I’ve been into the millennial crashout memoir genre this year, which is to say that I read both Lindy West’s heartrending polyamory memoir, Adult Braces (which I reviewed here), and Lena Dunham’s Famesick, an account of her cultural rise, which unfolded alongside her steep descent into chronic illness.
I was never a big fan of West’s writing back in her Jezebel days, but, honestly, no one writes well when they’re in the middle of something they can’t stomach. West’s memoir was a mix of desperate diversions and unmetabolized experience—and that much unmetabolized experience is hard for the reader to digest, too.
Dunham writes from a safer distance. She is not afraid of the dark, so to speak.
