THIS SITE HAS MOVED!

As of 9/18/15, this site has moved to www.jillygagnon.com

You can still read my blog posts here (you can also read them on the new site!), but visit www.jillygagnon.com for current information on everything else!

Monday, June 30, 2014

"The Artist's Temperament?"

I should probably recall many significantly more important things about the class I took on Vladimir Nabokov, my junior year in college, but the detail that has stuck with me the most wasn't about his expert use of language, or his uncanny ability to get us to sympathize with monsters, or even his amazing adriotness with puns (though that obviously stuck with me too): it was about his family life.

"Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Nabokov," my professor said, quieting the room with an intense gaze (side-note: GOD was he beautiful--my entire love of literature may just be a displaced crush on this professor), "the most unexpected, the way in which he is most unique among writers of his caliber, is this:

"He was happy." 

Let's be honest: I just wanted an excuse to put up a picture of David Tennant 

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

I'll Never Let Go, Book! I'll Never Let Go!

So after a few months of "research" reading only (which amounts to SOME legitimate touchstone-choices, and quite a few this-candy-tastes-good YA reads), I was feeling a bit intellectually guilty.

Stupid Slate article messing with my head (because I can admit this much: I'm defensive first because I think she's totally uninformed and wrong, but second because I fear there's some grain of truth beneath the total wrongness).

So I picked up a grownup book a friend was vociferously recommending, and which, as a Pulitzer-winner, I should have read a while back, anyway: Olive Kitteridge. 

I am shocked at how much I'm loving this book, especially since it's structured as a bunch of short stories, a format I rarely respond to as readily as I do to the full-blown-novel thing. I'm totally absorbed. I even turned off the Real Housewives to get back to it last night.



I know. Whoa.

Monday, June 23, 2014

Conferences?? Conferences.

Is there anything more bittersweet, more simultaneously-maddening-and-invigorating, more hungover, than a writing conference?

Or any conference? I feel like they're all this way, at least as far as the hangovers go.

I only started going to these a year ago, and I'm horrified I didn't start sooner. They're like miniature doses of grown-up summer camp. Every person there--at least at the writing conferences I've picked out so far--is passionate about this stuff, ready to talk about books, and craft, and their projects, and your project, and whether or not literacy is really declining, and whether or not that makes any difference in our opinion of The Hunger Games.

(Answer: who cares, that book was fun.)



Every time I go, the dream of doing this full-time feels brighter, more vital, and more in reach (yes, even after a tough critique) than it did before...

...but my life feels that much worse when I get back. Not least because a bunch of writers without any real responsibility are gonna go out for a BUNCH of cocktails. Monday morning does not look bright after five days of too much bourbon and too little sleep, I tell 'ya.

Conference-land is like a playground, filled with witty conversation, interesting people, and did I mention all the drinks? It makes ordinary life seem so dull by comparison. You mean I really have to still do THIS? Every day? Until indefinitely?

You can't be serious.

If only I had endless money (and vacation days) to spend on endless conferences.

Since I don't...I'd better get writing.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

The Lowest Form of Humor?

I'm heading to the Yale Writer's Conference this weekend, where I'll be joining a bevy of fellow authors in a humor workshop.

Of course we've all been emailing in advance, figuring out where we'll meet, and what we'll do, and how long it will be until we can drink, and of course it led ME to respond the only way I know how:

Terrible puns. Specifically, in this case, on kindred spirits vs. drinking spirits, but there have been a lot of emails, and therefore, a lot of terrible punning.

In one of the first classes I took in college, "Wit & Humor," we read Freud's book The Joke and its Relation to the Unconscious (as you might have guessed, it was a laugh-RIOT). In a series of profoundly unfunny--and often super-bigoted--examples, Freud laid out his theory of humor: what causes us to experience something as humor, what it means about our desires for our parents, you know, the usual Freud stuff.


I know the first thing I think of when I hear "Sigmund Freud" is "laugh factory"


Tucked away among his many blanket pronouncements on a form he was clearly incapable of producing, Freud ranked different forms of humor. Wordplay, I believe, was considered the "highest" form of wit.

Punning was considered the "lowest."

