Someone, maybe Oscar Wilde, said the self-absorbed make for the most interesting people.
Poet, essayist, performer and dancer Mary Lou Sanelli isn't exactly self-absorbed in the classic sense, but she does use herself - via the upright pronoun - as the starting point for almost everything she writes.
For Sanelli, a monthly columnist for the City Living supplement to this newspaper, the personal is universal and she pulls it off. Her essays and poems deliver us, through the medium of herself, to places of wider perception and deeper understanding. She'd be a far less interesting writer if she took a more impersonal approach.
Sanelli, who divides her time between Belltown and Port Townsend, will launch her latest book of essays Friday, June 26, at Queen Anne Books, 1811 Queen Anne Ave. N. The event, maybe more party than "event," is scheduled to run 6:30-9 p.m. with Sanelli reading at 6:45 p.m.
The book's title, "Among Friends: A memoir of one woman's expectations, disappointments, regrets & discoveries while searching for friends-for-life," might sound a little touchy-feely for some, but Sanelli is a grittier writer than that.
In her essay, "The Truth About Honesty," (its epigraph employs a quote from Ursula K. LeGuin: "What is more arrogant than honesty?") there's a quick exchange with her husband that captures her disarming subtly.
Sanelli, ruminating on the dangers of honest writing in a time of crisis, including 9/11, observes: " The Salem witch trials were, according to some, a cleansing of honest women, women who questioned whether the existing state of affairs should be their state of affairs. If I lived back then, they would have burned me up,' I said to my husband.' "
"Like a marshmallow, honey,' he replied, a little too quickly. I have no idea why."
It's that kind of sly payoff that makes Sanelli worth reading. If her new book asks the question: What does friendship look like? "Among Friends" goes a long way toward filling in the blanks without killing the mystery.
"Among Friends," Aequitas Books, 140 pages, soft cover. $15.
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