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.)

From the depths of Doctorow to the shallows of chick lit

March 5 to March 10, 1976 I read:

Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow

This is a lovely book. I now realize that the format was experimental (and that this did not always work for Doctorow) But at the time I read it, I drank it in without seeing anything that interrupted the story. The author's rambling fit well with the soundtrack--the renaissance that ragtime music and Scott Joplin in particular went through in the mid-1970s.

Three for Tomorrow: Three Original Novellas of Science Fiction (Hardcover)
by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, James Blish

You Can Get There from Here, Shirley MacLaine

While I was looking up this book (still available used and evidently frightening some readers to this day), I found that there’s a “noir cartoon” book—aka “graphic novel,” I’m unclear on the distinction entitled You Can’t Get There from Here by Norwegian cartoonist Jason. This one “chronicles one of the oldest love triangles in the world: Mad scientist creates monster, mad scientist creates woman for monster, mad scientist...falls in love with the woman he created for the monster!” Ha, and they thought Shirley MacLaine was scary! Seriously it sounds kind of sweet, in an angsty kind of way.

Word Play : What Happens When People Talk, Peter Farb
Working, Studs Terkel

My note indicates that I found Word Play and Working invigorating, but didn’t finish either. Too fragmentary in structure, I suspect. I ended up dipping into each of them repeatedly over the years since.


March 5 to March 10, 2006 I read:

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

This book made me laugh, which is something I value highly. Sedaris’ adventures with unusual French phrase books, such as the English-to-French for Medical Practitioners reminded me of a book that found its way to my bookshelves, the 1972 edition of A Practical Spanish Grammar for Border Patrol Guards (issued by the US Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service). What it lacks in political correctness, it makes up in phrases that are hard to find elsewhere such as: Give me the knife. Where did you bury the body? And: Provided that you tell us the truth we will let you go tomorrow.


Asking for Trouble: A Novel, Elizabeth Young

I had an odd experience with this book. I was sure I had read it before—but I think it was three other books I’d read wherein the heroine hires an escort to save face at an important wedding, and ends up finding love. This book eventually became a movie—The Wedding Date. In referring to that movie, the movie Pretty Woman was often evoked. I think that is totally inappropriate. The heroine of Pretty Woman, the Julie Roberts character, was portrayed as an ordinary streetwalker given the Pygmalion treatment to turn her into an acceptable date for an upscale executive.

Contrarily in the female-hires-male scenario, it is repeatedly stressed that the male lead is NOT a prostitute—just briefly dabbling in the escort biz as a favor for a friend.

I’m not going to delve into that treasure trove of gender expectations.

Asking for Trouble is classic chick lit—which is closer to farce than romance. While I read this I noted the author’s strenuous efforts to keep the heroine and her hero from disclosing the secrets that kept them apart. The similarity to farce is that both require juggling of ongoing deceptions. A surprising amount of skill is required to keep up the illusion of believability. Asking for Trouble is a first novel, and did not always pull off that trick, but I enjoyed it enough to finish it.

Once upon the edge...

February 28 to March 4, 1976

I didn’t finish much that week!

Picked-Up Pieces, John Updike
My note was: "just a few"
Gorge Eliot, the Emergent Self, Ruby V Redinger
My note was: "appallingly incoherently written, skimmed in self-defense." I did, and do, like George Eliot, but evidently not Redinger.

On Being Funny, Woody Allen and Comedy, Eric Lax
Approaching Oblivion, Harlan Ellison
All the Livelong Day, Barbara Garson

My note on Lax, Ellison and Garson—"never quite finished these, rather depressing." When I looked up Barbara Garson, I see that she wrote MacBird. As a Shakespeare fan and a protester against the Vietnam war, I still remember reading MacBird, including where I sat in the sunlight on the campus at UC Riverside in 1967. The parody of MacBeth was published by Grassy Knoll Press! Garson's MacBird cast Lyndon Johnson as MacBeth. But I don’t remember whether that registered with me when I read (at least some of) All the Livelong Day in 1976.


February 28 to March 4, 2006, I read:

Liquor, Poppy Z. Brite

In her interesting blog, Brite reveals an picture impressive tattoo of St. Joseph that she promised she would get if she could negotiate a change in the focus of her career. That transition (and tattoo) were accomplished. But encountering her earlier work and her more recent work at the same time, my impression is that Brite is a good enough writer that if something interests her, she can take the reader along for the ride.

Liquor is very different from Lost Souls and Drawing Blood. The earlier, horror tales took a homoerotic view of the teenaged heroes, with openly predatory villains, and lots of gore, decay and death-wish-on-the-highway scenes. Liquor is homoerotic soap opera with complicated villains and restaurant kitchen porn. The only decay in Liquor is aged cheese, wine, and maybe the steaks. The blitzkrieg partying of the horror books has narrowed down to a passionately committed gay couple in their 20s, who are both cooks, and trying to make it in the New Orleans restaurant world. They have an opportunity to open a restaurant using their dream idea. But they end up uncertain whether they have essentially sold their souls in order to get the money to open fulfill their dream.

Outsiders : 22 All-New Stories From the Edge, Nancy Holder, Nancy Kilpatrick (ed)

I was interested to see if the Poppy Z. Brite story in this book was a transition between her earlier work and her work in Liquor, but in fact the story was a snippet from the earlier lives of the heroes of the Liquor series—who qualified as Outsiders because of their sexual orientation, I guess.

Most of the rest of the short stories (with a few exceptions) were—as advertised, on the edge. Lordy, I haven’t been near the edge in decades and I ain’t interested in going, thank you very much. Most of these stories were too far over to the “splatter punk” type of atmosphere to be my kind of thing so it would be an exercise in futility to try to judge them.

Atmospheric ghosts, dark forces, and wild turkeys

February 19 to 26, 1976, I read:

Solemn High Murder, Barbara Ninde Byfield

The Early Pohl, Frederik Pohl


February 19 to 26, 2006, I read:

Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Cherie Priest
A very well-written, atmospheric, literally haunting book. One problem I had was that the heroine had a major case of don’t-do-up-in-the-attic-itis. For example, with a homicidal maniac stalking her, she heads straight for the cemetery after dark. I realize that that’s where the plot needs her to be, but for me, it got a little predictable. Where’s the most dangerous, isolated possible place? I think I’ll go there—alone—at night!

It held my interest but never really scared me much—which is fine. I should say that I don’t exactly read ghost stories to be frightened, as I know some people do. Well, maybe to be frightened just a little tiny bit…

The author has an interesting web site at--
http://cherie.twilightuniverse.com/


Final Intuition, Claire Daniels

More on the whimsical fun than frightening front is the fourth and final book in Claire Daniels' Cally Lazar series. In the interests of disclosure I should say that Claire Daniels is also my dear friend, Jaqueline Girdner, who wrote the Kate Jasper mystery series. I was interested to catch up on the latest adventures of her amateur sleuth, a New Age bio-energy balancing healer. Cally's boyfriend, Roy, is either crazy or really does see dangerous dark forces swirling around her. Aside from the final truth about these dark forces, there are always fun witty things in Jaki/Claire's books. I know of no other author who would bring on wild turkeys wandering through the yard oblivious of both murder and Thanksgiving. The Turkey Sisters are shadowed, although never approached, by a lone male turkey. Very Dashiell Hammett in a cozy mystery kind of way—I mean if Hammett used large, wild turkeys for actors and actresses (which might be kind of fun actually--never mind, Jaki/Claire's work has that effect on me).

More about Claire/Jaki and other unexpected treasures at--
http://www.maadwomen.com/clairedaniels/

An imperfect escape is better than no escape at all

February 10 to 18, 1976 I read,

The Catnappers, P.G. Wodehouse
It's hard to remember that 30 years ago I was catless and the word "cat" was pretty much neutral. No recollection of this Wodehouse. I keep meaning to read more. Whenever I see odd sentences quoted from him, they glitter with a wit that beckons.

The Black Tower, P.D. James
This was one of my favorite P.D. James mysteries, and I later read it again at least twice.

Chief! Al Seedman (my notes say “as told to Hellman” NYPD Chief)
I found this description on abe.com (the comprehensive online used books source)
"The distillation of perhaps the country's largest private crime archives -- the personal journals Albert Seedman kept throughout his career as Chief of Detectives of NYPD."


February 10 to 18, 2006, in between other work and getting my tax materials together, I escaped a few times to read:

The Loves of a D-Girl: A Novel of Sex, Lies, and Script Development, Chris Dyer
A “movie business in New York chick lit” novel told in entirely in the present tense—I guess to give the idea of a screenplay—“she stops reading. She puts down the book,” etc. Used judiciously this can heighten tension. Used for the entire book this can become irritating, and did.

Urban Shaman, C.E. Murphy
Comparisons to Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake vampire executioner series are unavoidable, even though the bad supernatural critters faced by the heroine, Joanne Walker, are on the Celtic side, more like those in Hamilton’s Meredith Gentry faery series. There are some interesting elements here. Walker is half Irish, half Cherokee and an awakening shaman--also a reluctant cop and a gifted auto mechanic. Reluctant cop? Hmmm. I don’t even read too many police procedurals, but I had trouble swallowing the way that the entire Seattle Police Department bends over backwards to keep Walker on the job so as to get free car repair! But the story and the heroine held my interest, and I’d read other books by this author.

Assorted flavors of numb & lies like ice cream

February 7 to 10, 1976 I read:

The House on Garibaldi Street, Isser Harel
The story of the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina by the Mossad, Israel's secret intelligence service. Harel was the leader of the team that brought Eichmann to Israel for trial. Fascinating book—updated and still in print.

The Santaroga Barrier, Frank Herbert
In some ways I like some of Herbert's lesser know books better than Dune, and definitely better than the sequels to Dune.

You Can Get There from Here, Shirley MacLaine
I like Shirley MacLaine (I was going so say "so shoot me" but I never use that expression anymore...the times we live in.)

Best SF '74

Clive: Inside the Record Business, Clive Davis James Willwerth
I obviously hadn't heard of Clive Davis because my note reads "some record tycoon."

The Intruders, Pat Montandon
This scary book was hard to track down, seeming to have vanished into book limbo. I remember this story of a haunted Lombard Street apartment. Even in the 1960s and '70s you didn't just leave a prime San Francisco apartment like that because of a little psychic disturbance. Finally I found a web page about it!
http://www.sfgate.com/offbeat/pat.html


February 7 to 10, 2006:

Two books I read this week have unexpected elements in common. Lost Souls and A Million Little Pieces both seem to be first novels with lots-o-drugs, cynical, suicidal youth and shaky redemption at the end. No vampires or homoerotic scenes in Frey though…

As a kind of weird segue, I have been imagining that some of the 1988 teenage drugged-out runaways in Lost Souls might end up 16 years later in the rehab unit where James Frey sets his story—and yes I know the controversy is about how much of Frey is true, and I will get to that.


Lost Souls, Poppy Z. Brite
This is the second Brite book I've read (a few months back I read her second book, Drawing Blood). Lost Souls came out in 1988 and I could see how it made an impact, there wasn't anything out there that I've ever heard of then that resembled it.

Like so many first novels, it is a Sensitive Story of Disillusioned Youth. Only it also has vampires, romanticized homoeroticism with teenage boys as the focus of lust, sex & drugs & rock & roll, graphic gore and bodily fluids, murder, rape, cannibalism and incest. Oddly enough, these amenities—though not my usual choice of story elements—did not bother me. I think it's because the characters were engaging, vulnerable and so very numb.


A Million Little Pieces, James Frey
Speaking of numb. The main character starts out the book starts out semi-comatose.

What do I think about James Frey's work?

It ain't William Burroughs, or even Augusten Burroughs. The no-quotes dialog and paragraphs-jammed-together style does convey the flattened emotions of the main character (or of his recollections, if we're thinking of this as Frey himself). But it's a very tedious form to maintain for hundreds of pages and for me that made it more difficult to keep reading.

In Frey's case, his lies, like the web spun by a con artist, fitted neatly into a very popular view about drugs and rehabilitation. The myths are—anyone can fall prey to drugs—even those who "have everything" and anyone can claw his way back to normalcy. There's some truth in these myths. The lies are in the packaging and the amplification of the fall.

James Frey was irresistible to Oprah and company literally because he was not the scary bad boy he played on television and in his book. I'm sure there was never a sense that he might fall off the wagon and be found passed out among empty liquor bottles in an alley behind the TV studio. There are many genuine survivors in recovery from drugs and lives of crime, some of them probably have written books. But their stories don't go down like ice cream. Their damaged faces and bodies show real, permanent scars.

Frey presents an irresistible Ivy League educated, fresh-faced package, the (much enhanced, and in some cases perhaps "borrowed") stories of a down and dirty addiction, tough guy encounters with cops and criminals, and eventual recovery.

The myth went down like ice cream. And now people are reading the label on the package.

I read this book after the story came out about how Frey stretched the truth for this "memoir" so there's no way I could say whether I would have guessed the fraud if I'd read it earlier. A friend who worked in a mental institution said the author photo confirmed for her that this guy could not have suffered the kind of battering he describes in the book and avoided permanent, visible facial scarring (also that the dental work without novocaine incident was unlikely in the extreme).

The phrase "a bullshit artist" came to mind, but after reading most of the book (I skipped some because that no punctuation thing can get really tedious) I'd say he's on the border between B.S. and crap by Hanne Blank's definition--link to her essay below.

Crap is what makes you throw the book across the room in disgust, while bullshit is the occupational hazard of the professional liar (a.k.a. fiction writer).
http://www.reflectionsedge.com/archives/dec2005/vatcc_hb.html

Charming echoes, books that require hip boots and gloves, books by mail

I was definitely having more fun 30 years ago this week!

January 30, 1976 to February 6, 1976, I read:

Hollywood, Garson Kanin
Online I found a comment about a scene in this book Kanin witnessed where a young Lawrence Olivier chatted with Greta Garbo at a party and then reenacted the conversation on the drive home for a suspicious Vivien Leigh. That really was memorable and charming, and it stuck in my memory also.

A Purple Place for Dying, John D. MacDonald
The Mystery Writer's Art, Nevin, Ed
The Worlds of Frank Herbert (surprisingly good anthology)
The Deep Blue Goodbye, John D. MacDonald


January 30 to February 6, 2006

Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, Greg Critser

I had meant to look this book up when I researched books with the three letter F-word in the title for my web page essay
http://www.maadwomen.com/lynnemurray/essays/fword.html

The book turned out to be quite insulting to fat people. Malarial mosquitoes probe more deeply and with less of an agenda than this so-called objective reporter uses in this book. I ranted on a bit on that at the end of this post, but feel free to skip if you're not in the mood.

First, on a positive note. Because it was borrowed, I didn't pay money to be insulted by Fat Land! I borrowed this book from a service called http://www.booksfree.com/ (this is a spontaneous, unpaid endorsement!) Booksfree.com does for paperback book lovers what Netflix does for DVD lovers—a real find for those of us who can't easily get to a library.

Optional Rant mode activated—

I was hoping that Fat Land would provide some useful information about some of the ingredients in highly processed foods such as trans fats and high fructose corn syrup—which seem to be to be health-damaging additives. [As it happens that information is much more objectively covered in Fat Politics, The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic, by J. Eric Oliver—a book I am reading with care so as to review on my web page.]

Alas, Critser begins by discussing his recent "successful" diet! I have two things to say about that:

First, I am saddened by our current cultural climate where anything expressed by a thinner person is somehow more valid and valuable than anything expressed by that same person 40 pounds heavier. This is prejudice. Pure and simple.

Second, I am angered by the contempt that infects Critser's every paragraph. His is not an unusual attitude but I experience rage afresh each time I see a "formerly fat person" who feels entitled to beat up on fat people "for our own good."

One Amazon.com reviewer pointed out that this author seemed to think he could shame people into losing weight. Sadly a whole raft of others chimed in about how the "refreshing slap in the face" this book delivered will help them lose weight. As this is a future, and uncertain event, these testimonials only point up the sad state of self-abasement that flourishes around issues of body size.

Nothing the book has to offer would alleviate the stress, or compensate me for the time wasted in reading it. However, I toyed with the thought of going through it to compare some of Critser's more superficial conclusions with those drawn by Paul Campos in The Obesity Epidemic or the aforementioned J. Eric Oliver's Fat Politics. But that would mean spending more time with the book, and even stopping early on, it took some effort to clear off the sticky coating of hatred from anything it might have touched while the book was still in my hands.

And yeah, I guess this rant was part of that process, and I say anyone who has read this far, as I say to the accommodating white page in front of me--thanks for listening.

Books dimly remembered and thankless tasks that are more fun than fun.

My younger self did a lot more reading in this stretch of the year than I have this year, although I seem to have been a little fuzzy about exactly what! I had a library-filtered view of books then, and assumed that everything ever printed was always available. I would have been scandalized at how easily books slip out of print and away.

It's also just as well that I didn't know how long this process would be, until I was well and thoroughly involved in the perverse pleasure of prose--which is not what you expect when you start, but worth the journey. As Noel Coward put it, "Work is more fun than fun." Although in all honesty, it doesn't start out that way!

January 24 to January 29, 1976 I read:

Three on the Tower
I have no idea what this book was or who wrote it.

A Professional Storywriter's Handbook, Edwin A. Peeples
My note reads that the author of this book was, in my opinion an MCP ("male chauvinist pig"), which didn't really give us a whole lot more information.

Every Crime in the Book: An Anthology of Mystery Stories (anthology, Mystery Writers of America) Ed. R.L. Fish
Shoot, I know more than amazon.com about this one! They didn't have the editor or the MWA connection.

One Fearful Yellow Eye, John D. MacDonald

Breakdown (Crackdown, Breakthrough? Something like that, Dick Francis' latest)
What can I say? He does have some interchangeable titles, and I usually write them down carefully so I can read them all rather than reading the same one over by accident! Research shows this was probably Francis' Knockdown, March 1, 1975!

You're never too old to die, Arthur D Goldstein
Another book that I don't remember, though it sounds like a mystery.

January 24 to 29, 2006 no books read.

This past week or so I've been submerged in editing a manuscript, which is its own kind of obsession. Marge Piercy put it well in her poem,

For the young who want to

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
***
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.For the young who want to, by Marge Piercy from THE MOON IS ALWAYS FEMALE
Alfred A. Knopf, New York

The devil you know, the Daniel Webster you may have forgotten

Sometimes things you read remind you of other things that you liked a whole lot better. Other times, they are excellent in and of themselves.

From January 18 to 22, 1976 I read:

The Nun In the Closet, D. Gilman
(My note was: childish, by a writer of children's stories.)

Amazon One, Mary F. Beal
(I didn't get far on this one. My note was that it was amusing but not enough to read and I didn't like the style.)

Ghost Writer, Diana Carter

The Devil and Webster Daniels, Terrence Lore Smith
I remember that this was a take off on the title of theh classic Steven Vincent Benet story The Devil and Daniel Webster, which is still worth a re-read or three. Looking up the Smith book, I found it was a Doubleday Mystery publication from the 70s, that's about what I remember about it as well!

