Here's a question
Oct. 26th, 2004 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI'm reading Liberating Paris by Linda Bloodworth Thomas. It's the first choice of the miniature book club started by a couple of friends of mine from high school. At our first meeting, to set ground rules and pick the book for the first month, my friend S. asked what I read. I've been reading a lot of the news lately, and that's been my biggest investment. Otherwise, I told her, when I read, I want to relax and have a good time, so I've been reading what I've been wanting to read but had never had time for while at school. Basically, after coming back from Australia last year, I wanted to devour every Terry Pratchett I could get my hands on. This was facilitated first by the library branch so close to my apartment, as well as my discovery (thanks to theKathy, another Pratchett devotee) that I could order books in from other branches, round out my readership a little. So, I told her the truth: I am not a genre person, I'm an author person, and when I get stuck on an author, I like to read them out until I lose interest or run out of material. Nominally, I recognize a tendency to prefer sci-fi, some fantasy, as that's the section I gravitated towards when I'd run out of Pratchett's at the local library branch (and before I knew about the ordering in), but I like mysteries, I don't dislike fiction or even 'hard' books when I read. Some of my favorites are books I read in class that I might not have read otherwise--Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest comes to mind.
Upon relating this, my friend S. paused and took a breath, the kind of action that signifies someone's hesitation to be the bearer of bad news. I couldn't imagine why. S. asked if I would be willing to branch out, away from the one author-ism, away from sci-fi. I said, yes, with reservations, clarifying my position as not a 'no,' but a cautious 'yes.' It would depend on the book, naturally. Her choices of three for us to pick from included Vanity Fair, the book by Al Gore's daughter, and Liberating Paris. I'd read a favorable review of the Al Gore's daughter one, one that likened it to Bridget Jones' Diary, so I was a bit keen on that and definitely shy of the easy 500 pages of Vanity Fair. For whatever reason, that book wasn't picked, mostly because S. had already read it, I think, which made no sense to me--if you'd read it and wouldn't pick it for that reason, why make it an option at all? We chose Liberating Paris.
Had I known what my friend Liz C. did about S.'s taste in literature, I might have been even more hesitant to pick Liberating Paris than I was at the meeting. S. argued for it as a fictional work that would immerse us in the life of the South, South USA, that is, something we weren't really in touch with and that, and with this I agree, is almost it's own country (if you've seen Sweet Home Alabama, there's a line where Reese Witherspoon says "People need a passport to come down here," and it's not that far off). S., in case you were wondering, is an Indian muslim, born in Britain, who has traveled the world as a result of her father's career in the UN. I'm sure that, to her, the South is a mysterious nether country attached to the more socially hip and with-it northeast. I was reluctant to sign on to Liberating Paris because I dreaded discussions of the South that focused on 'oooh, isn't this reveletory?' about the lives of fictional Southerners.
Turns out, Liz C. says it's worse than I think. In their high school English classes together, S. would hand the teacher lists of books that she felt were better than those being taught, more culturally tied, culturally focused, culturally revealing, culturally based, just culturally cultural, I guess. It's a kind of intellectual snobbery, not unlike S.'s elitism in general, that bothers me, and, now that I'm reading the book, worries me about the meeting this Friday. I can see her falling into the trap that this author makes a point of ridiculing: write a story about the South and publish it in the North, and, even if it upholds racial, cultural, sexual, and inter-personal stereotypes, it will be a hit, a masterpiece of fiction.
That, which is really both profound and a few years out of date (I feel the need to defend us Northerners a bit), was the first and only truly worthy contribution of this whole sorry piece of fiction. I'm stopping myself from abject criticism here, mostly because I need to reign it in if I want to make any worthwhile contributions come Friday, but this book is, in a word, dreadful. The characters are presented such that they ought to be, and might have been (in another author's hands), three-dimensional, fascinating human beings. The main couple are represented as being not in love but completely in lust with each other despite 20 years of marriage. Okay, cool, then there's the gal who's big but beautiful and okay with it; the guy who's crippled rather like Christopher Reeve and how he's managing on his intelligence but angry that he lusts and can do nothing about it; the 'i am definitely a redneck' character who dresses better than mannequins in 5th Ave shop windows.
But the author ruins these people. She proceeds to TELL TELL TELL TELL TELL about how they are what they are, cliche and drone, all the fucking way! The hefty woman not only describes fat people in the most hateful, clearly un-resolved fashion despite her claims to the contrary, but, when she stands up for another woman's right to be a minister, she is revealed to be a lesbian. Because only lesbians care about women's lib, obviously, and only an uppity dyke would dare suggest a woman can preach the word of God as well as a man. Worse, the woman she loves is the one trying to be a minister, and bang, we're back to gay priest-syndrome in fiction! Woo! And the woman who is obsessed with having a beautiful home is really a hollow woman on the inside, in case you hadn't guessed, whereas the woman her husband loves is, despite a lack of supporting evidence, a vibrant, joyous person.
Gah. This book just beats you over the head with how perfect absolutely everyone is--those that have obvious physical flaws are redeemed by being excellent, moral people. There are NO bad guys here except for the Wal-Mart clone that's destroying the small-town economy. This brings me around to my question: is there a way to tell which characters are 3D and which are cliches? Am I missing something fundamental about these people? Is it all in the telling? Could a woman who's big but beautiful yet clearly lying to herself about her comfort with it...could she be more than just another pathetic heroine-wannabe? What makes the 'I know the journey is worth more than the destination' revelation of the first character introduced seem groan-worthy instead of profound? Because it's been done? Because of the way it's done here?
