Tag Archives: Sweet Valley High

Sincerity, writing, and faith

07 Tuesday Feb 2012

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Because God has an excellent sense of humor, I am a confirmation mentor.

“You know I’ve been Presbyterian for like a minute and a half, right?” I asked my confirmand and my pastor and have said to everyone who’s been on the receiving end of this story.

No one seems to mind this fact, and so on we go, exploring the denomination, larger Christianity, faith in general and other Big Questions.

You know what’s really hard about that? No. Scratch that. You know what’s really easy about that? Being glib. It’s really easy to turn the whole thing into some big chucklefest. It’s really easy to brush the whole thing aside with a dusting of “you know, God, or whatever.”

What’s hard is being sincere. Not even in answering the questions, but in asking them in the first place.

I live in a world of academics and writers, many—but not all—of whom are decidedly not religious. And, you know, what I’m about to say probably isn’t even about religion, not really. It’s probably more about spending too much with the deconstructionalists and the years of reading books that have no author, no reader, and no text. It’s more about talking about what’s problematic than what is magnificent.

First: I love things. I unabashedly love a great many things. Virginia Woolf, TV, Sweet Valley High, Joan Didion, the mall, whatever my daily new favorite thing is. I do a weird jazz hand flutter to go with the high-pitched voice. I talk about my favorite things ad nauseum.

But you know what I don’t do? I never talk about what really matters. I never allow anything to get assigned actual value in the public sphere. Maybe it’s because assigned value eventually skis the slippery slope down to marginalization and oppression. Maybe it’s because TV taught me to be too cool for anything to have meaning. Maybe because books taught me that all the good stuff is left unsaid.

Being sincere is hard. Always. Being sincere means being vulnerable. And to be sincere about faith, about religion, about God, is the most vulnerable I can imagine being, since faith, religion, and God are something I consider more personal than anything else in my life.

Even talking about writing is less personal. Talking about writing is often cynical. Forget the market or readers or digital forms or the academy or any of that. Think about the act of writing itself.

Writers talk about writing all the time. They talk about it with each other and they talk about it online and they blog about it and it fills a majority of air space in the classroom. Writers talk about the problems they are having or the ideas that they have or wish they had, the books that they’ve read and that have inspired them. They talk about habits formed, habits broken, habits desired. Write every day. Write when you feel like it. Write in the morning, first thing. Write late at night, last thing.

Writing is hard. Always. It’s so hard. Characters never do what you want them to do, dialogue always sounds forced, the exposition is always a sinkhole. Sources don’t call back, facts don’t add up, it’s all situation and no story. The Internet is full of distractions, coffee shops are full of poseurs, desk chairs are woefully uncomfortable. (Full disclosure: I hate my desk chair. I spend more time during the day rearranging myself in it than anything else.) And the bottom line question, always: so what?

So what? So what? So what?

Writing is hard.

And it’s all true. All of it. (Sorry, coffee shop people, of which I am one on occasion–and a poseur always.)

But you know what? I love to write. I do. I really, really love it. Sincerely. I love learning new things and talking to new people and sitting down and making the puzzle come together and untangling knots and mixing metaphors with great aplomb. I love when things really get going and I forget that I’ve had to pee for the last hour and my sternum makes weird noises when I finally stop hunching over the keyboard. I love that I forget I possess a cat.

(See, even in a blog entry about sincerity, I can’t be completely sincere.)

And you know what else? I don’t think, in the nine years I spent as a student in higher ed, I ever once said those things—aloud—to other people. I don’t think, in being Presbyterian for a minute and a half and a life-long Christian whose first memory is of standing in my crib while my grandma teaches me the sign of the cross, I ever once said—aloud—to other people what I actually live by. I don’t think I’ve ever said, with sincerity, just what I mean when I say I have faith, am religious, believe in God.

Because who wants to be seen being sincerely, vulnerably enthusiastic about God?