The original Devil and Daniel Webster, however, lingers in my memory as one of the most brilliant stories I've read. The 1941 movie with Walter Huston as "Mr. Scratch" was also excellent! Looking the title up reminded me that Benet's hero was modeled after the real Daniel Webster, a politician and orator in the early 1800s. Those were the days when a U.S. Senator could be so legendary that he naturally fit the bill as a hero of fiction. The fictional Daniel Webster certainly did a service above and beyond elective office for his constituent, Jabez Stone, in getting him out of a deal with the Devil.

In my opinion, this is one of the few Faustian stories where the character fighting the devil is as interesting as the devil himself—and wins! The pleasure is in how he wins, and all the various arguments Daniel Webster and the Devil throw back and forth. E.g., Webster argues that Americans can't be conscripted to serve a foreign prince. The Devil argues that he qualifies for citizenship on the grounds that he was around when the Indians were cheated out of their land and the first ships carrying slaves landed in America. Webster is forced to admit the Devil's got grounds for claiming citizenship. But Webster has a few other arguments up his sleeve to prove that his fellow New Hampshire citizen does not deserve to be damned for his unwise bargain.


January 18 to 21, 2006

Red Leaves, Thomas H. Cook
An incredibly well-written, gripping book. I stand in awe (except that I was sitting because I literally could not put it down). The darkness and eloquence remind me of Dennis Lehane's Mystic River. Cook's work is more stripped down and elemental than Lehane, and also focuses more tightly on psychological layers. Cook's narrator reluctantly digs into the secrets in his family as he tries to protect his son, who is the primary suspect in the kidnapping of a child. The brilliantly crafted puzzle counter-balances the dark, tragic aspects of the story. It's very rare that a book holds my attention so insistently--all the way down to a cathartic redemption and a twist ending that I did not see coming.

I don't know if I could ever write anything that dark, but I would aspire to write so well.

From The Stacks

There's a Japanese tradition (which I picked up by some kind of Buddhist osmosis) of cleaning things up for New Year's, start fresh etc. I missed getting this done by the Western New Year--maybe the Lunar New Year...or somewhere before the spring equinox... As a book fiend, that means cleaning off my bookshelves, returning borrowed books and generally getting ready for the next crop of things to read.

January 12 to 17, 1976, I read:

The Scarlet Ruse, John D. MacDonald

The Hungry Ghosts, J. C. Oates
I have no memory of this book and didn't realize till I looked it up that "J.C." was Joyce Carol Oates. Now I have to go find it and look at it again!

January 12 to 17, 2006

This was a contrary week for me, cleaning out shelves of books I've put off reading.

Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
I never even heard of this when I was growing up, and it appears to be too late for me to read it with the requisite innocence! The first illustration shows a farmer with an axe, heading out to the barn to kill the hero, a newborn pig, the runt of the litter and therefore expendable. The second illustration shows the farmer's son, brother of little girl who intervens to save the pig and raise it. The brother carries both a rifle and a knife for reasons never really explained in the text. What is this a Quentin Tarentino film? I think I read a true crime article about this family.

Okay, okay. I realize that this is a much-loved story, and once again I'm being iconoclastic without hardly trying. But this small book made me very anxious. Not the spiders, Charlotte the spider is a nurturing sort of arachnid. I guess actual children would take the happy ending at face value. But I was uncertain about the Wilbur the pig's continued survival, seeing as how it was based on the farmer's whim, which could be easily changed.

Somebody Else's Music, Jane Haddam
I enjoyed reading Haddam's lighter novels, written as Oriana Papazoglou in the '80s, (Sweet, Savage Death, etc.), featuring romance writer and reluctant sleuth Patience Campbell McKenna.

I ran into trouble with this book, the first I've encountered (I believe there are 18) in the Gregor Demarkian series. Without going into detail, I had to stop halfway through the book because of the repeated and persistent body hatred aimed at fat characters—e.g., assuming that they were fat because of stupidity or insanity and inciting the reader to share the author's disgust at their bodies. Life is too short for me to spend my time in such a toxic environment.

This may sound like a backhanded compliment, but if Haddam were not such a skilled storyteller, I would not have lasted halfway through this 472 page book. I had to stop, because one way I protect my own emotional balance is to avoid spending much time with body-negative writings.

Heading back to the shelves...

If I were to have a country home with the requisite cute name on a sign outside (hard to imagine, but bear with me) it would be called The Stacks.

Romantic comedy outside the box

January 8 to 11, 1975

Good Samaritans and Other Stories, John O'Hara
A Shroud for A Nightingale, P.D. James
Ellery Queen, A Mystery Anthology (Opus 281)


January 8 to 11, 2006

Conversations with the Fat Girl, Liza Palmer

This is an interesting variant on a new subgenre that I guess we could call "big beautiful chick lit" or to translate that into English—romantic comedies with plus-sized heroines. I totally applaud this development and judging from the online comments, many women have been looking for these books and seek them out and recommend them to others
http://chicklitbooks.com/site/index.php/2005/10/25/p69

The fact is that the "heroine = slim" is the overwhelming equation in romantic (and romantic comic) fiction—oh, hell, fiction of any kind! It reminds me of a sequence in one of my favorite comic novels—which I'm delighted to see back in print--The Boyfriend School by Sarah Bird. http://www.randomhouse.com/BB/read/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345460097
The heroine, a reporter for an alternative newspaper who is tryng to write a romance, decides to make her heroine a big, strapping gal, "who never met an enchilada she didn't like." When an editor gets hold of the manuscript she changes it--now the heroine feels she is too skinny because "she forgets to eat." Same thing, right? Um, no.

Conversations with the Fat Girl is interesting, as I point out in my "state of the F-word" essay on my web page http://www.maadwomen.com/lynnemurray/essays/fword.html
the word "fat" in the title often is an attention-getter and frequently indicates that the theme will NOT concern fat. Paradoxically, the word "fat" is so negatively loaded, that books with big beautiful heroines often avoid the three-letter F-word to keep from alienating readers.

Conversations with the Fat Girl is an exception in that the title uses the F-word and the heroine and her best friend are both struggling with self-esteem and body issues. Conversations looks at the friendship of two fat girls who supported each other emotionally in youth and adolescence. What happens when one of them gets gastric bypass surgery, moves away and tries to live as if she never was tainted by having been fat?

I could quibble with many things in this book, but the main one that saddens me is a simple error that could have been corrected if anyone had looked at a map. The author sets a pivotal scene with the characters walking on the Golden Gate Bridge and has her characters drive to San Francisco from the University of California at Berkeley all the time to do this. You really can't get directly from Berkeley to the Golden Gate Bridge. From Berkeley to San Francisco you take the Bay Bridge. You also can't walk across the Bay Bridge—gotta drive, or maybe take a bus or BART. Not that you can't get to the GGB from Berkeley, but you've got to drive across some other bridge first (either the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, approaching the GGB from Marin, or crossing the Bay Bridge and approaching the GGB from San Francisco.)

This is not really a little-known fact, and it's easily checked via map, mapquest.com anything like that. Readers who know this geographic fact will say, "What?!!" and be stopped dead in their tracks and thrown out of the story for a moment--it's like putting the Hollywood sign in the Swiss Alps.

When my first novel came out in 1988, a triple-Virgo copy editor looked at every word. She even got out a map and questioned several of my characters' routes from point A to point B. My favorite was when she asked why my characters didn't take the direct route--walking straight through Sutro Park and crossing the Great Highway to get from Sutro Heights to the Cliff House. Um, a little matter of a 5-story drop off the cliff where Sutro Park overlooks the Great Highway. But shoot, she looked at the map. For Liza Palmer's book nobody did.

From Watergate loose ends to Discworld fun

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Dark books to read indoors in a warm room, with a new year in view

December 26 to 31, 1975

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (Paperback) Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry
I didn't have the co-author, Gentry, listed when I first read the book. I found it riveting, but unlike some readers nothing about it frightened me. Separating the "hippie ideas" from the violence was pretty easy. Manson was (and is) a con man who dressed his mind control in the context of love, peace and presented himself as a kind of god or devil in a way that pushed a lot of people's buttons. The idea that a mind-controlling Manson could reach out through his sad followers and destroy people. Tragic, but not particularly new.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, George V. Higgins
The hard-boiledest.


December 26 to 31, 2005

This Stephen King book was suggested by Landyn Parker in his blog
http://madscreenwriter.blogspot.com/
Now I'll have to see if the suggestion for unclogging drains works (the sisal for cat scratch posts I already knew).

On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King

I've read a lot of Stephen King books. He's good enough, and close enough to the bone with his writing, that I regret having read some of his books because they stuck with me in a nightmare way that I don't need.

I got upset when one of our cats died from a dog attack during the time I was I was reading Pet Sematary. My husband, Charlie, asked what the book was about, and I told him.

If you're not a King reader I'll just explain that the book is about standing on the edge of death when the one you love is on the other side—would you, could you bring them back? If you did, what would be the price? And would you do it anyway?

My husband said, "Just promise me you won't read any books called Husband Cemetery."

Charlie lived another seven years and my reading Stephen King had no known correlation with his lifespan. But I am now cautious before I read a scary book, I check to see whether they mesh badly with my own anxieties because I know the fear can stay with me even after a satisfactorily cathartic ending.

But I digress—this seems to be the night for it, sorry! On the subject of writers, storytellers and what makes such critters tick, Stephen King is always spot on.

