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This Is Running for Your Life: Essays

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Michelle Orange uses the lens of pop culture to decode the defining characteristics of our media-drenched times


In This Is Running for Your Life , Michelle Orange takes us from Beirut to Hawaii to her grandmother's retirement home in Canada in her quest to understand how people behave in a world increasingly mediated―for better and for worse―by images and interactivity. Orange's essays range from the critical to the journalistic to the deeply personal; she seamlessly combines stories from her own life with incisive analysis as she explores everything from the intimacies we develop with celebrities and movie characters to the troubled creation of the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders .
With the insight of a young Joan Didion and the empathy of a John Jeremiah Sullivan, Orange dives into popular culture and the status quo and emerges with a persuasive and provocative book about how we live now. Her singular voice will resonate for years to come.

352 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 2012

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Michelle Orange

6 books26 followers

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
Profile Image for Buck.
157 reviews940 followers
March 17, 2013
So this is weird, but it turns out Michelle Orange is my female doppelganger, at least in terms of her curriculum vitae, which mirrors mine in uncanny ways. We both grew up in London, Ontario, where we both rode the Gravitron at the Western Fair (though I wonder if she ever puked over the gunwale of the nearby Pirate Ship, as I once did). Then, in the 90s, we both moved to Toronto, studied English and became insufferable. Finally there’s the fact that both of us spent time on the West Coast, trying to find ourselves or whatever, but that’s almost obligatory for Canadians of our generation, so maybe it doesn’t count.

Still, I don’t want to make too much of our similarities, especially since Orange bristles, in one of her essays, at the very idea of having a doppelganger. In any case, our paths eventually diverged when she left for New York to pursue a writing career, while I...did not. Plus, on the evidence of this book, her youthful metaphysical crises were a bit more interesting than mine: in her twenties, she took up extreme jogging out of spiritual angst, whereas I, less original, took up recreational jogging because I was a fat-ass. So, yeah, different people.

There’s a certain dickish way in which I could imagine myself dismissing This Is Running for Your Life: 'Basically, it’s the sort of thing that smart women in New York tend to write: you know, personal essays about Facebook and movies and, like, the special problems of being a smart woman in New York. Joan Didion’s skirt must’ve rustled a bit when Orange fell out and hit Katie Roiphe on the way down.’ That’s the dickish response, as I say, and there’s something to it. Orange is certainly clever, but it’s a manic, brittle cleverness that sometimes falls into bathos, as in this line: ‘Puberty can go off like an IED in the Iraqi desert: one morning you wake up in a German hospital and spend the next six years learning to walk and talk.’ Not to commit the same solecism here, but that’s the kind of mesmerizing awkwardness I associate with Jennifer Lawrence at an awards ceremony.

But for the most part, I read this collection with real pleasure, complicated and distorted by real envy. As with the above-named Lawrence (sorry, but like every other loser on the planet, I can't stop thinking about her lately), Orange’s charm and talent cover any number of lapses. She takes some fairly unpromising subjects—a visit to her grandmother’s nursing home, Ethan Hawke’s face—and works out from there, ruminating, making connections, showing off her syntax and, in short, doing good, honest, essayistic-type stuff. I get the feeling Orange (like a certain young actress) has a brilliant career ahead of her. Which, I guess, is something else that sets her apart from me. But we’ll always have that stupid Gravitron.

3 reviews211 followers
January 5, 2013
Oh man, people: Do you remember 1999?


"I worry, specifcally, about 1999"

"I'm not sure I ever knew the good old days either. It's too soon to tell. And believe me, young people, I know the case against me better than you ever could: I rarely go to shows anymore; i don't troll the sites I can't even name for hot new sounds; I never got into Mumblecore; too often I read new books because I'm paid to; and it's probably a matter of months before I look in the mirror and see Ethan Hawke staring back. I'm right there with you. But tell me, have you seen 1999. I was young then, but it didn't mean that much to me. It seems like a while ago, I know, but it won't be long before you're standing where I am now, trying to sort your personal history from the stuff that stands alone. . . "


