Comments, wild rides & Shakespeare on eyes like Princess Di's

First a couple of comments on Comments. I had the honor of hearing from an author, Wendy McClure, whose work I admire quite a lot, although most of our dialog was due to my dismay over some of material in her book, I'm Not the New Me. By the way, I don’t believe I ever apologized for confusing Wendy McClure and Wendy Shanker (author of A Fat Girl’s Guide to Life)—if you’re out there, Wendy Shanker, I apologize to you as well. The entry and comments are at:

http://orangenotebookoflynnemurray.blogspot.com/2005/10/our-obsessions-ourselves.html

I promised to revisit the book, which I had lent to a friend. I got it back and looked at it again, and also looked at what I said about it in October.

I think Wendy McClure and I are fated to have different approaches to this subject, and that’s probably a matter of temperament.

She felt I was saying she approved of weight surgery or perhaps the newer operations—which she makes clear in an email to me she does not. I never got the feeling from the book that she approved--or disapproved--of weight loss surgery. She left it to her mother to say, in the section I quoted, that she wished she hadn’t done it but felt it was necessary at the time.

I want to make it clear that I’m not saying anyone should in any way disrespect this woman's choices about her own body in regard to having two weight loss surgeries. It is her body and she made a choice based on the information available to her. My concern was that discussing the “new operations” at the point when Wendy was asking her mother how she felt about having had the surgery, could give a reader the idea that the new operations are improved to prevent such suffering and/or regaining. Part of that “new operations are better” game is to allow surgeons to keep changing the procedures slightly so that they can ignore the previous high rate of complications with the “old operations.” No matter what surgical method is used, the result is an artificial, poorly functioning stomach. That in fact is the goal!

Wendy pointed out, also in a supplementary email, that I was probably naive to think that the Weight Watchers company needed or particularly noted her book. I don’t know how much books register with giant corporations. The written word is out on the fringes of our culture these days. But the view of WW expressed in I'm Not the New Me was that it was a community of interesting people—some of them young, witty and funny. No reason for WW to argue with that, and as far as defending the bizarre recipe cards from 1974 that Wendy makes fun of…she goes to some length in the narrative to express admiration for their current system, so that probably wouldn’t bother them either.

In re-reading I see that the strongest passages in I'm Not the New Me, are those eloquently describing the self-loathing that drove her to the Weight Watchers and web journal odyssey. Those feelings are familiar to anyone who has lived in a “too fat” body. The question I ask other writers when I conclude the obligatory self-loathing section of any Fat Story is, “How did you get out of the cave and what happened then?”

Some writers of fat stories are, of course, still in the cave. But if not, it seems to me a kindness if the writer could leave some kind of trail to help readers also trying to get out. If the writer tells me that the way out of this cave of self-hatred involves repairing a bad self-image through weight loss…. Sigh. I’ve been on that carnival ride and if you try to feel better about yourself by changing your exterior, you’ll find yourself back at the beginning again, buying another ticket. Repeatedly.

We each have to write the books we need to write—and to read whatever resonates with us. I leave for another occasion the question of whether a book is better or worse for strong opinions blatantly expressed. I’ve ventured too far into Diatribes-R-Us country already today.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled book report.


March 11 to March 20, 1976, I read:

Alive : The Story of the Andes Survivors, Piers Paul Read

Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains. Of the forty five people on the plane at the time of the crash, sixteen came down from the mountain, grim crash story, cannibalism, survival.


The Eden Express : A Memoir of Insanity , mark Vonnegut

The story of Kurt Vonnegut’s son’s 1960s schizophrenic breakdown reminded me of a book I encountered a year or so later--Operators and things: The inner life of a schizophrenic, Barbara O’Brien. She wrote her story in the 1950s. I was surprised that so many amazon.com commenters had the same experience of reading it, finding it haunting, and seeking it out again over the years.

Home Companion, S. J. Perelman

The Most of P.G. Wodehouse
Only the Jeeves stories & Quick Service

– My note on the three below was that they could not be read straight through, at least not by me.
The Glass Teat, Harlan Ellison
The Other Glass Teat, Harlan Ellison
Ellison Wonderland, Harlan Ellison -

Sportsworld, an American Dreamland, Robert Lipsyte


March 11 to March 20, 2006

Sex, Lies and Vampires
The first chapter had more hooks than a bait shop. I was a bit irked that at least one of the very first ones was never showed up again in the book and wound up as a totally unexplained loose end. To wit, what ever happened to the imp infestation that the heroine's new employer was going on about as the book opened, and what was the point of having her confuse a medieval antiquities expert with an imp exterminator. And furthermore, what happened to the imps? If you're going to use a hook, I think you should follow up in the body of the book. It was a good hook and it got me into the book, but then it frustrated me when it wasn't ever resolved. A fast moving romance with a lot of supernatural action and the requisite smart-mouthed modern human heroine.

The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, Peter Levi

This is not exactly in the celebrity bio mode. Except for Shakespeare fiends like myself. However, I found it fascinating and soothing. Levi has interesting insights, such as that the Earl of Southampton, who was most likely the handsome youth for whom the sonnets were composed, was a remote ancestor of Princess Diana—“Southampton’s looks and a certain trick of the eyes are recognizable in the Princess of Wales.” (Okay, so there's your celebrity bio tie in right there.)