On Writing is partly autobiography, including the devastating 1999 accident when King was hit by a van while walking down the road.

In even greater part, this is a practical manual for writers. King has such useful insights that I think, in future, when people ask about plotting, I'll direct them to this book. I love his insight of story as a fossil to be excavated. I also took the point from his description of his muse--wings, cigar, basement apartment with bowling trophies—gotta love that. He suggested that one's own muse (bowling trophies optional) will find it a lot easier to throw some magic on a writer who makes and keeps appointments with regularity.

Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year all!

Ghosts of passions past & an entirely different sort of magic

This time of year 30 years ago I was enjoying an orgy of John D. MacDonald's Travis Magee books. I made a list in my orange notebook so I could read them all--even bought one when it first came out in hardcover—which was a tremendous (and expensive) declaration of love on my part.

That passion ran its course. Now it's like remembering someone you dated in your teens. The details have only faded a little but, as Joni Mitchell puts it, "I can't go back there anymore." I loved MacDonald then and studied him closely, despairing of ever being able to tell a tale so smoothly. But I can't read him now. I picked up Cape Fear a few years back and I wanted to smack the hero for the smug arrogance with which he treated his wife, and the adoring way she sucked up to him.… (Which probably echoes some of my teenage romances as well—eek! Not to mention ick!)

Heck, it's Christmas, I won't start. I've moved on and so has John D. MacDonald, who passed away. I'm still pretty fond of Leonard Nimoy and George Plimpton's Paris Review, but those were less intense passions. It's always interesting (if a little scary) to me what books seem dated and which ones don't.


December 15 to December 25, 1975

Intimate Behavior, Desmond Morris
I Am Not Spock, Leonard Nimoy
I just looked this up to see if it was still available, and found that Nimoy has now written a retrospective entitle I Am Spock. I'll have to check that one out.

The Dreadful Lemon Sky, John D. MacDonald
The Long Lavender Look, John D. MacDonald
A Deadly Shade of Gold, John D. MacDonald

Writers At Work, (Paris Review 2nd Series), George Plimpton (Ed.)
I loved how they had a page of annotated typescript from each author before the interview. Ah, the glamour of it all.

A Tan and Sandy Silence, John D. MacDonald


December 14 to 25, 2005

After a pre-Christmas visit from my fast-moving younger brother, and with the constant tranquil presence of the cats for an anchor, I celebrated the holidays with books on monsters.

Monsters, An Investigator's Guide to Magical Beings, John Michael Greer

This book was a happy surprise. It's amazingly clear on subjects that I could never quite grasp before. They're pretty ephemeral subjects, but Greer has some plausible theories that take into account history, current reportage, and how the scientific worldview shut out things that can't be measured and put under microscopes.

[A]n experience can be extremely common, and can affect many human lives, even though it has no place in our modern culture's view of reality, is ignored by education and the media, and does not even have a name. Monsters, p. 22

One reader on Amazon points out that the cover (black with creepy yellow monster eyes) seems too sensationalistic. But I think if it draws in a wider readership, it will have done what a book cover is supposed to do.

A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits, Carol K. Mack and Dinah Mack

This cover made the Monsters cover look positively conservative, by the way. A black woodcut style critter with lots of teeth, horns, staring eyes on a solid red background.

This book is more of a "dip into" reference rather than a "read straight through book." Partly because it is organized by geography, unlike the Monsters book above which groups these phenomena by behavior and the author's theory of structure.

Each entry explains the critter and the area where the stories of it arose, describes the Lore around it, and provides Disarming and Dispelling Techniques. There's more of a tongue-in-cheek attitude here—unlike the Monsters book where Greer gives serious instructions for would-be monster-hunters, including stakeout and bird-watching style warnings about what gear to bring and admonitions not to trespass and to exercise caution and ordinary common sense.

The Field Guide's takes the comparative mythology approach, but the capsule stories and illustrations are interesting. The quotes are great. Ralph Waldo Emerson--who knew?

…I think the numberless forms in which this superstition has reappeared in every time and in every people indicates the inextinguishableness of wonder in man; betrays his conviction that behind all your explanations is a vast and potent living Nature, inexhaustible and sublime, which you cannot explain. Essay on Demonology," 1875 Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lost books, lost highwys

December 5 to 14, 1975

Admissions, Barbera
I have a vague recollection that this might have been a "doctor memoir" book, but it must be beyond out of print or I wrote the title wrong…

Anti-Social Register, William Hamilton
Possibly cartoons?

Lucy: The Bittersweet Life of Lucille Ball, Joe Morella
(I also have E.Z. Epstein as co-author, though amazon.com doesn't show that—the book has been out of print for awhile.) Good book though.

Ancient, My Enemy, Gordon R. Dickson
My note was "philosophical and anthropocentric"

You and I, Leonard Nimoy
Will I think of you, Leonard Nimoy
6XH, Robert Heinlein
Orbit 17, Damon Knight (ed)

December 5 to 14, 2005

White Teeth, Zadie Smith
A friend pointed out how impressed she was that Zadie Smith could have such a complex vision of life in her early 20s. I agree, and found White Teeth compelling, even though I often tend not to persevere with books that jump forward 5 or 20 years. I think it's because I get attached to the characters and resent having to start all over again with their offspring, whom I may or may not like! But Smith makes it work.

Murder At Morses Pond (Paperback)
by Linda Rosencrance
A true crime book, readable but a bit of a slog as the crime is described over and over. This is a "we're sure the husband did it, but will he get away with it?" type story, and it could have done with more revelations along the way. One commenter online mentioned that this was a court TV case. Maybe there were no more revelations.

Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West, Troy Paiva (foreword Stan Ridgway)
I started with Paiva's web site at www.lostamerica.com where you can see his photographs taken at night of abandoned places. Drive-in movies, the decaying resort around the Salton Sea, ghosts of former military bases—photographed to bring out an eerie beauty. I immediately wanted the book as a gift for my road warrior, younger brother. Fortunately I could get a signed copy from the author. The stories Paiva writes of his adventures taking the pictures are as colorful and wild as the photos themselves

Route 66: The Highway and Its People,Susan Croce Kelly (Text), Quinta Scott (Photographer)
The Piava book sent me back to re-read this photo essay and history. I had originally bought it because I used some Route 66 locations in Large Target. But the book was a keeper. It's fascinating how that Chicago to Los Angeles highway was developed in the 1920s and '30s--the road the Joad family took out of the Dust Bowl in The Grapes of Wrath. It boomed and played a major part in our national history through the '70s until it was finally officially replaced by five interstates by 1985. My father and brother drove on it from Los Angeles to Chicago in the 1970s and even then it took some doing to find it in places.

Fear of a Minimum Wage Planet

Whew! Finally finished those essays, which now can be found on my website. Funny how they seemed much longer when I was printing them out and editing them. I immediately jumped back into reading, but I'll never be able to keep up with my 27-year-old self.

November 25 to December 4, 1975

The Occult: A History, Colin Wilson
Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle, William A. Nolan, MD
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, P.D. James
Adventures in Consciousness, Jane Roberts
Orbit 10, Damon Knight, Ed
Inheritors of Earth, Gordon Eklund & Poul Anderson
Shakespeare, a Biography, Peter Quennell (gave up at last, very simplistically done)
The Lively Dead, Peter Dickinson

November 25 to December 4, 2005

Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
Ehrenreich goes "undercover" looking for entry level jobs and trying to live on the wages. This book was much scarier than the ghost book noted below. Scary because it's so real.

I worked that sort of minimum wage jobs Ehrenreich described throughout college (and that was an unusual number of undergraduate years)! But rents were cheaper then. I'm not so sure I could physically do what she did as a 50-something, stepping into housekeeping, waitressing and shelf stocking at Wal-mart. On the other hand, the life she describes returning to looks equally unimaginable to me.

The turning point for me out of minimum wage jobs was not finally finishing a college degree. It was learning word processing machines in 1974 (the noble IBM Magnetic Card Selectric Typewriter—may it rest in peace) that made a difference. That primitive proto-computer was difficult enough for many to masterk that know it allowed me to make a living and work unconventional hours so as to support a writing habit. One of my friends recently summed up my life in one sentence. "I get that you don't work well within the system." Some variation of that should go on my tombstone….except…

If, as a Buddhist, I would want a tombstone... Finishing those essays has brought out my inner Gracie Allen.

Ghost Walk, Heather Graham
Romantic suspense a la Phyllis Whitney, not quite Barbara Michaels. It was the ghost in the title, couldn't resist it. Set in New Orleans in pre-hurricane Katrina 2005, which gave it an unexpected patina of sadness.

Boldly going where most people had already gone

At this point in 1975, I believe I had just purchased a television set. My first. If I'd had one during the (many) years I was in college, I'd probably still be in college. So I was able to watch all the Star Trek re-runs for the first time. The books I checked out of the library reflects that. Well, except for the Jayne Mansfield bio, but I believe I already confessed to my celebrity bio weakness!

November 13 to 24, 1975

Jayne Mansfield and the American 50s, Martha Saxon

Bracknell's Law, E. W. Hildick (noted that this was a murder mystery)

The Trouble with Tribbles, David Gerrold

The World of Star Trek, David Gerrold

The Making of Star Trek, Stephen E. S Whitfield, Gene Roddenberry


November 13 to 24, 2005

Yikes! Still doing editing and scrambling away at web page essays. Reading the backs of cereal and soy milk cartons. I may be enjoying the essay writing about as much as I enjoyed the Star Trek reading 30 years ago. Hard to tell!