You know those books where all you want to do is copy their sentences and send them off to your favorite people on special Japanese paper? This Is Running For Your Life is THAT book. I was devastated by Orange's prose as much as her insight into, well, pretty much everything: from aging, to celebrity, to the DSM to the portrayal of dream girls throughout movie history. Do yourself a favor and buy it. . .and don't forget the Japanese paper.
Profile Image for mark.
Author 3 books46 followers
December 16, 2020
Michelle Orange is a critic, although she doesn’t like being called one. On page 259, in the essay “Do I Know You,” whence the book title was pulled, she asks: What is it you see when you look at me? And calls the question, “one of the most critical questions one human being can ask another:” – which is so, so ironic because she hides, or runs away, and doesn’t like to be photographed. I say: There is no hiding in writing. No matter what you’re writing – who you are will be revealed. Which is something Orange really struggles with – she resists being defined by words and rejects them all, the labels and what they imply.

"What a drag, this having to choose then forever do/love/be that chosen thing. What a fiasco. The thought of committing to any one of these selves racked up before me like labeled garmet bags—aspirant, striver, student, daughter, desired thing, woman, wife, mother, Catholic, Canadian, girlfriend, girl, straight, white, mammal, material, extant—filled me with dismay, so that even my clear choices were executed as halfsies. With no clear way forward I invested in a personal hedge fund, opting for solitude whenever grazed by expectation and drifting, for all my will and granitic intent on the road into a greater passivity. … make me an expert of loneliness; make me the loneliest person in the world." (p. 312)

That is from the last essay in the collection, “Ways of Escape.” She runs long distances, daily, alone, to get away; but doesn’t want to be called “a runner,” either. Michelle Orange is a writer, and a thinker, and I like the way she writes (see above) and thinks (see above.) I like what she has to say about things: Movies; Old Age; The Dream Girl; War; Men; The Camera Culture; Psychiatry, Mental Health, Advertising and Identity > Personality. (She runs from the swank Hotel and the APA conference in Hawaii - where she was on assignment and tired of all the crap that was being served – to the beach and hangs out with the homeless and alcoholic, preferring their company to that of all the doctors and such.)

This is what I see, Michelle Orange, when I read your words (Which is, of course an impossibility because you have done such a good job of hiding: few pictures, no Youtube, no Facebook, and no face-to-face. So I can’t see you, or touch you, or hear you, listen to you, or smell you, or taste you.): I see a person with a personality disorder, who has found the perfect job for said person with such a disorder. An alternative occupation might be that of a terrorist – an actual bomb thrower. Michelle writes of personality disorders, names them (but not hers) and makes the argument (true) that the APA is trying to do away with the whole concept of “having a personality,” because a personality is a “preexisting condition” and cannot be managed effectively by the market. (True.)

Michelle Orange is a thirty-something, going on sixty-something. She writes: “ I learned a long time ago that I can’t make anyone do anything.” (p. 123) I’m thinking, Wow, this is one savvy girl/woman/person … and she’s only 20/30 something! There are clues throughout about why she is the way she is, but she doesn’t go there. Again, writing, that oh no, no, no – not me. (But, she does have her brain scanned by a private company with an fMRI machine, and finds out – nothing.) Her longest “intimate” (my quotes) relationship was a long-distance one with a boy she met in college. It lasted over four years and ended when they actually when out on a date together. … Wow.

Should you read this book? Yes, if you’ve an open and curious mind. Five stars, for style and content.
209 reviews1 follower
May 27, 2013
I struggled with this book, and ultimately didn't finish it. There were definitely lots of insightful bits, and some outstanding prose, but I felt that some of the essays went so far off track that I thought I was reading a different one.

It is not light reading by any means. The parts that were insightful truly were worth discovering. My reading time is very limited, and I had to work to hard with this one.