On my cube walls, I have a few of those Tumblr-decorated quotations. You know, where words are different sizes and put together in a casually artful way. My favorite is by the inimitable John Green:

…because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.

May we all live this—really.

The consequences of Nurse Jackie

14 Tuesday Jun 2011

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(Spoiler alert for season three in general, the most recent two episodes in specific.)

I’m wary about discussing TV in comparison to real life because that’s not the point (ditto most entertainment; do you think people were sitting around a campfire thousands of years ago complaining of the problematic representations in The Odyssey?). But while I don’t go looking for it, and realism isn’t the bar by which I measure success, I am constantly taken when television does offer a real part of life in excruciatingly accurate detail.

One of the major criticisms of Nurse Jackie is that protagonist Jackie Peyton never suffers consequences. She lies, steals, cheats – hits every mark of addiction – and continues to sail as the ironclad head nurse. Some of that has changed as the third season draws to a close; she, for instance, is banned from administering narcotics. On one level, I get that criticism. After three seasons of an ill begotten and otherwise filched pill collection, an administrative pause is way too little way too late. And this is not just television, but American television. We have no ability to watch deviant behavior that doesn’t come with an immediate harsh backlash.

At first, I wanted to offer that, ultimately, Jackie has been experiencing slow-boil consequences since season one as her now-eleven-year-old daughter Grace grapples with anxiety issues. When the subject first arises from Grace’s teacher in season one, Jackie explodes. To deal with Grace’s severe anxiety would mean addressing her own, and since Jackie doesn’t exactly deal with her problems, she’s not about to admit that her daughter has any, either. So not only does Grace continue to suffer, but she’ll continue growing in her suffering in such a way that – eventually, inevitably – Jackie will have to deal on a level that far surpasses the effort she would have had to make if she had acted immediately.

I stand by that argument, especially now as Grace embarks on a tour de Xanax. Especially because Jackie is what happens when no one wants to deal with your problems, least of all you. We like to think, especially in our entertainment, that, say, doing drugs ends in death on the first try. (Thanks, Francine Pascal.) But we all know it usually doesn’t. We all know – have that friend, have been that friend – that uses undetected until she’s hollow-eyed. The friend who purges undetected until we accidentally stumble upon her in the bathroom. The friend whose depression goes untreated, whose anxiety goes untreated, on and on and on.

During last week’s “F*ck the Lemurs,” administrative powerhouse Mrs. Akalitus lets on, without ever saying so, just how long she’s known that Jackie has a drug problem. We know that she’s let the issue slide because Jackie’s superior work as a nurse remains untainted by her use. Never mind how much Jackie has been hurting herself. It’s just that sometimes it’s easier not to talk about it, you know?

Or, as Dr. O’Hara said, “I don’t talk about it because I don’t like talking about it. And I know full well that if I did start talking about it you’d go so far underground that no one would hear your cry for help, if in fact one day you need it.”

Eve Best’s O’Hara has been nothing short of magnificent as this storyline has surfaced. (Okay, for serious, she’s always amazing, but even more so right now.) She’s Jackie’s best friend. And, as a best friend, what are you supposed to do? You can say something. Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t. But it’s not something you can bring up every day. It’s not something you can harp on without end. As a friend, a parent, a sibling, a child, whatever, sometimes the best you can do by somebody you love is to just exist. To go to lunch. To talk in the chapel. To laugh over the silly things. But you know. And she knows. And it’s in that space you have to exist until she makes that next step.

In yesterday’s “Batting Practice,” Jackie admits to putting an end to her recent (and short-lived) sobriety by downing Grace’s Xanax. O’Hara doesn’t yell. She doesn’t scold. She just looks…crushed. All she can do is whisper Jackie’s name because what else can you do when you hope so hard for something that’s never going to happen?

