In the Land of Men: A Memoir

Miller recounts with clarity the things men have said to her in her time at Esquire, but she doesn’t give you any sense of how she responded, of who she is, of how she overcame these obstacles in her professional career. She omits entirely her own half of the dialogue in most scenes, writing her own memoir as if she were a mere observer of its events. It makes Miller seem a passive woman, which I am certain she is not. She breaks glass ceilings, but you never get a sense of how she did it. She rails against the patriarchy, but her actions are wholly complicit. It is not clear that she ever made any effort to raise up the women who followed in her footsteps, despite her criticism of the barriers that women face. Instead of a memoir about Esquire’s first female literary editor, the bulk of the text is mainly concerned with mythologizing the pathological, manipulative, petulant man-child of “Infinite Jest” fame, David Foster Wallace. She paints Wallace as a fragile narcissist and abuser of women but excuses this behaviour on the basis of artistry. What Miller recounts of Wallace is frankly, sad and gross. What Miller implies about Wallace’s much-darker, unspoken secrets is far worse. Yet, she forgives Wallace his reign of terror on the grounds of his literary merit, as if it is impossible to be both a creative thinker and a half-decent human being. For a woman whose entire literary career has been spent polishing and elevating the work of men from beneath their shadows, I can’t help but feel like her memoir does more of the same, serving only to spruce David Foster Wallace up for readers one final time. Miller spent her career padding and protecting men from their own delicate egos, and it’s a habit she cannot for the life of her break.