That is not to say it is not a very well written book; it just didn't make it for me.
Profile Image for Patricia Murphy.
Author 3 books116 followers
May 28, 2013
I really, really want you to read this book--if I haven't told you that already. I read it over a period of about a week, because I was reading about 4 other books at the same time, but every time I dipped into this one I kept stopping to email friends to say, "get this book." Or to read passages out loud to John who would chuckle and nod. I really loved the combination of poetic structure and research, personal experience and historical detail, witty observation and fierce independence. In DFW style, Orange is both confident observer and self-effacing representative of humanity. Here are some of my favorite bits:

"I needed to know how to feel, and how far I was from feeling it."

"talking with her was like watching someone unpack a rummage closet: you were less a partner than an implied observer, waiting for the last pack of mummified golf tees to be placed at your feet."

"Alone in her room or with her thoughts, a toxic narcissist gets along just fine. It's when she tries to exist out in the world that things go pear-shaped."

"A few years later we were all in the theaters for Pulp Fiction; dying of Kevin Costner fatigue, a generation of viewers was radicalized by the ersatz sixties and the deja-vibe of surf guitar."

"The evening had a mulch-scented coolness, and the campus, with its orange-tinted floodlights and Victoria-bred, limestone-bricked buildings, seemed to sigh at the peak of its campus-ness."
Profile Image for Erin.
33 reviews3 followers
February 26, 2014
Started this on a beach excursion. A little heavier than the situation called for, but the essay about her grandmother going into a nursing home had so much great insight and I can't not love a woman who would travel to Beirut (for fun?!) and then be genuinely surprised that it was awful.
Profile Image for Allison Smith.
1 review2 followers
April 17, 2013
Michelle Orange cuts to the buzzing, inarticulate feelings I have about internet and image culture without the preachy, whiny tone of reminiscing about "the good ole days." She's just as confused as the rest of us about where we fit in as individuals during the age of constant connectedness.
Profile Image for Lucas Miller.
496 reviews9 followers
October 8, 2016
I discovered this book through Amazon recommendations. I don't know much about essays. Although enjoyable, I don't have the critical apparatus necessary to say when they are "good" or "bad." This has led to an increasingly random collection of collections in my to read pile. Initially, this volume was intended as a gift, but was kept, for personal reasons. Ms. Orange is Canadian, and the geography of her essays is unfamiliar but comforting in the way that perhaps only Canada can be to my mostly liberal, usually disappointed American mind.

I had no idea that the author was a film critic. The bulk of the essays here concern the movies, film, and being a film critic in some way, often peripheral, but always close to the heart of the stories the author tells. This was a pleasant surprise. Not writing about film, but writing about her experience of film makes my novice understanding of film studies a barrier easily crossed to enjoy these pieces. Actually, after finally making my way through the whole collection, I wanna high-jack my friend's Criterion Collection DVDs and not talk to anyone for a few weeks. Just watch.

Most of these essays feel about ten pages too long. That's a personal judgement and says nothing of the quality of the writing. But none of the pieces were one sitting reads, and my reading of the book happened on the margins of writing a curriculum, reading primary documents, and suffering through Gilgamesh. I wanted to put five stars for this, but felt that two months reading time might knock off a star, although that feels arbitrary.

I underlined a lot of phrases in the early essay focused on pop culture. I slogged through the essays in the middle about the author's family. I was initially disappointed, but in the end completely rapt by the final essay about long distance running, studying film, love, email, and being alive. Recommended.
Profile Image for miteypen.
834 reviews65 followers
February 10, 2015
Perhaps reading Ann Patchett's This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage right before this one was a mistake because Patchett's essays were much easier to relate to. Orange's essays are intellectual to the point of obscurity; there were times I had no idea what she was saying, even though her writing style is quite eloquent. She obviously has a lot to say, but there were times that I thought she tried too hard to display how smart and clever she is. Or maybe I'm just not smart or clever enough to keep up. In some of the essays, she goes off on tangents to the point where I wasn't entirely sure what her main point was. She also seems to have a penchant for analogies and metaphors that are so unique it's hard to find a point of reference. (For example: "Now she was cramming her schedule with sights like Godard's bande a part racing through the Louvre.") Although I ordinarily like a book that makes me think, this one was mostly just over my head. Again, maybe it's me as a reader who's lacking, but in all honesty I would only recommend this book to readers who like what they read to be as convoluted as possible.
19 reviews
September 10, 2013
I make it a personal habit not to read the reviews before I read the book. I normally read the synopsis and make a decision based on how that touched me. From that, I hoped for more than I received with this book, however, after reading the reviews, "perhaps" I will give it another look.

