Month / September 2006
Can Chick Lit Reflect the Post 9/11 World?
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Debra Pickett puts forth an interesting notion: Why hasn’t there been a 9/11-themed chick lit title? It’s an idea that might just get the Merrick & Baratz-Logsted camps declaring a truce.
In her column, Pickett cites Jay McInerney’s The Good Life as a “literary” exemplar of the post-9/11 novel. But even a cursory look reveals that The Good Life is as “fluffy” as its pink cover counterparts. The characters may be older than your typical chick lit protagonists and they may be committing adultery. But in their own way, they’re looking for Mr. or Ms. Right and trying to forge their identities to get behind their stalled midlife crises. They all have a lot of free time and they spend much of the book gleefully swiping their credit cards to obtain more consumer goods.
The Good Life‘s grand conceit is that, despite 9/11’s turmoil, nothing has essentially changed. But its even broader conceit is that these fluffy relationships are viewed by the characters as more substantial than world events.
Ergo, chick lit. Albeit, with really lousy sex scenes and odd references to mersangers.
So if McInerney can do it, why not chick lit authors? What if Mr. Right turned out to be an al-Qaeda terrorist operative? Or what if somebody wrote a book in which a Homeland Security operative or security inspector applied the same scrutiny to her dating life as she does with her job (in one fell swoop, you’ve got chick lit, a way to examine post-9/11 life, and a way to expose women’s issues within an underreported vocational bloc)?
Five Years Later
I woke up this morning to voices on the radio telling me how I should feel. They told me that I should “never forget” what happened five years ago today. They told me that it “wasn’t a question of if, it was a question of when.” One voice even suggested that we should remember this “until the end of time.” They suggested in their somber and soothing tones that I was meant to mourn in some way or be completely serious, that I had to treat today like some centerfold in a stroke mag, the airbrushed flesh replaced by an American flag.
Well, I’ve had five years to come to terms with the planes crashing into those towers. Five years paying attention to the tenuous and as yet unproven connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Five years watching soldiers die and Iraqis bombed. Five years watching my civil liberties erode, my phones getting tapped, due process being dismantled, and who knows how many false arrests. Five years enduring those who want me to live in fear and to disrupt my life. Five years encouraging others not to be afraid. I’ve spent five years keeping up a cheery front while the vultures in DC have done everything in their power to make my countrymen live without dignity.
Well, I am not some emotional machine with buttons for people to push. Nor is anyone living in this great land. That this day should be treated with some kind of automatic reverence is appalling. I am troubled that people are expected to feel and think in some predetermined way. Any true act of patriotism involves something in which the citizen and the government mutually respect each other. There are many things that I can be patriotic about, but the emotional manipulation of this fifth anniversary (and if this is an anniversary proper, how does one raise a toast to three thousand lives and beyond anyway?) is not one of them.
To quote the great H.L. Mencken, “The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”
I’m not sorry that I like my country too damn much. Neither should you be.
[UPDATE: The Rake offers a handy-dandy guide on this matter.]
Roundup
- Lee Goldberg has discovered a novel based on the Pink Panther movies.
- I didn’t read Garry Wills’ original review, but it turns out that I don’t need to. Unless Harvey C. Mansfield demonstrates that he can drink me under the table or beat me in an arm wrestling contest, I think it’s pretty clear that his masculinity is muted at best. The fact of the matter is that manly men do elaborate. And this tendency to expatiate is part of the problem. Small notes in denial of this suggest a titmouse’s temperament. (via Scott)
- Sara Gran pens an amusing essay on Brooklyn writers.
- Charles Frazier responds to charges of betrayal and greed: “I saw something that said I was ‘the symbol of greed in the publishing industry.’ I’m not the one who decided what the offers were gonna be on the book. And it’s not like I went into this just looking to take the highest offer.” While I can see Frazier’s point, Frazier doesn’t clarify just what it was about Random House’s publicity plan that made their offer more compelling than the extra cash. Hopefully an eagle-eyed interviewer will clarify what Frazier meant.
- Duane Swierczynsk alludes to the mysterious “Cabana Boys” circle in a recent interview with Jason Boog.
- A porn film shot on MIR? I think I prefer the Russian Space Agency to NASA.
- I missed the damn Mountain Goats show, but thankfully Annalee Newitz didn’t.
- With all this inflated talk of five year anniversaries (“Never forget” and “It’s not a question of if, but when” are the common phrases I hear), Elizabeth Crane ponders the larger question of whether one is truly defined by place.
- Liza Featherstone suggests that the James Frey class-action suit was “frivolous.”
- A new issue of Bookslut is up, and it features an interview with Jeff VanderMeer.
- For those who thought the New York Sun was just a place for silly bookstore owners to deposit their strange and needlessly contemptuous articles, Gary Shapiro’s nice overview of The New Criterion‘s history may very well prove you wrong.
- Callie Miller writes about two underrated “remarkable writers.”
- wood s lot points to a forgotten 9/11 photograph.
- Banksy hits Disneyland.
- Eric Alterman, one of the first mainstream media bloggers, is canned by MSNBC. And in other media news, I’d hate to be on the Dallas Morning News staff right now.
- Alex Ross on whacking down his book from 390,000 words to 250,700 words. (via James Tata)
- Deborah Howell takes a page from the Frank Wilson playbook and reveals what goes on behind Book World. Meanwhile, Sammy T remains silent. (via the Literary Saloon)
- And speaking of Sammy T, one must ask why Stanley Crouch was asked to cover a Huey Newton bio. Why not assign him a book that you wouldn’t expect him to review? Was Crouch assigned the book because he’s African-American? Does the NYTBR‘s troubling policy of assigning men the nonfiction and women the literary fiction (if, indeed, assigning women at all) also extend to race? It is not Crouch’s review I take umbrage with, but the idea of assigning like-minded reviewers to like-minded books. This smacks of institutionalism. Consider this: Dave Eggers can review Edward P. Jones’ All Aunt Hagar’s Children. But why can’t Crouch or Jones review, say, Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics?
Mabuse on Murakami
My review of Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman appears in today’s Philly Inquirer.