Last year, I focused almost exclusively on reading music-related books. I had to—over the past 3-4 years, I had accumulated a stack of unread titles gathering dust on my bookshelf, staring back at me accusingly. “Why,” they seemed to ask, “did you bother buying us if you weren’t going to read a single page?” Fair enough. So, I dove in, starting with Liz Phair’s 2019 Horror Stories, the first of her two memoirs.
Horror Stories isn’t a traditional music biography. Instead, it’s a collection of personal essays that recount pivotal and deeply affecting moments in Phair’s life. These reflections explore how those experiences shaped her, now in her 50s, and helped her confront aspects of her personality she finds difficult—even off-putting. Think of it as an introspective journal with prompts like: Write about the most horrifying thing about being pregnant. Or: Recall a time when you saw someone in crisis but did nothing. How did it make you feel? Or: Have you experienced a #MeToo moment?
Nor, I should add, is Horror Stories a recapitulation of her career. So, if you’re looking for insight into the making of Exile in Guyville, her honest and, at times, profanely refreshing debut, you won’t find that here. What you will find is a story about an aborted album whose producer (Ryan Adams) alternated between being a good working partner and being moody and demanding. The fact that she tried to get this record made over a period of three years, only for Adams to up and leave the project to tour for a year, speaks to his professionalism—or lack thereof.
One of the more powerful chapters is the one on #MeToo, in which Phair recounts the myriad times she was propositioned, grabbed on the ass, shown porn by a record executive, and pantsed by a co-worker at a catering job. It gives male readers who aren’t assholes an understanding of the kind of humiliations (large and small, but mostly large in Phair’s recounting) women endure in the world. If you ever wonder why some women are so guarded around men, just read this chapter and you’ll get a sense.
One theme that’s knitted into the narrative is Phair’s relationship issues. She either has a string of bad luck in choosing partners, or she keeps making the same mistakes in being attracted to a type. Most of her romantic relationships (including her short-lived marriage) fall apart after a period of relative calm, and after a while, she wonders if there’s something about her that makes these heartbreaks happen. Sometimes it is. That is to say, she’s fallen out of love with the person and has become cold and cutting. Other times, it’s the guy—one of whom drops a metaphorical anvil on her head by revealing he had fathered a child a few months before breaking the news to Liz. She also chronicles a time when she started a flirtatious relationship with a young man who worked as a Trader Joe’s clerk. She’s attracted to him, and his feelings are similar, but he also reveals that he’s getting married—and wants Liz to come to the wedding in Mexico. She declines. He’s hurt. And they part ways. The “horror” in that story is that she finds out about six months later that “Mr. TJ” committed suicide.
So, are these horror stories? Not all of them. Some are shocking, though. Case in point: the time when Liz was 18 and at a college party. She and her friends went into a restroom and saw an unconscious young woman in one of the stalls. As she notes:
“She was lying facedown, passed out, head resting on the floor next to the toilet, a big smear of excrement extending out from between her sprawled legs. I’d never seen someone who’d shit themselves, let alone publicly. The humiliation of it was extreme. As I waited with my back against the wall, I had a clear view of her soiled underpants. I don’t remember what I was thinking. I was just uncomfortable. We all were…No one thought to check if she was breathing, at least while I was there. No one wanted to go near her.”
The horror here is in her lack of humanity for a person who was likely experiencing alcohol poisoning. Phair notes that she carries that guilt throughout her life.
This is another powerful chapter in the book—and it’s the first one. Another chapter about her long labor preceding the birth of her son is more stressful than horrific. Yes, what pregnancy does to a woman’s body must indeed feel more than strange, but is it horrific? Maybe. I’m not a woman, so I can’t speak to her state of mind. But I’ve heard my fair (ha!) share of pregnancy stories from women who have had similar experiences as Liz, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word “horrific” uttered. One would think that the difficult labor Phair had might affect her relationship with her son, but it hasn’t. Indeed, she is very protective of her son’s privacy, so he’s mostly a peripheral character in the narrative. But it’s clear in Phair’s prose that she has a very close relationship with him.
Would I recommend this book? It has some interesting and engaging chapters, but overall, it reads like a writer trying to figure out her romantic relationships and why she can’t make them last. That’s fine. And I hope she does meet someone—if that’s what she wants. For now, she has a plethora of albums that run the gamut from indie to mainstream. So, if Liz Phair the writer isn’t your thing, you should check out her records!
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