Anne Lamott's amazing grace

The former Salon columnist talks straight about being attacked by readers, why she's not crazy about Hillary, her wonderful week with Molly Ivins, and what a drag it is getting old.

By Joan Walsh

Read more: Religion, Joan Walsh, Anne Lamott, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Faith, Life, Salon Conversations

March 21, 2007 |

Anne Lamott works in mysterious ways. Her publisher overnighted me a copy of her new book, "Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith," so I could read it the weekend before our scheduled interview. On Saturday morning, the doorbell rang and a Fed Ex guy delivered the book; a half-hour later, mysteriously, another Fed Ex guy, another book. So I had two. I grabbed one and took it with me to get a manicure, where a woman sitting across from me couldn't get over the fact that I had the new Anne Lamott before it was even published, when she'd been waiting for it to come out for so long! I explained that I was writing about it, and then I set out to read it, but she kept interrupting. "How is it? Do you like it? Have you read all of them? Is it as good as the last one?" The normally petty me would have been irritated, but under the influence of "Grace (Eventually)" I knew there was only one way to respond: I handed her the book as she left (knowing I had another one at home), making her day, and mine.

I'm sure my nail salon friend wasn't disappointed. "Grace (Eventually)" continues where "Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith" and "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith" left off, with Lamott raising her son, Sam, railing at the Bush administration, ministering to friends, loving Jesus, staying sober, getting older. For the last 20 years I have tried to read everything Lamott has written, going back to the days when we both contributed to a mind-blowingly smart but short-lived magazine called Equator, as well as the late, sometimes great California magazine. She wrote "Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year" just in time for me to read it after my daughter arrived without any. And she began her series of books on faith as I began to realize that my adolescent rebellion against and lingering disappointment with Catholicism wasn't a reason not to have a spiritual life as an adult.

Readers of "Traveling Mercies" and "Plan B" will find familiar, if slightly darker territory in "Grace (Eventually)." In "Ski Patrol," she takes a bad fall off a chairlift and pretends to be fine, but finally allows a woman worker from the ski resort to minister to her until she's safe and warm. In "A Field Theory of Beauty" she makes uneasy peace with aging, covering some of the ground Nora Ephron did in "I Feel Bad About My Neck" but with more God and less money spent on maintenance. There's grace in all of the essays, but it doesn't always make them light reading: "At Death's Window" is about helping a friend with cancer die; in "Dear Old Friend" she helps her aging Aunt Gertrud, who's outlived close friends and family, change her mind and keep her house and her independence; in "Samwheel" (that's the way her son pronounced his name when he was small), she narrates an awful fight with Sam that culminated in her slapping him. When a version of that piece ran in Salon, it generated more reader mail than any essay ever had before. (Lamott says things with Sam got worse "and we both got help, and now, five months later, we are closer and healthier than we've been in years.")

I feel as though I should disclose my friendship with Lamott, even though our interview about "Grace" was the first time we'd ever had a conversation in person, apart from brief hellos at readings and political events. But she once wrote a Salon Premium testimonial (back before we'd ever met or spoken) suggesting that I deserved a raise (and I got one); we had a long e-mail commiseration when the San Francisco Giants lost the World Series and fired Dusty Baker in 2002; she regularly writes with encouragement after my various television adventures, and we have teenagers who are about a year apart, which is a crucial bond.

Your book is called "Grace (Eventually)." But I thought the deal is that if I get to the right spiritual place I will be in perpetual grace. Are you saying instead it's "Grace eventually," not "Grace now," and not "Grace permanently"?

I think it's very frustrating and if I were God I would have a completely different system. I would have a magic wand and I would touch people with it, and help them be struck well. But nobody cares about what would work for me spiritually. My experience is that grace is never in the direction you are looking for it and it never even vaguely resembles what you think decent grace might look like. It's like a shift, it's like a breath, it's like a pause. But then an hour later or three days later real life rears its ugly head again and it's dicey, life is, and it's a mess. We're in our seventh year of the most catastrophic and appalling administration we've ever had and any place of calm or surrender or spiritual equilibrium we can get to will be hard won. It's very frustrating.

But there it is.

There it is.

I told you the story about the woman in my nail salon who wanted your book so badly that I just had to give it to her. It seems like you're writing for people in need, who have fallen off some kind of wagon and are trying to find the courage to get back on. Is it ever a burden for you?

I don't feel it as a burden. I feel like all I can share is my experiences and my belief that we're all pretty much in the same boat. Everything in the culture says that if you're a person who really loves Mary or Jesus or one of the Hindu gods or whatever, that you're not supposed to have jealousy or existential waves of judgment. And I don't think God ever said that. I think the message of Jesus is "Me too" and "It's weird down here" and "People can be really awful and the amount of suffering you're going to see around you, whether in San Francisco or Fairfax or a foreign country, is going to literally blow your mind." I work like hell but I'm also secretly kind of lazy. I do tons of benefits and stuff like that and yet I'm kind of lazy and shiftless; I take a nap every single afternoon. I have a life that allows a 45-minute nap. So what I can say to people is, "There's nothing you've thought, I haven't thought too. No matter how awful you behave I can probably relate, although the details will be different."

Next page: "Sometimes I see myself and go "AAAA! Who's that sad old derelict?"