O’Hara, who is something of a British lovechild of ER’s Drs. Romano and Weaver, doesn’t come easily to tears. She doesn’t fall to expressed emotion in general. She drinks, she spends money, she can avoid as well as Jackie can. In her final scene of the episode, she has a big Barneys’ shopping bag in view behind her desk, which Jackie notes upon entering O’Hara’s office. After giving Jackie a refill on Grace’s medication, O’Hara looks down at her desk and, without the show calling attention to it, brushes her fingers underneath one eye. She looks away, clears her throat, before listing the many ways she could truly help Jackie out of her addiction. Rehab, meetings, detox somewhere far away. Or, in her final offer, personal detox, O’Hara as “a very fancy methadone clinic.”  “You are in over your head,” she says. “I just want everything to be” – she pauses – “better.”

This pain, this intensity, this serious-problem-not-solved-in-twenty-two-minutes (thanks, DJ’s anorexia on Full House) is so much more satisfying for me as a viewer than the catch and release of television’s traditional format. (It’s, actually, an extension of what I really loved about Roseanne, but that’s for another day.) Odysseus eventually made it home, and Jackie will, too.

Not a whole lot different from real life

31 Thursday Mar 2011

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[If you are genuinely concerned about Sweet Valley Confidential spoilers, stop reading right now. The only way to truly talk about this book is with details, details, details. Monica Hesse does a fine enough job of legitimately reviewing the book for The Washington Post, but I’m not here for legitimacy. Not that kind anyway.]

It’s been a big week for books in my life, and reading Confidential directly after Unfamiliar Fishes led me to one thought: I have more questions about the last ten years in Sweet Valley than I do the entirety of the complex and morally ambiguous history of America’s annexation of Hawaii.

If you know anything about me, you know my relentless love of and devotion to the world of Sweet Valley. I’ve been waiting for this book for forever. Though Sweet Valley Confidential is not the fabled series restart – it’s a singular entity – it’s about as satisfying and dissatisfying as any other individual Sweet Valley book. This book, however, is a real-sized, hard-backed serious mess. And, with the exception of the inevitable reconciliation scene, is so tremendously awful that it’s amazing again. (The reconciliation scene is just tremendously awful period.)

Premise: the twins are twenty-seven years old, maybe certifiable grownups. They are also estranged, Jessica having done yet another unforgivable misdeed, only this one has led to Elizabeth’s flight for New York City, where she learns to wear black and have casual sex. (Good for her.) Notably, there is no mention of the similar misdeed that led to a similar flight to London (incidentally, where Elizabeth lost her museum-quality virginity) while the twins were in college.

But this one is bigger. Why? Jessica is with Todd.

Well, okay, I’ll bite.

First, when did Elizabeth get back together with Todd? Francine gives us nothing about that. Second, they were living together for two years and only starting to plan their wedding. Really, Francine? This is Elizabeth’s storybook high school romance. I don’t for a millisecond believe that she wouldn’t have insisted that shit get locked down before cohabitation. I do, however, absolutely believe that Jessica’s engagement to Todd is her foray into marriage number three.

Here’s how it went down: Jessica and Todd have a dalliance their senior year of undergrad (at which point, he’s already back together with Elizabeth). This leads to their insistence that they hate each other as well as Jessica’s marrying a much older and wealthier man (so she can flee the country or something. She leaves said husband while on his yacht in European waters). She comes back and moves in with Todd and Elizabeth, and the sexual tension is insurmountable (yuk, yuk, yuk). Blah, blah, blah, Elizabeth finds out, bolts, Jessica and Todd immediately move in together and become engaged, etc. All of this happens in first-person flashbacks. The real-time plot is Jessica trying to win back Elizabeth (lots of creepy sexual undertones between the twins in this book) and Elizabeth trying to be someone other than Elizabeth, all of which ends, of course, in Jessica and Todd’s wedding.

