Other People: Takes & Mistakes

In his most recent nonfiction work, Shields (The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead) offers portraits of "other people," including family members, lovers, athletes, and celebrities. However, in these essays, Shields also frequently interrogates his notion of self, focusing a lens on his identity in relation to others. The author recognizes this inward gaze and feels the anxiety and ironic distance separating him from his subjects. This may be why he is at his best when he creates more fully realized portraits, such as those of television writer David Milch, basketball player Charles Barkley, and journalist Howard Cosell. This writerly tension, between being enmeshed in the world and at a critical remove from it, persists throughout, articulated most clearly when writing about Bill Murray: "are these just parts of myself in eternal debate, or am I really this anemic? Murray, for all his anomie, likes being in the world. Bully for him. I love standing in shadow, gazing intently at ethereal glare."