Little Weirds
Jenny Slate
225 pages - 2019- nonfiction, memoir
April 11th, 2024 — April 12th, 2024
Rating: ⭐⭐½
I wanted to like this book, but I think the more it went on, the more I felt like I was dragging through it, shuffling my feet towards the finish line. I am a fan of Jenny Slate—granted, I don’t know much of her body of work, but I think she plays one of the best characters on “Parks & Recreation”, and that’s saying something—but I thought that this book was simultaneously too much and too little.
For one thing, there is almost nothing with meaning in this book. That might be a little harsh, and I don’t want to be. But I do not think I learned a single thing about Jenny Slate in reading this. The entire collection of short essays has an overlying theme of loneliness, but I found it difficult to relate.
Every story is written in a language that is so flowery it borders on absurd. At first, it felt like reading poetry, and I was enjoying it; around page 150, I started getting tired of it. I wanted to read something that meant anything, instead of just odd hypotheticals about all the times Jenny has died. I think a point was missed on me or something, but I do not think I felt anything strong while reading any of the chapters.
That being said, though, there were some lines that were very beautiful. I had some difficulty picking them out, because most of the lines in the book are incredibly long, almost run-on sentences. But there were a few phrases that stuck out to me. “I am that mysterious stranger that I hoped to meet.” “I am tired of sinking down to a lower place to be with men.” “I’d rather live with a tender heart.”
The part that stuck out to me the most, almost definitely because of its current relevancy in my life, was the incredibly short two-page essay on seeing a solar eclipse. The eclipse happened a few days ago, and I was lucky enough to see it. I felt that Jenny encapsulated all of my feelings about it in a (not so) concise way. This is about half of that essay:
After this eclipse and group experience, is everyone else’s hair also made out of necklaces now and is your heart a plum with a golden marble in it that will spin eternally, like mine is? Final comment: It is very warming to think of the adults going to places to get the paper glasses, and to think of the adults who own a small store or bodega, and that they heard about the eclipse and then ordered the paper glasses, knowing that people would want to watch the rare thing that was going to happen.
The first sentence is very ethereal, and not exactly how I was feeling; but the second sentence details the feelings and thoughts that I have been having this week very well. I love that people went out and got glasses to hand out to each other, that people will stand and share and stare up at this event that we have known is going to happen for millennia and yet still make a day of it.
Other than that section, though, I did not relate to much of Jenny’s prose. I think it was a valuable read—it definitely has some interesting ideas and metaphors—but I do not think I will be recommending this to anyone. I’ll stick to her work in “Parks & Rec.”
Total pages read so far, 2024: 7,526
Total books read so far, 2024: 21
Next book: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell