Lorrie Moore

Introduction

Happiness is defined in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as “a state of well-being and contentment”. Is it possible to obtain and conquer happiness? In the short story “How”, Lorrie Moore believes that life's occurrences fall into a subsequent order, and the characterization of sincere happiness does not fall into this arrangement. For “from time to time you will gaze at his face and his hands and want nothing but him”, but eventually love begins to fade. Passion fades into confusion, leading to boredom, lies, suffocation, and search for a reason to stay (Moore 79). Does love always fade off into the distance? Is pessimism a way of life? Or could it be that this negative order reveals the fate of only a small amount of people, leaving millions in a world of happiness. Moore refers to attempts in life as tries that “sputter and deflate like balloons” (Moore 79). Although many goals in life do fail, it is wrong to believe that no matter how hard one tries, the attempt will turn out pointless. One should not give up because love and happiness can overpower doubts and failure.

Among the most promising American short story writers to emerge during the 1980s, Moore is distinguished for the clever wordplay, irony, and sardonic humor of her fiction, all of which usually masks an underlying sadness or trauma experienced by her characters. Best known for her novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? (1994) and the short story collections Self-Help (1985) and Birds of America (1998), Moore presents female protagonists who are often exploring loss or moving toward a new, undefined stage in their lives. Her darkly comic stories are filled with relationships in which the partners feel alone and devoid of hope. Her adult characters typically find themselves coping with realizations that their lives will not fulfill their hopes and dreams; consequently, they experience feelings of displacement and unease. Moore's fiction has appeared in numerous periodicals, including the New Yorker, which featured one of her best known stories, “People Like That Are the Only People Here,” in 1998.

Biographical Information

Born in Glen Falls, New York, Moore was interested in creative writing as a young child. Her parents participated in a local community theatre, where Moore learned to appreciate drama and language. Academically gifted, she advanced quickly through public school and won a Regent scholarship, which she used to attend St. Lawrence University. Her writing career began at age nineteen when she won first prize in a Seventeen magazine fiction contest for her short story “Raspberries.” Moore won several academic honors as an undergraduate, including the Paul L. Wolfe Memorial Prize for Literature, and was editor of the university's literary journal. After graduating in 1978, she worked for the next two years in Manhattan as a paralegal while attempting to develop her writing talents further. She entered Cornell University's Master of Fine Arts program in 1980, where she studied with Alison Lurie, and in 1982 received her M.F.A., staying on as a lecturer at Cornell through ...