Tracy Carr<\/span> Subscribe to Clarion Ledger: Local journalists covering local stories<\/p>\n Clarion Ledger journalists cover the important moments in Mississippi. Support local journalism by subscribing.<\/p>\n Staff<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/media-video><\/div>\n <\/story-highlights> Susan Orlean, author of eight books of nonfiction, including \u201cThe Library Book\u201d and \u201cThe Orchid Thief: A\u00a0 True Story of Beauty and Obsession,\u201d semi-reluctantly turns her gaze to herself and her decades-long writing career in \u201cJoyride: A Memoir.\u201d<\/p>\n Orlean writes, \u201cI\u2019ve always dreaded the idea of writing a memoir. I\u2019m used to looking outward, not inward; I yearn to bring attention to hidden worlds, not to my own. I\u2019m proud of my work, and I want the widest readership I can muster, but I hate vanity.\u201d<\/p>\n If there is a takeaway from \u201cJoyride,\u201d it\u2019s to explore what makes you curious. She writes of the central tenet to all of her writing: \u201cthat anything at all is worth writing about if you care about it and it makes you curious and makes you want to holler about it to other people.\u201d<\/p>\n One day, as she wandered the streets of New York looking for something interesting to write about for a \u201cTalk of the Town\u201d piece, she saw a flyer on a telephone pole for a gospel concert.<\/p>\n She went to the concert and loved it. Later, she saw an obituary in the New York Times for Jackson\u2019s Franklin Williams, a founder of the Jackson Southernaires, a longtime (and still existent) gospel group. She somehow convinced them to let her travel with and profile them.<\/p>\n The experience traveling with the Southernaires was profound for Orlean: \u201cEvery bit of cynicism in me dissolved; every cool reportorial stance softened. I was stirred beyond measure. I was reminded throughout the experience how unbelievably fortunate I was to have this entr\u00e9e into such a range of communities and cultures; this is the single greatest privilege of being a writer.\u201d<\/p>\n The main reason I picked up \u201cJoyride\u201d to begin with was to read more about how the essay \u201cOrchid Fever,\u201d published in the \u201cNew Yorker\u201d in January 1995, became the book \u201cThe Orchid Thief\u201d (published in 1998) and the genre-bending, thrilling (and kind of insane) 2002 movie \u201cAdaptation,\u201d which stars Meryl Streep as Susan Orlean herself. (I recommend all three versions of this story.)<\/p>\n Orlean devotes a good chunk of the book to this, including her initial horror at the wild direction the screenplay went and her eventual softening. Look, if you\u2019re going to be portrayed having a fictional affair with the subject of your book, at least Meryl Streep is the one doing it. \u201cAdaptation\u201d was nominated for four Academy Awards, and won one (Best Supporting Actor for Chris Cooper\u2019s portrayal as the titular orchid thief, John Laroche).<\/p>\n As a bonus, the appendix contains five of the essays she refers to, including \u201cDevotion Road,\u201d the essay about the Jackson Southernaires. I find it difficult to read about an essay (or a song or a movie) and not immediately go experience that thing for myself, so this was a welcome surprise.<\/p>\n \u201cJoyride\u201d also contains solid writing advice, including a detailed account of Orlean\u2019s index card system for organizing facts and quotations for a piece. She writes, \u201cWriting is a mysterious practice, so it feels important to me to apply logic and methods whenever I can, an armature on which to hang the creative part. I know I can\u2019t produce a perfect sentence using a system, but I hope to set up an environment in which the likelihood of being able to produce that perfect sentence increases.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJoyride\u201d combines a writer\u2019s work and life in a way that is incredibly honest and authentic. I have no doubt that Orlean in real life is the person the reader encounters in the book. About her career, she writes, \u201cI felt called, I really did, to describe ordinary life in a way that revealed its complexity and poetry \u2014 to show how rewarding it is to be open to and curious about the world, and how much joy can be found in letting yourself be surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Tracy Carr is the editor of Conversations with Ellen Gilchrist, published by the University Press of Mississippi.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.clarionledger.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tracy Carr \u00a0|\u00a0 Special to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger Subscribe to Clarion Ledger: Local journalists covering local stories Clarion Ledger journalists cover the important moments in Mississippi. Support local journalism by subscribing. Staff Susan Orlean’s “Joyride: A Memoir” details her career as a nonfiction writer and her belief in following one’s curiosity. The book explains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2117432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[30218,373605,373607,21994,371189,23038,284334,51971,23560,26575,367893,239343,239347,23759,373606,23152,284335,354212,239344,28776],"class_list":["post-2232866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ai","tag-biographies","tag-biographies-u0026-quotations","tag-books","tag-books-u0026-literature","tag-company","tag-enabled","tag-highlights","tag-literature","tag-new","tag-new-york-times-company","tag-overall","tag-overall-positive","tag-positive","tag-quotations","tag-story","tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","tag-times","tag-u0026","tag-york"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Madison-MS-approves-The-Gallery-entertainment-complex.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2232866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2232867,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232866\/revisions\/2232867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2117432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2232866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2232866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2232866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0|\u00a0 Special to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"play\"](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/appservices\/universal-web\/universal\/icons\/icon-play-alt-white.svg\"){kind=icon}
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A review of \u2018Joyride: A Memoir\u2019<\/h2>\n
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