Honest and moving.” — Psychology Today
“A singular and haunting memoir…The book approaches the mysteries, gaps and obstacles in Tallent’s own story with the same psychological precision and elliptical motivation she applies to her fictional characters…Elizabeth Tallent’s gift has never been in doubt…She has written a subtle and idiosyncratic account that tries to elucidate her decades-long writer’s block even as she recognizes that—as with so much in anyone’s life—she cannot fully grasp it. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a memoir quite like this, one that spills its many dark secrets with so little self-pity, so much acuity and such a deliberate lack of authorial certitude.” — Daphne Merkin, New York Times Book Review
“[Scratched is] a harrowing story of overcoming perfectionism, leavened by [Tallent’s] dry wit and precise, poetic use of language. . . . This book is a record of Tallent’s struggle to show her scratches and to believe, as her young son tells her one day after spilling a glass of milk, ‘Everybody makes mistakes.’” — Associated Press
“Fascinating…The passages in Scratched that deal with writer’s block will have the effect of quicksand on anyone who’s struggled to express herself on paper. You sink under, horrified and enthralled… Scratched proceeds on strong sentences, sleek with a hard, dark lacquer…There is a sadomasochism, then, to the reading and writing of [it], and Tallent is never so alluring as when she’s parsing her own prison.” — The New Yorker.com, Page-Turner
“Ms. Tallent’s exploration of perfectionism is an exploration of living as a writer and living as a woman…But as she turns perfectionism over, studying its facets, its idiosyncrasies, it becomes clear that this disorder stems from something more universal than writing or womanhood: the loss of love…Her writing is beautiful and precise, full of flashing insights and bracing honesty.” — Elizabeth Winkler, Wall Street Journal
“Scratched is a brave and complex memoir…Tallent brings an intellectual rigor to her memoir that recalls Kathryn Harrison and Dani Shapiro. She is capable of beautiful precision…The lesson, which also applies to this book, is that there’s beauty and value in imperfection, too.” — Heller McAlpin, Washington Post
“Chaotic, tumbling, and beautiful prose. . . . Scratched is a pure and consuming pleasure. Its messiness feels both defiant and intentional, a middle finger raised to perfectionism. . . . Tallent's juxtaposition of style and structure with subject matter is her memoir's big victory. It's also refreshing to read…Reading it reminded me how exhilarating disorderly writing can be… Scratched is a performance of, and appeal for, urgency. It's a call I hope other writers will be able to heed.” — Lily Meyer, NPR.org
“A profound new memoir, Tallent takes readers deep into her own internal high-pressure chambers of self-loathing and not-enough-ness — feelings that can goad creativity, but also ultimately shut it down…A tentative embrace of creating something contradictory and new is finally what this oddly enthralling memoir embodies.” — Maureen Corrigan, NPR
“Tallent published four lauded books in the 1980s and 1990s, but this is not a memoir about that; readers meet her again as a Stanford professor and the divorced mother of her young son, grasping for the root of her perfectionism and its stunting effects on her writing. Tallent's personal literary endeavor contains many wildly evocative passages and breathtaking sentences, making it a must-read for lovers of writers’ memoirs.” — Booklist
“Reading Scratched gave me the feeling of standing very close to a blazing fire. It is that brilliant, that intense, and one of the finest explorations I know of what it means to be a woman and an artist.” — Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend and Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
Chaotic, tumbling, and beautiful prose. . . . Scratched is a pure and consuming pleasure. Its messiness feels both defiant and intentional, a middle finger raised to perfectionism. . . . Tallent's juxtaposition of style and structure with subject matter is her memoir's big victory. It's also refreshing to read…Reading it reminded me how exhilarating disorderly writing can be… Scratched is a performance of, and appeal for, urgency. It's a call I hope other writers will be able to heed.
A profound new memoir, Tallent takes readers deep into her own internal high-pressure chambers of self-loathing and not-enough-ness — feelings that can goad creativity, but also ultimately shut it down…A tentative embrace of creating something contradictory and new is finally what this oddly enthralling memoir embodies.
Honest and moving.”
[Scratched is] a harrowing story of overcoming perfectionism, leavened by [Tallent’s] dry wit and precise, poetic use of language. . . . This book is a record of Tallent’s struggle to show her scratches and to believe, as her young son tells her one day after spilling a glass of milk, ‘Everybody makes mistakes.’
A singular and haunting memoir…The book approaches the mysteries, gaps and obstacles in Tallent’s own story with the same psychological precision and elliptical motivation she applies to her fictional characters…Elizabeth Tallent’s gift has never been in doubt…She has written a subtle and idiosyncratic account that tries to elucidate her decades-long writer’s block even as she recognizes that—as with so much in anyone’s life—she cannot fully grasp it. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a memoir quite like this, one that spills its many dark secrets with so little self-pity, so much acuity and such a deliberate lack of authorial certitude.”
