Self-Help
Moore invented the second-person story as a sustained narrative mode in this 1985 debut. "How to Become a Writer" is both funny and devastating in a way that few stories manage. Her language is so precise it hurts.
The complaint against Self-Help starts with repetition: nine stories built from the same handful of ingredients, cheating men, distant mothers, disillusioned narrators, delivered in one clipped, wisecracking voice, and one reviewer names the result directly, “a kind of soullessness at the heart of her work”. Others say “the tone and style got old” well before the book ends, and one review argues the collection “embraces many of the worst tendencies of M.F.A. fiction”, heavy on puns aimed at impressing classmates rather than earning a laugh. A critic went further, dismissing it as “boutique fiction at its most cutesy-poo”. The stronger material fronts the collection, so readers who make it through report diminishing returns by the back half, the second-person address wearing out its welcome story after story.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
