Donna Martin graduates!

Tags: 90210, Television

As with all great TV moments, the conclusion of Roseanne is a love it or hate it experience. I’m in the love it camp — so much so that it’s my favorite series finale of all time. Roseanne’s monologue is one of the most truly beautiful things I’ve ever heard on television (and it ranks pretty high in beautiful things heard in life, too). I love unexpected flashes of truth, moments of being as my girl Virginia called them, and this is definitely one of them.

In choosing life, I realized that my dreams of being a writer wouldn’t just come true; I had to do the work. And as I wrote about my life, I relived it, and whatever I didn’t like, I rearranged. I made a commitment to finish my story even if I had to write in the basement in the middle of the night while everyone else was asleep. But the more I wrote, the more I understood myself and why I had made the choices I made, and that was the real jackpot. I learned that dreams don’t work without action; I learned that no one could stop me but me. I learned that love is stronger than hate. And most important, I learned that God does exist. He and/or She is right inside you, underneath the pain, the sorrow, and the shame. I think I’ll be a lot better now that this book is done.

Tags: Roseanne, Series finales, Television, Writing

Sal Pane and I tear it up over at The Rumpus. The Golden Girls vs. Batman: The Animated Series. (Clearly, I win, but you can see for yourself.)

Tags: Batman: The Animated Series, Golden Girls, Salvatore Pane, The Rumpus, Writing

In your honor, my favorite from you: “That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”

Tags: Dorothy Parker

How do you convey something so maddeningly inconceivable? How do you make someone understand a disease that so frequently evades science, medicine, the very people who suffer?

In Wintergirls (Viking, 2009), young adult author Laurie Halse Anderson tilts a prism of ice, splintering the light of eating disorders, self-injury, and the girls trapped in unimaginable self-destruction.

Wintergirls opens as eighteen-year-old Lia learns of her former best friend Cassie’s death. (We’ll later find out with Lia that Cassie died as a result of the horrific consequences of chronic bulimia.)  Lia, who has spent two stints in eating disorder treatment, is already holding tight to the anorexia she believes keeps her safe. Cassie’s death – and the thirty-three calls from her that Lia ignored the night before – catapult Lia through the increasing cold of New England’s late fall/early winter. And then Cassie’s ghost comes to haunt Lia, and we walk away unsure if Cassie’s truly there or if she’s become an internal persona attached to Lia’s disordered thoughts.

I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of sad-girl books: teen-girl novels, grown-woman novels, memoirs (so many memoirs).  Teen-girl novels are problem novels. Girl has problem; girl fixes problem. The problem is the story, and that’s that.  Grown-woman novels are frequently memoirs in disguise.  And memoirs are digested – information spun during years of therapy and refashioned into a charming survival narrative.  The brutality of the moment has been cut, sanded, and stained – the difference between a tree and your dining room table.

This, though, this is beautiful and right there.  The little thoughts of guilt over Cassie or moments in Lia’s past break through the paragraphs.  Each breakaway, each cross out, puts us closer and closer to Lia’s thoughts. The school nurse hands Lia a cup of orange juice. “I take the cup from her. My throat wants it my brain wants it my blood wants it my hand does not want this my mouth does not want this.” Or, “I inscribe three lines, hush, hush, hush, into my skin. Ghosts trickle out.” Lia and her family are all richly dynamic characters, leaving the problem as a result of the characters – rather than the characters a result of the problem.

The very power of the book is also its greatest danger. For almost every food Lia eats, she gives us the calorie count. Her designated post-hospital “healthy” weight still leaves her at an underweight BMI. (Intended or not by Anderson, low discharge weights frequently end in relapse.) Lia visits pro-anorexia websites, snippets from which are included in the text. Critics have discussed the hazard of this material (which I’ll argue is so beyond easy to find on the Internet that reading it in a book is a moot point) and also how, as the novel progresses, it’s so easy to fall into Lia’s thought patterns. Everything she says seems logical. On a narrative level, this means Anderson succeeded admirably at her job. Don’t break the dream, right? She slams us right into it and holds us there. It hurts.