Which always confused me, because I would think of punning as a sort of wordplay-subset, the squares within the larger category of wordplay rectangles, so to speak (i.e., all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares).

Either way, I took umbrage. I did and do LOVE puns. Especially bad puns. The kind where you groan first, and MAYBE laugh second. Maybe.

I know I'm not alone in this. Nabokov was indisputably one of the best English-language writers in the last hundred years, and just as indisputably a pun-lover. According to my Nabokov professor, an especial favorite was delivered when a nun, attending one of his lectures, was offended by some back-row hanky-panky between a pair of students.


Dreaming up his next sweet-slash-lame burn...


"Sir," she fumed, approaching the lectern. "How could you carry on your lecture when those two young students were...spooning there?"

"Be grateful, madam," he said, ever the gentleman, "that they weren't forking."

Please tell me I'm not the only one who unabashedly loves punning. I've always thought they add flavor to otherwise dull conversations (but then I'm often in poor taste...).

Monday, June 16, 2014

Grown-Up Reactions to Kid Lit: Eleanor & Park

Jilly:  So can I just say up front, I'm always pre-skeptical of books that are set in the recentish (read: around when the author was probably a teen) past for no particular reason.

MK:  Ha. That's probably fair. It's hard to view recent history as appropriate for historical fiction.

Jilly:  I mean, so the author knows which bands would have made Park appropriately "cool" for 1986 Omaha. That's not enough of a reason to choose that historical moment

MK:  Okay, but I do think putting your characters in a mixtape era makes sense. It's hard to get that kind of visceral pull in a contemporary setting. "Here, I made you this spotify playlist."



Jilly:  Agreed. And it would be hard for her to get the same level of cut-offness for Eleanor. The concept of having no phone line--period--is just difficult to conceive of for any socio-economic level, these days

MK:  Yes. It's a fantastic marker for her poverty level. Although I wonder how well that works for an actual teen reader. The idea of not having a Walkman as a socio-economic indicator.

Jilly:  Well right, that's the thing that always knee-jerks me on recent-past books; the hallmarks you use may work for a crossover adult audience--the visceral feel of a mixtape you mentioned, the poverty level, the Smiths being cool--but they don't resonate for modern teens precisely because it's nothing they've ever experienced. I BARELY experienced that, and I'm an '84 baby. A 2000 baby is so far past it that it may as well be 1940s Russia, or 1804 Jane Austen

MK:  I think teen readers overlook those, though. The emotional pull works even if you're glossing over the references that don't really work for you.

Jilly:  Well she does totally nail the feeling of falling for someone. There's hardly even a plot, but I couldn't stop reading, and I think it's 100% because her descriptions of what it feels like (as per her own promise) let us remember what it's like to be that age, and be in love. Which I think applies even if you are that age--nostalgia for experiences that might be currently available is legit, too

MK:  Absolutely. I'm ordinarily not a huge fan of alternating POV (I get confused really easily, as I did whenever she shifted within a single chapter), but I love the way she captured how anxious they both are about themselves and each other, but how little they understand the other's emotions.

Jilly:  Right, and the momentousness of it all. The sense that you can't get enough of this person and it's almost physical: the desire to EAT Park; the embarrassment at being with Eleanor, but simultaneous inability to stop touching her hair; the sense of having no control over your experience because of this other person.

MK:  And the experience that suddenly your body isn't even your own because you never had someone touch you before. I think Park's viewpoint is really strong in that regard--he's just consumed by these relatively innocent touches and can't even handle thinking about going further.

Jilly:  Which I think is a good counterpoint--not that teens should think sex is taboo, but the idea that all boys always want only sex, that they CAN'T be embarrassed or nervous or unsure about it, seems negative to me

MK:  YES. It is very very rare to get a male POV with a budding relationship that isn't all about being horny.

Jilly:  But do we think boys would ever read this book? You would know more about this, as a librarian who actually ENCOUNTERS teen boys. I mostly avoid them on buses and sidewalks.

MK:  I think the cover would detract a lot of boys. I think there are absolutely boys who would read it on recommendation, but it reads as a little girly.

Jilly: And the write-up is all about romance, which just vibes "girl" at any age.

