And Then The Child Gets Raped

So Book Club was last night. We read a new title, something published this year by a young author who was getting rave reviews by book reviewers and, according to the dust jacket, other well-known authors who universally praise the author's talent and skill.

The writing was dazzling, wondrous and bewitching. The turns of phrase and wordplay are vivid and exuberant. These are words I'm picking out from the dust jacket. The prose made you appreciate "good writing" in the way that you want to clap when you read a well-crafted Talk of the Town piece. And the author was smart to put all this wonderful wordplay and astute description in the words of a 13-year-old protagonist because the only thing people want more than reading about precocious 13-year-olds is reading about precocious 13-year-olds in the first person. Everything about the book is perfect.

But the tone seems "current" in a way that is disturbing. These days, there doesn't seems to be that much difference between precocious, well-spoken teens doing whatever it is that teenagers do (I don't know, sit around and play with their hair or something?) and pretentious, overeducated adults pursuing the same things they were interested in as adolescents (again, whatever that might be). And maybe the author intended this, but I don't know. Which is to say, the twee tone grated after a while, and while it generally fit the setting, it wasn't a world I wanted to linger in.

The un-wide gap between precocious adolescents and pretentious twenty-, thirty- and forty-somethings sets up a situation where you can read a book and think that it could just as easily be a young adult novel. The Nora Roberts book we read was interesting if only because if you took out some gratuitous cursing and what little sex there was — and lowered the characters age by about ten years — it could have been a teen book; their lives were about as meaningful. In the same way, I kept getting distracted by the twee quality of this particular book, and were it not for the author's biographical badges of honor, I might have thought it was a young adult book.

And then the 13-year-old protagonist gets raped. Nothing spoils delightfully twee writing like the main character getting raped. And not just raped, but raped by a vagrant wearing a bird suit.

Um . . . gross?

On the one hand, it's a funny little think piece to write a novel that is wondrous and ponderous and full of beautifully crafted sentences and quirky characters and then destroy the vibe with child rape. Ha ha! How unexpected! On the other hand, it's like, Dude, did you really have to have your characters rape children?

Book Club disagreed in part about the intention behind the tone. Some felt there was an irony going on that was depressing — the disconnect between the real world and fantasy world. But others of us just saw a disconnect: Too much of the writing was too cutesy too much of the time to make it seem really bleak. The fictional satirical world seemed lifeless through the thick morass of sarcasm and snark — much in the same way George Saunders sucks the life out of his stories in his In Persuasion Nation by satirizing popular culture to death. Alliteration and quirk and astute observations about working class Americana make you not care about the characters and actually work to make you actively dislike the author's point of view. So you think everyone's dumb? Well, fuck you — but more importantly, it makes me not give a shit about the world you're creating, to the point where I'm counting how many pages I have until the end. Anyway, which is to also say, this book defaulted to that other really boring "current" trend of satirizing culture without participating in it. At times it reminded me of what would happen if George Saunders wrote an episode of Gilmore Girls — and then had the children get raped.

But maybe it's just me and my expectations about how or how not child rape is an acceptable plot development. But I think it's fair to say that those of us who got that far into the book were a little surprised about what transpired.

Then again, the author certainly set a high bar for herself to exceed. I don't know what's next for her but I wouldn't mind a novel in which, say, more than one main character gets raped. Perhaps she could set it in Brooklyn, with the requisite quirky characters, florid writing and perhaps even a torture scene. That would be unexpected for sure.

And I'm Nobody's Motherfucking Hen!

Last weekend there was what seemed to be a big Nora Roberts movie marathon happening on the Lifetime network. I wouldn't have paid much attention to it but our book club just read Nora Roberts' Savor the Moment, which is book three of her "The Bride Quartet" series.

Book Club doesn't usually veer toward such overtly mass-market material, though we have read some non-traditional choices in the past: a Mary Morrison "urban fiction" pick was eye opening in its depiction of anal cleanliness and Tim LaHaye/Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind helped get us up-to-speed on how the rapture is going to happen. Everyone enjoyed reading those two books, even if we all did so in a sort of anthropological way.

Then there's Nora Roberts.