More noteworthy things:

  • Actually, first, I want to note something genuinely positive about this book. That Sweet Valley is – at heart – a small town filled with people who will never give up being big fish in a small pond is a centerpiece of Confidential. And it’s here that Francine allows life to actually happen to these people. For instance, Caroline Pearce is a cancer-surviving real estate agent who has nothing better to do than remain the gossip she was in high school. The group intermarries…and cheats…and divorces…and moves in together at lesbian-like speeds…in a style that’s uncannily un-Sweet Valley, yet somehow remotely true to a character’s likely trajectory.
  • Elizabeth uses words like fuck and shithead and I just can’t deal with that.
  • Steven Wakefield, playboy esquire, gets caught with Aaron Dallas. He leaves his baking-her-feelings wife Cara for him. The family-acceptance flashback is skipped entirely. That’s cheating on your part, Francine.
  • Lila and Ken were married/are separating. She’s a cheater. He’s an NFL player. Obv.
  • Winston made a lot of money, turned into a douche, and died. That’s upsetting to say the least.
  • Grandma Marjorie exists. And we actually get to see her!
  • Enid is a recovering-alcoholic, right-wing gynecologist. We don’t get to see her at all. Yet somehow she’s at the wedding. As is Mr. Collins. And many other people who have no business being there like Jeffrey French, Betsey Martin, Roger Patman (I thought he died in the earthquake??), and Robin Wilson. And, in case you were worried, Robin Wilson has only gained back a little bit of weight while being the town’s premier caterer. Cheap shots, Francine, but it is pretty much the best epilogue of any book ever, so you get a half-pass.
  • Bruce Patman’s parents died while he was in college, turning him into an actual human being as well as Elizabeth’s best friend. In the eighteen years I’ve been reading Sweet Valley books, I never once thought I’d root for Bruce, yet I did every step of the way in Confidential. Though, I’d like to note, no mention of Bruce’s dad and Alice in their college days. Double note: Bruce’s moment with Elizabeth in high school is brushed over like nbd.
  • Have you felt like puking today? Try on this post-love-confession between Bruce and Elizabeth: “Gently, he unbuttoned her silk blouse. She didn’t move. He slid it down over her shoulders, deftly unhooking her bra and allowing her breasts, with their taut nipples, to be free. He just started at her, drinking in the sight of the flesh and blood of years of longing. Still she didn’t move, waiting for him to slip her skirt and thong down over her hips and reveal her total nakedness to him.”

Lastly, I leave you with the three best passages in the entire Sweet Valley universe, two of which prove once and for all what a true badass Alice Wakefield is.

  • Between Alice and Jessica: “‘That’s the only reason I’m doing it, because you’re making me,’ said the twenty-seven/thirteen-year-old. ‘I don’t know what Todd is going to do.’ ‘Act like a man, I hope.’”
  • When everyone combusts at Grandma Marjorie’s birthday party: “‘Ned!’ [Alice] shouted. ‘Bring out the fucking cake!’”
  • From the epilogue, which says everything I ever hoped Francine would ever say: “It was a fun wedding. Not a whole lot different from any Sweet Valley High dance, which, as everyone knows, is not a whole lot different from real life.” (I want this to be my tombstone. Now that the Internet is aware of this, it better happen.)

Things noted while reading one of the last Sweet Valley High books (circa 1998):

08 Saturday Jan 2011

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  • Overuse of the word girlfriend.  As in, “Chill out, girlfriend.”  On average?  Once a page.
  • Ditto girl.
  • As well as a slew of Clueless catch phrases.
  • The token school band, The Droids, started their junior year playing such rousing anthems as “Different Drum” (it’s not that I knock it, it’s just that I am not convinced of high schoolers in the market for a band that plays Linda Ronstadt’s greatest hits) and ended the same year as an industrial punk band.
  • Also that the Wakefield twins and friends would fall all over themselves for industrial punk during their Southern California backyard birthday bash.
  • Can someone make an annotated timeline for the lives of the Wakefield twins?  For instance, Liz and Todd dated in the sixth grade.  Possibly before that (my knowledge of Sweet Valley Kids is slim at best).  Sweet Valley High starts with Liz finally scoring a date with Todd.  At some point, Todd moves away to Vermont; he and Liz break up.  At another point, he moves back, and they get back together.  Apparently, after I stopped reading the first time around, Liz cheats on Todd, and they break up in time for the earthquake (note: the Sweet Valley you know and love will never be the same).  During aforementioned birthday bash, they both note their years of loving one another.  Senior year passes.  They get back together just in time for graduation.  College starts.  They’ve been together — and only with each other — for an eternity, which is why Todd feels justified in kicking Liz to the curb when she doesn’t drop her drawers during week one away from home.  (I think at some point in college, they try to get back together again, but I’m unsure of this.) Whew.
  • For teenage dime-store romance, I find myself awfully confused with an alarming frequency.
  • In writing out the Liz and Todd sequence, I’m pretty sure I finally figured out the tangle that was my friends Lindsey, Mike, and Todd when we were in high school.  Thanks, Sweet Valley.
  • Asking for an annotated timeline means that writing one is probably in my future somewhere. On it, Francine.  Just toss that check in the mail.

