- The Rumpus
Before Reese Witherspoon acted out the events of her life, Cheryl Strayed was known not as the writer of Wild or even as Cheryl Strayed, but as Sugar, the Rumpus‘ pseudonymous advice columnist, who developed a following among Rumpus readers for compassionate, bullshit-free responses to readers’ quandaries, delivered in the form of the personal essay. Sugar went on indefinite hiatus after Strayed published Wild and her career exploded, but now, the column is back in a new form: Dear Sugar Radio, a brand-new weekly podcast from WBUR Boston, hosted by Strayed along with Steve Almond, who was the Rumpus’ first (and crankiest) Sugar.
So, how does it hold up? Well, Sugar’s compassion is alive and well, and Strayed and Almond as a team have a good cop-bad cop dynamic going on that could never have existed in the column. The advice is sound and delivered with genuine empathy, but something’s missing. Maybe it’s because part of the appeal of Dear Sugar was that Sugar’s identity was a secret, or that each installment was a one-on-one conversation between Sugar and whatever sweet pea had written to her that week. Whatever it was, there’s a level of intimacy that the column had that doesn’t translate. I enjoyed the first episode of Dear Sugar Radio, but having read Dear Sugar religiously (and Tiny Beautiful Things, Strayed’s book version of the column), I don’t think I’ll do the same with the podcast. That said, the Rumpus has archived 98 columns from both Sugars—you can read ’em all here.