that it was created without a guiding hand - that I was able to truly appreciate how complex and awe-inspiring something as simple as a leaf can be. This is why I wish more people would bin the idea of a god, but if the notion has to exist, I suppose I'd prefer it be this woman's inoffensive and unobtrusive version of it.

That self-mocking stance is really just a way of saying "It's okay that I'm a neurotic who makes bad life decisions, because I'm confessing to it!", winking at the reader as if we're all like that, right? I don't know if she started it, but it is definitely part of a dreadful trend in personal essays these days.

Very well written. Thanks for that.

I've long abandoned any hope for productive dialogue with the true believers. Where I spend my time now, and the recipient of most of my ire, goes to the liberal-religionistas, who confuse belief with an inability to move beyond their own narrow view of themselves and the world.

But, never mistake the allure of selling "outsider just like you" to those who are desperate to be accepted by the liberal intelligentsia they love to hate.

@1, you nailed it even more than Paul did, and yet I retain a nostalgic fondness for Lamott because she personifies in one dreadlocked tender heart all of loopy Marin County (and some of my extended family), where you're about equally likely to find yourself parked next to a rusty VW van as an Aston Martin, but a million times more likely to be boxed in by Priuses. One Lamott paragraph and I'm smelling mudflats and bay laurel. Much more than that and I get antsy.

But Lamott has dreadlocks! Clearly that means she's closer to the earth than the rest of us?

I miss Hitchens terribly...

Does anyone on The Stranger/Slog have a recommendation of a good book that talks about a persons God or spirtuality?

Hating mothers and the issues that are important to them might be fun, but it doesn't make them irrelevant. Comparing her to Christopher Hitchens is useless, except that he too shamelessly pandered to his audience.

"Lamott's spirituality is too tempestuous and too shallow to build a life on."

It seems like that's not true, as she's built a life on it and seems to be okay.

@10: I'm a mother, and I'll be honest: I completely get the need to believe that some other power will protect your children from the things you cannot control. I have never felt the absence of god so keenly as I did during the first few months of my daughter's life. But being a mother does not negate my intellect, and Lamott's soft-headed drivel does not speak to my experience as a mother at all. It's her experience, and that's fine, but not accepting it as universal does not make women like me traitors to the cause. Really, it merely reveals the paucity of voices that speak to the experience of motherhood, which is a shame.

Why are these two authors (Hitchens and Lamott) being compared and/or pitted against each other by the commentators? I am currently reading "Mortality" and, incidentally, never could make it through one of Lamott's books. But presently I fail to see a connection. Did the two have some kind of ongoing dispute or dialogue? Will somebody please clarify?

I agree with #13. Of all folks to pit against each other, why these? If you were looking for a theistic discussion about death to compare Hitchen's too, why not compare his work to Forrest Church's Love and Death? Theistic fellow, more likely to be read among atheists, and he's talking about death. Or did the author just want a reason to lampoon Lamott?

@9 -- I guess that depends on what you are looking for -- essays, biography, a particular spiritual bent/philosophy?

A good book about a personal God? You could try the bible, but I warn you that you might end up hating that person.

I'm an atheist (or secular humanist, or freethinker--they all work for me, but in a pinch I go for atheist) who's been in a 12-step recovery program for five years, so maybe I'm already beyond help, but I love both of these authors and their work and the values that animate their work very much. I can go from Hitchens's completely rational, high-and-dry defense of Enlightenment anti-theism to Lamott's moving portrayals of her clawing her way back to life from alcohol and food addiction with the help of Jesus without experiencing much cognitive dissonance. Not that Paul Constant or anyone needs to agree with me, but that's what I kept thinking as I read this piece/review/weird author cage match that nobody asked for.

I think you're comparing apples to oranges, Paul. I often agree that liberal religionists need to do far more to distance themselves from their fire-breathing cohorts than they do. But even if Anne could be accused of squishy theological thinking, which I don't think is fair (I think she'd admit her essays are personal and she's not trying to convince anyone of anything the way Hitchens is openly doing), she's still exploring issues of how to live a moral life that can ring true for a lot of people. If you don't like her style that's one thing but to argue that she goes in for the kind of "profound blasphemy" or "pathetic misunderstanding" that Hitchens blasts seems like overkill.

She tells emotionally relevant stories of learning how to forgive others, and how to make meaningful sense of the frequent tragedy of human life that any non-theist could still benefit from (as I do). To characterize her work as "I let someone cut in front of me at Starbucks so I didn't feel so bad about buying non-organic loganberry preserve this morning" (I'm paraphrasing) seems really unfair to me.

