Carley Moore\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s debut collection of essays, 16 Pills, is a therapeutic read, and while no book can boast being a panacea for the ills of modern life, this one comes close. Moore writes like her life depends on it. She dissects the stories of her life with intelligence and precision, and invites the reader to share in her examination. Feminist, political, funny, and irreverent, Moore\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s essays are masterful, and show a true love of the form; the stories are deeply personal, while still tapping into shared human experience.<\/p>\n
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Moore is a Professor of Writing and Culture at NYU, and an Associate for Bard College\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Institute for Writing and Thinking. She is a poet, a novelist, and an essayist, and her love for writing in all forms is clearly evident in this collection. The essays range from short, sharply focused vignettes revolving around a single memory or issue, to more broadly universal themes, drawing copiously from her life and her reading for inspiration. She selects passages from a wide scope of material, using quotes from Zadie Smith as well as more surprising sources, like an article about lice from Scientific American.<\/p>\n
The title 16 Pills refers to the number of essays in the collection, and themes of illness, physical and mental health recur throughout. These are not the only themes Moore explores, but the early years of her life had a huge impact on her, and the far reach of this time is evident.<\/p>\n
The collection\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first essay, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Sick Book,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d introduces the basis of these themes of body and wellness. As a child, Moore was hospitalized for an unknown medical condition that caused her muscles to contract and twist to the extent that she sometimes couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even walk. While doctors struggled to diagnose her mysterious illness, she was helpless to control her own body, not just the muscle cramps, but her daily schedule, and the tests she had to endure. What she could control were her observations, her thoughts, and her memories. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Sick Book\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is doled out in a series of brief vignettes, memories from this frightening time. Her eventual diagnosis is revealed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c although not in this essay \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and she refers frequently back to this time as she explores its repercussions on herself and her family.<\/p>\n
Moore has a neurological condition called Dopa Responsive Dystonia. She shares this hereditary disease with her father, although hers is a much more severe case; her father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lived experience with the disease was mild enough that he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know he had it until his daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s diagnosis. The essay \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Spectacle and Silence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d begins with a brief anecdote from this time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a memory of she and her father sitting together on a green recliner. From here she launches into an exploration of personal responsibility, political activism, and what it takes to become an adept witness and advocate, as well as the amount of work it takes to learn to play ones role in all three. She judges the failings of herself and her father in particular here, and explores the role of media and storytelling in guiding self-reflection and as a vector for personal and political change.<\/p>\n
Moore seems to delight in combining the sacred and the profane: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nitpicking and Co-Parenting\u00e2\u20ac\u009d starts as a humorous essay about she and her ex husband dealing with their 5 year old daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bout with lice. The essay discusses the challenges of co-parenting and raising a well-adjusted child, then veers into a feminist examination of the practical work of nitpicking (i.e. it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a very women-dominated profession), the trope of a nitpicking wife, and then ties that to the film \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Alien,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wherein Sigourney Weaver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s character Ripley, is the hero \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but a female hero who is ultimately performing another kind of nitpicking. Ripley does the tough job that no one else wants. She cries and she is in pain, but she knows what she must do and simply does it. Moore explains how \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[Ripley] embodies a feminist ethos I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come closer to realizing as a single, co-parenting mom\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (19).<\/p>\n
In the essay \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My Pills,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Moore explores the essay as an agent of healing, albeit a difficult one. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the essay form itself an anti-palliative, a recipe for pain, and an invitation to cause trouble?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she asks, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Because the writing of an essay is the untangling of the worst kind of mental knot\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (86). Moore warns that the essay isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a cure-all, and the process not simple. Such examinations can be very messy, but they are also necessary. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In my essays, I plan to wallow and wander, to get stuck and linger over painful moments and difficult texts. I am trying to figure something out here and to name it for myself and for you my dear friend\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (86). A better metaphor for an essay in Moore\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hands might be something more akin to the irrigation of a wound. Moore is not afraid to bare it all, to show her vulnerability, as messy as it can be. Instead she probes the things that most people shy away from, and the result is healing.<\/p>\n
16 Pills doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t offer easy answers, instead it invites the reader to become comfortable with uncertainty. As she says in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Resistance Dance,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I feel \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmixed\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 about a lot of shit. If you give me a problem, I will feel two to ten ways about it. I speak from multiple positions. [\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 ] The essay is my most comfortable genre because it allows me to honestly change my mind. I like landscapes that feel like mixed tapes and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll take a queer dance floor over a straight one\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (146).<\/p>\n
Although she delves into some dark places, Moore\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 16 Pills is ultimately a journey toward optimism and hope, a journey toward self-discovery and acceptance. If only we all could cast light into the dark corners of ourselves with such alacrity.<\/p>\n
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