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Listen up, David Sedaris! Some nationally known humor writers like Portland.
In her new memoir, Adult Braces (Grand Central Publishing, 336 pages, $29), Lindy West mentions that she did not have fun working on the television adaptation of her first memoir, Shrill, which was filmed in Portland. But in a phone conversation with Willamette Week, she said, “It’s not Portland’s fault! I’m obsessed with Portland. I love Portland. If I was looking to move back to a city, I would possibly pick Portland over Seattle at this point. Don’t tell Seattle.” (Sorrynotsorry, Seattle.) “The food’s so good. Portland rules,” she said. She also said working in television wasn’t all bad, but that it was a hard time in her life.
Shrill was canceled in early 2021, and West’s husband wanted to add a third person to the relationship (a woman in Portland!). West considered the possible polycule while taking a solo road trip from Washington to Florida and back again in a camper van named BAAA (because it had a sheep on it). On the cross-country adventure, she visited friends, camped alone, and left herself emotional voice memos. When she got back, she decided to give polyamory a try. If you were online in 2021–2022, this isn’t a spoiler. West is still in that internet-famous throuple, and she is impervious to your opinions about it.
Adult Braces isn’t juicy gossip about West’s marriage; it is starkly honest about mental health, relationships, and what it’s like to be famous for being yourself. Blending her signature wit with deeply vulnerable glimpses into her mindset during this time, the book reads like a cinematic journey both across the country and within West’s psyche. The following interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
WW: You speak fondly of your time at an alt-weekly paper, Seattle’s The Stranger. Why are alt-weeklies the best?
Lindy West: I’m alt-weekly ’til I die. Dan Savage was my boss and taught us to think of the paper as a performance, so there was theatricality in everything we did. In addition to delivering our opinions and original, serious reporting, we also were always mindful of creating a piece of entertainment. That’s how I think about all my writing since then. I owe everything to that experience.
How do you deal with your writing being tied to your personality and, by extension, your relationship?
So much of this book is grappling with the psychological fallout of realizing I’d made myself into a brand and being kind of trapped in it. I’m so grateful to people who support me and love my work, and I never want to lose sight of that. I don’t want people to feel like they loved me wrong—that they did fandom wrong. It’s a negotiation I have to do internally. How do I not completely give away every part of my life to people just because I can feel that they want and need certain things from me?
Any time I post something kinda transparent about my relationship, a couple people come out of the woodwork to let me know they don’t like it. I don’t engage. If they want to know what I think, they can buy the book, and if they don’t like what they find, they can go find their own husband and make their own decisions. The idea that because you’re a public figure your life is up for public consensus is very strange because that’s not true.
You have that problem in common with the Heated Rivalry cast.
Leave the boys alone!
Why is the title Adult Braces?
Literally, I have adult braces, but I was also an adult bracing for impact my whole life. Also, I needed adult braces, structural support to help me be a functioning adult. I liked the metaphor of this thing being in my head that is slowly rearranging the pieces as I go through all these other things in my life.
What was a surprise during your journey across America?
I want to say something poetic about the character of America or whatever, but the real answer, the biggest surprise, was the natural springs in the Florida panhandle. North Florida is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my life…except that it’s scary to send people to Florida, so it’s a tough line.
More generally the thing that surprised me was how rarely I didn’t like a place. Of course, a tremendous amount of that is a privilege of being a white person, but pretty much everywhere I went I felt some degree of, “Oh, I could live here, if I had people here.” You can make a nice little life in so many different places.
What’s next for you?
I want to write a voicy first-person mystery series starring a chunky writer who moves to the woods and finds herself solving mysteries. Keep an eye out for Lindy’s mystery novel, title TBD.
READ IT: Adult Braces: Driving Myself Sane by Lindy West will be published March 10.