The theme of this month's picks — whoever is picking comes armed with three choices that the club decides on — was shit that Lori's aunts read. One of Lori's aunts loves Nora Roberts. A majority of us wanted to see what Nora Roberts was about. We ended up reading Nora Roberts.

I'm always up for an anthropological Book Club pick because I imagine that I'm doubling up on my personal edification. With Mary Morrison, I wanted to know what exactly all those folks on the subway were reading. With Left Behind I figured it was finally time to wrap my mind around Kirk Cameron's worldview. So Nora Roberts — same deal, you know?

The thing with really popular titles is that I guess I assume that they're fun to read. Whether it's salacious sexually or salacious Armageddonly, I just took for granted that some books were "page turners." Not that all books' pages shouldn't be easily turned, but some pieces of writing are slogs, you know?

Anyway, I sort of assumed this Nora Roberts book would be filled with gossip and sex and maybe even intrigue — I assumed I'd be above it all and say something along the lines of, "Oh, well, of course it was trashy, but I'm a guy who doesn't mind sorting the recycling, so of course I appreciate it on some level," etc., etc.

And then I'm reading it, and I'm like, "Dude, where's the sex?" and, "Dude, where's the conflict?" and, "Dude, why do I feel so fatigued while I'm reading this, because this beautiful mass-market mega-popular tour de force is just kind of . . . well, bad?"

This is not to say that The Bride Quartet series isn't an inspired idea. It revolves around four best friends who start a wedding company — because nothing is more exciting to romance readers than weddings, right? This particular business is a full-service wedding factory and each lady has a special skill, whether it's planning, flowers, photography or cakes. They use those headphone/microphone thingys and use abbreviations like "MOB," "BM" and "SMOG" — that's "mother of the bride," "best man" and "stepmother of the groom" (don't worry, I had to ask, too). It seemed so superficially accurate it was hard not get wrapped up in their world.

The four friends also live on a big estate in Fairfield County. The "tribe" — that's what they call themselves — eats lots of wedding cake and drinks a bunch of white wine. All consequence-free. Total mass-market gold, lady reader wank fantasy catnip.

So yeah, it's an inspired concept: Weddings! Besties! Connecticut! Think a cross between Sex and the City and The Baby-sitters Club. You could make years of Lifetime movies from this stuff.

Laurel McBane, the cake maker, is the focus of this book. I guess part of my problem with the book was that Laurel McBane is so unlikeable as a character. She's this joyless, single-minded, type-A pastry chef who even though she doesn't work in a bakery still gets up at four a.m. to make stuff.

Another part of my problem with the book probably stems the lack of sex. I don't mean that I need a Harlequin-level of sex — whatever that level is, I don't know, maybe every ten or fifteen pages or so? — but I just assumed romance novels had more of this.

The three sex scenes in Savor the Moment are dispensed of quickly and efficiently — sort of half a paragraph each. Almost like they're placeholders for longer, steamier scenes.

The sex in Savor the Moment is somewhat like the road trip scene where the tribe sets out for their Hamptons beach house. The drive — 2 1/2 hours without traffic from Greenwich to Southampton — is boiled down to "Everything changed when they cut east of New York and started across the skinny island. She lowered the window, leaned out. 'I think I can smell the water. Sort of.'" And suddenly they magically appear in the driveway.

Dude, have you ever driven from Fairfield County out to Long Island on a summer weekend? It sucks.

A world of besties who never have to bother with beach traffic. Add that to the fantasy.

Perhaps traffic is not the point. Perhaps the sex isn't even the point. The other part of the fantasy I can discern is that all of the men they interact with are really sweet! Perfect, in fact! Gentlemanly, too! Always — always — taking it slow! The only time one yells is when naughty old Laurel McBane is trying to ramp up the sexual tension on page 49:

"What the hell's wrong with me? I'll tell you what the hell's wrong with me." She planted a hand on his chest to push him back a step. "You're irritating and overbearing and self-righteous and patronizing."

"Whoa. All this because I wanted to pay you for a cake I asked you to make? It's your business, for Christ's sake. You make cakes, people pay you."

"One minute you're fussing — and yes, the word is fussing — because I'm not eating the kind of dinner you approve of, and the next you're pulling out your wallet like I'm the hired help."