Ms. Tallent’s exploration of perfectionism is an exploration of living as a writer and living as a woman…But as she turns perfectionism over, studying its facets, its idiosyncrasies, it becomes clear that this disorder stems from something more universal than writing or womanhood: the loss of love…Her writing is beautiful and precise, full of flashing insights and bracing honesty.
Scratched is a brave and complex memoir…Tallent brings an intellectual rigor to her memoir that recalls Kathryn Harrison and Dani Shapiro. She is capable of beautiful precision…The lesson, which also applies to this book, is that there’s beauty and value in imperfection, too.
Tallent published four lauded books in the 1980s and 1990s, but this is not a memoir about that; readers meet her again as a Stanford professor and the divorced mother of her young son, grasping for the root of her perfectionism and its stunting effects on her writing. Tallent's personal literary endeavor contains many wildly evocative passages and breathtaking sentences, making it a must-read for lovers of writers’ memoirs.
Reading Scratched gave me the feeling of standing very close to a blazing fire. It is that brilliant, that intense, and one of the finest explorations I know of what it means to be a woman and an artist.
Tallent published four lauded books in the 1980s and 1990s, but this is not a memoir about that; readers meet her again as a Stanford professor and the divorced mother of her young son, grasping for the root of her perfectionism and its stunting effects on her writing. Tallent's personal literary endeavor contains many wildly evocative passages and breathtaking sentences, making it a must-read for lovers of writers’ memoirs.
Tallent published four lauded books in the 1980s and 1990s, but this is not a memoir about that; readers meet her again as a Stanford professor and the divorced mother of her young son, grasping for the root of her perfectionism and its stunting effects on her writing. Tallent's personal literary endeavor contains many wildly evocative passages and breathtaking sentences, making it a must-read for lovers of writers’ memoirs.
01/01/2020
Tallent (Mendocino Fire) is insightful on the challenges of living with perfectionism, a disorder related to meeting a personal standard that is often unattainable, particularly to an outside observer. The perfectionist mindset believes others expect them to be perfect and will be highly critical of them if they don't meet these standards. Tallent had a great deal of success early in her career, publishing five books and placing several short stories in the New Yorker. She secured a teaching position at Stanford University's prestigious creative writing program. Yet her perfectionist nature would prevent her from publishing anything else for more than 20 years. She describes perfectionism as set apart from other disorders by the "pleasurableness" in the self-abuse. Perfectionism also gave her something to fall back on when she felt lost, providing a toxic form of identity. VERDICT An original perspective on the perfectionist personality. Recommended for avid readers of memoirs.—Gary Medina, El Camino Coll., Torrance, CA
2019-10-19
A fiction writer explores the causes, and consequences, of her desire to be perfect.
Tallent (Creative Writing/Stanford Univ.; Mendocino Fire: Stories, 2015, etc.) makes her debut as a memoirist with an intimate examination of her quest for perfection, which has dogged her since childhood. Perfectionism, she writes, "is set apart from other forms of trouble by the inflamed genius of its self-abuse and its pleasurableness." It tyrannizes her by "dangling before me flawless elizabeths who would transcend limitations lightly, with every hair in place": a fantasy woman with the power "to intensify, focus, motivate." To those who do not suffer it, perfectionism can seem like "ambition on steroids," but Tallent is ever aware of its debilitating effects. Early success as a writer caused her to feel "quickened self-consciousness, elevated standards" that led to an inability to write for more than 20 years. Sentences she created "written in pursuit of transcendence were dull. For the sake of perfection I took a voice, my own, and twisted until mischance and error and experiment were wrung from it, and with them any chance of aliveness." Seeking the sources of her obsession, Tallent learned that her mother, also a perfectionist, refused to hold her newborn daughter because she saw a scratch near the infant's eyelid—self-inflicted in utero—that aroused her revulsion. Nineteen when her mother disclosed this, Tallent felt relief at knowing, at last, "a necessary piece of my life." Besides causing inhibition, self-doubt, mistrust, anxiety, and depression, perfectionism is characterized by self-absorption—"the failure to be interested in things as they are, or people as they are"—a trait that unfortunately focuses the narrative too narrowly on its wounded protagonist. As she portrays herself as a girlfriend, wife, bookstore clerk, analysand, and writing program director, Tallent admits that among her shortcomings was a tendency to judge others harshly "with perfectionist righteousness." The author's prose is dense, precise, and often lyrical, but the relentless energy of her long sentences and pageslong paragraphs sometimes feels overwhelming.
A candid, sharply etched self-portrait.
