There was a time from the mid-to-late-’90s when you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing recording artist Alanis Morissette blaring from the speakers. Tracks like “You Oughta Know” and “Ironic” from “Jagged Little Pill,” her chart-topping, Grammy-winning album that would go on to sell more than 30 million copies, were ubiquitous on the airwaves.
With Morissette’s defiant delivery and message of empowerment, it’s no surprise she became a Gen X touchstone, particularly for women. Among the artist’s superfans is Megan Volpert, 43, a Decatur poet and cultural critic who has written books on pop culture icons Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. Her latest book, “Why Alanis Morissette Matters” (University of Texas Press, $24.95), addresses the question implied by the book’s title. The short answer is, “She helps us get through life for a while,” said Volpert over the phone last week.
Volpert was in her early teens, growing up in Chicago, when Morissette first came on the scene.
“I was still in the closest as a queer teen, under resourced, living in the suburbs and hating my parents like all hot-blooded American teenagers tend to do at that age,” she said. “I just wanted something that seemed less fake and louder, something that spoke to me. Hearing her music and seeing her videos really got me in the heart spot. I listened to her lyrics, and I thought, ‘I agree with this. I think this is true.’”
Credit: University of Texas Press
Credit: University of Texas Press
Volpert went on to teach high school English for two decades and didn’t give Morissette much thought again until Diablo Cody’s Broadway musical adaptation of “Jagged Little Pill” debuted in 2018. Volpert went to New York to see the production right before the pandemic shut everything down, and it helped crystallize her concept for the new book.
She recalled having a series of epiphanies during that performance. One was recognition of a shared sense of religious fervor that permeated the audience. “The community vibe at the event was ah-mazing,” she said. “Everybody was singing along.”
Another was the handling of the song “Ironic.” Having the song sung by a pair of high school students in a writing workshop as they debated whether it was actually ironic was “hilarious and redemptive,” said Volpert.
Volpert blends elements of memoir, essay and criticism in a slim but probing collection of essays that consider the relevance of the artist and “Jagged Little Pill” from a multitude of angles. Pulling from both academia and pop culture to make her points, she draws parallels between her subject and the Greek drama “Antigone,” Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” and the character of Sandy in “Grease.”
Among the book’s revelations is Morissette’s advocacy for psychology. Having sought the counsel of psychologist Dick Schwartz during a bout of postpartum depression, she wrote the foreword to his 2021 book “No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal International Family Systems Model.” She also contributed the foreword to Jamie Grumet’s 2019 book “Modern Attachment Parenting.”
“That’s the truer goal of this book,” said Volpert. “Yes, it’s coming out around the 30th anniversary of ‘Jagged Little Pill,’ and we certainly should celebrate that as a seminal, iconic, legendary moment in American music culture.
“However, it’s also important to understand that the things that she thinks about and the way that she thinks about them have been applied across a number of avenues of her life, including other creative projects and her general ability to be a public face and role model. And so that psychology work? It’s all in ‘Jagged Little Pill,’ and it’s essential to a million other things that she did.”
The question remains: Has Morissette read the book? Copies were sent, but there’s been no response. Volpert said it’s not something she dwells on. She achieved the goal she set for herself.
“I wanted the book to be an homage to the totality of her body of work, not only as a musician but as a thinker and as someone who is consistently plugged in to culture. … Love her or hate her, she definitely mattered.”
And the nominees are: The Georgia Writers Association has announced the nominees for the 2025 Georgia Author of the Year Awards. More than 120 books were nominated in 15 categories, including First Novel, History, Biography, Poetry Chapbook and Young Adult. Winners will be announced online June 30. For a complete list of nominees, go to authoroftheyear.org.
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She may be reached at Suzanne.VanAtten@ajc.com.
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