Traveling Mercies
by Anne Lamott
List Price: $13.00
Pages: 288
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0385496095
Publisher: Anchor Books
Born in San Francisco, Anne Lamott is the author of five novels and three
works of nonfiction, and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She
has been a book reviewer for Mademoiselle, a restaurant critic
for California magazine, and a columnist for the San Francisco
Chronicle. She also writes a popular column for the on-line magazine
Salon, which Time magazine noted "could alone be the Best
of the Web." Anne Lamott lives in northern California with her son, Sam.
A note from Anne Lamott
Everywhere I travelled in the last five years or so to talk about writing, I found myself approached
by people in the audience who would want to talk to me about God instead.
Rather than wanting to hear about plot or character development, they
wanted to confide that they had a relationship with God, too, and they
wanted to hear stories from my church. Thirteen years ago, I first lurched--very
hung over--into a little church in one of the poorest communities in California.
Without this church, I do not think I would have survived the last few
years of my drinking. But even so, I had written about the people there
only in passing. I did, however, speak about the church whenever I could,
sheepishly shoehorning in a story or two. But it wasn't really until my
fifth book [Operating Instructions], that I came out of the closet as
a real believer. In talking to many many people about this over the years,
I found that our one common denominator was that we were all stunned to
discover that faith and devotion could shimmer big enough to include all
of us--even people like me.
I started to realize that there was a great hunger and thirst for regular, cynical, ragbag people
to talk about God and goodness and virtue in a tone that didn't frighten
and upset you, or make you feel that you were doing even more poorly than
you'd thought.
Once I turned my mind to this, all of these stories, moments and connections started appearing to me.
When I told them to people--to readers or to friends--they were almost
relieved. It was so great to start comparing notes about this faith of
ours, to be funny and sarcastic and attitudinally challenged about it,
and still be people who could be devoted to God. We no longer had to feel
that we were crazy or self-righteous or losers, or pathetic for having
that faith. We were just maybe a little different.
Soon all kinds of people starting giving me soul food in the form of stories, insights, feedback, great
lines, jokes and bumper stickers, and I started to put that soul food
back into circulation. And because a lot of this material we were sharing
comes from our most human and private and real and vulnerable places,
it turns out to be both unbelievably funny and very, very touching.
So I don't think of Traveling Mercies as a book about religion at all, but rather as a handbook,
or maybe a sort of owner's manual, for people who are trying to live faithfully:
which is to say, learning to cooperate with grace--even (or especially)
when real life rears its very confusing head. It's a book about some of
us who--surprising even ourselves--came to believe in a loving God who
is with us always--even on bad thigh days, even in the midst of homework
wars with our children--a God who does not roll His or Her eyes at us
even when we are trying to buy cars, or date, who does not forsake us,
even when we whine, or are bad to each other. It is about my experiences
with a God who loves me, chooses me, forgives me, every step of the amazing
way.
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