Guest Hosting on Blogs
You can — and I do — say a lot of things about how blogs cut down on our attention span, create an echo chamber, and generally lead to some sort of mental decline. But they are also, I hasten to add, a really neat way to find out about what people are thinking. I am, as anyone reading this will know, a terrible blogger. Kelsey Boeckermann at Reading Keeps You Sane asked me to write about the title of my new book, After the Moment. I did, and she posted it here.
Ashley Thompson at her blog asked me to write about rape and abuse in literature, and since it is not posted, I have it here. I think she might have meant YA literature, but I kind of went ahead and did my own thing, which is probably why you’ll find it on what passes for my blog and not on what is her blog.
Ashley has asked me to write about rape and abuse in literature, and it’s impossible to do that without mentioning the novel Lolita. So, let’s get it over with: Lolita.
Here’s the thing, though. Nabokov’s novel, in doing what great art must, transcends words like Rape and Abuse. Instead, Lolita inspires silence, awe and reverence. If you haven’t read it, go immediately to get a copy and enter into one of the most ferociously elegant reading experiences of your life. It will leave you forever changed, and, also, silent.
However, David Harrower’s play, Blackbird, about a man’s sexual seduction of a 12-year-old girl, demands conversation. For one thing, Blackbird is a play, and drama, if it is any good, must invite discussion. One does read plays, but they are written to be performed. To be seen by an audience, and then to be analyzed and talked about by the audience itself.
The other reason to discuss Blackbird is that the play is, in its entirety, a conversation between Una, who was twelve when Ray, then forty, had sex with her. The two meet (Una discovers his whereabouts by accident and pays a visit to his office) many years after the incident and we, the audience, have the chance to witness two terribly damaged people exchange memories, lies, rage and something akin to love.
Is Ray lying when he says he loved her? Is he lying when he says Una was the only child for whom he felt desire? Some lies Una grasps at as if they were lifelines, but there are truths about herself that she, understandably, can not bear to see.
What makes Blackbird worth both time and attention in spite of its subject matter, is that Harrower insists on depicting his characters and their situation with nuance, respect and empathy. The same can be said, I believe, of Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. Allison’s novel, about a young Southern girl molested by her step-father, is less elegant than Blackbird, but it is written with a passionate intensity that takes over your life as you read.
It is, I think, literature’s job to enter into the dark corners of our lives. To the places where we don’t wish to linger, but are enriched by having them illuminated.
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After the Moment - Why a boy? Why this boy? Why this book?
The answer to this is a bit long, but it starts with a story that at least three different women — each, in 2001, the mother of a teenage boy — told me. Some of the details were different, but the story was the same. At some point during the day on September 11th, these mothers went into a quiet place (the bathroom, the laundry room, the yard) and cried big, hysterical tears knowing that a war was coming. And a war, to these women who had grown up under the shadow of Vietnam, meant a draft.
I held an image of these weeping women in my mind, and then, when the war did start, but the draft didn't, my mind wandered to their sons. Sending a "volunteer" army into battle raises many troubling questions of class, money, and race, but I wondered what it was like to be one of the boys who stayed home. That he would be privileged was obvious, but according to any YA book that takes place after 9/11, he is also oblivious to the dangers he has escaped.
I wanted to read about a boy who was neither a genius (we've got a lot of those in YA-land, don't we?) nor a clueless wonder whose intellectual curiosity never reaches past a girl or a game. I had met the average, thoughtful boy (and the men they became), and I wondered why I so seldom saw them on the page. It was around this time that I met the woman who would become my new editor. For some reason, the question of violence against women (well, girls) came up, and that set me to thinking how in YA-land things always work out for that girl. Her attacker is always caught, convicted by his peers or his own remorse, if not by a judge.
Yeah, right.
And so I began to write about the boy who stayed home while his less fortunate peers went to Iraq. There was a girl he loved (he was seventeen and straight—how could there not be a girl he loved), and there was violence. And then eventually there was this book.
Part of the 'eventually' involved some research. My editor asked me to write a description of my foray into the world of men, boys, sex, and love. If you are interested, it is here...
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Howard's End
I am reading Howard’s End for the second time. The last time I read this novel I was in college, taking a British Literature seminar. We read the usual suspects, one a week, and sat around a table talking about symbolism, structure, thematic motif and all that good stuff.
I loved the class, I loved the students (only one of whom I can recall, he was a fraternity brother of my first unrequited love), and I loved the teacher (whose name I’ve forgotten and whose face I can only barely conjure). I could even bear the Hardy, once it was explained and dissected for me. I am not, alas, a natural born Hardy lover, but I managed him with the help of the class.