Could there be two different girls who look the same?

02 Thursday Dec 2010

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Sixth months ago my source handed me a shopping bag and told me that I better love him for the rest of my life.

The contents?

All forty-eight books in the Sweet Valley Senior Year series.

Oh.

[Inside advertisement: "You're watching 'Dawson's Creek'...You're wearing Urban Decay...Have you read senioryear?"]

The semester had just finished, and I had turned in a 186-page draft of my thesis, and I had completed my term paper for modernism, all of which meant that my brain was gone.  Mush.  Even more so than usual.  And because I spent all year writing about TV, I wasn’t entirely into the idea of oozing into the dent in my broken futon for tube time.  (Sacrilege, I know.)  (Plus, when the regular season ends, there’s not much to love about regular television watching.)

So I started reading.  I read legitimate books, too.  And moderately legitimate.  But always I had a book from Sweet Valley Senior Year on my nightstand.  Sometimes, one of those slim volumes took weeks and weeks of two-pages-before-bed reading.  Sometimes, I’d fly through five on a rainy Saturday.

Senior Year is so weird.  It’s completely out of time and place in the Sweet Valley universe.  First, the ubiquitous twin description is nowhere to be seen.  There is the rogue mention of their sun-kissed blonde hair or their eyes the same blue-green as the pacific ocean, but not that mandated setup that fills Sweet Valley High.  The gang has new (mostly better) friends when the earthquake that ends their junior year combines Sweet Valley with another local high school.  You guys, there is an out gay guy, and because it’s 2001 by this point, it’s not a one-book problem like back in the twins’ junior year.  This kid is awesome.  I kind of love him.

Throughout this series, Jessica is slightly less sociopathic — she actually winds up being outshone in that arena by a character far more narcissistic than Jessica could ever dream of being.  Elizabeth is slightly less meddling as she gets in touch with her inner emo.

The regulars who filled the other books mostly fade into the background.  Todd gets a few random shoutouts.  Enid, Winston, etc. are all but forgotten for most of the series.  Ken comes to the forefront as an actual human being.  The books are oddly self-referential and meta-humored in a way that does nothing more than reward those foolish enough to have read this far.

All of these leads to a few conflicting thoughts.

["Lots of gossip goin' round," yes, but Gossip Girls they are not.]

Part of the appeal of Sweet Valley High is how awful it was.  It’s dime store romance for teenagers, which means that it’s not supposed to have any merit outside of escapist entertainment.  Which it does spectacularly.  Senior Year elevates the books out of that space into a territory where they’re not awful, but they’re not awfully good.  Well, I take that back.  They lack the pizzazz, scandal, whatever of contemporary series.  Like the revamped early books in Sweet Valley High, the books still mostly have 1983 plots with 2000 accessories.  They’re charming in their innocence.  So that doesn’t make them bad, it just makes them not terribly exciting.

One of the frequent complaints about regular Sweet Valley High is that, like The Babysitters Club, the characters are in this unending revolving door of their junior year.  Christmas comes and goes and comes and goes.  Prom happens and prom happens and prom happens.  The twins are sixteen and Margo tries to kill them.  A year later, they are still sixteen, and Margo and her twin try to kill them.