So there’s the big question: should an author keep secrets? The most brutal parts of us, the spider-web thoughts that confuse us, that help us understand each other, are so quickly taken for the damage they do. If one girl falls over the ledge between thought and action after reading a book like Wintergirls, is that one too many for the good the book might do? What if it brings one girl back? Or helps a mother understand her little girl?  We know how much the disorder is hurting Lia both physically and emotionally. She sprints, limps, and then crawls her way right to that line between the living and the dead where she’s forced to make a decision about her recovery because no one else can do it for her. We also know how much her suffering hurts her family, especially her younger stepsister. By novel’s end, we are reminded of the very illogic of Lia’s logic.

What happens to writing if we write with our fingers wrapped in the fear of liability?  What of any topic we want polished, polished, polished, so that we might only acknowledge the good? Gender, race, sexuality, class, religion, any of it. All of it.  We so often take discussion and disclosure as tacit endorsement for the very thoughts that scare us the most. We say help us understand, but we so very rarely seem to actually want what understanding entails. And that maybe hurts the most.

Tags: anorexia, bulimia, Eating disorders, Laurie Halse Anderson, Problem novels, Recovery, self-injury, Wintergirls, Young adults

1) Anyone who would actually see a sing-a-long showing of Grease most assuredly doesn’t need the words to the songs. This audience can probably also recite the dialog. (And there was no need to have bolstered songs to encourage the audience to participate. Again, anyone who would show up to this would actually sing.)

2) Whoever was responsible for putting the lyrics on the screen probably owned/was hosted on a teen-girl domain circa 1998. (You guys know who you are.)

3) Seeing Grease on the big screen means not being able to fast-forward through “Beauty School Dropout.”

4) Hearing “Beauty School Dropout” for the first time in fifteen years offered the shocking revelation that it is quite possibly the most depressing song ever in a musical.

5) I know I’ve mentioned how Olivia Newton-John circa Grease would make an excellent Wakefield twin. Perhaps Diablo Cody could look into using her to play Alice Wakefield — or, pending her being too old to practically be the twins’ older sister — she could play Marjorie.

6) Pins!

7) I still have another seven years before I’m as old as Stockard Channing was when she played Rizzo, and I am nine years out of high school.

8 ) Do you ever forget just how dirty this movie is? This once again came to my attention when certain words became pictures during “Greased Lightning” as well as being acutely aware of the five-ish-year-old girl in the audience.

9) Singing aside, this was a great big screen experience. I’ll go ahead and put it up there with seeing Gone with the Wind when it was re-released when I was fifteen. Now to just get Dirty Dancing…

10) There are few things in this world as instantly gratifying as watching Grease— even for the millionth time.

Tags: Diablo Cody, Grease, High School, movies, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, Sweet Valley High

Toward the end of every June, right around that time I would have been dismissed from school for the year, I reread Judy Blume’s ode to complicated girl friendships, Summer Sisters.

Do you think of this book every time you hear "Dancing Queen"?

The early summers in the book remind me always of the many summers I spent at our neighborhood pool (much in the style of every suburban kid movie ever).  Friendships changed during those summer months.  Girls I went to school with, but never hung out with from September through June, suddenly became the only people in my life for July and August.

Mostly because I’m still (forever?) in school, my life beats to the rhythm of the school year, and though my semester ended with the month of April, summer did not actually start until those thickening June days and reading Summer Sisters.

The inimitable Bob Gray writes in his recent Shelf Awareness column about favorite lawn chair books (for those of us who didn’t spend summers beachside) from readers’ formative years. In a similar vein, Andi Diehn writes about her evolution as a writer over at The Millions (shout out, Sweet Valley High!).  For me (okay, for like every female writer my age), Judy Blume reigns supreme for both of those categories.

I didn’t read Summer Sisters until sometime in late high school (maybe a year or two after it was published), but for many summers in elementary school, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great provided the same literary switch of the seasons. Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Paula Danziger – they provided the sacred texts of childhood.  When I was about eight, I met Valerie Tripp, who wrote many of the American Girl books. But Valerie Tripp – because she was a name-inside-the-covers author – didn’t have the same celebrity aura as the likes of Blume and Cleary.

Which I suppose was practice for the world I live in now. A world immersed in books and writing and authors.  I’ve given many an established writer/editor rides to and from airports, fumbled through many of those awkward dinners where you’re reminded that most writers (including yourself) aren’t the most socially capable people on the planet, and sat through more readings than I know what to do with.  And it’s all – even the awkward moments – wonderful.

