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“For many of us, myself included, it’s easy to want to be on the New York Times bestseller list, or the USA Today bestseller list, and to try to get an amazing number of week-one sales, but it’s important to remember that those lists are really hard to get on, and there can be this nice long tail in terms of the impact of a book where maybe it doesn’t necessarily get a ton of sales in that first week or that first month. But over time, it continues to sell, right? And then you get these bumps, and you realize that, oh, this book has staying power.” — Mallary Tenore Tarpley, author of Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery
Hey CNFers, so on this email chain for two signings I’m doing in Ketchum, ID, one of the guys was like, “Check your Amazon link to make sure it’s OK.”
I said, “I’ll trust it’s OK because I haven’t yet looked at Amazon or Goodreads and that will lead me down a one-way road to Bummerville.”
So then my friend Kim BETRAYED me with a separate email that said, “I’m gonna force good news on you” and it’s a screen shot of 106 ratings on Amazon for an average of 4.6 and 228 ratings for an average of 4.4 on Goodreads. She said anything above 4.0 on Goodreads is really good.
I think I owe a lot of you for rallying behind the book. Now, I’m still not going to go read any of them, but I guess the book is landing with people. It’s hard for me to admit that it might be good and THAT’s why it’s getting good ratings. Therapy, is it too late to start?
Mallary Tenore Tarpley (@mallarytenoretarpley) is here today for a double-feature Friday. I realize that a flood of these podcasts probably overwhelms and stresses you out and if so, just know that I’m twice as stressed trying to get through this backlog of interviews and honor the guests who came on in a somewhat timely manner.
She’s the author of Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery (Simon & Schuster/Simon Element). It’s pretty heavy shit, man. She developed a disordered relationship to food when her mother passed away when she was just 11 years old. Mallary spent years in treatment and the book blends her personal story with the ballast of sciences and outward-facing reporting, memoir plus as it was pitched. We’ll call it Memoir Max.
Also, hosted my first Patreon AMA last night. How did it go? One person showed (thanks, Kate!) and it was kinda awkward. It’s set up so attendees type their questions and I’m the only one on camera. With just one person in the chat, it’s a bit weird. Might do these on Zoom, might not do them anymore. If you want to join, visit patreon.com/cnfpod.
Got a new review on Apple from ManinProgress it says “Too Much” 4 stars:
This guy must have been listening during a particular phase of the show where I would occasionally interject. I don’t do it anymore. Oh, well. At least he gave it 4 stars.
Mallary has been on the hustle for Slip. She’s everywhere. She’s posting. She’s newslettering. She’s beating the drum. She’s an example of what a modern author must do in this age. I’d say take a look at what she’s doing and maybe cherry pick what works for you. But speaking from experience, really nobody is going to do it for you.
She graduated from Providence College and earned an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College, where she started this. She worked with my dear friend Maggie Messitt on it for a bit.
Mallary is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Texas where she teaches journalism classes. She started her career at The Poynter Institute where she would become the managing editor of the website, poynter.org. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Nieman Storyboard and she has a Substack, don’t we all, called Write at the Edge, at mallary.substack.com. You can also learn more about her at mallarytenoretarpley.com and follow her on LinkedIn or Instagram as well.
We talk a lot about
- platform and publicity
- How she vetted a freelance publicist
- Staying power
- And some of her best memories working alongside Roy Peter Clark at Poynter
Stick around for a parting shot on the eating disorder I invented in college. I don’t know why I’m going to share what I’m going to share, but it’s up to you if you care to listen or not.
Mallary’s Rec
The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke
Parting Shot: The Eating Disorder I Invented
Before I get into this, please don’t listen to this as if I’m fat shaming anyone. Health is a spectrum, bodies exist on a spectrum and just because you’re objectively skinny doesn’t mean you’re healthy, and just because you might be heavier doesn’t mean you’re unhealthy. OK?
So, for, like, ever, I’ve had major issues with my body, body shape, body image. It was imprinted on me from a pretty young age and will likely need a lot of therapy to cure, but who has the time?
My mother could always be seen doing crunches and stuff between commercials when I was growing up. Like a lot of women, most of her value or perceived value came from her looks. She was voted most attractive in her high school graduating class, this in the 1950s. Every morning when I woke up, there was some aerobics show on the television and I often watched Denise Austin or Body by Jake while I ate my Honey Nut Cheerios. Raised on He-Man and Hulk Hogan.
Despite being pretty athletic and coordinated, I was never super lean, I was always a little thick through the middle despite wanting so desperately to have a chiseled abdomen, because I so desperately wanted girls to like me and notice me. THIS WAS THE WAY. And I thought the only way would be to look like a Men’s Health cover model. One year, I wanted and received the Ab Works Machine for Christmas. It was this hinged thing with handles to do crunches on. I did a set, ran upstairs and asked my sister and mother if they could see the definition in my stomach. They laughed. This did not help my confidence.
To be clear, this obsession never manifested in the kind of maniacal devotion to actual execution, to true bulimia or anorexia nervosa, though it very well could have. To this day I’ve never quite achieved the physique I’ve long dreamed of. My appetites for beer and junk food and sleeping are too strong. My relationship to “good” food and “bad” food was and is so messed up that I’m caught in this awful tension between what I “should” eat, what I do eat, and the shame that often elicits. If I know there are Oreos in the house, I can hear them talking to me. And I will eat them just to get them out of the house.
