Moore Flight Sincerity, Sarcasm, and Essay

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In the third chapter of Flight, Zits describes who is perhaps "the only real friend of [his] life" as a "pretty white boy" who "doesn't even like or respect Jesus -- or Allah or Buddha or LeBron James or any other God" (Alexie 24). In what is otherwise a very poignant passage, where Zits is explaining is near-instant love for this boy he meets in jail, the mention of LeBron James in the company of various prophets/deities is a not-so-subtle cynical undercut of what could be an intensely emotional scene. It is not further referenced, and this type of occurrence doesn't appear again in this passage, but there is a sense of slight self-mocking throughout due to remarks like these.

The self-mocking is anything but slight in Moore's "How to Become a Writer." The speaker opens by telling you to try to be something else, and to fail at it quickly: "Early critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire" (Moore, par. 1). Despite the possible (and probable) veracity of this sentence, there is an obvious tongue-in-cheek quality within the sentence. The speaker is mocking herself -- or you, technically -- for wanting to be a writer in the first place, because it just means being a failure at something else. This is not the same kind of deep seated self-hatred that Zit experiences in Flight; there is far more conscious irony and developed cynicism than a believable fifteen-year-old could embody, but there is still an obvious self-disdain that becomes almost explicit here, as if the arch-ness of the expression were a substitute for true emotional content.

That is, in fact, exactly what Moore manages to accomplish with this tone, just as Alexie's more subtle yet equally sarcastic interjections reveal the true depth of the sincerity with which Zits is speaking to the reader.

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In Flight, the end result is a defensive but deeply hurting adolescent; the fact that he employs flippancy in the limited fashion he does is actually a testament to the level of his emotion, as the average fifteen-year-old -- even Holden Caulfield, for the most part -- would never be able to admit to even the depth of emotion that is portrayed in the cited passage.

The poignancy of the events the narrator in Moore's story relates, such as her brother's crippled return from Vietnam, is equally apparent despite her consistent self-deprecation, as her avoidance merely becomes an indicator of the level of pain she is accessing. Her use of the second person is another element that on the surface creates detachment but the overall effect of which is to make the story all the more personal. This is not exactly because it makes the reader the subject, but rather because the intimacy of the details reveals the true first-person nature of the narration and offers it as an experience of shared humanity.

Both of these stories manage to convey a sense of closeness and intimacy through the technique of strategic detachment and humor. It is as though any perceived disconnect between the text and the emotional content of the story begs the reader's intervention, and the increased engagement with the stories results in an increase in the power of their language. The true mastery shown by these authors is in their ability to make these unique stories seem universal and personally meaningful through their selective use of standard human defense mechanisms -- there is nothing that appears so vulnerable as someone constantly on guard, and these writers exploit that fact beautifully.

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