Getting It, Together: Bill Clegg’s Memoir Commemorates 12-step Meetings

But how did a literary agent fall for the rhetoric of recovery?

More generally, though, the problem is that Mr. Clegg doesn’t explain how a man who lives for language could subscribe to a program that employs it so carelessly. His embrace of the culture of recovery makes emotional sense—he is weak, he wants consolation, he needs the camaraderie of addicts like he needs “oxygen”—but it doesn’t make literary sense. The personal redemption comes at the cost of a host of unredeemable clichés. At one point, he alludes to James Frey, a guy who wrote with “macho arrogance” and went on Oprah to crow about “how he relied on his own willpower to quit.” Though he admits that, in the thick of his addiction, he “strongly identified” with Mr. Frey’s attitude, Mr. Clegg doesn’t tell us how he got past that attitude, except by reminding us of the chaos it led him into. It leaves one wishing he had told a slightly larger story, of how a stylist of his powers found sustenance in rhetoric like “The truth will set you free”—of how he learned to speak in “a voice that is mine and not mine.” As it is, the heart and the mind are split. You root for him as he finds an apartment, a romance, a friend group and finally a job. But you count on the relapses to keep it interesting.

editorial@observer.com

Getting It, Together: Bill Clegg’s Memoir Commemorates 12-step Meetings