House of Cards: Love, Faith, and Other Social Expressions Book

I suppose my main beef with "House of Cards" isn't quite Dickerson's fault, or even his publisher's, as the subtitle reads "Love, Faith, and Other Social Expressions." Nevertheless, in all the blurbs of praise I read about this memoir, including the three on the back, nobody mentioned that the book devotes a lot of time to thinking about Christianity in its various incarnations, interpretations of the bible, the nature of faith, and that sort of thing. I don't like books being surprisingly about Jesus.

That being said, I devoured this puppy in three days, which is significant praise since I'm rarely able to make much reading time outside of my commute, and House of Cards was worth it. Dickerson is, indeed, self-effacing and honest and clever, and there's no reason for the reader to doubt his self-professed skills as a writer of greeting cards. Dickerson even deals shockingly well with his own history of Nice Guy Syndrome, and the related history of Kind Christian Disorder. He cops to his own over-eager sense of entitlement to women and respect and success, and the narration winks to Dickerson's hindsight understanding that being a decent person doesn't and shouldn't earn you any cookies. And that's a big deal.

It's good to hear another writer articulate how much of the writing process has nothing at all to do with putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, that there's so much staring into space and seemingly-irrelevant reading and chit-chat that goes into it. I wish I could give these chapters to my boss, and anyone else who manages a staff of writers. Sometimes we really are goofing off, but often we just gotta shake the sillies out of our composition-brains. And Dickerson relays many an amusing anecdote about what that looked like for him at Hallmark, making me feel like way less of a weirdo.

The opening pages unfortunately make a promise the rest of the book fails to live up to. We are treated to a slew of Dickerson's cartoons, greeting cards, love poems, and assorted other writings, which conspicuously disappear as he moves closer to his career at Hallmark. I'm sure that's a copyright thing, but those nuggets were the best part of the book, and I resent never getting them at the same volume again.

To sum up, even in the estimation of this liberal Jew from the big city, Dickerson's debut memoir has a lot of promise and its fair share of genuine, resonant moments, not to mention wit and self-knowledge. I think the blurb on the back does the author a disservice in comparing him to David Sedaris: I'd rather read Dickerson. But maybe next time a more consistent Dickerson who makes good on expectations and is marketed a little more carefully. I get it, Jesus is a big thing to a lot of people. I'm just asking for fair warning.