[Best, best, best moment in all of Senior Year: when Jessica looks back upon her high school days and remembers "that crazy Margo chick."  That's it.  That crazy Margo chick.]

Senior Year is entirely linear.  The first thirty or so books stretch the pacing to almost real time.  A book will cover a day or two, and the next picks up right after.  The ghost writers must have gotten word that they need to wrap things up as the second half of the twins’ senior year is rapid fire, mostly the big hits like Valentine’s Day, Spring Break, etc.  I frequently argue that good TV is like literature.  In that equation, a season would be like a volume in a series, with each episode being a chapter.  The thing about Senior Year is that it read like a television show.  It could reasonably be a season of a show that was a lot better than the actual Sweet Valley High television show.

The advantage to Senior Year is that it was the last of the franchise.  Therefore, they had the benefit of having all of the previous books in the Twins, Kids, etc. series.  So there are fun moments like when Jessica wishes she could be like Janet*.  The disadvantage, however, is that Sweet Valley University exists.  The twins start college with the same personalities they had as high school juniors.  Their plots depend on those personalities.  If Jessica is who she is in Senior Year, she isn’t in the position to get sucked into Mike’s abusive world.  Elizabeth won’t be upset by Enid’s transformation into sophisticated Alex because the two haven’t been friends all year and Enid turned goth anyway.  The flip side of this is when the books don’t acknowledge what happened in previous incarnations.  Like when Elizabeth claims that getting dumped on prom night is the worst thing ever.  Unlike, you know, when she killed her twin’s boyfriend while drunk driving at the infamous Jungle Prom.

[The inclusion of Double Love means that I now own three versions of the very first SVH book.]

Which brings us to book forty-eight, Sweet 18.  The very last book in the Sweet Valley universe (until Confidential is released in the spring).  This book seems to be entirely written for people who have not touched the books in years, but are curious to see how things shake out.  All of a sudden, there’s Enid and Winston and everyone we haven’t seen since about book two.  And way the hell out of nowhere, Elizabeth and Todd get back together.  (I would have bought it if it hadn’t been so rushed in some vague attempt to make things align with the beginning of SVU.)  All of which is like a platter of sentimentality.

We all know how I do with sentimentality.

A few weeks ago, propped up in bed with pillows, too late to still be reading (aw, it’s like I’m ten all over again with more or less the same reading material), I finished Sweet 18.  The twins turn eighteen (obvi), they graduate high school, and we close the book (so to speak) on the Sweet Valley universe.

And I cried.  Of course I cried.

First, I cry over every graduation event on television, in movies, and in books.  There are few events as sentimental as that.  My family writes the book on sentimental crying.  In real life last June?  I started weeping at my sister’s graduation before they even finished “Pomp and Circumstance.”

So of course I cried over the end of Sweet Valley.

I’m interested to see how Sweet Valley Confidential uses the otherwise completion of the franchise to its advantage.  Will it be more Sweet Valley High or more Sweet Valley Senior Year?  Which would you prefer?

*just wanted to give you time to guess/remember.  Janet was president of the Unicorn Club.  But you knew that, right?

Thoughts after seeing the sing-a-long showing of Grease

30 Friday Jul 2010

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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.

Because @JudyBlume is on Twitter

21 Wednesday Jul 2010

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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?

Brief thoughts on Sweet Valley High

28 Wednesday Apr 2010

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So, book 94, A Night to Remember, is the jungle prom where Jessica spikes Elizabeth’s punch.  Unknowingly, Elizabeth drives drunk and kills Jessica’s boyfriend.  In book 100, The Evil Twin, Margo, who inexplicably looks exactly like the Wakefield twins (and will later turn out to have an identical twin of her own) comes to kill a Wakefield in hopes of having the perfect life.  From the broken ornament on the cover, you know this book takes place at Christmas.  Follow me, then, to book 111, A Deadly Christmas.  The back cover:

Jessica Wakefield is in danger!  Finally convinced that her fiancé, Jeremy Randall, is nothing but a two-timing criminal, Jessica plots to get even.  But when her devious plan goes wrong, Jessica is caught in her own trap–seconds away from a fiery death.