After having spent several years reading and writing academic and cultural analysis papers, I swore never again. From the first essay, I felt I was back in school and just couldn't get beyond that academic hogwash feeling.

Maybe, another time.
Profile Image for Syar S Alia.
23 reviews
January 12, 2014
I think I read this at the right time in my life; I connect too deeply to Michelle Orange's meandering essays to be totally objective about their merits. The tentpoles of her well-tread themes - aging, technology, movies, human connection, nostalgia - hold up a web of interesting essays, some of which I found meandered too far without a purpose (clear to me). But the ones that worked really worked for me, and I often found her use of language inventive, sometimes poetic, and pleasingly clever. An engaging read.
Profile Image for Brian Longtin.
362 reviews5 followers
July 31, 2022
Some writers think deeply and write densely to the point where I feel smarter while in the act of reading them, even if I may have to admit afterward I didn't fully get what they were saying. This book impressed me while it also made me feel like I couldn't quite keep up with it, which I enjoy. A 3.5-worthy collection of personal essays mixed with cultural criticism.
Profile Image for D.
495 reviews2 followers
September 4, 2013
The book demonstrates Orange's film competence, and is chock-full of observations from middle-age eyes. A commentary on isolation in her life and our culture.

Keeping impossibly current has become the key selling point of smartphone connectivity.

We remember with the totemic shallowness, the emotional stinginess of sentiment. And we experience the present with the same superficial effort.

1968 Marshall McLuhan, Norman Mailer used the example of plane travel -- the latter word, as McLuhan points out, taken from the French verb to work -- to illustrate his fear of a poorly inhabited present. McLuhan predicted: If you push that all the way, what it means is that we will increasingly tend to inhabit all of these areas in depth, simultaneously.” Mailer cried: “But we will not inhabit them well! We will inhabit them with a desperately bad fit!”

Brigette Bardot spoke of Marilyn Monroe: She always was for me what every woman -- not only me -- must dream to be. She was gorgeous, charming, fragile.

Like global bankruptcy and a good orgasm, it happened slowly, then all at once.

“She’s a hormonal jitterbug, who’ll have you holding up filling stations to keep her on mood elevators!” Wood Allen in Anything Else (2003).

Paul Newman “Hud” Little by little, the look of a country changes because of the men we admire.

Without a rich cultural serial to follow, we become vulnerable to the persuasion of extremes.

The more difficult it gets to clear the necessary space, the more necessary that space becomes.

James Dean: He was beautiful, the thoroughbred combination of virile and vulnerable that drives girls wild.

If WWI had a reanimating effect on America’s sociocultural infrastructure, with WWII the transformation was manifest.

Socialism is… above all an atheistic phenomenon, the modern manifestation of atheism, one more tower of Babel built without God, not in order to reach out toward heaven from earth, but to bring heaven down to earth. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Susan Sontag: Cameras were originally used to collect the world

My Effortless Brilliance film by Lynn Shelton

In his “Reflections on Gandhi,” George Orwell wrote, “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.”

What I can say is that, having known isolation in all its trickster forms, I see it where and for what it is. I see that we are all running now. And I'll see you out there.
Profile Image for Christy.
235 reviews16 followers
July 2, 2015
For some reason, I had thought a book of essays on pop culture would be fun, quick reading and I was very wrong. Not the author’s fault, of course, but definitely required a readjustment of my reader expectations. The thing is, I admired Michelle Orange’s formidable and perfectly executed vocabulary and incisive analysis, but I wasn’t interested in most of her chosen topics. True, I did highlight some choice phrases from her essay about manic-pixie-dream-girls but even then, I thought the essay went on too long. (This essay had also become rapidly dated in the two years since the book’s publication.)