Nutrition--physical and mental

November 4-12, 1975

Nutrition and Your Mind, George Watson

I found a neat quote from him online in a site discussing nutrition and alcohol abuse

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/youropinions.php?opinionid=4908

I don't remember reading Nutrition and Your Mind, but alcohol was certainly relevant to my life in 1975--it was a major part of my rather questionable coping strategy.

Those were the days when my only cookbooks were the Adele (not Angela!) Davis's nutritional cookbook given to me by my health-food-freak grandmother, and whatever diet book I was trying to follow at the time. As I look him up on the net, some of Watson's ideas about nutrition and psychological functioning resonate. Other people have taken his ideas in a number of different directions since. Some of them have made a lot of money morphing them into diet books. I don't remember if I experimented with his ideas back then—probably.

The Doonesbury Chronicles, GB Trudeau

Fun, and mentally nutritious! Still going strong after 35 years, and now it's online—god, I love the internet!

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/


November 4-12, 2005

The past week or so I've been editing business stuff for pay and starting to write the essays I keep threatening to put on my web site, so I didn't read any books during this period. I'm sure full-scale fiction withdrawal pains will strike at any moment.

A little touch of Falstaff in the night & Fat Chicks Ruling

Thirty years ago I was having a great time reading plays and thrillers--this past week…ehhh, about fifty-fifty fun to irritation. I think it's cumulative. I concluded reading a whole banquet of books with Fat in the title, preparatory to writing a sort of round up review and "state of the F word." Even avoiding the obviously negative books, it was a mixed mood experience, as you'll see below.

October 27-November 4 1975

The Odd Couple, Neil Simon
The Subject Was Roses, Gilroy
Marathon Man, William Goldman
Black Sunday, Thomas Harris


October 27-November 4 2005

Fat Boys, A Slim Book, Sander Gilman

Is the title offensive? I asked a fat male friend and got no reply—so I guess that would be a "Yes." It's offensive, and on purpose. When a woman refers to herself as a "fat girl" or a Fat Chick" it can seem like taking control because pairing a frivolous word like Girl or Chick with the much-demonized "Fat" puts an aggressively flirtatious spin on it.

The word "boy" has a different history. First of all, Gilman is referring to others, not himself. This is not the "fat boy's guide to life." For all we know, Gilman is quite thin. As is frequently the case in academic works, he does not discuss himself at all. But he admits that "Fat Man" has a totally different resonance than "Fat Boy." To call a grown male a boy indicates a put-down.

On the one hand, Gilman wants to explore the most derogatory description possible. Yet he includes a wierd little explanation of why it might be okay, simply because fat males often refer to each other this way.

The phrase "fat boy" will serve as shorthand in this study for the obese male. Elmer Wheeler pointed out that his rather obtuse (and rotund) publisher initially objected to his title: "I straightened out the publisher. Fat boys, I told him, have a habit of calling to each other, 'Hey, fat boy!'" [Elmer Wheeler is or was, the author of The Fat Boys Diet Book in the 1940s]
Fat Boys, A Slim Book, p. 8

This anecdote "straightens out" nothing. Aside from the questionable wisdom of insulting one's publisher, the fact that men hurl insults at each other when they are bonding is well known (some women do this as well). However, men also hurl insults just before they violently attack each other, as in the expression "fighting words." I see no evidence of brotherly affection in the text of Gilman's book, or in old Elmer Wheeler's "explanation." We never hear from Wheeler again in Sander's text. Possibly his miffed publisher made sure the book never left the warehouse.

Gilman's reason for compiling centuries of the most derogatory statements about fat men (and women as well) is that these attitudes have persisted throughout history. Slavery, mass murder and child abuse have also persisted throughout history but that doesn't mean we should accept them as folk wisdom. The book is on the scholarly side, with almost as many pages devoted to footnotes as to text. I can't call it a Recovering Dissertation because evidently the author has published a few other scholarly type books earlier.

Perhaps if someone had paid me to read the entire book.... But no one did, so I didn't. Short as it was, I could only bear to skim most of it. For ordinary folks, I'd recommend keeping a fast acting, anti-depressant handy while reading it. (Is there such a thing? Never mind.)


As a fiction writer, what particularly offended me was Gilman's take on Falstaff. I've used the Falstaff archetype in my own fiction (don't ask where, but if you want to be notified when it sees print, I'll email you—it may be a few years!) My own creative experience with Falstaff, the Fat Rogue, was an amazing one. When I invoked him from the place where fictional characters live (in this case, Room #23 of the Boar's Head Tavern, in the Shakespeare Quarter of the Collective Unconscious), Falstaff was alive, exuberant, and energized. As a con man and bad boy, he radiated naughty energy and and he was ready to meet my characters and run with them. He had some ideas of where he wanted to go for starters. First stop the Big and Tall Store for clothes, next stop a tavern with ale and pork roast, etc.

I felt that Gilman's dissection of the meaning of Falstaff (diseased, aged, emasculated) combined an autopsy report and a social worker's report. All data and no juice. I strenuously disagree that Falstaff engendered contempt in audiences. Queen Elizabeth the First did not request a play be written "with Falstaff in love" because he was a diseased, impotent, old codger. She didn't think there was too much of him—she wanted more!

I really wanted to like Fat Boys, A Slim Book because there aren't that many books exploring maleness and fatness. If someone knows of any that really do, please tell me!


Fat Chicks Rule! Lara Frater

After Fat Boys, I was relieved to turn to this, a witty book with no pretensions and a totally positive and accessible tone.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that under Fat Chick Lit, Frater lists my Josephine Fuller mystery series, for which I am duly grateful.

The edge to Frater's book comes from her description of her own experience growing up fat.

When you begin to look into size acceptance you encounter so many "fat stories" and so much suffering. It reminds me of the phrase "Speak Bitterness." The women's movement of the 1970s borrowed this phrase from 1940s China, where women who had been literally enslaved, were liberated and encouraged to talk about their experiences being sold as concubines, battered and oppressed in ways unthinkable to us.

Sometimes it is very healing to speak the bitterness—to be allowed to say what happened, and to know that people will listen. I'm not going to go into this at great length here, but I gotta say reading a few dozen "fat stories" can depress the hell out of you for awhile. The ill-treatment doesn't extend to slavery, but there's no question that people with low self-esteem can be easily exploited.

Frater's Introduction devotes three pages to her own story as a fat person--which was the perfect amount for this kind of book. She discussed how she has coped, and while admittedly a work in progress, she is ready to offer up resources to help others. She says--

I want to help end the cycle of destruction that dieting and lack of self-esteem leads to, and help my fellow fat chicks accept two important things:

You are beautiful even if you don't measure up to the Hollywood standard of beauty.

There is no perfect number, perfect weight, perfect size or perfect body, except what you think is perfect for you. Fat Chicks Rule! p. 13

Frater offers a wide range of strategies for fat chicks getting ready to rule. Some chapters include, Roll Models: Famous Fat Chicks, Entertainment, Seating Issues, Witty Comebacks, Fat and Fit are Just Fine, Tips on Looking Hot, Romance, Sex - including positions! The explanation of how "the same thing that makes us fat helps us to enjoy sex." was worth the price of admission.

I liked the crystal clear, totally positive tone of Fat Chicks Rule! I would definitely give it to a young woman struggling with body image issues, but I hope it finds its way into the hands of many, many women of all ages.

Our Obsessions, Ourselves

October 16-25, 1975

Busman's Honeymoon, Dorothy L. Sayers
(Read once more with pleasure)

Constant Reader, Dorothy Parker, New Yorker pieces 1927-33)

Mademoiselle Chanel, Pierre Galante: translated by Eileen Geist & Jessie Wood
Skimmed, I vaguely remember good photographs

Extreme Remedies, John Hejinian

Dolphins, Jacques Cousteau & Phillippe Diate

Homeward and Beyond, Poul Anderson

Lovecraft, Sprague de Campe

The Tomb and Other Tales of Horror, H.P. Lovecraft


Oct 16-25, 2005

I'm Not the New Me, a Memoir, Wendy McClure

A Fat Girl's Guide to Life, Wendy Shanker

Before I picked theses books up, I had Wendy McClure and Wendy Shanker mixed up. Well, actually I thought they were the same person, and at first I was confused that Shanker's website http://www.wendyshanker.com/
didn't have McClure's hilarious satire on Weight Watchers cards, which you can read at http://www.candyboots.com/ .

I gotta tell ya--reading the books together cleared that up in a hurry!

Wendy McClure writes for Television without Pity. She seems to be about 30.

Wendy Shanker has done stand up comedy on television as well as articles for many women's magazines. She seems perhaps in her mid-30s. Five years can make a difference in that decade of life! In my own defense against ditziness for getting the two confused, I'll say that the two books came out at the same time and were often reviewed together.


I'm Not the New Me, a Memoir, Wendy McClure

I started with this book because I had found her satire on the 1970s Weight Watchers cards so funny. Indeed at the end of the book, in the acknowledgements, she states: "Thank you, Weight Watchers, International, for influencing me in a way that certainly neither of us ever expected. And for not, you know, suing me." I am Not the New Me, p. 308.

Why should they sue her? Her book is a WW marketer's wet dream. (Hereafter I'm going to refer to it as "WW" because I don't care to waste keystrokes on them.)

Oh, McClure makes fun of 1970s WW recipe cards, but I'm not surprised that a publisher pounced on this one like a cat on a hot tinned mackerel.

Let's review" She's 30ish, writes for a popular-with-plugged-in-youth website, she's got her own "dieting progress" website with all kind of quirky, funny scenes from the life, and she's essentially endorsing female bonding through a venerable diet organization with a major marketing budget and a vested interest in attracting younger consumers…. Hmmm…. That's the kind of math publishers like to do.