I think it's impossible to look at the history of the 60's counterculture--including large swathes of the anti-Vietnam and the pro-civil rights movements--without acknowledging the depth of spiritual questioning that was going on in those communities side by side with radical politics (Camille Paglia also has a great article about this—Cults and Cosmic Consciousness in Arion journal of humanities). I see Anne Lamott continuing that tradition of embracing a sometimes quixotic spiritual quest and asking how it can coexist with fundamentally leftist politics. She obviously grew up in that atmosphere, and I think she does a fine job of combining those two elements in her work--again, take or leave her prose and her theology, but don't try to compare her to Hitchens. She'd also probably lose in an intellectual duel with Schopenhauer. For my part, any lingering belief in a benevolent deity I do have (maybe 3%) is tied up with the thought that maybe there is some sliver of transcendent meaning in the idea that we're all brothers and sisters, an idea that people in the 60's were trying to embody in our political/social process. I think that idea moves beyond the political and emotional to something that can be called spiritual without embarrassment, and even without theism, necessarily. And I think that's where Lamott is coming from, just with an obviously theistic bent. Maybe that's nonsense, but it's not harmful nonsense, or nonsense that makes me or Anne Lamott less capable of being politically right-on or effective. She may be a little loopy for your tastes but she's certainly not complacent.

I'm an atheist (or secular humanist, or freethinker--they all work for me, but in a pinch I go for atheist) who's been in a 12-step recovery program for five years, so maybe I'm already beyond help, but I love both of these authors and their work and the values that animate their work very much. I can go from Hitchens's completely rational, high-and-dry defense of Enlightenment anti-theism to Lamott's moving portrayals of her clawing her way back to life from alcohol and food addiction with the help of Jesus without experiencing much cognitive dissonance. Not that Paul Constant or anyone needs to agree with me, but that's what I kept thinking as I read this piece/review/weird author cage match that nobody asked for.

I think you're comparing apples to oranges, Paul. I often agree that liberal religionists need to do far more to distance themselves from their fire-breathing cohorts than they do. But even if Anne could be accused of squishy theological thinking, which I don't think is fair (I think she'd admit her essays are personal and she's not trying to convince anyone of anything the way Hitchens is openly doing), she's still exploring issues of how to live a moral life that can ring true for a lot of people. If you don't like her style that's one thing but to argue that she goes in for the kind of "profound blasphemy" or "pathetic misunderstanding" that Hitchens blasts seems like overkill.

She tells emotionally relevant stories of learning how to forgive others, and how to make meaningful sense of the frequent tragedy of human life that any non-theist could still benefit from (as I do). To characterize her work as "I let someone cut in front of me at Starbucks so I didn't feel so bad about buying non-organic loganberry preserve this morning" (I'm paraphrasing) seems really unfair to me.

I think it's impossible to look at the history of the 60's counterculture--including large swathes of the anti-Vietnam and the pro-civil rights movements--without acknowledging the depth of spiritual questioning that was going on in those communities side by side with radical politics (Camille Paglia also has a great article about this—Cults and Cosmic Consciousness in Arion journal of humanities). I see Anne Lamott continuing that tradition of embracing a sometimes quixotic spiritual quest and asking how it can coexist with fundamentally leftist politics. She obviously grew up in that atmosphere, and I think she does a fine job of combining those two elements in her work--again, take or leave her prose and her theology, but don't try to compare her to Hitchens. She'd also probably lose in an intellectual duel with Schopenhauer. For my part, any lingering belief in a benevolent deity I do have (maybe 3%) is tied up with the thought that maybe there is some sliver of transcendent meaning in the idea that we're all brothers and sisters, an idea that people in the 60's were trying to embody in our political/social process. I think that idea moves beyond the political and emotional to something that can be called spiritual without embarrassment, and even without theism, necessarily. And I think that's where Lamott is coming from, just with an obviously theistic bent. Maybe that's nonsense, but it's not harmful nonsense, or nonsense that makes me or Anne Lamott less capable of being politically right-on or effective. She may be a little loopy for your tastes but she's certainly not complacent.

A used copy of a Lamott book fell off the bookstore shelf at a time when my best friend was dying and I had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness (yep, still have it). At some level I can agree with this reviewer's comments. But I guess it depends on whether you're looking for things to criticize or for things that might help.

No, I don't believe in a personal god, a being who cares about me, nor do I think everything happens for a reason and all will be well in the end. Nasty shit happens to people who don't deserve it, like my friend, and I don't think it's because of any lord who works in mysterious ways. But Lamott piqued my curiosity when I saw a quote from her - "You know you've created God in your own image when it turns out he hates all the same people you do."

I think she offers some thoughts and perspectives that are worth some consideration without having to buy into her idea of a higher power. Perhaps not, though, for an adolescent who wears all black and is too smart and too cool for pretty much everything.