Because I had purchased the book, I persevered after a hiatus. I’m glad that I did, for I really liked the fourth essay, “One Senior, Please” which was mostly about Michelle Orange flying to Halifax to visit her dying grandmother, and is a musing on flying and on her grandmother’s life. It was my favorite essay of the collection. Orange’s observations about flying were spot-on and funny. This observation followed a description of a several hour wait on the tarmac before departure:

"In a tone that grew more defiantly nonchalant with every update, the pilot advised us that some of our bags would arrive on a future flight. Even with routine debacles such as this it’s rare to be promised future bullshit while the current bullshit is still very much in progress. Sorry ’bout that, folks."

I also loved how movies formed the connective tissue between granddaughter and grandmother. Maybe I just like memoirs/novelizations/personal essays about grandmothers (books like Kimi Cunningham Grant’s Silver Like Dust and Jeannette Walls’ Half-Broke Horses come to mind).

The other standout essay was the fifth, “Beirut Rising,” a description of Orange’s visit to Beirut in 2008. I love travel writing, and this essay was a straight-up example of that genre.

The rest of the essays continued to have their moments of apt commentary and interesting, though sometimes incomplete, juxtaposition of ideas. I’m glad I persevered with it, but the collection wasn’t really to my taste overall, with the exceptions noted above.
Profile Image for Hugo B. Hugo.
22 reviews
April 7, 2021
I picked up this collection of essays based on a single movie review by its author, Michelle Orange. Her critique of the arthouse fare boldly encapsulated its superficial meaning accurately piercing through its posed mannerisms. I appreciate that kind of perceptive insight. But one good movie review does not equal a long-form collection.

This collection lands more in the genre of magazine page-turners: flashy, easy-consumable, superficials surveys of trendy topics. The writing is filled with annoying marketable tics: references to celebrities, references to pop-culture, references to products. A sky is labelled Microsoft-blue, an expert on brain scans is the "Michael Jordan of MRI's", and Ethan Hawke is a matinee idol. Ho-hum.

It's cute that a church girl from Southern Ontario grew up to move to New York to write film reviews, but very rarely does Michelle Orange reveal the affect other people's experience have on her. An essay on the civil war in Lebanon is riddled with jokes about plastic surgery. Her essay on running reads like an episode of Degrassi. Keep in mind, this was written before acknowledging your privilege became a trend. It upholds the view that basic white girls, if they are stubborn enough, will eventually land a publishing deal.
Profile Image for Sara.
1,168 reviews
July 5, 2013
“The new American dream is to build a really bitching personal brand, and the result of all that tap dancing on all those individual platforms is a pervasive kind of narrative decadence. We race to consume and regurgitate the hour’s large and small events for each other like patricians in a postmodern vomitorium -- to know them first, translate them into bitter capsule form fastest, and be shocked or stirred or perceived as in any way less than totally savvy about these things the least. Even within our self-contained realities we become dulled to what’s real and what’s not, and further desensitized to what lies behind our fellow performers’ virtual scrims. From the vantage point of the individual platform, even the narrative of tragic greatness seems less a product of secular anxiety -- a sort of surrogate Christian allegory -- than one more of the stories we devour out of self-interest. We take heart instead of horror in the idea that anyone can be famous, but we are performers with no actual interest in dying for each other. It seems related that actual death is by far the most awkward thing for the Internet to handle. Because it’s so real” (71-72).
Profile Image for Joanna.
2,125 reviews32 followers
May 11, 2013
I grabbed this on a whim based on a brief reference to "manic pixie dream girls" which is a phrase that has been delighting me since Cary's last movie night, and found myself absolutely encapsulated in many bits and pieces of these essays. "That's ME!" I kept exclaiming. I do that! I feel that! I contemplate that! And then, well, no.... I never did or felt or contemplated some of the other things in here. Nevertheless, I loved recognizing myself and I also found the rest of it valuable. I am haunted still by her statement that age 28 to age 42 is one stage in which you feel all-the-same-age and then you don't. I'm about to be 41, you guys. It's almost over, this late-youth stage. This I'm-not-REALLY-an-adult,right? stage. I am not sure, yet, if it's true. Interesting topics abound in this collection of essays. Read it!
Profile Image for Ryan.
8 reviews
Read
April 16, 2015
I was peripherally aware of this book via a few websites and a podcast (Other People) that I started tuning into recently, where Michelle Orange was described as a 'super genius', and had grabbed a copy of it during a slightly hurried trip to the library.
It was quite a ride- there were some absolutely terrifying sentences in there that convincingly proved that my brain is still stuck in some lowly swamp, nowhere near any peak of receptivity, unable to respond to her incisiveness- which along with her word use was simply, well, super.
There were some more narrative, or easier-to-grasp if you will, essays, like the piece about Beirut, and the final one, but this is a collection that I feel will require a few more years of upward growth on my end for a proper appreciation; the writing and tone etc. was clearly good though- I liked what I could see from my level!
Profile Image for erin.
58 reviews8 followers
May 26, 2013
I liked "Have a Beautiful Corpse" a lot because #permateenwave is on my mind lately, and "Do I Know You?" because yeah, I get that a lot. A couple quotations so I can return this to the library:

