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d_aulnoyBooks like the Shopaholic series make the Baby Jesus cry ... or, at least, they make me gnash my teeth and tear at my hair in my disappointment with the reading public. Really, fellow readers? This is how little you think of yourselves? It makes me understand my dad's reaction when I was 11 years old and reading the Baby-Sitter's Club books: I figured he ought to be pleased that I was reading, period, compared to my peers, and he figured that I had to be getting the neurological version of cavities.
So he rushed out and bought me a copy of War and Peace. Man, after that, it took me years to stop twitching whenever Tolstoy was invoked. The answer, in my humble opinion, was not to get me a copy of something that I would have no ability to relate to for years to come: if Dad wanted to get me onto a more high-brow plane, he would have done a lot better to have shoved a copy of something on the same level, but better, into my hands and had done with it.
So what's better than the Baby-Sitter's Club books? Well, a) I don't actually think that they're all that bad, and b) let me send you a copy of my syllabus for children's lit! But what's better than the Shopaholic Books? Ah, now, that I will tell you. Because while the fact that the Shopaholic books are bestsellers lowers my faith in humanity, I find it is restored by the popularity of two authors at completely opposite ends of the scale: Judith Krantz and Peter Straub.
Judith Krantz (in case you do not know of her glory already) writes these ridiculously overblown family-dynasty romance novels, heavy on the creative smut. But, see, here's the thing: her dirty family dynasty books are funny as hell, well-researched and historically accurate, full of interesting tidbits about Paris in the 1920's and the modeling industry in the 1930s and how to fly a single-engine plane and be a woman pilot in WW II, about exiled Russian royalty and bohemian London in the 60s and making commercials in the 70s and buying vintage clothing and modeling, about running a magazine dynasty and buying New York real estate and being a single mom and starting a female-friendly publication (in the 80s, mind you) ... and that's just to start. (Note: every serial comma marks another book - yes, she crams all that into each discrete manuscript ... impressed yet?)![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fjm actually reminded me of one of my favorite books by her in response to my Shopaholic ravings: Scruples. Scruples is basically a novel about an idle rich girl's vanity project, a big, beautiful store in Beverly Hills designed to cater to the most demanding shopping population in the world, a demographic Our Heroine will understand, because she's the widow of one of the world's Ten Richest Men. But it's actually a lot better than it sounds, if occasionally disturbing: while it has the makeover element that distresses me in so many romance novels, where Our Heroine starts off obese, moves to Paris for a year, comes home a bombshell, and marries rich, unlike in most of those novels, that's just the beginning. When the aging prince on a noble charger exits stage left, that's when the action really begins, and the action is all about Our Heroine actually doing something ... and fucking around a hell of a lot in the process.
That's something I quite appreciate about Krant's oevre, actually. I mean, sure, the sex scenes are ridiculously overblown, but ... here's the thing: there's no moralizing. Our Heroine blows (through) something like a dozen partners without any concern about sluttiness or Twu Wuv. There's a brief digression on how sex is sex, not love, and you shouldn't use it to fill a void which could have gone badly wrong ... but didn't. And this is a theme in Krantz books: in the sequel to Scruples, the imaginatively titled Scruples II (there's, um, a catalogue), there's a character named Sasha who has an ingenious dating scheme: 3 men at a time. Not all at once, just always 3 to be juggled, to maintain balance. She calls herself a Great Slut, since there's no way for a woman to be a Great Rake. It is kind of awesome. Keep in mind, too, that most of these were written in the 70s and 80s - they functioned as a direct response to most of the sickly-sweet pap that was out there, while still being unapologetically romantic, lush in their descriptions, and third-wave feminist way before there was a third wave. Here's an extract from my much-loved and now coverless copy of I'll Take Manhattan, first encountered when I was about 9: the premise of ITM is that little Maxi Amberville, black sheep of her magazine-dynasty family, has been challenged to restore one of the family titles and is currently wracking her brain for ideas.
What's in the pile?" Justin, Maxi's brother, asked.
"I call the the 'so what else is wrong with you?' magazines," Maxi said. "Their premise is simply that things are going so badly that you're desperate for help."
"Ma's overreacting," Angelica whispered to him.
"The hell I am," Maxi snapped. "All they do is undermine your self-confidence; they make you feel that it's impossible for your body to ever be attractive enough, that you should be doing better, better, better, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the boardroom - what, you mean you haven't been promoted yet? Oh, thank them - thank the good editors for making you feel better about that heel you married, the seventeen different things you do wrong in bed; all of which are your fault, bad girl. Guilt! If I read one more article about bulimia I'll throw up. Isn't there a single magazine a woman can buy that loves her just the ways he is? What did I just say?"
And thus, a star is born, and littled_aulnoy 's psyche is properly prepped for her first encounter with a copy of Cosmo. We still don't really have one of these. Sassy tried, but went under, Jane tried and ... failed kind of miserably, actually, and nobody else seems to be so much as making the effort: the closest we've got are weblogs like Jezebel. And, of course, the now out-of-date but happily still not out-of-print cultural artifacts of Judith Krantz.
Krantz is sort of like the Georgette Heyer of the 80s: a writer who didn't talk down to her audience, challenged them to think, and rewarded them with gorgeous language describing fantastic scenes. The fact that 80 million copies of her books are in print in 50 languages (according to her Wiki page, at least), makes me feel a little better about the - dare I hope? - flash-in-the-pan popularity of the tripetastic Shopaholic books ....
