Angelus News | May 17, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 18

THE CRUX
BY HEATHER KING
The limits of advice-column living
The first thing I turned to
in the newspaper as a kid
was Ann Landers’ advice
column.
I couldn’t get enough — still can’t
— of human dysfunction. The letters
were longish but Ann’s advice was
always succinct,
practical, and to the
point.
“You have every
right to tell your
in-laws that they
cannot smoke in
your home.”
“That child needs
to be seen by a professional
for evaluation.”
“Give Gloria
notice — either she
stops seeing that
married man, or she
will have to move
out at the end of the
month.”
My favorite was
when Ann hit some
prying busybody
with the familiar
zinger, MYOB:
Mind Your Own
Business.
Enter “Tiny
Beautiful Things,” a
book by mega-popular
author Cheryl
Strayed and now a play that was
recently staged at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Strayed wrote an anonymous
advice column for a time under the
pen name Sugar and, after revealing
her identity, collected the letters into
“Tiny Beautiful Things.”
Steve Almond, the writer who
originally passed on the column to
Strayed, calls her approach “radical
empathy.”
That’s one way to put it: padding
around her suburban kitchen in a
hoodie and pajama bottoms, to my
Cheryl Strayed at the “Tiny Beautiful Things” opening night at the Pasadena Playhouse on
April 14 in Pasadena.
mind Sugar (played here by Nia
Vardalos, who is best known as the
screenwriter and lead actress in “My
Big Fat Greek Wedding”) makes every
problem about herself: her grief over
her mother’s death, her fling with
heroin, the risks she’s so bravely taken
(and that worked out, because look,
here she is, the best-selling author of
“Wild ,” writing an advice column
that will also be a bestseller!).
The play consists of three characters
who take turns reading their letters
aloud. Then within 1 ½ seconds
Sugar responds
with a TED Talklike
answer: “Don’t
surrender all your
joy for an idea you
used to have about
yourself that isn’t
true anymore.”
“Nobody will protect
you from your suffering.”
“You cannot
convince people to
love you.”
I’m probably just
jealous. But I kept
thinking of Christ
on the cross, and
Sugar padding up in
her pajamas to hand
him a couple of
purple balloons, pat
KATHY HUTCHINS/SHUTTERSTOCK
him on the head (oh
wait, the Crown of
Thorns would have
been in the way),
and remind him
that he, too, could
find healing through
Tiny Beautiful
Things.
In fact, the Romans offered him such
cheap anesthesia: sour wine mixed
with gall. He refused it.
The audience, however, seemed to
love the play. So MYOB I told myself.
And on the way home, I mentally
composed my own letter.
28 • ANGELUS • May 17, 2019