Essayist Meghan Daum, in her
ten-essay collection My Misspent Youth,
is beautifully and painfully honest even when it is self-incriminating to be
so. She forewords her book by arguing
that it does, indeed, have a cohesive point and a subject, which she summarizes
as "about not knowing what things are about and trying to sort matters out
by using one’s personal experiences and observations as a tool" (9).

These essays offer wise,
questioning, and often skeptical analyses of American culture from the
perspective of the hope and the disapproval of youth. Her humor is amazingly potent, and her sophistication as a writer
allows her access to subtle and beautiful nuances of language to make powerful
and amusing comments on everything from flight attendants to polygamists to
dying young.

The first essay, "On the
Fringes of the Physical World," relates Daum’s experience at being charmed
and romanced by e-mail. She understands
that, although she never expected herself to be part of something so seemingly
"geeky" and so potentially dangerous as courtship with an absolute
stranger, it was something she, and many of her friends from whom she heard
similar stories, had to do because they missed the "courtship ritual"
(27) so missing from contemporary existence:

We had finally wooed and
been wooed, given an old-fashioned structure through which to attempt the
process of romance. E-mail had become
an electronic epistle, a yearned-for rulebook. 
The black and white of the type, the welcome respite from the
distractions of smells and weather and other people, had, in effect, allowed us
to be vulnerable and passionate enough to actually care about something. It allowed us to do what was necessary to
experience love. It was not the
Internet that had contributed to our remote, fragmented lives. The problem was life itself (27-8).

Like many of the essays in My Misspent Youth, Daum here is able to
summarize the search for beauty and meaning that many people, especially young
adults, are facing in a consumer-driven, alienating, and often cruelly
disappointing world. She is able to
chastise herself and others while at the same time displaying a keen and
sympathetic understanding the circumstances that have caused them such
loneliness and isolation.

"Variations on Grief," the
book’s most honest and vital essay, details Daum’s experience with the death of
an old friend about whom she had very mixed feelings. Throughout the essay, she admits how she was unable to admit her
grief at the time, a mixed bag of grief and relief, and instead "decided
to create an ironic occurrence rather than a tragedy" (157). She relates
the experience of lying to his parents both before and after his death, and of
the confusion and pain that this caused her:

The words I said to Jan and Howard Peterson after
their son was dead were even bigger lies than the ones I’d said when he wasn’t.
I continued with the present tense. 
"Brian’s probably laughing at us now." And "Brain, though
he is sad to leave you, is probably fascinated by whatever he is experiencing
now." They loved this (169).

Throughout My Misspent Youth, Daum is alternately engaging and intense,
momentous and delightful, and always honest. 
This is a collection of essays that seems to be disparate in its subject
matter and themes, yet it is one that upon further thought reveals itself to be
an absolutely appropriate work for disaffected, alienated, yet undyingly
hopeful readers, both young and old. 
Daum has succeeded both in making a work very much of its time and one
that will be relevant for many years to come. 

©
2002 Miranda Hale

Miranda Hale is a
first-year graduate student in English Literature who lives in Spokane, Washington
and who reads entirely too much Sylvia Plath.

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