This is turning into a novel in its own right, so I'll save my thoughts on Peter Straub until later, but in the comments, any suggestions for authors whose popularity makes you feel better about the state of literacy today?
So he rushed out and bought me a copy of War and Peace. Man, after that, it took me years to stop twitching whenever Tolstoy was invoked. The answer, in my humble opinion, was not to get me a copy of something that I would have no ability to relate to for years to come: if Dad wanted to get me onto a more high-brow plane, he would have done a lot better to have shoved a copy of something on the same level, but better, into my hands and had done with it.
So what's better than the Baby-Sitter's Club books? Well, a) I don't actually think that they're all that bad, and b) let me send you a copy of my syllabus for children's lit! But what's better than the Shopaholic Books? Ah, now, that I will tell you. Because while the fact that the Shopaholic books are bestsellers lowers my faith in humanity, I find it is restored by the popularity of two authors at completely opposite ends of the scale: Judith Krantz and Peter Straub.
Judith Krantz (in case you do not know of her glory already) writes these ridiculously overblown family-dynasty romance novels, heavy on the creative smut. But, see, here's the thing: her dirty family dynasty books are funny as hell, well-researched and historically accurate, full of interesting tidbits about Paris in the 1920's and the modeling industry in the 1930s and how to fly a single-engine plane and be a woman pilot in WW II, about exiled Russian royalty and bohemian London in the 60s and making commercials in the 70s and buying vintage clothing and modeling, about running a magazine dynasty and buying New York real estate and being a single mom and starting a female-friendly publication (in the 80s, mind you) ... and that's just to start. (Note: every serial comma marks another book - yes, she crams all that into each discrete manuscript ... impressed yet?)
fjm actually reminded me of one of my favorite books by her in response to my Shopaholic ravings: Scruples. Scruples is basically a novel about an idle rich girl's vanity project, a big, beautiful store in Beverly Hills designed to cater to the most demanding shopping population in the world, a demographic Our Heroine will understand, because she's the widow of one of the world's Ten Richest Men. But it's actually a lot better than it sounds, if occasionally disturbing: while it has the makeover element that distresses me in so many romance novels, where Our Heroine starts off obese, moves to Paris for a year, comes home a bombshell, and marries rich, unlike in most of those novels, that's just the beginning. When the aging prince on a noble charger exits stage left, that's when the action really begins, and the action is all about Our Heroine actually doing something ... and fucking around a hell of a lot in the process.That's something I quite appreciate about Krant's oevre, actually. I mean, sure, the sex scenes are ridiculously overblown, but ... here's the thing: there's no moralizing. Our Heroine blows (through) something like a dozen partners without any concern about sluttiness or Twu Wuv. There's a brief digression on how sex is sex, not love, and you shouldn't use it to fill a void which could have gone badly wrong ... but didn't. And this is a theme in Krantz books: in the sequel to Scruples, the imaginatively titled Scruples II (there's, um, a catalogue), there's a character named Sasha who has an ingenious dating scheme: 3 men at a time. Not all at once, just always 3 to be juggled, to maintain balance. She calls herself a Great Slut, since there's no way for a woman to be a Great Rake. It is kind of awesome. Keep in mind, too, that most of these were written in the 70s and 80s - they functioned as a direct response to most of the sickly-sweet pap that was out there, while still being unapologetically romantic, lush in their descriptions, and third-wave feminist way before there was a third wave. Here's an extract from my much-loved and now coverless copy of I'll Take Manhattan, first encountered when I was about 9: the premise of ITM is that little Maxi Amberville, black sheep of her magazine-dynasty family, has been challenged to restore one of the family titles and is currently wracking her brain for ideas.
What's in the pile?" Justin, Maxi's brother, asked.
"I call the the 'so what else is wrong with you?' magazines," Maxi said. "Their premise is simply that things are going so badly that you're desperate for help."
"Ma's overreacting," Angelica whispered to him.
"The hell I am," Maxi snapped. "All they do is undermine your self-confidence; they make you feel that it's impossible for your body to ever be attractive enough, that you should be doing better, better, better, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the boardroom - what, you mean you haven't been promoted yet? Oh, thank them - thank the good editors for making you feel better about that heel you married, the seventeen different things you do wrong in bed; all of which are your fault, bad girl. Guilt! If I read one more article about bulimia I'll throw up. Isn't there a single magazine a woman can buy that loves her just the ways he is? What did I just say?"
And thus, a star is born, and little
d_aulnoy 's psyche is properly prepped for her first encounter with a copy of Cosmo. We still don't really have one of these. Sassy tried, but went under, Jane tried and ... failed kind of miserably, actually, and nobody else seems to be so much as making the effort: the closest we've got are weblogs like Jezebel. And, of course, the now out-of-date but happily still not out-of-print cultural artifacts of Judith Krantz.Krantz is sort of like the Georgette Heyer of the 80s: a writer who didn't talk down to her audience, challenged them to think, and rewarded them with gorgeous language describing fantastic scenes. The fact that 80 million copies of her books are in print in 50 languages (according to her Wiki page, at least), makes me feel a little better about the - dare I hope? - flash-in-the-pan popularity of the tripetastic Shopaholic books ....
This is turning into a novel in its own right, so I'll save my thoughts on Peter Straub until later, but in the comments, any suggestions for authors whose popularity makes you feel better about the state of literacy today?