‘Furiously Happy’ Unites Kindred Spirits
Jenny Lawson’s best-selling ‘Furiously Happy’ is a humorous account of her struggles with mental illness
Author Jenny Lawson, with tote bag, Sunday among fans at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif. PHOTO: ANNIE
TRITT FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By
Updated Dec. 11, 2015 2:47 p.m. ETThe Wall Street Journal
HANNAH KARP
PASADENA, Calif.
In “Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things,” Jenny Lawson
writes humorously about her struggles with mental illness, expressing
thoughts some of her readers said they’d been afraid to utter aloud.
On her book tour this fall, even her most anxious and agoraphobic fans
have turned out in droves, confessing their secrets, connecting with
kindred spirits and letting loose. Wearing everything from hair curlers
to pajamas, they bear gifts ranging from booze
to taxidermy, and wait hours to get their books signed and share their
struggles with Ms. Lawson.
A typical event feels like a raucous support-group meeting conducted by the funniest stand-up comedian in town.
“Furiously Happy,” which spent eight weeks on the New York Times best-seller
list and has sold 70,000 printed copies, according to Nielsen BookScan,
is a mishmash of funny essays, conversations and what Ms. Lawson calls
“confused thoughts.” The 41-year-old author offers a window into the
mind of someone struggling with anxiety disorder,
impulse-control disorder, avoidant-personality disorder,
obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression, among other ailments. Her
book doesn’t give advice and is intended to show the benefits of being
“a bit touched,” while helping readers laugh at their neuroses.
Flatiron Books Senior Vice President and Publisher Amy Einhorn, Ms.
Lawson’s editor, said there is a “long tradition of books dealing with
depression and mental illness being incredibly popular,” going back to
J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” Two books
alongside Ms. Lawson’s on best-seller lists had similar themes: Patrick
Kennedy’s “A Common Struggle” and the young-adult novel “Challenger
Deep.”
Ms. Lawson also has a blog that
gets millions
of visitors each month, one of whom posted this week that his son had
just been treated for “anxiety and depression…nothing stabby.” OnTwitter she
has about 500,000 followers. Twitter is a godsend because “it can be
two in the morning and I can say I’m panicking, and there will be at
least 100 people who are awake,” she said, adding that many tweet their
support. Last month Ms. Lawson inspired hundreds
of people to start tweeting their most awkward moments, a discussion
that went viral.
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Fans of Ms. Lawson at Sunday’s event for the author at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif. PHOTO: ANNIE
TRITT FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
But it is her readings that separate her from other celebrity authors,
attracting devotees who “need special care,” said Heather Duncan, the
marketing director of Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store. Though other
writers can pull bigger crowds, Ms. Lawson’s
fans bond more and linger longer as she stays until the wee hours
signing each and every book, Ms. Duncan said.
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Braving crowds can be a tall order for Ms. Lawson’s readers, but they
are quick to come to each other’s emotional rescue. At one reading this
fall some attendees fashioned a small fort out of their sweaters to give
a panicky fan a place to calm down. At another
reading in Denver, bookstore workers helped out by saving places in the
book-signing line for people who needed to regroup in the bathroom.
Recently, Ms. Lawson crouched beneath the signing table for a photograph
with a fan who couldn’t handle the spotlight.
“Every time when I go out on stage I think I’m going to have a panic
attack, but I see so many people with the same deer-in-the-headlights
look and think, ‘Those are my people!’” said Ms. Lawson, who opened her
jammed reading in Pasadena, Calif., last weekend
by promising her pills would kick in soon.
Ms. Lawson grew up in Wall, Texas, and wrote for various websites and
publications before starting her current blog in 2007. After publishing
her first book, the 2012 memoir “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened,” Ms.
Lawson said, her readings were thronged but
fans weren’t comfortable sharing their own stories. When she started
promoting “Furiously Happy” this fall, though, things were different.
Many fans arrived with friends they said they had made at readings on
her 2012 tour, and they felt more confident that
no one would judge if they “started to freak out a little,” Ms. Lawson
said.
Since September, she said, “I have not had a single reading where I
didn’t have a person whisper to me...‘I’ve never known another person
with trichotillomania’”—a disorder that involves the uncontrollable urge
to pull out one’s hair. (Ms. Lawson recommends
tricks like coconut oil, to make the tactile sensation of pulling less
satisfying.)
The most meaningful insight, she said, came from a formerly suicidal fan
at a reading who showed Ms. Lawson a picture of her children and
thanked her that they still had a mom.
Cayla Newnan, a fan, dressed as Ms. Lawson on Sunday at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif. PHOTO: ANNIE
TRITT FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Among the memorable gifts the author has received: sunglasses decorated
with pills, and a painting that a fan made by using lips as a
paintbrush, kissing the paint and then the canvas. Knitted items are
popular, since many of her fans need something to do with
their hands, she said.
For her recent Sunday-afternoon reading at Vroman’s Bookstore in
Pasadena, some fans arrived five hours early to secure good seats. One
woman standing in the aisle confessed to a friend that she had been
ambivalent about coming because “I’m a fan but not a
huge fan so I worried about taking up the place of a fan.”
Cayla Newnan, a 15-year-old from Woodland Hills, Calif., came wielding a
blow-dryer with curlers in her hair—a homage to how Ms. Lawson appears
on her blog. Chaz Boston Baden, a 52-year-old computer programmer from
Anaheim who said his wife struggles with depression,
came wearing teddy-bear ears glued to a headband. Though Ms. Lawson
writes a lot about her animals, both real and stuffed, Mr. Baden said he
simply likes the ears, which he also wears at science-fiction
conferences.
James Callaghan, a 36-year-old graphic designer from Altadena, Calif.,
said he hadn’t read “Furiously Happy.” But he attended the reading,
bearing cookies and Cheez-It crackers for Ms. Lawson, to thank her for
all the retweets he got after sharing his awkward
moment last month: “That time I told my Art Dept co-worker to use
Photoshop to ‘youthenize’ the old lady in a photo.”
David Buchanan
Authorhttp://www.amazon.com/dp/
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