However, I HATED Howard’s End. Hated it. I hated the sisters, loathed the Wilcoxes and thought the prose heavy and awkward. Reading it was like being hit on the head with a blunt object. Several years later, I read more Forster (A Room With A View, Where Angels Fear To Tread, and my favorite, Maurice) and was amazed at how lovely it was. A fusion of sorbet and spun glass.
Now, spending time with the Schlegel sisters (who seem like the very clever daughters of a fantasy uncle: you know, the erudite, cultured man with an eye for beauty and all the time in the world to talk to you), I wonder if I was too young and stupid to appreciate the book. Or, is it a question of not being able to see simply and clearly when you are studying a book while seated at a table and calling what you read British Literature?
I love love love talking about books. The sentences that stop your heart, the insights that change your soul, and the characters who seem like new friends all demand discussion. But maybe when we talk about books with words like Symbol, Imagery, Structure and Theme, instead of words like Love, Joy, Thrill, and Interesting, we miss the point.
I might, yet again, miss the point of Howard’s End (and it is clear to me that Forster is making one). But this time, it will be enough for me to have felt like a first class passenger on a train built by a man who adored what he was making.
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Bragging
They say it's not bragging if it's true. And it's okay if you're bragging on the behalf of someone else's true thing. And a web page devoted entirely to one's work is a form of bragging, no matter how many people claim it's a social networking tool.
One of the many, many reasons I failed at blogging was that I found it impossible to escape the sensation that every typed word was a form of bragging. Even if all you write about is how you take your coffee, there's a subtext of bragging and it's that you think the way you take your coffee is worthy of mention.
Ha!
However, here is something worthy of mention. It has the added bonus of being true. And, yes, I'm bragging. Barack Obama has read my step-father's* book about Lincoln as a writer. Because I am one of those people who worked for Obama, read his book and cried through all of his speeches, this is a great thing. The Washington Post, NYT and LA Times all loved the book as well, but really, who cares? This, for me, is what matters:
*He is really my mother's husband since he entered my life when I was already past 21.
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Surprises About Men; Unexpected Lessons from the Other Side
I didn't set out to write a book from a young man's point of view, but once Leigh's story began forming in my mind and on the page, I knew I had some work to do. Young men tend to be portrayed as either maladjusted geniuses (have you noticed that the YA genre is littered with boys who are intellectual prodigies?) or video-game playing dunderheads. The guy I was writing about was neither. He was thoughtful, but not brilliant. He simply got up every day trying to figure out how to do the best he could. I started to read memoirs by thoughtful men about what life was like when they were boys. I was reassured that, yes, thoughtful boys exist, always have, still do. But I hit a wall when it came to boys & sex. A wall no amount of reading could fix. So, I located my bravery (it was next to a pair of old ballet shoes), and went out to talk to those on the other side of the wall.
Here are some fun things men told me:
1. Having sex for the first time does NOT stop you from thinking about it so much. The first thing you want to do after having sex the first time is, well, have it again.
2. If you ask a man why he wants to have sex, he will look at you as if you are speaking a different language. Ask your girlfriend that question and you will hear words like Intimacy, Connection, Expression, Pleasure, Joy, Love. The closest answer I got from men was Because. I began to suspect it was like any habit: you bite your nails, you eat sweets, you want to have sex, you adjust your glasses, all without thinking. Probably without noticing. Just because.
3. Boys move around. A lot. It's not just the jocks. Young men work stuff out in movement. No one said this to me flat out, but most of the men I spoke with (not to mention the brave, horrified teenage boys whose mothers pushed them my way) reported an adolescence lived in motion.
4. They LOVE having a car. Oh, my God, do they LOVE having a car. Who knew? I grew up hailing cabs, but my male counterparts tell me they LOVED that first car.
5. They fall in love for the first time when the girl with whom they want to sleep (or with whom they already are sleeping) grabs their attention in some non-physical way. Now, maybe I wanted to hear that, and maybe I talked to an odd bunch, but in the things they said, and how their faces looked when we moved from the topic of sex to that first time love struck, led me to this conclusion. As one gentleman succinctly put it, "Wanting her was a given; thinking about her was a shock."
I would hasten to add that that all of these "lessons" were gleaned by my highly subjective brain as I listened to men talk. A different woman might have learned different things. No one is an expert on gender. But most writers spend their lives observing others. We live for—and through—what we see. And if we don't think we're seeing clearly, we try to see from as many different angles as possible.
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In Defense of Great Expectations (and a brief look at the joys of reading way above one's grade level)
Every now and again the question arises as to whether the words Young Adult belong in a phrase that contains the word Literature. As someone who makes her living writing YA novels, I refuse to have a dog in that fight for two simple reasons.