Elizabeth Wakefield is scared for her twin sister, and she doesn’t know whom to trust.  Has Sue Gibbons really joined their side, or is it Sue and Jeremy against the twins?  If Elizabeth’s instincts are wrong, Jessica will go up in flames!

I’m not trying to judge or anything, BUT, if your boyfriend just died, maybe it’s a little soon to get engaged?  Especially since it’s high school and all.  And someone’s already tried to kill you and take over your person?  (And, maybe in the time between, there was a werewolf in London?)  I’m just saying that maybe it would have been better to go on a quiet vacation this Christmas.  Just a thought for next year.

Quick fix: Sweet Valley High

23 Wednesday Sep 2009

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Because my friends are awesome, my Facebook wall and inbox got insta-flooded when news broke that Diablo Cody obtained the rights to Sweet Valley High.

This is both super exciting and super unsettling.

I’ll go with the latter first.

Diablo Cody is responsible for Juno.  Have we talked about Juno?  I don’t think so.

I hated it.

Really, I wanted to love it.  Love it for its cute and quirky indie kids and snappy dialogue.

Remember how Napoleon Dynamite wasn’t actually about anything, but that didn’t matter because it didn’t pretend to be about anything?

Juno, at least I’m assuming, appeared to be about something, except it never really was.  The whole thing just left me sad inside.

As faithful readers, y’all know how much I love Sweet Valley.  The opportunities could be outstanding.  True-to-original 1983 falsified teenage life?  Weirdly-dating-itself-anyway 2008 revision?  Camp-tastic?  Or just another movie we’ve already seen before?  (Please don’t let it be the last one.  You don’t obtain the rights to the most satire-ready series and then blow them on dreck you could have done on your own.)

I mean, I’m not particularly worried about a movie being awful.  Did you perhaps watch the TV show circa 1994?  I did.

Indulge yourselves:

The show was hilarious.  But entirely on accident.  (Actually, not unlike how the books were hilarious on accident, but plus bad acting.)

So, what are your hopes and dreams for Cody’s latest project?  Will you come see the movie with me opening night?

(If I don’t answer to your comments right away, it’s because I’m jamming to the aforementioned show’s soundtrack in my car.  Yup, I bought it then and still own it now.)

New moon, same ol’…

04 Tuesday Aug 2009

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(It’s Twilight week here at One Size Fits All, wherein I’ve sold my soul, read all four books, and watched the first movie.  I’m under the assumption that I’m the last person on the planet to do this, so, if I’m wrong, and you need a spoiler warning, consider it this.)

Before I get started, I want to point out some positives in the adventure thus far.  Even though our protagonist and her lovey dovey Edward make me want to dig my brain out with a spoon, the peripheral characters aren’t nearly as bad.  Bella’s father, especially, is a likeable, endearing character, as are two vampire associates, Carlisle and Alice.  I’ll also give Stephanie Meyer props for setting her story in a small, working-class town (though I’m not sure what it says that Edward’s vamp fam is loaded like Gossip Girl, but at least everyone’s not sporting Paris Hilton bling).

Back to our regularly scheduled tale.  New Moon picks up on the morning of Bella’s eighteenth birthday; she’s still human, which is nice because that means I could find her and kill her for being so obnoxious.  Since Edward’s age (seventeen) is stuck like Mrs. Haversham’s clock, Bella’s not into being the older woman.

After a birthday party gone awry, Edward and his family get the hell out of Forks, leaving our heroine distraught.  October, November, December, and January are all blank pages, save for the name of the month.  I’m all over not experiencing those months with Bella.  Thanks, Stephanie Meyer!

