Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Anna Marie Tendler. Rachel Murray/Getty Images for The Other Art Fair
Anna Marie Tendler she didn’t expect the reaction to her memoir, The men called her crazy.
“Publishing a memoir is not for the faint of heart,” Tendler, 39, wrote on Tuesday, Dec. 10. Substack post for her new COVEN newsletter. “A lot of people are mad at you — some who know you personally, and many who don’t.” I naively prepared myself to be attacked for what I wrote. But it turned out that the other women were deeply offended by me. Some might say needlessly offended??”
Tendler added that she was “really blown away” by the response to the book, which hit shelves in August, because she “has nurtured a life surrounded by extremely kind, smart, empathetic, ambitious friends.” She added that “a lot more people loved the book than hated it” and thanked the “incredibly nice” fans who turned out for her book tour.
When Tendler announced the memoir via Instagram in March, she described it as a “mental health story; about being a woman; about the family. And finally, about the endless source of my heartbreak and anger—men.
Donato Sardella/Getty Images for The Other Art Fair Anna Marie Tendler, ex-wife of comedian John Mulaney, detailed the moments after she checked herself into a mental health facility in an excerpt from her upcoming memoir, Men Called Her Crazy. Editor’s note: The story below contains discussion of suicidal ideation, eating disorders, and self-harm. (…)
The caption led many to believe that the book will be about Tendler’s split in 2021. John Mulaney. The same month that the former couple announced their separationMulaney’s relationship with Olivia Munn was made public. That May, Mulaney, 42, and Munn, 44, welcomed their son, Malcolm. They got married last July and daughter More welcomed in September.
“Everything that happened was completely shocking and I think it’s surreal,” Tendler said of her and Mulaney’s divorce during a January 2022 interview. Harper’s Bazaar. “In a way, I feel like, well, it can only go from here, because I’ve reached the depth of where I could go.”
Tendler defied expectations not mentioning Mulaney by name at all in The men called her crazy.
“I have no desire to take care of one thing that people might know about me,” she said The New York Times August, adding that focusing on her divorce would be “a crutch I don’t need.”
While Mulaney was left out, The men called her crazy details several of Tendler’s past romantic experiences. Some reviewers criticized the book for its male-centeredness. Fran Hoepfner wrote for Vultures that the memoir’s “relentless gender-essentialist reiteration feels — however lived and true to Tendler’s experiences — dated and unexplored in any serious way.” Hoepfner went on to argue that for all of Tender’s talk of “reclaiming her own story, it comes back to men again and again.”
John Mulaney’s road to rehab and divorce still stirs interest more than three years later. Mulaney, 42, was named GK’s Comedian of the Year for their Men of the Year 2024 issue. In his cover story, published Tuesday, Nov. 12, Mulaney gets candid about his new chapter in Los Angeles with Olivia Munn and ( …)
Jezebel‘s Kadi Ruth Ashcraft shared similar sentiments, writing that she “begged Tendler’s ideas and anecdotes to coalesce into a thesis that goes beyond a general, basic hatred of men.”
However, not all reviews were bad. Chicago Book Review‘ Erica Dirk called Tendler “very funny” and “particularly skilled” in exploring how “having money emboldens men.”
In her first COVEN newsletter, Tendler said she felt “very proud.” The men called her crazy and encouraged those who have not yet read it to do so.
“I wrote MHCRC because I had something to say about mental health and patriarchy, having spent the last five years in an almost constant struggle with how it defines so much of the world and how it has shaped my life personally,” she wrote.
