I've always been a late bloomer in some ways, and extremely precocious in other ways. When I was twenty I was living in New York and working a job and could barely bother to be a college student and had my own apartment, but I couldn't possibly get married before I was thirty-nine.
Meghan DaumI feel that I'm an essayist and that my best work gets done in that form. I wanted to do a book where the essays could exist on their own terms. A book that was neither a book of essays that were shoehorned into a memoir, nor [one where] the essays had been published elsewhere first, [because] then they would kind of bear the marks of those publications.
Meghan DaumEvan Handler is not only a fine actor, heโs a damn good writer. Itโs Only Temporary is wise and funny and as righteously indignant as it is endearingly self-effacing. In what may be a literary first, the book actually left me wanting more.
Meghan DaumThere has to be insight born of hindsight. Otherwise, you're only confessing your sins and asking the reader to forgive you. And that is a complete misuse of the writer's power and unfair to the reader.
Meghan DaumFor me, one of the reasons I love this form - the personal essay form - is because it's a way of forming an intimacy with the reader. What I'm saying to the reader is: I'm going to tell you something; I'm going to be generous; I'm going to offer. The confession, on the other hand, is sort of an imposition because you're asking the reader to forgive you or somehow exonerate you or say, "Hey, I'm even worse." But what I'm interested in doing is being generous and offering a perspective or suggesting a way of thinking about something.
Meghan DaumI grew up in a town where there were no adults over forty who weren't somebody's parents. It was, unfortunately, the kind of town that's a "great places to raise kids" - that's basically code for "there are no adults here who are not parents." I had a few teachers who were kind of weirdo drama teachers and were hugely influential.
Meghan Daum