Kelsey McKinney bookends her new collection of essays on gossip with a word from 鈥淭ell all the truth but tell it slant.鈥�
As the co-creator of the runaway hit podcast 鈥淣ormal Gossip," McKinney was well aware of gossip's need for a PR makeover. But what started as a project to liberate the act from its designation as sin, villainized and demeaned as 鈥渨omen鈥檚 talk,鈥� turned into something much more slippery.
In interrogating the longstanding contradictions of gossip, Dickinson鈥檚 line proves instructive: Which parts are true, which parts are slant, and who gets to do the telling?
鈥淵ou Didn鈥檛 Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip鈥� is a whirlwind inquiry into one of society鈥檚 oldest practices. McKinney writes about gossip with an intellectual rigor that borders on reverence, explaining how a raunchy lyric exemplifies the theory of mind and how the notorious burn book from 鈥淢ean Girls鈥� actually helped teenagers avoid a predatorial teacher.
In each essay, McKinney unpacks new facets of gossip with a colorful cast of sources, ranging from the Apostle Paul, ChatGPT, philosopher John Stuart Mill, celebrity gossip account DeuxMoi and Town Tattle, an about-town magazine that was 鈥渆ssentially the Roaring Twenties鈥� Gossip Girl.鈥�
McKinney, both a reporter and critic, is perhaps best known for her role as podcast host. On each episode of 鈥淣ormal Gossip,鈥� before she passed the baton to new host Rachelle Hampton late last year, McKinney would relay 鈥渁n anonymous morsel of gossip from the real world.鈥� After introducing each guest, she would ask them a simple question: What is your relationship with gossip?
It's a question that lies underneath each of McKinney's essays. From teenagers who use gossip as a way to beat down school rivals to women who warn coworkers to avoid office creeps, McKinney paints a complicated portrait of how gossip's virtues and vices are directly intertwined with power and who wields it.
Perhaps some confusion about gossip comes from the fact that it is itself difficult to define. Often conflated as slander or libel or even hate speech, gossip's definition is nebulous, existing according to McKinney 鈥渋n a kind of transitory, imaginary space between events and their codifying.鈥� It's this tentative quality that makes gossip a prime 鈥渢ool for the less privileged鈥� and an annoyance for those in authority.
In seeking to at least approach a definition, McKinney argues that gossip is distinguished not by its tone but rather by its point of view. The orators who relayed ancient tales like 鈥淭he Epic of Gilgamesh鈥� and the group chat dishing about who's dating who have something in common: Their tales are always second-hand, meaning every juicy detail is an interpolation of the truth. And yet it's the slant itself that makes gossip so delectable, and dangerous.
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AP book reviews:
Curtis Yee, The Associated Press
