We Learn Nothing

Insight despite immaturity; the situations described are often less elegant than the writing.

I read this because I was so taken with an older piece of his that got sort of meme-ified recently (“if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known”) and overall, I really enjoyed it. He's a sharp, insightful writer with a lot of humor but also, in general, compassion.

However. This collection came out in 2012, and some of the essays collected within are older than that. And some of them have simply not aged well. There's plenty of George W. Bush humor that's not like “oh yeah...that guy did suck but now we have bigger problems lol”. But then there is a lengthy essay, “Chutes and Candyland,” about Kreider's friendship with the transgender author Jennifer Finney Boylan, and they are clearly close friends (Boylan asked Kreider to stay with her for 10 days immediately following her gender conformation surgery to help care for her), and the essay was clearly written with love and the best vocabulary available to Kreider at the time. (And received Boylan's blessing). But reading it now is very yikes and I have to imagine might be hurtful for a trans person to read.

Still, I'm eager to read more of his work, but I just wanted to highlight that concern!

There are truly brilliant moments in these short stories, others might be a little dated.

Tim has a great eye for some universally specific parts of the human condition.