White is the publisher of the Seattle-based literary press, Scala House Press. In this essay, White argues that, whileMoore displays an extraordinary gift of language in "You're Ugly, Too," she does not reveal the sources of her character's anguish and therefore leaves little for the reader to empathize with.

Lorrie Moore's "You're Ugly, Too" is a witty and sometimes hilarious account of an unmarried woman who, like so many of Moore's fictional creations, is unable to connect with men—or with anybody else, for that matter. With Moore's signature barrage of one-liners, jokes, and what critic John W. Aldridge, in his critique of Moore in Talents and Technicians: Literary Chic and the New Assembly-Line Fiction, calls "other ludicrous dislocations of language," it is easy to understand the acclaim thatMoore and this story have received.

However entertaining her style may be, readingMoore can ultimately be a frustrating experience...