In We Learn Nothing, political cartoonist and New York Times essayist Tim Kreider deploys his wicked satirical genius with introspective wisecrackings that make us laugh, cry and suffer in humiliating discomfort as he maintains that, even when given the chance to make life-changing decisions, we revert to old habits.
For example, a stabbing Kreider experiences as life-altering becomes, after a month or two, just another page in the book of life--out of sight, out of mind. He also muses on Lisa Nowak, the NASA astronaut who drove 900 miles--allegedly wearing adult diapers--to kidnap her lover's new girlfriend, and reminds us that "we've all worn the diaper" of unrequited love and ensuing heartbreak.
Youthful bar-hopping escapades that wear thin in middle age, obsessive attachments to long-lost family and a con-artist uncle and the easy "defriending" of online friends all turn into moments of critical self-examination. "Although we may unconsciously experience [anger] as upsetting," Krieder writes in another essay, "somatically it is a lot like the initial rush of an opiate, a tingling warmth you feel on the insides of your elbows and wrists." Saving emotional tear-jerkers for last, "Chutes and Ladders" becomes Kreider's most poignant admission of unconditional love and friendship, and an assertion of the possibility of thoughtful redemption.
No one is immune to Kreider's self-deprecating sarcasm. Like a tornado that rips apart the foundations of established towns, so, too, do Kreider's essays tug at our heartstrings, stripping human behavior of all its pretty, petty pretensions. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer