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I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton

by Lynn Melnick

University of Texas Press, 2022
eISBN: 978-1-4773-2600-8 | Cloth: 978-1-4773-2267-3
Library of Congress Classification PS3563.E4436Z46 2022
Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

When everything fell apart for Lynn Melnick, she went to Dollywood. It was perhaps an unusual refuge. The theme park, partly owned by and wholly named for Dolly Parton, celebrates a country music legend who grew up in church and in poverty in rural Tennessee. Yet Dollywood is exactly where Melnick—a poet, urbanite, and daughter of a middle-class Jewish family—needed to be. Because Melnick, like the musician she adores, is a survivor.

In this bracing memoir, Melnick explores Parton’s dual identities as feminist icon and objectified sex symbol—identities that reflect the author’s own fraught history with rape culture and the grueling effort to reclaim her voice in the wake of loss and trauma. Each chapter engages with the artistry and cultural impact of one of Parton’s songs, as Melnick reckons with violence, creativity, parenting, abortion, sex work, love, and the consolations and cruelties of religion. Guided by Parton’s music, Melnick walks the slow path to recovery in the company of those who came before her and stand with her, as trauma is an experience both unique and universal. Candid and discerning, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive is at once a memoir and a love song—a story about one life and about an artist who has brought life to millions.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Lynn Melnick is the author of three books of poetry and a contributor to Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture. Her poems have appeared in the New Republic, the New Yorker, and the Paris Review; her essays have appeared in Jewish Currents, LA Review of Books, and Poetry Daily.

REVIEWS

It is a mighty task to write generously, robustly, and imaginatively about Dolly Parton, who already exists so broadly at the intersection of many American imaginations, all of them flourishing and fluorescent. But what Lynn Melnick has managed is beyond mere tribute, and beyond biography--it is a rich, close reading of multiple lives that sometimes find themselves touching. The narratives in this book are masterfully presented and do justice not only to the life of its central subject but also to the life of its writer.

— Hanif Abdurraqib

Lynn Melnick’s new book is an ode to storytelling itself, how it keeps us alive and makes our lives more worth living, whether in music, poems, or even a biographical memoir that winds two stories together to make something stronger and more beautiful than either would be alone. A gorgeous and heartrending story of survival.

— Melissa Febos

A riveting blend of cultural criticism and memoir...In her quest to 'be more Dollylike, rising again and again from the embers of expectation,' Melnick offers a gorgeous story of survival and self-discovery. Die-hard Dolly fans won’t want to miss this.

— Publishers Weekly, starred review

I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive is more than an artful memoir; it is thought-provoking cultural analysis of a beloved icon whose relevance endures.

— BookPage

[Melnick] writes with remarkable vulnerability and candor yet ensures that the often-painful memories she relates don’t cloud her critical gaze. She moves gracefully between confessional and analytical registers, her prose both sharp and full of heart.

— The Atlantic

Discarding the societal demand to keep quiet about her own trauma, Melnick structures the book as an inquiry into the music of Dolly Parton that 'unmired' her when she first found herself in a drug rehab program as a teenager in the 1980s. It’s Dolly Parton’s music that offers transcendence in Melnick’s life from then on, and she scrutinizes Dolly’s songs and their personal and cultural impact in a mixture of biography, critical investigation, music journalism, social history, and invocation. 'It’s a refusal of secrets,' Melnick writes in the final chapter about a song that Dolly is singing, but this is also a perfect summation of her book.

— BOMB Magazine

There is rich texture in the details Melnick shares of her life, which she weaves into Parton’s history and the backstory of each song, with Parton’s hardships and struggles as much an inspiration to Melnick as the star’s thrilling success...This is absolutely the book for any Dolly Parton fan, full of anecdotes and intricate history of The Leading Lady of Country. It was empowering and inspiring to read the stories of these women (Parton and Melnick) and to know they have made something of the ashes left when others lit a match.

— Southern Review of Books

This book revels unabashedly in the turmoil of both women’s lives. Like Dolly’s voice, Melnick’s tone is casual and joyous, yet still defiant, cogently seeking commonality between its two subjects and showing how she and Parton have each performed their womanliness—and all its concomitant mess...Carefully researched and at times uncomfortably honest, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive also avoids hagiography and handles the problematic aspects of Dolly better than most...I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive is, at core, about the Appalachian skill of 'always being aware of the terrible' while steadfastly and laughingly avoiding its grip.

— The Georgia Review

Melnick lovingly chronicles how Parton’s expansive songwriting catalog and her six decades as a household icon have been inextricable from Melnick’s own journey from a Jewish teenage addict to an accomplished artist.

— Lilith

Each chapter in [I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive] glances at the author's life through a different song penned by Parton. [Melnick] deals with past trauma by analogizing her own life to the country legend's. Although Melnick and Parton didn't seem to have much more in common on the surface, discovering their similarities is at the center of this moving journey.

— The Boot, "10 Best Country Music Books of 2022"

Melnick’s book is about the author’s vicarious, identity-forming relationship with a cultural figure. Each of its 21 chapters is organized around a particular song, so we learn everything she was able to find out about how Dolly...wrote or recorded that song, what the press said about it, and what the artist herself said about it in interviews and talk show appearances. Moreover, each chapter delves into what the title song means in Melnick’s life and what it says about related cultural issues. In that way, it’s a blend of memoir and cultural criticism, as well as a wealth of information.

— Chapter 16

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Seven Bridges Road
Chapter One: Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That
Chapter Two: Steady as the Rain
Chapter Three: The Seeker
Chapter Four: Here You Come Again
Chapter Five: Jolene
Chapter Six: The Grass Is Blue
Chapter Seven: Coat of Many Colors
Chapter Eight: Islands in the Stream
Chapter Nine: Do I Ever Cross Your Mind
Chapter Ten: Will He Be Waiting for Me
Chapter Eleven: Down from Dover
Chapter Twelve: Silver Dagger
Chapter Thirteen: Don’t Think Twice
Chapter Fourteen: I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby
Chapter Fifteen: Little Sparrow
Chapter Sixteen: 9 to 5
Chapter Seventeen: Two Doors Down
Chapter Eighteen: Put a Little Love in Your Heart
Chapter Nineteen: Blue Smoke
Chapter Twenty: Bargain Store
Chapter Twenty-One: The Story
Acknowledgments: I Will Always Love You
References and Resources

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