McClure's charm notwithstanding, I had to stop reading for awhile. I felt a mixture of anger, sadness and queasiness. The writing may be appealing or amusing but the actual effect is saddening.

It's one thing when McClure free-associates over the lame, puke-in-Technicolor '70s recipe cards. I laughed. You can read it free at the candyboots.com site referenced above.

But when I realized that I had paid money for a book that was essentially a love affair with a national diet plan, I had to put the book down. I got nauseous for real.

Fortunately, I picked up--

Review of A Fat Girl’s Guide to Life by Wendy Shanker

Shanker's journalistic background and in-your-face feminist attitude cleared out some cobwebs immediately.

Plenty of research suggests that obesity—at least as it's classically defined—is not nearly the death sentence that most media outlets and weight-loss companies would have you believe. Half of have the battle is won when you start reading between the lines. You have to look for alternative opinions because they don't get a lot of publicity. NO ONE MAKES MONEY FROM TELLING YOU YOU'RE FINE THE WAY YOU ARE. The Fat Girl's Guide to Life, p. 113 [full caps from LM.]


Okay just one more quote, the nausea receding…feeling better now:

….MAJOR WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAMS WOULD NOT BE SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS MODELS IF THEY HELPED YOU LOSE WEIGHT AND MAINTAIN THAT LOSS. The Fat Girl's Guide to Life, p. 50 [full caps in original].

Shanker gets a bit bossy in her prescriptions for a healthy life as a "Fat Girl" (as opposed to a cringing lower case "fat girl"). But there are so many people trying to tell us what to do and eat and think, it's refreshing to find a bossy young woman telling us, "Think for yourself, goddamn it."

Eventually I did go back and finish I Am Not the New Me. McClure is a skillful and sensitive writer. I suppose what haunted me the most—possibly because I'm around the same age as McClure's mother—is the way that both mother and daughter justify the mother's TWO stomach stapling operations, and then blame the mother for regaining all the weight after each. McClure states:

My mom was getting fat again. The surgeries could only do so much; unlike the kinds of gastric surgeries that came later, there was no intestinal bypass….and it was possible to stretch the stomach over time. I Am Not the New Me, p. 144.

First of all this is classical blaming the victim. Second, gastric surgeons change techniques often—essentially experimenting on their paying clients. This also allows them to say, "Oh, those old operations were flawed." There is no proof whatsoever that the current crop of operations will have any different regain rates than the old. Weight loss surgery of any kind is essentially creates surgically enforced bulimia and anorexia--when they talk among themselves, bariatric surgeons admit as much. The effect is the same with both older and newer operations, and it does not make a naturally thin person out of a fat person.

McClure's mother sounds like a very gentle, long-suffering person, and I hated so much to see her blamed for regaining weight, or for eating ice cream because it was all she could keep down without vomiting. McClure asks her mother (who is a therapist) if she felt okay about having two gastric surgeries and then regaining all the weight each time. Her mother essentially tells her--

...she says she wished she hadn't, of course. She says it was goodjust to do it. There was a time she'd convinced herself that she was just too far gone, and the fact that her body had this potential to change, that despite everything it could follow the logic of science, that therefore she was still a part of the world, part of everything. I'm Not the New Me, p. 297

Sigh.

McClure certainly took risks, first in web journaling openly on the internet about intensely personal life, and now in exposing the same things in book form. Her honesty is engaging, but the way that she clings to weighing herself as a barometer of self-worth drives me totally up the wall.

Mainly I felt like handing McClure a copy of A Fat Girl's Guide to Life.

As the Feng Shui-s

The "Re" line doesn't seem to have much to do with the books I read--or maybe it does.

I liked the way it sounded saying it out loud. [Ya know,"As the feng shways----never mind.]Written down—not so much!

Come to think of it, maybe it does have something to do with the books I read this past week. Both of which were by women who garner laughter when they read their pieces out loud, and who couldn't get a laugh out of me reading their books. I wanted to laugh...but no. As for what I was reading in 1975--mostly more serious, but not all!

October 10-18, 1975

The First Circle, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (hardly begun--never finished)

This may have been the point at which I realized I'm never in this life going to finish any of those long Solzhenitzyn books. I did read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but that was short.


Behind the Mask, Louisa May Alcott
American Gothic, Robert Bloch


Oct 10-18, 2005

Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs, Cheryl Peck

I admire Cheryl Peck's positive view about her own body and lifestyle enough that I feel bad about not laughing at anything in this book. Many readers found it hilarious. I also understand the author reads the pieces in various gatherings to appreciative audiences. I am always mystified when people laugh at things I read out loud--there definitely is a "presence factor" that can work in favor of a reader. Maybe Peck's personal magnetism when reading would lend these pieces something that I did not find on the plain black-and-white pages.

I wanted to enjoy this book because the author is a large, in-charge, middle-aged lesbian from Michigan. Those are all things I want to like. I applaud the attitude and I did enjoy some of the pieces, like her touching reminiscence of how her grandmother made all their dresses when she and her sisters were growing up. But I grew distinctly irritated at her sisters, whom she identified with nicknames like Wee One, UnWee—I can't go on. The nicknames in the book were gratuitously precious, and really annoying to me.

Maybe there is no easily discernable "why" one person finds something hilarious and another does not. Here's a sample from the title piece, just in case you may like it:

If you took a poll of fat girls, you would knock on a lot of unfriendly doors before you would find the jolly, fun-loving sport who would answer, "Heck, yes, I love to sit down in a lawn chair that breaks, dumps me on my ass in front of all my friends and leaves me to wonder, how am I ever going to get back up?" Kristin would not be one of those women.
Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs, p. 156

What took the humor right out of the title essay, and irked the hell out of me was how all Kristin's friends unmercifully teased her about this episode. Not amusing to me, and not the sort of friendship I find appealing.


Big Girl's Guide to Life, Bunkie Lynn

A forty-something, self-described Big Girl with attitude, Bunkie Lynn was raised in the American South, now living in Nashville, Tennessee. I have heard from many Southern women that "fat" is a particularly rude and obscene word to say right out there in front of everyone, so saying "Big Girl" makes sense.

The humor is heavy on sarcasm, and evidently she's a successful speaker who entertains her audience in person. Any amusement I might have taken from the author's strategies was heavily diluted by her underlying assumption that she (and every Big Girl by extension) really SHOULD diet, and dieting would "solve" the weight problem—if it wasn't such a major pain in the ass. She just won't and she's now accepted that.

Myself if something has NEVER worked for me, I am no longer so quick to blame myself, and begin to wonder whether that strategy wasn't flawed. But Bunkie has never come to this conclusion, and in the course of blaming herself and taking blame from others in her life, she spends a lot of time (and unforgivable "Big Girl" jokes, aka fat jokes) outlining the supposed binges that Big Girl indulge in, and anyone who tries to stop them should expect to be flattened by an enraged Big Girl. Sigh.

The incorrigible appetites of fat women are a myth, and I just don't find it funny. Your mileage may vary. Here's a sample:

…When it comes to the pain in my load-bearing joints, I have two choices: I could lose weight, which according to my orthopedist would reduce the stress on those puppies at a 4:1 ratio (but the process would cause me to become an axe murderer); or I can maintain my current weight and take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) as the good Lord intended, with an occasional pain pill thrown in for good measure.

Being the intelligent Big Girl that I am, I realize my limitations. If I succumbed to a weight loss program, I'm starin' down 15-25 in the slammer for chopping up everyone around me who is eating foods on my forbidden list. A much wiser choice is to keep those NSAIDs refilled and memorize my orthopedist's phone number. Don't you agree? Of course you do. The Big Girl's Guide to Life, p. 84

Bunkie Lynn doesn't mention, nor does her orthopedist seem aware that "losing weight to reduce stress" in 98% of the attempts, results in regaining—often more weight than was originally lost. How good is that for the joints, eh? Anyway, I'm glad she's decided to maintain the weight she has, rather than losing some that might come back with reinforcements! If the orthopedist is doing such a good job, hasn't he ever heard of physical therapy, or does he just prefer to blame the patient?

Going all over the map without leaving home

October 4-9, 1975

Burr, Gore Vidal
(Didn't finish) I like his short essays, but somehow his full-length novels never have held my interest.

October 4-9, 2005

Where Fat Girls Haven't Gone, Staci Backauskas,
I'm always on the look out for fiction with plus-sized protagonists. In this book, heroine, Giletta Montrose, a truly big beautiful actress with attitude takes on reality TV. The title refers to the name of the series wherein she gamely attempts various stunts that "fat girls never do" such as: kayaking in the Hudson River, parachuting from an airplane, dancing in a music video, and competing in a beauty pageant where all the other entrants are standard-beauty-contest-zero-sized.

The reality show format gives the book a "what next?" quality as Giletta constantly skates on the edge of humiliation and physical injury (in one scene on real ice skates!) She always manages to pull it off and look fabulous, with more than a little help from "gal Friday" production assistant, would-be screen writer Madison, who alternates narrating chapters. A full review of this book and fat fiction in general coming in a week or so to my web site.


Fat. The Anthropology of an Obsession, Don Kulick & Anne Meneley, Ed.