MK:  Which is really too bad, because I think there are a lot of other ways to sell the story.

Jilly:  Right. The cultural disconnect, and feeling of outsiderness that both characters have is definitely something I could see having cross-gender appeal to a sensitive, Park-esque boy, at least.

MK:  The music, too.



Jilly:  Totally. Okay, so here's my elephant in the room: do we buy that a teenager as seemingly cynical as Eleanor  would believe she's in love? I may have been the only teenager ever with this particular brand of precocity, but I definitely remember feeling--AT THE TIME--that teenagers weren't REALLY in love, and that it was kind of idiotic to call things that.

MK:  Oh I don't think she believes that at all.

Jilly: But don't we think the three-word postcard at the end had to be "I love you?"

MK:  See, I don't love that ending. Because I totally buy her thinking they're doomed from the start.

Jilly:  I didn’t either! It felt like a cop-out to me. Like a concession, rather than what she really felt would happen

MK:  That's a really apt way to put it. Writing the postcard feels like her giving in.

Jilly:  Both the author AND Eleanor

MK:  Yes!

Jilly:  I have to Giver this one (which is my way of saying ask about the after-the-end): do you think they get back together?

MK:  (My mom loves to Giver.) I think the ending implies that they do, which is super unfair.

Jilly:  It seems like kind of a cowardly ending.

MK:  I really think it's a disservice to the rest of the book, which gives a lot of room for things to be uncomfortable and unsettled.

Jilly:  And it closes off a much more realistic experience, to my mind: you will love someone first, and you will probably lose them. Not losing them in a way stiffs the characters. Do they not grow or move on? It amber-seals them. I feel like that's what first love did for me: it may or may not have been real, but it taught me about ME.

MK:  Yeah. I think the rest of the book does a really good job at showing you that "love" doesn't fix the rest of your life, it just provides a little cocoon from it for a while.

Jilly:  And it shows that even in still-loving relationships--like Park's parents'--love isn't that intense for long. They kiss every day, but it's as much habit as passion, I feel like.

MK:  Good point.

Jilly:  Overall, though, I loved it. She flubbed the landing a bit, but it was a really touching book.


MK:  Agreed. 

Friday, June 13, 2014

What's Best for Creativity?

This morning, I woke up extra-early for work, like I do everyday, so I could spend at least a few precious minutes staring at my computer, working on the next novel (I obviously find plenty of time to do not-work at my job, but the kind of focus that I need to work on a novel vs. an essay or a blog is just...different).

Feel free, at this point, to pat me on the back for being saintlike in my devotion to my craft. That half-hour of zombie-staring at a screen, then frantically typing a few sentences I'll fiddle with, slowly, the next morning is pretty much heroic.

But since today is Friday, and my body clock just doesn't want to be in bed before 12 or 12:30 most nights, I was extra tired.

Stupid tired.

So of course I thought it would be a good idea to introduce a second maybe-love-interest to a story in which I intend there to be zero actual romances.

Terrible idea? Or best idea ever?



That depends on me, of course, and whether my skepticism towards teen romance (which I maintained EVEN AS A TEEN) will win this fight; but it did get me thinking (slowly, thickly, rusty-gears style): when do you get your best ideas?

There are a lot of tired maxims about creativity: "you'll get great ideas in the shower," or "the best ideas come when you least expect them," or "write drunk, edit sober."

Is there any truth to any of them? Is my brain's being so painfully tired that I think, right now, I can actually feel it throbbing, a good reason to trash everything I wrote this morning...or to trust it? Should I start pulling out my computer around the start of cocktail number two?

What's the best state to be in to GET ideas (obviously this is all personal)...and what's the best state to be in to execute them?

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Speak, Memory...Please?

Does anyone else have a memory like a steel sieve?

People talk--regularly--about how they can remember "every detail" of some event or other, about how they can smell the smells, and see what they were wearing, even recall which member of N'Sync they were most into at that exact moment...

...so much of the time, I feel like I'm working off snapshots from a very poorly-documented slide reel stuffed somewhere in a parental attic.



Sure, I remember SOME stuff. Kinda. Sometimes.

