Lamott, Anne

American novelist and nonfiction writer Ann Lamott has penned best-selling books combining self-deprecating humor, honesty verging on blunt-ness, a spiritual attitude, and autobiographical details. As Lamott once commented on the theme of her life, her books insist on “knowing what happened and saying it out loud.” Lamott's work does not shy away from coupling discussions of motherhood with alcoholism, drug abuse, and other compulsions and obsessions. In Operating Instructions (1994), Lamott's ironic account of her pregnancy and her first year as a single mother, she explicitly comment on her different addictions—“alcohol, drugs, work, food, excitement, good deeds, popularity, men, exercise”—to avoid being confronted with a sense of total aloneness. Lamott challenges the romantic, saccharine vision of motherhood, emphasizing instead the difficulties of being a single ...