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Type of bind: Perfect Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 158
EAN num: 9780979327001
ISBN number: 0979327008
Label: Cary Tennis Books, LLC
Manufacturer: Cary Tennis Books, LLC
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 400
Printing Date: November 15, 2007
Publishing house: Cary Tennis Books, LLC
Sale Popularity Level: 131895
Studio: Cary Tennis Books, LLC
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Witty and Irreverent Wisdom for Lovers, Cheaters, Drinkers and Saints
In Since You Asked Cary Tennis, with the help of Salon.com's 4.4 million monthly readers, has collected some of the most unforgettable letters and best answers from his Salon.com advice column.
Those who open Since You Asked at any page will be instantly caught up in an idiosyncratic modern problem. 'Where does my boyfriend really live?' Or, 'We're married, but do we have to live together?' And the correspondent who confessed, 'I forgot to tell my wife I have a twelve-year-old daughter.'
Cary responds to these problems at a deep level: the level of personal myth. In this way Since You Asked is a uniquely intimate book that explores the big questions of life thoughtfully and maybe provides a little peace. This is why one of his readers called him, 'The Walt Whitman of advice columnists.'
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Rated by buyers 
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Ideally the appeal of literature should be its capacity to transport us away from our own limited views and worries, and confront us with parallel fates - which are sometimes worse, but often just different from our own. It is a proven fact that human brains get a kick out of watching, reflecting about and imagining "solutions" for trouble, even when it doesn't directly concern us. At bottom we are all social voyeurs, as can be seen in our penchant for gossip but also our love of fictional narratives. And here is a very appealing book, consisting of nothing but human trouble - and one man's endeavor to provide advice, help or just consolation.
Although this volume's collected advice columns hardly constitute anything resembling a novel, we can in fact read it like a rich narrative, with Cary Tennis himself as the main character, the constant voice throughout the book, reacting to the many passing voices and their problems. This must be quite a challenge for any writer: to be continually confronted with characters he has not constructed, whose fate he can hardly make out, much less control, and who expect from him some kind of guidance or even illumination (as we all expect of good literature, anyway). Come to think of it, this sounds like a postmodern plot. And does our hero/writer live up to the challenge? Undoubtedly. Each letter and reply by Tennis are well worth reading for their complexity, surprising twists and, above all, some guaranteed sparks of enlightenment.
Tennis has armed himself with some of the most effective weapons known to writers. There is, very first of all, common sense - a tool more difficult to handle than it may sound (usually confused with cliché) - by which I mean an instinctive understanding of the unspoken rules commanding human behaviour and interaction (whatever our individual differences), such as a keen sense of (in)justice, the value we place on status and hierarchies, our competitive mood when it comes to sexuality. In short, some conflicts cannot be avoided because they are part of human nature. By keeping this in mind, Tennis is able to distinguish between trouble which befalls us quite incidentally, and trouble which we have invited by breaking common rules. His advice therefore often "rings true", as it taps into our shared values and assumptions. Then there is Tennis's keen eye/ear for the implicit or subconscious messages of the advice seekers, whereby he tries to glean from the little they write/say the bigger implications left unspoken, which constitute the real source of trouble (our brains are more prone to confabulate/beautify/deceive than to speak out the whole painful truth). If sometimes Tennis chooses to directly confront the advice seeker with his blunt interpretation of an ambiguous letter, often he opts for symbolic communication - another tricky but valuable tool on which our most appealing mythologies and narratives are built. This allows him to address the codified messages of the letters from a more general perspective, providing advice that leaves space for ambiguity and individual interpretation, reminiscent of ancient oracles or koans. Finally, Tennis resorts to a great degree of empathy, frequently shifting the focus of his replies to himself, in order to draw parallels and possibly console the person plagued by trouble. By assuring his reader not only that he has had his own fair deal of unhappy experiences, but also that he himself has often made mistakes, Tennis reinforces his image of firm but friendly listener/speaker - like the idealized wise old men our ancestors relied on for guidance and advice.
Of course, the one thing missing in this narrative - just like in real life itself - is the "happy end". There actually isn't that much help any human can provide, as our troubles are often based on teensy-weensy implications which we cannot control anyway. The advice presented here will not necessarily solve much. But Tennis's column may perhaps alleviate people's suffering by providing a platform where readers can acknowledge that, yes, existence is a real bummer. And some of us have been dealt a very bad hand. All Tennis can do, in the end, is to reiterate Freud's dictum that while it is solely up to fate to remove our sufferings, much will be gained if we learn to defend ourselves as best as possible against "everyday unhappiness". Altogether, this book provides a fair overview of the varieties of human trouble and everyday unhappiness (in times of so-called peace and so-called prosperity), reminding us that we all have a burden to carry - and unfortunately some burdens feel heavier than others. Herein lies the tragedy of life. And the essence of all good literature.
Rated by buyers -
Cary Tennis has one of the top five great writing "voices" on the Web, and now here he is finally in print! What makes his voice great is a combination of whimsy, unpredictability, wisdom, authenticity, and then the edge of humour with a twist. Even the most entertaining advice columns lean toward the predictable answers, and let's face it, most of us often think we could do a better job answering than the columnist. Not so here! -- what would you tell a woman who is in love with a fat man but can't stand that he's fat? Nope, not help him lose weight; nope, not tell him to shape up or you're leaving.....but something else, much more philosophical and completely right...which you'd have to buy the book to learn-:) Cary Tennis can write to make you cry, touching things you thought you knew and were through with due to your own therapy & time passing, but no, there it is, in grey and white, explaining that lost love affair in an entirely different perspective, changing your understanding of your life in that one moment of reading his answer.
Part of the joy of this book is the complex questions and how they get asked -- I'm sure readers learned over the years that you just can't ask simple short questions if you expect a great answer -- I mean, how wonderful is it that someone writes in (in detail of course) to basically ask "I'm not sure I have a self -- how do I get one?" Just try a snappy answer to that one.
Five stars for Tennis, because I think I'd buy anything at all that he wrote just to find out what he has to say.
Rated by buyers 
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I am not familiar with Cary Tennis's advice column on salon.com, but I thought I'd give this collection of his best columns a whirl because I love reading advice columns. You get some rather interesting letters here. There is one about a twenty-four-year-old virgin desperate to lose her virginity, one about a stepmother who is tired of her overeating and extremely talkative obese stepdaughter, another about a married man with kids in love with a prostitute, and there is one about a woman who has been dating the same guy for five years and has no idea where he lives. There is a wide variety of stories here, and they riveted me from beginning to end. I especially liked Tennis's candid and insightful answers, sprinkled with metaphors and keen observation. There is one story here that, like Tennis, I found difficult to believe, and it's the one about the man who had left a woman years ago and still hadn't gotten over her. The narrative seemed too over the top and interestingly woven, not to mention too Lifetime-movie-of-the-week-like to be real. I'm glad Tennis let him know what he thought of it. The questions I found most compelling were the ones centered on physical, verbal or any form of abuse and the ones centered on women who have a hard time trusting others. Those particular columns hit very close to home and I liked Tennis's answers to them. Since You Asked is a great collection of Cary Tennis's best columns. The one thing I would have liked to see was a table of contents. The columns are thrown in randomly throughout the book. It would have been easier to break them into categories. Other than that, I enjoyed this book.
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