But especially when I talk about my childhood, I feel like a sense of texture is missing. I can imagine myself in my dad's den, staring into the weird half-height cupboard crammed full of little-kid books I'd sometimes read anyway; or I can picture the Slim Jim can Perek and I cut a hole in to use as our "club dues" bank, sitting on a shelf of the spiderwebby shed; I even remember staring contests with the mounted mountain goat head in the basement (Perek and I got bored sometimes)--I see moments, and if I tried, I could probably sort the photos into a mental album that was roughly chronological, but I don't remember what it felt like to be any of those people.

Do other people have a sense of what they actually were at different ages and stages that I'm just totally deficient for lacking? Or is this normal--to have a collection of discrete moments as your past, not a film reel?


Either way, I find it upsetting. There's such a tangible loss.

Not of anything big and important--although I think my memory gaps the most around the kinds of "major" events I think people would expect me to remember (my friend Kathleen Hale and I were talking about this lately, and I have a sense that my memory seeming to have an at-will erase button isn't the default for everyone)--but a loss nonetheless.

I was a kid who used to save the bags things came in because I could remember what they'd held, where they'd come from, and throwing them away felt like tossing scraps of my own memory--myself--away.

Part of me--the part that has never seen Hoarders--thinks I might have had the right idea...

Monday, June 9, 2014

Grown-Up Reactions to Kid Lit: The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson)

My friend MK is a high-school librarian, so both of us read a pretty remarkable amount of kid lit. In this maybe-semi-regular-feature, we discuss it!


Jilly: First thoughts on this one?

MK:  Well, one of my first thoughts for this one is that we have the opposite problem with our narrator, who reads as older than 12 to me for most of the book.

Jilly:  Totally agreed. I'd put Percy at about 14

MK:  Yup. Especially since they make such a big deal of his dyslexia/problems in school early on (which I realize are later explained by his brain being wired for ancient Greek or whatever)—his vocabulary is awfully expansive.

Jilly:  I mean, with boys developing more slowly, generally speaking, he could have been 15, with his vocab, his punning, his proto-sex-drive. I feel like he and Annabeth were being set up as eventual love interests (in the series) and their awareness of all that felt older than 12

MK:  Actually that was the part the felt the most authentic to me-he teases her for having a crush on Luke, but I don't think there's sexual tension between the two of them at all.

Jilly:  I don't think they have sexual tension yet; I think they're being set up to develop it later.

MK:  I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. I just think he's completely unaware of it, in the way that tweens can still be friends-ish with the opposite sex.

Jilly:  That's fair. You don’t think her crush on Luke felt more 14-ish? I felt like Annabeth's vibe was generally older, which increased my sense that Percy felt older, too. Like the anger with her dad could have been 15 for me.

MK:  Well, you said it yourself- she seems older because she's a girl. I think their relative maturity levels make sense.

Jilly:  I think they do, but she felt older to me AS a girl. Anyway, we can agree that the kids these days, they grow up so fast.

MK:  Hahahaha. Yes.

Jilly:  What did you think of the characterization of the myths and the gods etc.?

MK:  I liked it, but I also got this sense of "This will go PERFECTLY with our unit on mythology!"

Jilly: Percy's recall of all the myths sometimes felt a bit forced

MK:  YES. Especially from someone who is flunking tests on the subject!

Jilly:  I can't imagine ANY 6th grade class going into that much depth with mythology, either. That level of memorization is high school or older to my mind

MK:  I also found the "misunderstood troublemaker finally finds his place" narrative not overly believable, because the place turned out to be "among super intelligent nerds."

Jilly:  Yeah. The ways that he made trouble honestly felt more like the accident-prone kid than anything
I think part of that was Riordan playing to his audience of, presumably, 10-year-olds

MK:  Yes.

Jilly:  Like "HAHAHA HE DID WHAT???" But if that kid were in a classroom, I think most teachers' response would be exasperation, but they'd try to work with him. They'd also understand that a kid with dyslexia would need a different class load -- I mean, he was clearly attending private Manhattan schools. I find it hard to believe that his dyslexia would be allowed to totally dive-bomb his education at places like that.

MK:  Well right. They don't get any money if they kick him out.

