Anna Marie Tendler I didn't expect the backlash to her memoir; The men called her crazy.
“Publishing a memoir is not for the faint of heart,” Tendler, 39, wrote on Tuesday, December 10. Share the substack For her new COVEN newsletter. “A lot of people are angry with you, some of them know you personally, some of them don't. I naively prepared myself to be attacked for what you wrote. But it turns out it was the other women who offended me the most. Some might say unnecessarily insulted??
Tendler added that she was “really surprised” by the response to the book, which hit shelves in August, because she “lived a life surrounded by very kind, smart, compassionate, ambitious female friends.” She added that “more people liked the book than hated it” and thanked the “very nice” fans who attended her book tour.
When Tendler The notes announced She described it on Instagram in March as “a story about mental health; About being a woman; About family. And finally, about the endless source of my sadness and anger – men.
The comment led many to believe that the book would tell the story of Tendler's highly publicized 2021 breakup John Mulaney. In the same month as the former spouses They announced their separationMulaney's relationship with Olivia Munn It has been announced. In May of that year, Mulaney, 42, and Munn, 44, welcomed their son Malcolm. They went on to tie the knot last July and She welcomed her daughter More In September.
“Everything that happened was absolutely shocking and I think surreal,” Tendler said of her and Mulaney's divorce during a January 2022 interview with the podcast. Harper's Bazaar. “In a way, I feel like it can only go up from here, because I've reached as deep as I can go.”
Tendler defied expectations by Not mentioning Mulaney by name at all in The men called her crazy.
“I have no desire to cater to the one thing people might know about me,” she said. New York Times In August, she added that focusing on her divorce would have been a “crutch I don't need.”
While Mulaney was deleted, The men called her crazy It detailed many of Tendler's past romantic experiences. Some reviewers criticized the book for focusing on men. Fran Hopfner wrote to eagle that the memoir's “relentless reworking of gender equality seems – however vivid and true to Tendler's experiences – dated and unexplored in any serious way.” Hopfner also claimed that for all Tinder's talk about “reclaiming her own story, she keeps coming back to men over and over again.”
Jezebel's Cady Ruth Ashcraft She shared similar sentiments, writing that she found herself “begging Tendler's ideas and tales to coalesce into a thesis that goes beyond a basic, universal hatred of men.”
However, not all reviews were bad. Chicago Review of Books' Erica Dirk He described Tendler as “very funny” and “particularly brilliant” at exploring the way “having money encourages men”.
In her first newsletter for COVEN, Tendler said she felt “so proud” of him The men called her crazy He encouraged those who have not yet read it to do so.
“I wrote MHCRC because I had something I wanted to say about mental health and about patriarchy, having spent the last five years in a near-constant wrestling match with how much of the world defined me and how it shaped my personal life,” she wrote.