An adult with critical analysis skills is unlikely to approach a total airplane book/movie like Wild without a few stereotypes in her pocket. The memoir of a 26-year-old who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail alone in the wake of her divorce/drug habit/mom’s death can’t not be mawkish, can it? And it was the debut selection in the new Oprah Book Club? And the movie stars Reese Witherspoon? I confess: I had a shoulder chip about Cheryl Strayed going into her appearance at Benaroya Hall Thursday night and have been pointedly avoiding this book for the two years it has spent blowing up over on the NY Times bestseller list. Then I read it.
Sure enough, Wild kicks off with a pretty barfy intro that includes the lines “I looked north, in its direction—the very thought of that bridge a beacon to me,” and “A world called the Pacific Crest Trail.” I knew it, I whispered, because I know everything. (The book gets better after about Chapter 3, as Strayed becomes more of a human and interacts with other humans. That first chunk is hard to forgive, though.)
Even if you hadn’t read or seen Wild, the sight of the crowd waiting to get into the Mark S. Taper Foundation Auditorium at Benaroya Hall on Thursday would likely have confirmed your prejudices: a packed house full of Bothell’s munchiest yogamoms and retired drama teachers—7 to 1 women—eager to hear the author of Wild discuss her life and work via Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Literary/Arts Series. Diaphanous scarves and Strand totes for acres. People wrung their hands and used the word amazing to describe the book to each other. My sour-patch Seattleite heart pumped vitriolic judgment as I eavesdropped.
A stranger eating yellow soup in the lobby/cafe told me between mouthfuls about how she traveled to Tulum by herself after her marriage ended, and she slept in a hammock in the jungle and there was a tarantula. “I think this lecture is really going to inspire me,” she said.
SAL Executive Director Ruth Dickey opened the show with an anecdote about the time a woman saw her reading Wild on a plane, grabbed her arm, and proclaimed, “That is the most AMAZING book!” Dickey then invited sixth-grader Lily Williams, winner of a Wild-themed writing competition, to read her winning poem on-stage. Lily’s poem was good and actually sort of heavy. The line about people wanting to reduce her to ash made me feel like a snotty jerk for the superiority I’d enshrouded myself with. Everyone had been very genuine so far, and the people were digging it, so where was the harm? Who was I to roll eyes?
After Dickey’s preamble, Strayed was introduced and spoke solo for the first half of her set, summarizing the plot of Wild and interjecting cutting-room floor material along the way. A quip about how she’d cheated and done the research on plant and rock names many years after she’d taken the hike, so she’d looked like she knew anything whatsoever about natural science was especially endearing.
Strayed, much to the frustration of the part of me that still insists on being jaded, is charming. Winning, chatty, self-effacing. She didn’t wear a scarftan or say Namaste. In fact, she swore a whole bunch. She seemed like a younger, saltier Meryl Streep. She seemed like a person.
The Oprah-lescence in the room remained palpable, of course, although I found it progressively less offensive because everyone around me appeared stimulated and happy. Turns out that people, especially people who have lost parents, clearly like to see and hear Strayed talk about how she lost her mom and the suffering that loss brought on and what she did about it. She also wrote a novel, Torch, on this subject in 2006 (her first bestseller). Though her monologue was undeniably a little rooibos-scented—she took the PCT hike because she “needed spiritual redemption” and “to put one foot in front of the other”—an aside about Reese Witherspoon’s acting tip for Strayed’s nervous cameo in the Wild film effectively cleared the air effectively. “Don’t fuck it up,” Witherspoon told her.
Dickey then returned to interview Strayed, and their discussion touched upon “Dear Sugar,” Strayed’s advice column on The Rumpus. While I’m hesitant to dismiss the woman’s memoir, which is about her life, for godssake, my impression (limited, I confess, by design) is that “Dear Sugar” offers the best use of Cheryl Strayed’s voice. As is true of most people, she is fathoms more interesting when she consoles and relates to other humans, rather than talking exclusively about herself. The column consists of her compassionate, kind of strange responses to profoundly sad letters, and it gets to you in a way that makes you side with her and vote for her, because she’s helping. She has a real gift for this kind of writing, and for the empathetic insight it requires. (I couldn’t see that gift when I read Wild, because I haven’t suffered through the things she has, so I only saw a lady who likes to talk about herself.) I will say that in the live presentation, Strayed deployed buzzphrases from her column—”radical sincerity,” “the obliterated place,” “unconditional positive regard”—which put me, so to speak, in the alienated place. The rest of the audience, however, seemed to be fully on the bus.
The Q&A session at the end was mercifully brief. (A typical exchange: One audience member asked Strayed how the kindness of strangers had impacted her journey and Strayed said that people on the trail were nice to her.) The night ended abruptly, and everybody filed out, energized, sparkly, and chatty. Later, I heard a group of women in the restroom using all the same words that the women in the lobby had used beforehand: amazing, inspired. By this point, however, I had learned that I am an asshole, so I decided to forego the rolling of my eyes. I’d softened. People can like whatever they want.
What is wrong with me?
