What If This Were Enough?: Essays
Ratings11
Average rating3.7
*A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018* *A Bustle Best Nonfiction Book of 2018* *One of Chicago Tribune's Favorite Books by Women in 2018* *A Self Best Book of 2018 to Buy for the Bookworm in Your Life* By the acclaimed critic, memoirist, and advice columnist behind the popular "Ask Polly," an impassioned collection tackling our obsession with self-improvement and urging readers to embrace the imperfections of the everyday Heather Havrilesky's writing has been called "whip-smart and profanely funny" (Entertainment Weekly) and "required reading for all humans" (Celeste Ng). In her work for New York, The Baffler, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic, as well as in "Ask Polly," her advice column for The Cut, she dispenses a singular, cutting wisdom--an ability to inspire, provoke, and put a name to our most insidious cultural delusions. What If This Were Enough? is a mantra and a clarion call. In its chapters--many of them original to the book, others expanded from their initial publication--Havrilesky takes on those cultural forces that shape us. We've convinced ourselves, she says, that salvation can be delivered only in the form of new products, new technologies, new lifestyles. From the allure of materialism to our misunderstandings of romance and success, Havrilesky deconstructs some of the most poisonous and misleading messages we ingest today, all the while suggesting new ways to navigate our increasingly bewildering world. Through her incisive and witty inquiries, Havrilesky urges us to reject the pursuit of a shiny, shallow future that will never come. These timely, provocative, and often hilarious essays suggest an embrace of the flawed, a connection with what already is, who we already are, what we already have. She asks us to consider: What if this were enough? Our salvation, Havrilesky says, can be found right here, right now, in this imperfect moment.
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I really enjoyed the majority of the essays. Some seemed to pick and choose pop culture references to make a point, which is fine but doesn't convince me of much. Some relied on pop culture references that I am not familiar with, so they weren't very relatable for me. I liked her writing style but it didn't blow me away in this collection.
👍🏽Pick it: If you find yourself addicted to optimization and dissatisfaction.
👎🏽Skip it: If you can't stomach conviction.
Cultural criticism is often penned from the throne of a writer who removes himself or herself from the dysfunction they judge. Which is perhaps why I have a hard writer crush on Havrilesky.
She does not excuse her participation in our society's obsessive pursuit for the bigger, the better, the next – anything other what we have, who we are in the NOW.
And it's because she writes as someone in the arena, searching out and screwing up, a reader will not feel threatened by her observations, but feel enrolled to deem the present enough.
Each essay can stand and shine on its own. But thread together, it's one of the most-focused collections I've ever read.
I am a huuuge fan of the Ask Polly advice column in The Cut. I come back again and again because I feel some kinship with her. She's got sharper edges than a Dear Sugar, but like Sugar is deeply compassionate. Polly is funny, but not flippant or sarcastic like Choire Sicha's NYT Styles section advice column.
I guess what I love the most is that she has become the person that people like me—millennial weirdos who feel stuck because all we seem capable of doing is looking around in shock and disappointment asking “oh my god, is this really it?”—send their deepest questions. And we have changed her in turn.
Like any book of essays, there are some that speak right to me, some that don't speak to me at all, and some that I hope to god speak to some future, more courageous and secure form of myself.
Read it, and feel free to skip the one about Tony Soprano unless you really like the show.
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