There are Big Name Writers out there, but most of the people in my world, no matter how much I adore and admire them, aren’t so Big. Professors and friends introduce me to their friends who also write, and we all become Facebook friends, even though I’ve never heard of them before or read their work or anything like that (and they accept even though I’m clearly nobody).

Because I’m usually introduced to these people as people, I’m always shaken by my lack of context when said people, say, write status updates and all of a sudden veritable cults of followers flock to impress.  And then I have to take a minute.  Am I supposed to know this person?  Is she famous?  There are too many writers to keep track of! Then I don’t want to comment on status updates because I’m not intending to be part of an accidental cult or I don’t feel worthy enough to participate if we’ve elevated the level of who’s participating.  It’s all very weird.  And all very no-one-who-isn’t-a-writer-could-possibly-give-a-shit.

This probably isn’t a common sentiment, but I enjoyed the hierarchy of high school.  I knew who belonged where and what to do in interactions with whom, etc.  Three popular girls shared the locker next to mine.  I knew I could talk to Hollis, acknowledge Emily, and just not even look in the direction of Farryl.  It was that easy.  But my world now, it’s just so confusing.  It’s like navigating every high school’s hierarchy all at once.  So many clumps of mid-level writers (as seen in all of the rebuttal lists for the “20 Under 40”).  Ten hundred million times more clumps of low-level writers and MFA students.  I loathe not knowing where I’m supposed to be or how to interact with whom I meet.  (Also, with the exception of Sal Pane, I’m wary of forging friendships or “friendships” entirely based on how well that person might serve me in my future. That feels very slimy.)

So, realistically, I know that writers I meet as writers – they’re people, too.  The aforementioned professor that I threatened to throw up on twice in one year is a writer I’ve admired since I was sixteen.  But the minute I met her, the writer I had been reading for nearly a decade splintered off of the person in front of me. (Not unlike my dealings with the folk music world. There are the singers on the stage and on the CDs and then the people they become when we split an ice cream sundae.)

But then along comes Judy Blume.  She has a blog.  It’s not updated very often, but I get a little giddy every time she posts something (and then proceed to re-declare how much I love Judy Blume).  And then she goes and gets a Twitter account, and it’s like she’s a real person, too.

Pictured: Judy Effing Blume

I just don’t know what to do with that.  Judy Blume isn’t a real person.  She’s Judy Effing Blume!  Yet, there she is, receiving Tweets from Susan Orlean (who may or may not be real either, so there’s that). (Also, it may or may not have been Susan Orlean.)  I could only be more surprised/thrilled if Joan Didion requested my friendship on Facebook or if Virginia Woolf rose from the dead to comment on my blog.  I mean, seriously.  This woman has been a part of my reading life since I learned to read.

But it makes me wonder what happens for little girls just now reading Judy Blume (or whomever – this can apply to big girls reading Susan Orlean as well).  What is it like to have vague access into the minds of your writer-heroes, always?  When you’ve never not known that?  Does that change how you read and love Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great?  Does your respect for a writer change when you can see how she interacts with the writing community in ways much larger than the acknowledgement section at the end of a book?

Tags: American Girl books, Andi Diehn, Beverly Cleary, Bob Gray, childhood, Judy Blume, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, Paula Danziger, reading, Sal Pane, Summer Sisters, Susan Orlean, Sweet Valley High, The Millions, Twitter, Valerie Tripp, Writing

You can catch my review of Nicole Walker’s poetry collection This Noisy Egg over at ye olde Hot Metal Bridge.

In unrelated news,  after learning all about current children’s/tween’s television, I’ve decided that The Wizards of Waverly Place is the show least likely to make me shove a fork in my eye. That’s a little friendly tip for you parents/caretakers out there.

Tags: Book review, Hot Metal Bridge, Nicole Walker, poetry, This Noisy Egg

Y’all, I have been dreaming about writing something for the City Paper since I was in high school.  The Pittsburgh City Paper totally gave me that chance. And I got to write about the furries, which I’ve wanted to do since I moved to Pittsburgh three years ago.  Read here.  Happy day!

Tags: Anthrocon, Furoticon, furries, Milestones, Pittsburgh City Paper, Writing

Yo. Check out the PANK Blog for my review of Dan Holloway’s Songs from the Other Side of the Wall.

Tags: Book review, Dan Holloway, Fiction, PANK, Songs from the Other Side of the Wall, Year Zero Writers