‘You Need to Take My Son to Jail’
September 4, 2008 § 3 Comments
Those of you who read Ann Bauer’s powerful Modern Love essay in the New York Times this past Sunday may also want to read Ann Bauer’s Brevity essay “The Nowhere Place.”
This is the second time in recent months that a Brevity veteran has landed in the Modern Love column, and that makes us smile. If you missed Lori Jakiela’s essay on sex chairs (among other things) you missed a good one.
Both Jakiela and Bauer are veterans of the same issue — Brevity 11. A fine vintage, it seems.
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog 
I just read both of Ann Bauer’s essays. Now my coffee is cold, and whatever I was thinking of, I am not any longer.
My first urge is to stop writing, ever again. The second: maybe I cannot write like Ann Bauer, but, by God, I can do better.
Thanks.
I hope that was clear — I meant better than my usual scribbled, tossed-out stuff — not better than Bauer.
Man, that easy send button is dangerous.
Dear God, what a beautiful essay, this “Jail” piece. There is a single reference — “I imagined other things. Like maybe Andrew was curing himself of autism.” — that cuts to the gut of memory for those of us who’ve faced something similar.