Fascinating series of essays by anthropologists about the wildly diverse meanings of fat in different cultures. The Peruvian fat-sucking vampire legend described on the back cover sounds like tabloid fare, until you read Mary Weismantel's essay, White, where she describes the deep sorrow expressed in these Andean folk legends. The vampire is a white predator--earlier versions had him riding a horse, now it's mirrored sunglasses and SUVs. He kidnaps and drains native people of the fat that keeps them alive, discarding their damaged bodies so he can grow wealthy from the last drops of their life force. The legend arises from a population living on the brink of extreme hunger on a daily basis. It doesn't take an anthropologist to see how these stories express the feeling of their very bodies being stolen to make others wealthy.

This book is a banquet of wildly diverse, entertaining, and profound explorations of the meaning of fat and body size in many cultures.

One such essay, Anne Meneley's Oil , explores the significance of extra virgin (and other!) olive oils in Tuscany. This article has changed my life! Never again will I touch that "light" olive oil-- evidently it's the dregs sold to the fat-fearing American market as "lite". Aiiiii!

Rainbows, crystals and enlightened crickets

September 26-October 4, 1975

Rainbow: The stormy life of Judy Garland, Christopher Finch
An excellent biography of Garland--one of the few books I bought to read over again.

The Crystal World, J.G. Ballard
Very tedious, a cross between Camus and Edgar Rice Burroughs with a dash of Conrad for atmosphere finally finished on Oct after 3 days. I do remember that this book was about everyone, everything turning into crystals. Not exactly fast moving.


September 26 to October 4, 2005

Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism, Jacqueline Ilyse Stone
This is a scholarly book I might not have attempted it, if it hadn’t been written by a very close friend. She suggested that, as a Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist, I might find it easier to start with Chapter 6, which contains the biography of Nichiren. So I read the first chapter and then the sixth, and found it very rewarding. I’m not enough of a serious scholar to read it straight through. It may take me awhile to finish the rest because I have to let it sink in as I read!

By the way, the original enlightenment idea, essentially, is “. . . the proposition that all beings are enlightened inherently. Not only human beings, but ants and crickets, mountains and rivers, grasses and trees are all innately Buddha.” Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism, p. 1.

Colette in occupied Paris, Jennifer Weiner in Shoes and taboos

From September 22 to 25, 1975, I read:

Looking Backward, Colette

I remember reading many of Colette’s books, and even where I was living and where I sat or lay when I read them--many of my small apartments had no chairs, so I frequently read in bed. But specifics on this book eluded me. So I looked it up on the net and found a 1975 New York Times review by Anatole Broyard. Vaguely, I remember that this was about her life in Paris during the Nazi occupation, but I hadn’t remembered that she purposely went there when she could have stayed in a small village. God, I love the Internet (also Colette)!

Who could describe better than Colette, I thought, the almost dreamlike character of life in Paris during the Occupation? Safely lodged in a small village in central France, she had returned to Paris impulsively, unwilling to miss the tragicomedy, the cramped heroism, of keeping body and soul together under such conditions. A connoisseur of gestures, she was ideally equipped to appreciate the strategies of improvisation, the stubborn Gallic shrugs of perseverance. Already quite old and partly lamed by arthritis, she sat in her window, one of France's greatest voyeurs, and reviewed the long-running drama of survival.

How to keep warm? she asks in "Looking Backwards." "An old armchair is sure to burn slowly and steadily. I used to know a Breton set of shelves which would go up very well in smoke ... the skeletons of crates, the handles of broken brooms, the empty case that once held a dozen bottles of champagne ... let's screw up rolls of newspaper with an iron wire, which will burn almost without flaring up." A friend is traveling to Boulogne to buy animal sculptures to burn, "a stag and a Newfoundland dog, both in wood, life-size. A Newfoundland had a hare in his mouth and a thick tree trunk beside him -- even a branch of flowing hawthorn ... from Anatole Broyard’s 1975 NYT review of Colette’s Looking Backwards.


From September 22 to 25, 2005, I read:

In Her Shoes, Jennifer Weiner

I contemplated reviewing this for my web page where I consider books that touch on size acceptance, but I decided not to. The interview with Jennifer Weiner that was included at the back of the paperback has a section that illuminates why I didn’t want to review the book. Actually I agree with Weiner on most points, but I put in bold the section that pointed to why I didn’t want to write an entire essay on her book, and explained below:

Q: In both of your novels [Good in Bed and In Her Shoes], the idea of body image is a central theme. Do you think this concept is a constraint that we place on ourselves, a restraint that society places on women, or a combination of the two?

A: Um, all of the above? I think it starts out as being a societal mandate—a kind of signpost outside of life’s roller coaster, reading “You Must Be Less Than This Fat Or Nobody Will Ever Love You”—and it’s something that women internalize, and carry with them in different ways. One of the things I was trying to do with this book was to show both sides of the coin, and the different ways that buying the beauty myth can harm you. Rose, for example, who’s a normal size and healthy, gets the message that her body is something to be ignored and concealed, swathed in sweatpants and unfashionable-length skirts, until she learns that however it appears, her body is first and foremost, something to use—to get her around, to ride a bike, to walk a dog, to hold the people she loves. And then there’s Maggie, who’s got this ready-for-its-closeup body (which, as we see, requires a tremendous investment in terms of effort and time), but it doesn’t bring her all the happiness that the plastic surgeons and diet merchants promise. It gets her scads of attention—good and bad—and it gets her judged, the same way Rose’s body earns her judgments. I hope someday the idea of “you are how you look” will change. . . But I worry that there’s so much money to be made off of convincing women that they’re inadequate, too big, too little, or otherwise completely unacceptable that change is going to be painfully slow.
From A Conversation with Jennifer Weiner, p. 534-35, Pocket Book paperback edition of In Her Shoes.

As I said, I totally agree with that last bit, and I realize that every woman in America today has to live with constant pressure to feel bad about herself—and then go buy something to make her feel better.

But Weiner has chosen to tell the story of a “normal size” sister, whom our twisted culture beats up on as “fat,” with her body-obsessed, yet dyslexic sister, who manipulates others with her body and is trashed by those around her as “stupid.” She's spanned the whole gamut of body oppression from A to B (to paraphrase Dorothy Parker's review of Katherine Hepburn).

I think Weiner’s work is size positive, but intentionally avoids scaring people away by using a character who actually is fat--as opposed to one who is merely healthy but considered as fat in our twisted view. I am guessing that this was a conscious decision on Weiner's part and it can be defended from the point of view of reaching a larger audience (um, larger in the sense of more readers, not larger readers). It certainly has worked, in that the paperback I bought was a mass market edition accompanying a motion picture release.

A positive fat character, a meditation instructor, appears in Weiner’s Good in Bed. The heroine, Canny, calls her a good “role model” but almost immediately upon sitting down to meditate, she has an insight that causes her to run away. One could argue that it's only coincidence that she talks to a fat lady and leaves town immediately. But from where I sit, it looked as if she needed to distance herself from the very idea of this woman’s fatness—be she positive or negative.

As a novelist, I know it’s damn hard to bring the reader into the head of a humanized fat character—as opposed to a stereotype of one sort or another.

Worse yet, and it is worse, I truly believe that an actual fat character used in a positive way is a taboo in fiction nowadays. And it’s not one of those fun-to-break taboos like cannibalism and necrophilia that bring in the big bucks.

My writer’s brain is already meditating on that State of the “F” Word essay. . . I’ll take my keyboard and soap box in the other room and let you know when it’s done and up on the web page. . .

A spy by any other name & talking the writer's block blues

September 18-21, 1975 I read:

Spy/Counterspy: The Autobiography of Dusko Popov

The name's Popov, Dusko Popov....
Some names cry out to be fictionalized.

Worse yet, the name of this book is confusing to Mad Magazine readers. When I looked at this 30 years later I wondered if it was a book of cartoons. Fortunately, the Internet informs us that "Popov was one of the most important double agents the British had during World War Two and was rumored to be Ian Fleming's model for James Bond. Known to the British as 'Tricycle' and to the Germans as 'Ivan’” It's vaguely coming back to me.


September 18-21, 2005 I read:

Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon

Sometimes I get in the mood to read about writing—usually not a sign of productivity! Chabon has an interesting insight--

…about the nature of he midnight disease, which started as a simple feeling of disconnection from other people, an inability to “fit in” by no means unique to writers, a sense of envy and of unbridgeable distance like that felt by someone tossing on a restless pillow in a world full of sleepers. Very quickly, though, what happened with the midnight disease was that you began actually to crave this feeling of apartness, to cultivate and even flourish within it. You pushed yourself farther and farther and farther apart until one black day you woke to discover that you yourself had become the chief object of your own hostile gaze. Wonder Boys, p. 76

Hmmm, creative writing as a form of substance abuse. Fortunately the navel-gazing insights in the book are interspersed with road trips, minor thefts, low-life characters and genuine humor. It may seem hard to imagine being captivated by the story of a professor with writer’s block and practically no conscience, suffering through a college literary festival. But the Hunter S. Thompson style field trips provide enough action to make the book hard to put down.

A-bombs, exorcism and lost books re-found

September 12-17, 1975 I read:

Lawrence and Oppenheimer, Nuel Pharr Davis
Interesting book about the fathers of the atomic bomb.

The Devil’s Bride, Exorcism: Past and Present, Martin Ebon
I looked this up online and discovered that there is now a racy Regency romance novel with the same title! Um, just the “devil’s bride” part, not the part about “exorcism past and present”--I guess THAT would be a work about divorce law.

The Youth Doctors, Patrick M. McGrady, Jr. (skimmed. A very tedious book.)


September 12-17, 2005

Eleven On Top, Janet Evanovich
Recent Evanovich books have not made me laugh as much as this one, definitely a fun read.

Fly Away Home, Marge Piercy
I had read this in the mid-80s. The book about a woman finding herself in mid-life resonated with me. But for some reason I didn’t connect Piercy the novelist with Piercy the poet, whose work I also read.