Jilly:  All of this is definitely adult quibbling though; I doubt many 10-year-olds would be bothered by any of it, and it doesn't significantly impact the book, it's just some of what I see as a string of "convenient short-cuts" the author makes. Like a trope of YA is that authors want to get their kids not to have to deal with modern technology, because it's too awkward for them to manage.

MK:  Well, it also dates your books more quickly.

Jilly:  True. Anyway, Riordan had a good enough reason for that work around, but I feel like a lot of his explanations for those things--the "I just need to get the kid to place X or to not have thing Y around"--were a bit "convenient." Sorta like "meuh, good enough, let's get back to the underworld."

MK That's fair. I felt like he was doing The Odyssey for 12 year olds, but only some of the time.

Jilly:  Do we think the book will get kids into mythology in general? I feel like it could - it does make the myths feel human

MK:  I feel like it gets kids More into mythology if they already have an introduction. I just think it's introduced as sort of intermediate level knowledge.

Jilly:  What do you mean?

MK:  Like, Percy is "remembering" a bunch of stuff from class, but some of it seems like "Oh, we all know who Zeus is."

Jilly:  Oh, that's fair. Yeah, and for gods like Hephaestus, that sort of "duh, we all know THIS guy" thing is asking a lot.



MK:  Exactly. And I think references can get readers interested in learning more, but if there's a base level of understanding you need to even Get the reference, that's either frustrating or you ignore it completely.

Jilly:  Right--you skim right past it and never find that myth, or even think to want to. Like the Aphrodite cabin is only referenced as being monstrously vain.

MK:  Yeah, we definitely get the PG version of Aphrodite and Bacchus.

Jilly:  No joke. The Diet Coke? C'mon now. All of that said, I feel like it sounds like we didn't like this book, but I thought it was pretty charming.

MK:  Hahaha. Yes, it's very readable.

Jilly:  I especially loved that Percy wasn't Zeus's kid, which is what I expected.

MK:  Okay but how annoying was it that it took pretty much the whole book for him to figure out he has power over water? JUST GET IN THE DAMN WATER.

Jilly:  RIGHT? It was like, "I made a fountain move, then I somehow made pipes spit water on my enemies, then I felt immediately healed in water, and yet no one, truly no one, can determine who my god-dad-or-mom is."

MK:  "Weird, I get this strange feeling every time I'm near water...  must be a coincidence."

Jilly:  I guess I chalked that up to the author wanting to give his readers a mini-mystery they could definitely solve. Like the sense that they got it, YESSSSS! CALLED THAT ONE BRO!

MK:  Now I'm imagining a bunch of 10-year-olds reading it at the same time and being super smug. "Oh, you haven't figured out who his dad is yet?"

Jilly:  I mean...I would've been that 10-year-old. ATHENA CABIN TILL I DIE!

MK:  Hahahaha. By the way, knowing that there are a bunch of half-bloods running around, they sure give those assholes a lot of leeway for capture the flag.


Jilly:  no joke. That summer camp is a liability NIGHTMARE.

Friday, June 6, 2014

THAT Article.

If you're not big into the YA world, you may not have seen yesterday's article on Slate, which basically tells you all that, as adults, you shouldn't be reading YA, at least not openly.

Basically, the author believes that as grown ups, we should read edifying, grown-up things, presumably those things that book reviews refer to as "difficult, but beautifully rendered," or all-the-Proust.

Because so many people make it through this once you just shame them for liking John Green...

She then hates on YA for being easier to read, for including "satisfying" endings (which don't have to be happy, but, apparently, by virtue of actually being ENDINGS, not just a cessation of writing, are somehow less valid than "real" literature), and for causing her to have "oh, brother!" moments.

Because no "good" adult books have any of those.

Let's ignore the fact that clearly this woman was the one who had to talk about SAT scores and drop the names of literary critics she was reading during college conversations because that's how you prove you think deep thoughts--the fact that I don't want her at my cocktail party isn't the main issue here.

Neither is the massive condescension based on a super uninformed reading of what constitutes YA. She justifies herself by saying that she, essentially, aspired to reading the "real" grownup books as a kid, and we're making idiots who won't do that, but she ignores the fact that, by today's definitions, Salinger, a good chunk of Austen, and much of Dickens would fall squarely in the YA category.