Once Bella emerges from her cocoon of despair, she decides to renege on her promise to Edward that she’ll not do anything dumb/kill herself.  Her first decision?  Get a pair of motorcycles.  Reckless = self-destruction = my favorite.  Also, motorcycles?  Call up Elizabeth Wakefield and find out how that goes over.

It’s during this period of the book, though, that Bella spends all of her time with Jacob, a cute kid from the rez.  And for these two hundred or so pages, they have a joyous time.  You could totally extract this part of the book and have a fairly decent young adult novel on your hands.  Also, I think I have an unrequited crush on generic Native American culture.

Pervert redux, via text messages:

Me: Hey does she bone Jacob?

My sister: Negative

Me: Damn that’s way sad

My sister: It really is

The Jacob scenes are so delightful that I’m almost willing to overlook lines like “I’d been broken beyond repair.”

But then it all goes to shit when Jacob joins the illustrious rez cult, which I happen to know are full of werewolves (thanks for the spoiler, Library of Congress information!).  I’ll go ahead and own that I’m hooked on this storyline.  Especially when Bella goes crazy pants and uses some Edward-style stalking techniques to hunt down Jacob and figure out just what the hell his problem is.  Problem: vampires and werewolves are super enemies, especially between these two particular groups.  Antics will ensue, I’m sure.

Now that Jacob’s too cool for school in his super-phasing werewolf ways, Bella goes cliff diving (for sport) into an unexpectedly choppy ocean, wherein she resigns herself to death, and wherein I say to the book, “It’s all right to die; dying takes the sadness out of you.” (That would have made a much better song, Marlo Thomas.)  While Jacob saves Bella from her sure death (like Theodore saves Alice in The Wakefields of Sweet Valley saga!), vampire Alice gets a vision that Bella is dead, which is passed to Edward, who can’t live without her, who goes on a suicide mission to Italy.  (To quote Lewis Black: “You don’t kill yourself in a mansion.  You kill yourself in a shitty little apartment like I live in.”  Comparable.)

But, Bella saves the day, only to inevitably make things worse for everyone else around her.  The super royal vampires are now invested in having her ass as grass.  How to stop it?  Become a vampire, of course!  My last roommate had this same complex – making her ex-girlfriend feel better about making my roommate feel like shit.  It’s obnoxious on the page, and it’s even more obnoxious in real life.  Not my favorite message to send to the world.

Snark, via text message:

Me: Putting my mortality to a vote…I’m going to write Stephanie Meyer and tell her she’s the best comic writer ever

Matt: good luck with that

Me: I bet no one has told her that before

Everyone sans Edward agrees – Bella gets to rock the vampire life.  Not today, but as soon as she graduates from high school, which, from what I can discern, is a few months away.  Father vamp, Carlisle, will do the deed.  What Bella really wants, and what Edward knows she wants, is for Edward to pop her vamp cherry.  Which he’ll only do after they get married:

“Oh, c’mon,” I said, an edge of hysteria in my voice.  “I’m only eighteen.”

“Well, I’m nearly a hundred and ten.  It’s time I settled down.”

DOES NO ONE ELSE FIND THAT DEEPLY CREEPY?

Then she goes into why marriage isn’t right for her yet (but becoming a vampire is) because that kind of commitment didn’t work out so well for her parents.  Don’t let him get the milk for free, Bella!

For the time being, they settle.  Everything goes back to the way it should be, with the major exception of a lurking killer vampire, Victoria, who wants Bella dead more than I do.  Bella also can’t understand why Jacob won’t return her phone calls, even though he’s clearly stipulated that it’s one or the other.  But her best friend is no match for the love, love, love of her life.  To which I say, bros before hos, Bella.  You’re a really shitty friend.  She’s also got some serious Jessica Wakefield sociopath problems going on.  Which is fine for a 150-page Sweet Valley High book, but I’m not sure if I can deal with that for the 1,400 pages that comprise the last two books.

Cliffhanger: much ado about Jacob.

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