On re-reading, I was startled to see how many small, peripheral things in this book influenced me. I recently even wrote a "women's novel" (romantic comedy--title: The Happily Ever After Diet, a Guide for the Dysfunctional Bride, with size acceptance highlights) with a heroine named Daria. My Daria is, however, very different from Piercy's, and I still haven't found a publisher for her story, alas! Oddly, when I mentioned Fly Away Home to a friend who has read everything she could find by Piercy it turned out this was one she hadn’t read. I had to have another reading of it before I passed it along! It was as good as I had remembered.


Sleeping with Cats, Marge Piercy
Autobiography with cat appreciation. It always interests me the degree to which authors are or are not sociable. Aside from her cats, Piercy has led a life with an amazing about of major human social interaction--friendly, romantic, political... I got exhausted just reading about it! Some of the cat stories were sad, but stories from her life were interesting enough to keep me reading past midnight.

Many flavors of escape, humor and a cry for self-help

In 1975, having finally graduated (over the summer) from San Francisco State, I started a full-time word processing job at a bankers' association. This cut severely into my reading time. If I started to read something that didn’t offer the kind of escape I needed, I didn’t bother to finish it.

September 3-11, 1975 I read--

Half Lives, Erica Jong

I'm Done Crying, Louanne Ferris as told to Beth Day

Hanging by a Thread, Joan Kahn, ed.

The Best from Orbit, Damon Knight, ed (SF anthology)

The Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov in mystery writer mode

This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald (didn’t finish)

Forbidden Colors, Yukio Mishima (couldn’t endure it—skimmed it)


By contrast in 2005, my need for escape is less intense, writing fulfills some of it. Also, for various reasons, my books come from other places than the public library, so I can't be quite as impulsive. The desire for escape has morphed into a quest for laughter and self-improvement, which come in many flavors.

September 3-11, 2005 I read:

Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris
For the longest time I had David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs mixed up. When I opened up the mailer with the copy of Holidays on Ice, I wondered if I had accidentally bought two copies of the Burroughs book, Dry. Both covers are white with gray details and sinister moods. Holiday has a white cover with a black and white photo of a clear liquid in a whiskey glass, with black snowflakes showing up against the ice cubes. Then I realized that Dry has a white cover with blurred gray letters, no graphic. Whew! Ten dollar error avoided and I now no longer confuse Sedaris and Burroughs.

Sedaris’s small book (134 pages) provided several laughs in the first essay--"The Santaland Diaries," which recounted the author's adventures as an elf in Macy's Santaland. The other three essays left me cold as the ice cubes on the cover. I just don’t know, and thus can’t laugh at, rarified suburbanites who use the holidays as markers on a social climbing expedition. On the other hand now I understand why Sedaris is so frequently published by The New Yorker.

This reminded me how fragile, quirky and culturally nurtured humor is. Like a delicate flower, it blooms in one climate and refuses to stick its head out of the ground in another.


What to Say When You Talk to Yourself, Shad Helmstetter, Ph.D.
My friend and fellow novelist Jaqueline Girdner entitled one of her Marin County murder
mysteries, A Cry for Self-Help. Helmstetter would be comfortable talking to the New Age suspects in that book.

Is there a 12-step group for those of us addicted to self-help books? I don't know if I'm ready to give up the habit though, because some of these books have proved incredibly useful. I learned to stop at least 90% of my negative self-talk on body issues with some of these simple techniques from Marcia Hutchinson’s Transforming Body Image, and similar body-positive works.

I expected What to Say, etc. to be about self-esteem, but maybe a little more generic. Not exactly. It turns out to have a bit of Napoleon Hill type Think and Grow Rich flavor to it.

The first part of the book is great, about keeping affirmations simple. There’s a cute story about his sitting down in the middle of three empty seats in a crowded airport, initiating both sides of a loud discussion with himself, managing to get three seats to himself to engage in his audible self-talk.

Unfortunately, Helmstetter seemed to go totally bonkers in the last part of the book. It’s like his affirmations become cumbersome contracts covering every possible eventuality. Throw one of those at it, and I think my subconscious mind would react in a similar way to my conscious mind—hey, leave me alone and stop telling me every little thing to think. The first part, where his suggestions are simple, seemed possibly useful.

Object lesson for me on finishing books before commenting...plus warning label

I regret that I didn’t quite finish reading Augusten Burroughs’ Dry when I wrote yesterday’s entry. I hadn’t reached the two pages wherein he details his disgust at Sally Struthers’ fatness, and envisions her in vicious detail—collecting donations for her Feed the Children charity and using them to buy and messily consume junk food. I guess there is supposed to be a joke swimming somewhere in that vitriol.

I totally get that Burroughs’ fat hatred is fat phobia from a self-confessedly appearance-obsessed gay man of a certain age. Hey, I read a LOT of stuff by authors who meet that description. But not if they gratuitously spit venom on fat women, life's too short to pay people to do that.

I write this in irritation with myself: (A) for not finishing the book before I endorsed it, and (B) for not totally “getting” the fat phobia until nearly 24 hours after I did finish the book. We live in such a sea of body hatred messages, that sometimes I get numb to them.

Now about the cats. I almost called this entry “fat hatred and cat hatred in Burroughs” but I think it’s more like fat phobia and cat victimization….

I long ago decided that no book, no matter how well-written is worth the piece of my life it would take to read it, if it contains fat hatred and/or cruelty to animals. I was disturbed by the crazed adolescent starving her cat to death in Running with Scissors. But yesterday I read on a blog that there is discussion of a cat-poisoning substance in Burroughs’ most recent book, which is labeled fiction--no doubt with an eye to not being sued, as he's currently being taken to court by relatives of the crazy doctor portrayed in Running with Scissors. The blogger mildly suggests that crazy people who might read such a book don’t need more information to facilitate animal abuse. I agree.

charm, laughter, and thoughtful things

August 28-31, 1975, I read:

Mother Goddam: The Story Of The Career Of Bette Davis, Whitney Stine

This book is waaaay out of print now. My memory of the joke Bette Davis made about the title came from the notorious 1926 play, The Shanghai Gesture. She remarked that when Hollywood made the picture, the owner of a notorious Shanghai brothel, Mother Goddam, would have to be called “Mother Gosh Darn.” In the von Sternberg film the part was re-christened Mother Gin Sling, so she wasn’t far wrong (though she didn’t play the part).

Born with the Dead, Robert Silverberg

Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Jokes, Isaac Asimov, Ed.

The Roots of Coincidence, Arthur Koestler
--I noted "such a small book and I couldn't finish it even though I LIKED it." Who knows, one day I might finish this!

The Embedding, Ian Watson


August 28-31, 2005, I read three books that would seem to have not so much in common, but in fact all three are sustained primarily by the author’s charm:

In the Company of Cheerful Women, Alexander McCall Smith

This is a mystery that follows none of the conventions of a murder mystery. There is no murder, and the rather mildly mysterious crime that is presented is never solidly resolved. Yet, the book is worth reading for the author’s evocation of Botswana and the further developments in the lives of the Precious Ramotswe and her associates at the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, characters we’ve come to care about in previous books. I also need to mention how beautiful these hardcover books are in every detail, notably the bold, almost Kente cloth-style African designs on the end papers (orange in this case) that compliment the covers.

Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs

Burroughs’ memoir of a bizarrely dysfunctional childhood, is a story of survival very different from McCall Smith’s gentle meditation. But Burroughs has his own kind of charm and humor, and it was sufficient to keep me reading his tale of an upbringing that makes Christina Crawford’s Mommy Dearest sound like Little Women. In Dry (see below) Burroughs sums up his childhood when he explains it to a potential boyfriend:

He was surprised to learn that my Southern parents divorced when I was young and that my mother gave me away to her psychiatrist when I was twelve and that I lived with crazy people in the doctor’s home and never went to school and had a relationship with the pedophile who lived in the barn behind the house.

In a nutshell (to coin a phrase) this is the subject matter of Running with Scissors. To pull laughter out of such raw pain a major accomplishment. (E.g., when Burroughs at 13 wants to quit school, his doctor and now legal guardian, suggests a suicide attempt and proceeds to supply both liquor and pills, and walk the child through it, supervising his hospitalization and then writing a letter to the school so that Burroughs can be officially excused due to mental fragility.)

There is a gross-out, “what-atrocity-will-happen-next?” quality to the book and I cringed as often as I laughed—a few episodes I skipped, and a few I wish I had skipped. My fellow cat-lovers may want to either avoid the book or skip the section where one of the crazed daughters decides her cat is sick and proceeds to starve it to death with no intervention from any family member.

But I was interested enough to read Burroughs’ next book Dry. Anyone who can make me laugh several times in the course of a book is worth a return engagement.

Dry, Augusten Burroughs

This is the story of Burroughs’ adventures in rehab. He brings us up to the point at which the story begins by saying.

When I finally escaped [from a life of squalor, pedophiles, no school and free pills], I presented myself to advertising agencies as a self-educated, slightly eccentric youth, filled with passion, bursting with ideas. I left out the fact that I didn’t know how to spell or that I had been giving blow jobs since I was thirteen.

Although successful at 24, his monumental alcohol problem comes to the attention of his employers, who intervene and send him to rehab. In a way it’s a familiar story, and it reminds me of Marian Keyes’ Rachel’s Holiday. Not as much wild laughter—the deep wounds sustained in childhood are beginning to be dealt with. But, Burroughs is not only brilliantly witty, but also thoughtful, warm and decent.