This is no longer "real" lit, FYI.


Let's even ignore the fact that she "clinches" her argument by quoting Shailene Woodley's sense of herself as just-too-grownup for more teen parts, a girl I've previously noticed in People mainly because she's a super-devotee of not washing her hair, like, ever (truly, we should take her opinions as dogma).

I take real issue with this sentence:

"YA books present the teenage perspective in a fundamentally uncritical way." 


How do you figure?

Every narrative perspective, when it's first-person, is only as self-critical as the narrator. Humbert Humbert was self-critical in Lolita, but the story wasn't critical of his perspective, or his right to tell the story. There wasn't meta-criticism of his telling.

Like adult narrators, teen narrators are sometimes bitchy, sometimes quiet, sometimes self-loathing, sometimes just people...but their perspectives as narrators aren't meta-critiqued. They may not be reliable narrators, but they're taken at face value AS THE NARRATORS.

Does the author of this article want YA to "up its game" by adding a meta-narrative, in which YA authors show us all that sure, Hazel Grace thinks all these things are love, but she's just dumb because she's still 17? Since when is condescension to your characters a good thing, regardless of genre? And since when is presenting a narrative voice on the page the same as agreeing with the conclusions it draws--again, in any genre?

Faulkner famously used a mentally handicapped narrator to tell one of his stories. Should he have then gone in and reminded us that we're listening to an idiot, so, you know, take his emotions with a grain of salt?

Or did he trust the reader to see that the narrative perspective he chose may or may not be universally correct? That it may be inflected by important facets of that character's personality, like having serious developmental delays, or, you know, BEING A TEENAGER?

I realize this is just another layer of her condescension, and that the entire article is based on having read very little YA literature, but I have to say I'm disappointed.

Not that she's a snob.

That she, such an important adult, is still such a weak critical thinker--after all, I'm not digging very deep here.

It's even more shocking, since she clearly spends so much time reading "real" books...


Thursday, June 5, 2014

Really Old Kids vs. Adults

By anybody's count, I'm definitively a grown-up now. I have forehead wrinkles that don't go away when my face is at rest. I have multiple bills in my name and a good credit score. At some point in the near future, my doctor will probably start prodding, lightly, about my fertility.

If I ever go to the doctor, which I don't, because I'm not a very GOOD adult.

I've been living on my own for years now, buying groceries besides beer, keeping my cats mostly fed, blah blah blah, but I still feel as though doing those distinctly "adult" things earns me credit in my grown-up account which I'm then justified in blowing on totally non-adult behaviors.

This week I went to the dentist AND scheduled an eye appointment so that, rather than just continuing to wear my disposable contacts until my eyes actually fall out, I can then go on to spend MORE money on contact lenses, the most boring and adult thing to spend money on ever (barring, of course, the insurance I pay for in order to reduce the appointment cost in the first place).

This means that I can go home and watch Adventure Time for hours, right?



I've been doing these "adult" things long enough that they shouldn't register as out-of-character anymore. But it still feels like I'm playing house. Every time I vacuum the living room, or pack a lunch for work because it's JUST SO PRACTICAL AND COST-EFFECTIVE, I feel like I deserve a gold star. Or a cocktail that--now that I'm old enough that real diseases can happen and long-term health is a legit concern--I probably shouldn't have.

Shouldn't paying my credit card bill in full exempt me from having to ever understand what the hell "escrow" is?

Even asking that question earned me a cocktail.

When do other people make the switch to an adult identity? Is everyone just faking it, walking around talking about the rates of return they're getting on their various IRAs while secretly, inside, they feel like they should still be allowed to fake their moms' signatures on a "doctor's note" so they don't have to go to work today? I assume there are people out there who actually FEEL like grown-ups. What's that like? Awful? I'm gonna go ahead and further assume it's awful.

I'm starting to think I will never stop feeling this way--like I'm playing pretend--a stance I'm not exactly upset over, but one I'd love to know whether I'm alone in taking...

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

I Confess...

Even though I claim--I think truthfully--to love books, and even though my day job is not NEARLY mentally taxing enough to make post-work reading some sort of brain-strain, and even though I'm trying to launch my career as a full-time, capital-A Author...