Anyone want to volunteer to read this when I'm done and explain it to me? What am I missing that might make this a good book?
Upon relating this, my friend S. paused and took a breath, the kind of action that signifies someone's hesitation to be the bearer of bad news. I couldn't imagine why. S. asked if I would be willing to branch out, away from the one author-ism, away from sci-fi. I said, yes, with reservations, clarifying my position as not a 'no,' but a cautious 'yes.' It would depend on the book, naturally. Her choices of three for us to pick from included Vanity Fair, the book by Al Gore's daughter, and Liberating Paris. I'd read a favorable review of the Al Gore's daughter one, one that likened it to Bridget Jones' Diary, so I was a bit keen on that and definitely shy of the easy 500 pages of Vanity Fair. For whatever reason, that book wasn't picked, mostly because S. had already read it, I think, which made no sense to me--if you'd read it and wouldn't pick it for that reason, why make it an option at all? We chose Liberating Paris.
Had I known what my friend Liz C. did about S.'s taste in literature, I might have been even more hesitant to pick Liberating Paris than I was at the meeting. S. argued for it as a fictional work that would immerse us in the life of the South, South USA, that is, something we weren't really in touch with and that, and with this I agree, is almost it's own country (if you've seen Sweet Home Alabama, there's a line where Reese Witherspoon says "People need a passport to come down here," and it's not that far off). S., in case you were wondering, is an Indian muslim, born in Britain, who has traveled the world as a result of her father's career in the UN. I'm sure that, to her, the South is a mysterious nether country attached to the more socially hip and with-it northeast. I was reluctant to sign on to Liberating Paris because I dreaded discussions of the South that focused on 'oooh, isn't this reveletory?' about the lives of fictional Southerners.
Turns out, Liz C. says it's worse than I think. In their high school English classes together, S. would hand the teacher lists of books that she felt were better than those being taught, more culturally tied, culturally focused, culturally revealing, culturally based, just culturally cultural, I guess. It's a kind of intellectual snobbery, not unlike S.'s elitism in general, that bothers me, and, now that I'm reading the book, worries me about the meeting this Friday. I can see her falling into the trap that this author makes a point of ridiculing: write a story about the South and publish it in the North, and, even if it upholds racial, cultural, sexual, and inter-personal stereotypes, it will be a hit, a masterpiece of fiction.
That, which is really both profound and a few years out of date (I feel the need to defend us Northerners a bit), was the first and only truly worthy contribution of this whole sorry piece of fiction. I'm stopping myself from abject criticism here, mostly because I need to reign it in if I want to make any worthwhile contributions come Friday, but this book is, in a word, dreadful. The characters are presented such that they ought to be, and might have been (in another author's hands), three-dimensional, fascinating human beings. The main couple are represented as being not in love but completely in lust with each other despite 20 years of marriage. Okay, cool, then there's the gal who's big but beautiful and okay with it; the guy who's crippled rather like Christopher Reeve and how he's managing on his intelligence but angry that he lusts and can do nothing about it; the 'i am definitely a redneck' character who dresses better than mannequins in 5th Ave shop windows.
But the author ruins these people. She proceeds to TELL TELL TELL TELL TELL about how they are what they are, cliche and drone, all the fucking way! The hefty woman not only describes fat people in the most hateful, clearly un-resolved fashion despite her claims to the contrary, but, when she stands up for another woman's right to be a minister, she is revealed to be a lesbian. Because only lesbians care about women's lib, obviously, and only an uppity dyke would dare suggest a woman can preach the word of God as well as a man. Worse, the woman she loves is the one trying to be a minister, and bang, we're back to gay priest-syndrome in fiction! Woo! And the woman who is obsessed with having a beautiful home is really a hollow woman on the inside, in case you hadn't guessed, whereas the woman her husband loves is, despite a lack of supporting evidence, a vibrant, joyous person.
Gah. This book just beats you over the head with how perfect absolutely everyone is--those that have obvious physical flaws are redeemed by being excellent, moral people. There are NO bad guys here except for the Wal-Mart clone that's destroying the small-town economy. This brings me around to my question: is there a way to tell which characters are 3D and which are cliches? Am I missing something fundamental about these people? Is it all in the telling? Could a woman who's big but beautiful yet clearly lying to herself about her comfort with it...could she be more than just another pathetic heroine-wannabe? What makes the 'I know the journey is worth more than the destination' revelation of the first character introduced seem groan-worthy instead of profound? Because it's been done? Because of the way it's done here?
Anyone want to volunteer to read this when I'm done and explain it to me? What am I missing that might make this a good book?
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 08:20 pm (UTC)We could add it to our writing group. If we meet for writing twice a month, we could have a book for every other meeting, suggestions in turn. That sounds like a plan.
And yeah, her taste is, in my opinion, less than, but I joined because I wanted to have horizons expanded, and, in the long run, I believe I'll be better for reading books I wouldn't otherwise know about let alone read. Just that this time the book blows...
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 08:53 pm (UTC)