"That's not what — Goddamn it, Laurel."

"How can anybody keep up?" She threw her arms in the air. "Big brother, legal advisor, business associate, motherfucking hen. Why don't you just pick one?"

"Because more than one applies." He didn't shout as she did, but his tone boiled just as hot. "And I'm nobody's motherfucking hen."

Romantic hijinks ensue: "And she fixed her mouth to his in a hot, sizzling, frustrated kiss, one that gave her heart a jolt even as her mind purred: I knew it!"

So that's basically — basically — the extent of the conflict between Laurel and Del — or "Delaney Brown of the Connecticut Browns"; the next 250 pages feature the inexorable march toward (spoiler alert!) wedded bliss.

By the time they drove out to Long Island, part of me wanted Del to get on the phone from the beach and just cut loose on the ladies, "You stupid little children, I told you to take the Throgs Neck, not the Whitestone!" Something, anything, to make it slightly more edgy.

Maybe literature doesn't always have to feature conflict — but, gosh, books can be so boring without it! Without conflict there's just Fourth of July softball, working out in the gym and — once at least — tremendous morning sex. It's like listening to your officemate talk about each of her friends in very great detail. Except you've never met them because they live in another state. And they have really boring lives. And it's only 3:45 and you can't go home yet. You're left with ample time to ponder whether Nora Roberts is being sarcastic or ironic with the title.

I don't totally understand what "character development" means, but people use this term all the time and I know that you have to throw it around if you're trying to seriously critique something.

I also know that when critiquing writing people love to talk about how important it is to "show don't tell" — I don't know that I completely understood this either — until I read Savor the Moment, that is. I guess that counts for something.

Unclear? Take look at this opening sentence from chapter eight: "It was strange and interesting to go out with Del as a date rather than one of the group."

Isn't this exactly the type of sentence that editors everywhere love to circle in big knowing red ink? Like, "Don't tell me it is 'strange' and 'interesting,' show me!"

And if you do decide to tell and not show, isn't it particularly bad to default to words like "strange" and "interesting"? If you must tell, can't it be something like "Although it made her feel like Michael Jackson's publicist to admit it, Laurel McBane felt a not-entirely-unpleasant twinge in her tummy when she went with Del as her date rather than as one of the group." Or something. I don't know. But, jeez, "strange" and "interesting" must be some of the laziest of words you could choose.

I think ultimately I was struck most by how much Savor the Moment read like a first draft. The other thing about using a line like "It was strange and interesting" is that it reads like someone who has been scribbling ideas for a story. That's the kind of note someone might jot down and then expand on later or sort of fleshed out at some point. I figure that writers know to do this before they submit a draft to an editor. I assume that a writer who gave a shit would make this idea more intriguing somehow, or at least attempt to express it in a more creative way.

Then again, if you don't care about spending much time on a piece of writing, you just go with that line. You can also feel comfortable composing page after page of dialogue — just absentmindedly hitting open-quote, closed-quote, inserting words, any old words, lulling your mind with how people "sound." Dialogue seems easy to type, especially when it's impertinent dialogue — I bet you can write it while you watch TV — you don't even have to look at the computer screen . . . I imagine Nora Roberts plowed through multiple DVDs of 24 or even the American League Division Series while she wrote a bunch of the dialogue. And don't get me wrong, dialogue is fine — I'm sure it helps you imagine how the characters interact with each other — but stuff like that happens in a first draft, not a finished paperback.

Jen confirmed the hunch about Nora Roberts' writing regimen when she read the New Yorker profile about her. Apparently she just holes up with cigarettes and Cheez-Its and starts writing. And keeps writing. And then hits "send" and it's done with.

Part of me thinks this is great — just get it out there — click print and go! Why sweat details? Write and move on to something else. It's impromptu. It's expansive. It's like The Fall's discography. Nora Roberts and Mark E. Smith should get together and do business seminars.

And yet . . . couldn't Nora have spent a little more time working through the idea? Reading writing like this is just fatiguing. You get bored by impertinent details. You get antsy when you start to think that a writer is just checking the word count every ten or fifteen minutes. Writing like this is not fun to read. Writing like this makes you reconsider the notion that It's Not Important What You're Reading As Long As You're Reading. Read one of these and see if you still agree — I bet you start to think that it's better to hunker down with season four of The Wire than read. Even go see a romantic comedy — at least with that you can still appreciate that a lot of effort probably went into it.