One, if I say, "Of course YA novels are great literature," I sound self-important and, far worse, a tad defensive. After all, if you need to say you're smart or beautiful, how smart or beautiful can you really be?
Two, if I say, "Come on, who are you kidding, YA novels are judged by how or if a teenage reader can relate to or see him/herself in it, and not by how well the writer used language, character, nuance, detail," I not only run my work down, I risk offending all of my colleagues as well.
But as for what teens should be asked to read, well, that is a discussion I will enter. I am dyslexic and, as a result, my love affair with books has had its share of fights, tears, reconciliations, and chronic resentments. Not only that, my sisters and I were judged by what we read, which was a drag, but we were also expected to read in an interesting and passionate way, which was kind of great.
Which brings me to Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. One of the many bloggers weighing in on this latest fracas about YA's literary merits is Laurie Halse Anderson. I have read, enjoyed and admired her exemplary YA novels (Speak and Twisted). Anderson is a tireless advocate for what she refers to as "the raucous world of children's and YA literature." As such, she has this to say about those who don't give the genre its due respect:
People who don't understand the significance of YA literature to our culture are either ignorant or they are idiots. . . . Idiots don't deserve my time or energy. They are the ones who make grand pronouncements on literature, who believe that the best way to educate a 14-year-old who reads below grade level is to shove Great Expectations down his throat. Then, when the kid says that the book sucks and that all books suck, and he reaches for his game controller, they are shocked and appalled at this horrifying, illiterate generation.
In the same post, she mentions people who live in Brooklyn and who love those who
write dense short stories in which nothing happens that cause a sub-section of erudite inhabitants of Brooklyn to twitter and fawn, but leave the rest of the reading world scratching their heads.Although I have lived in Brooklyn, my neighborhood was mostly retired Italian hitmen and still-working drug dealers and so I am only qualified to speak about Great Expectations.
The novel was assigned to my seventh grade English class, and it was hard. Hard to read, understand, and impossible to enjoy. As is common with dyslexics, I found that the words swam together on the page, creating a brick wall, through which I could pass only with the greatest difficulty. And, to make matters worse, it wasn't considered enough to grasp the plot. I had to discuss, in class with my teacher, the novel's symbolism, setting, and dialogue.
The book made me feel like a failure. But I had to read it.
So I bought my first and last Cliffs Notes (discovered as if by a miracle at a candy store three blocks from my house). It helped a little. I would read the Cliffs Notes, read the novel, re-read the novel, review my own notes and &mdash nothing would happen. The book was still a brick wall, but on and on I went. I could have gone to my parents (or the teacher, I suppose). My father would have sat with me every night, explaining as I read it aloud, as he had done when I was seven.
I didn't ask for help because it was very clear that everyone expected me to be able to read, understand and learn from Great Expectations. The bar was not set low for me simply because I was thirteen. Or even because I was dyslexic. No one I knew thought the novel was only for the smart, older kids. It was for all of us.
Eventually, as sorrow, old women, young girls full of beauty and vengeance, fires, nostalgia, convicts, and dark ocean nights broke into my brain carrying images, words and ideas I would never forget, I saw that the novel was even for me.
My efforts had cracked the novel open.
I write YA novels and I like writing them and it's nice that kids read them. But that in no way allows me to agree with those who hint that we should ask kids only to read material to which they can relate. Or worse, to read only what they can. YA can and should be a stepping stone or a language of transition, but it's not a destination.
If we who write and promote YA Literature don't ask kids to crack open the secrets buried in Pip's life, who will?
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Welcome to Stray Thoughts
This is where a blog would go if I were the sort of person with any propensity for blogging. But as I have just closed up shop, as it were, on a social networking site called Livejournal, I can hardly claim that. I could give you a lot of reasons behind my belief that only Andrew Sullivan, Stephen McCauley and Novella Carpenter should blog, but my reluctance comes down to an improbable fear which sounds a little bit more like delusional fantasy.
One day, A.S. Byatt or Andre Aciman comes across my webpage (how this happens is left rather vague, as befits both fears and fantasies) and she (or he) is appalled at the poor level of writing as well as the idea that I could ever have thought x, y, or z was interesting enough to post. While this pretty much sums up my reaction to most blogs, especially those kept by otherwise good writers, it's funny that I seem to think the only thing standing between me and Byatt's good opinion is my blogging.
I realize this is crazy, but there we are. I'll put things here if I can get them past my terror of what Andre Aciman might say. Otherwise, go to the news section if you are at all interested in updates. Or email me asking anything you want to know. I don't mind going on and on in private about my cat, what I'm reading, my running times or any other of the mundane, but to me precious, details of my life.
I just can't do it here.
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