...I watch a lot of TV.

And not all of it is good.


Yeah, yeah, I know...

I think TV has finally matured enough that most people grant it a greyscale of quality (one we've long since allowed for film and literature). It's no longer ALL brain-rotting; there's legitimate art playing out on television.

On the one end of said scale are blindingly-bright shows--in my mind this includes everything from Planet Earth to The Killing (Danish version)--that people consider enriching, intelligent, deeply layered, or any number of other words that imply that watching them is an effort not to just kill time, but to attain some level of cultural or intellectual literacy.

Then there's middling stuff, equally entertaining and well done, shows that people don't judge you for watching. I'm thinking Game of Thrones goes here, possibly Sherlock, and maybe my new addiction Orphan Black.

I think of these shows like I think of really well-executed genre fiction (which, if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm deeply attached to): some people still look down on them slightly just because they entertain, but if you're not a total snob, you can see that while they may not focus exclusively on matters of great philosophical weight, as well-written entertainment, they still add value to peoples' intellectual lives.

And then there's the other stuff I watch, the stuff that absolutely sucks brain cells out slowly through my ears (more quickly when I play Candy Crush at the same time). Really, I think the majority of TV falls into this category: the intelligence-rotting, time-wasting, lowest-common-denominator crap that I'm SO DEEPLY ADDICTED TO.


Not only do I know who this woman is, I DELIBERATELY LISTEN TO HER TALK. 

I now follow fully four franchises of the Real Housewives series. I will throw away 45 minutes of my life watching awful women--sorry, awful Dance Moms--scream at one another and generally eff up their children's lives permanently. I think I have seen at least 98% of the episodes of Ghost Adventures, something I tell myself I'm hate-watching, which, at this point, has become indistinguishable from just watching.

Besides, "hate-watching" is just a term smart people have made up so they can feel better about their lowbrow tastes.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who, occasionally, takes the braindead way out on a Tuesday evening.

The rest of you must have guilty TV pleasures, too, right?

RIGHT???

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Monday, June 2, 2014

Slaughtering Sacred Cows: A Wrinkle in Time

Recently, I chatted with a friend about Harriet The Spy, a book that I was overjoyed to discover was even better than I had remembered.

But there are some books that you go back to, thinking that as certified "classics" they're sure to stand the test of time, and you realize that kid-you must have been much less discriminating than adult-you has become.

I'm sorry to have to say it, but that's what happened with A Wrinkle in Time.



I had only the vaguest memories of the book, and they were mainly that it was very complicated. I think I must have originally picked it up around the age of 7 or 8, and it was just over my head; jumping through space-time with a 5-year-old who speaks like an olde tyme BBC production was lost on me...

...as was the incredibly heavy-handed moralizing.

I know the idea of teaching a moral lesson in kid's lit isn't new; in fact for many people it's one of the many "musts" of children's stories. But the incredibly overt strain of indoctrination that permeates certain books--the Narnia series is the other prime example I can think of--is just so hard to ignore as a grown-up.

Rereading this felt like when I read Ayn Rand again at 20. At 14, it seemed SO PROFOUND. Being capable of picking up on an actual theme in a book--one which was intended, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer--made me feel so smart that I thought I liked Rand's writing.

When I revisited it with a formed brain, it looked more like what it was: very thinly-veiled propaganda being spouted by wooden characters.

At least Madeline L'Engle wasn't a Randian...but she was clearly a devout Christian, and the ways in which her pet philosophy continually crops up in this book (and presumably the later titles in the series, none of which I'll be rereading) become just as ham-handed by the end.

That wasn't even my only issue with the book--L'Engle's 14-year old protagonist reads like a young 10-year-old, which is always a pet-peeve for me, and her main character traits seem to be stubbornness and wanting to hold hands, making her remarkably 2-dimensional for a book that explores a fifth one--it's just my most prominent gripe.

It's not even the content of the philosophy that's problematic, it's the way it's deployed: SO OBVIOUSLY. Am I the only one who just can't get behind this book? Have I just alienated everyone ever by calling a spade a would-be-indoctrination-manual?