My Mind Ain't So Open

The B-side to Magazine's "Shot By Both Sides" single was a song by Howard Devoto called "My Mind Ain't So Open". Like a lot of songs, especially early punk/new wave songs, the titles were better than the lyrics. So when Devoto writes, "My mind/It ain't so open/That anything could crawl right in," it's great. Except then he followed it with this:

Oh my lover
We are opening
Windows we see
All that we've seen

Overlooking
A vivid room
Is it such a dumb thing to do?

Huh? Are the lyrics on the internet wrong or something? What exactly is he saying?

By my count we've read four or five sci-fi/fantasy books for book club, including Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (October 2007), The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (June 2008), Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (May/June 2009), City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer (October 2009) and, if you count it in the genre of sci-fi, the sci-fi-esque Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (May 2006).

I think the stuff we've read runs the gamut in the genre — "soft" or "social" science fiction, cyberpunk, alternate history, fantasy. And I have to say — I don't totally see the appeal of it. I liked aspects of some of these books — Snow Crash, for example, seemed to correctly predict Wikipedia, yet it also included a frankly bizarre sex scene involving its 15-year-old protagonist that seemed like it crossed a line.

I am one of those people who is happy not to have to think about techno music anymore — or if I do, it's usually because it's background music at a restaurant or on a commercial or when the Mets are threatening to score a run. For a while there though I kept wondering if there was something wrong with me. Why didn't I "get" it? Wasn't I supposed to get it? Isn't one of the characteristics of a fully formed human being that he or she is able to converse about — and maybe even be legitimately interested in — anything that the Arts section covers?

Instead I read stuff like this and knew it was hopeless:

And instead of the mourning that peeked through his early techno music, there was a broad-shouldered, mechanized jubilation, the certainty that a good time is its own reward.

Jon Pareles gets it — why can't I?

Thankfully, that era is long, long gone.

I kind of hate feeling like I don't like entire genres of art, but the more time I spend consuming stuff the more I think that life is too short to force yourself to like certain things, even if that thing is as brilliant as Zombie Nation's "Kernkraft 400 (Sports Remix)".

Which is to say, I'm not sure I'll ever be into sci-fi/fantasy, though I'll acknowledge that maybe I'm still missing better examples of the genre. Maybe it's the retsina or grappa of literature — I think I can go the rest of my life fully comfortable with the fact that I just don't think grappa is that good.

The last book we read was Philip Pullman's Northern Lights/The Golden Compass. (I was going to write "Human Compass," but that was actually what we called a high school math teacher who had an astonishing ability to form a perfect circle on the chalkboard without the aid of any circle-making device.)

The Golden Compass is not only fantasy but it's young adult fantasy, which as far as I can tell does not necessarily mean that the author relies on simplistic plot devices and facile twists but does maybe necessarily involve a child estranged from her parents who is smarter than most adults. (Adults must think kids want to believe that they're smarter than adults, and orphans, too.) The hero here is a talking polar bear. It's the first book in a trilogy. I don't know what to say beyond that.

So it didn't take long for book club to devolve into a heated exchange about whether it was democratically responsible to allow legislative committee chairs to pick what bills will be heard in committees. No, for reals, I swear to god that's what we spent perhaps a good hour arguing about. Which is to say, Albany may be in need of fixing, and it is also not a talking polar bear. And "My Mind Ain't So Open" ain't no "Orgasm Addict," either.

I don't remember why we started debating this or why it matters now. Senate MC believes that all bills should get a hearing while I maintained that I was totally comfortable with the idea that the party in power gets to choose which bills it will hear — for better or worse, that's the two-party system. If you don't like it, move to Nebraska. Or read this Brennan Center report.

I have six tabs open on my browser with evidence that I think buttresses my point that legislative bodies need some manner of gatekeeping to move forward legislative priorities, but sometimes arguments turn to mush when you sit down to write about them. They can be like dreams in this respect. And then we move on to something else.