Right now, there is a pint of ice cream in the freezer of non dairy Phish Food and the ringing in my ears from it is worse than tinnitus. I once ate so much mac & cheese at a friend’s wedding that I threw up because I have this scarcity mindset around food, that I won’t get “mine.” I didn’t grow up with five brothers. I was basically an only child and I still had/have this mindset that if I don’t chug my food and get seconds (or thirds) as fast as possible I won’t ever feel sated.
My friends constantly made fun of how fat I was, even though I really wasn’t that chubby. They thought it was hilarious. I did not. Even though I could kick all their asses on whatever field of play we were on … except swimming. Jesse was as long as a barracuda. They’d laugh at me, poke at me. When I was 24, another friend of a roommate looked at me and was, “B.O.’s already got a dad bod!” I probably invited it. They thought it was funny, how mad I’d get, or how sad I’d get. Almost unilaterally, all my friends were way leaner than I was. So I was an easy target in that regard. This is growing up in Massachusetts.
In college I was a janitor for one of the bakeries on campus, Hamden. And they often left dozens of glazed donut holes on the tables when their shift was over for us to clean up one way or another. Leftover stuff they figured some vulture making $8 an hour would scarf up. I’d eat them like they were M&Ms and feel the requisite shame. So then I got a wise idea that I would chew on them, feel that pillowy sweetness, and then spit them out into the trashcan for minimal calorie bleed into my stomach. My buddy Jon thought I was insane. But he was naturally lean and the naturally lean don’t usually “get it.” I called it “pre-bulimia.”
Man, I was always seduced by ways to get that six-pack, or to chisel that body to look like a cover model. I knew it was never possible, but the allure was always there. I never had the confidence to eschew it. And when I look in the mirror, I see Grimace or Spongebob.
My father fat shamed EVERYBODY, especially women, when we saw them from a distance. Or if he brought up so and so, he’d say, “SHE put on some weight,” or “HE got heavy.” My sister, SUPER lean, did not inherit the endomorphic bod I got, says the same things. One of her daughters one year, she may have been seven or eight, greeted me by repeatedly poking stomach making a kind of squishy sound, which was super inappropriate. She was, is, and will always be super skinny. Objectively, I didn’t look like the obesity B-roll footage you see on the news. My torso is where 90% of body mass is. Both my parents are apples. Different shaped apples, but apples.
And so it’s only natural that I have this internalized fat phobia and I hate it. Someone very close to me grew up much the same way, she grew up similarly conditioned toward disordered eating and how people judge us by how big or small or wimpy or jacked we are.
Sometimes when I see people I have seen in a while and they say, “You look good,” I get a little high. And if I see people I haven’t seen in a while and they don’t say anything, I think, “Fuck, they must think I’m a fucking slob … and now they’re talking behind my back about how I’ve let myself go.” I hear my Dad’s voice saying, “HE put on some weight.”
As I wrote a few weeks ago, I’m quickly running out of fucks to give, but this is a lingering fuck that is very hard for me to let go of because it runs so deep. In the culture. In my upbringing.
Thing is, men rarely talk about this shit. This is usually the purview of the women’s magazines I saw piled up in front of my mother. Of losing 30 pounds in a month and HOW TO KEEP IT OFF. Get your pre-pregnancy body back, and on and on.
The covers of all these magazines are so doctored with lighting and photoshop and the people on the covers have cooks, nutritionists, and, more than likely, are on some kind of PED. Fuck, even the bodybuilding mags show the roided out dudes, but they’re touting some supplement as if that’s what made them jacked. You got jacked with hard work, yes, but also chemistry.
It’s such a drip, such a waste of headspace, especially when there’s so much suffering and hunger and fascism and school shootings and it’s like, You’re concerned about how your belly looks in that t-shirt? I very rarely go swimming. I almost always wear a long sleeved shirt to the beach, if such an outing occurs.
I can do better. I must. I know I need to lean down for health. My blood pressure is pretty high and I want my knees and body at large to feel more limber and less achy. Studies show that excess body fat on the torso can lead to a host of gnarly things. That’s where all my excess mass is. My concerns are far less cosmetic than they used to be … and yet … it’s still there …
This is what Mallary’s book dredged up in me. So much of the literature she cited I could relate to with dizzying synchronicity.
Anyway, figured I’d share that, whether you cared for it or not. I know it’s not in any way writing advice or shit like that, but sometimes, sharing a sliver of my life away from the page is within the rules. And all the more why I put these blogs, such as they are, at the end of the program.
400 Episodes Ago
Sarah Minor Isn’t Your Typical Writer
300 Episodes Ago
Damon Brown on ‘Bring Your Worth’ and the Secret Power of Cocktail Napkins
200 Episodes Ago
The Atavist’s ‘Feast for Lost Souls’ with Annelise Jolley and Zahara Gomez
100 Episodes Ago
I fucked up and skipped from 388 to 390, so now every needs to be changed. Or we just say who cares? Maybe?