"In many ways high school is just Hollywood without money: we make stars and audiences of each other. We watch each other all day and, if it can be arranged, all night too. We learn how to behave and what we're drawn to, the people with presence." (p. 75)

"Perfect recall is the enemy of memory, which relies for its particular textures on the art -- to say nothing of the mercy -- of forgetting." (p. 241)



Profile Image for Cecilia Bastarrica.
64 reviews15 followers
December 22, 2014
I was intrigued by the first essay in this collection – I found the subject and the language so fresh and interesting. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm did not last long. The writer’s style and the sudden segues within the essays had me growing increasingly annoyed until finishing each piece turned into a chore. Not what I look for in any book. The author has obvious writing chops, but after a while I started to feel like she was trying too hard and her insights got lost in a jungle of “clever” writing. Meh. Not my cup of tea.
1,153 reviews12 followers
August 15, 2013
I really liked this collection of essays - the author is a gifted writer - and she writes about things that I don’t often read about it other places (her chapter that talked about how everyone takes pictures these days was a shining example). Her style is not for everyone - but I liked it. It is challenging - and seems random - but the order is clear as well. It is an interesting style she has - and one that I feel like I can learn from (without imitating!). I’m very glad i read it.
Profile Image for Kate.
413 reviews
Read
October 3, 2014
Well, someone on a podcast recommended Orange's essay on the "manic pixie dream girl" phenomenon, and I put this book on my list for that alone. Orange's writing style is SO dense, I really struggled to get through three of her essays in addition to the recommended one, and then decided it just wasn't worth the effort (I have New Yorkers to catch up on!). So I only got about halfway through this.
Profile Image for Anna.
194 reviews4 followers
May 10, 2013
Hot damn, this is some phenomenally good writing. A really nice mix of reflections on personal things and the world at large that never veers into precious, preachy, or navel gaze-y. The bit about how people in their twenties become obsessed with knowing the ages of everyone they meet in relation to their own is so very true.
Profile Image for Herzog.
923 reviews14 followers
July 9, 2013
This book is very well written and there are flashes of absolute brilliance especially when dealing with personal matters and insights. I thought it less successful in the travel essays (Beirut, Hawaii, San Diego). Since the author is so young, I'm optimistic that we'll see much more from her in the future.
Profile Image for Kasadarko.
8 reviews3 followers
October 20, 2013
Finally! Memory anxiety broken down and clearly dissected. Michelle Orange is a treat to read. She is able to dissect those nagging facets of the human condition through her own experiences without it ever getting too preachy. Each essay is relatable, smartly written, and inspiring. I did not want to this book to end. I pass it along to friends who need some Orange.
Profile Image for Amy.
934 reviews68 followers
April 18, 2016
Michelle Orange writes a good essay about a number of subjects that I already have interest in: Nostalgia, Manic Pixie Dream Girls, Movie-watching, and the Evolution of Photography. However, even the subjects that I didn't have much invested in: Beirut, Hawaii & Mental Illness, and Running all contain worthwhile ponderings.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews

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