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d_aulnoyPresent tense. Terse. Loaded with implications. Basically, the kind of writing that Stephen King accuses Harold of in The Stand.
My Life in Clothes is the kind of book that I ought to like, at least on paper: each chapter is marked by some garment and its contribution to self-image. However. instead, I'm rolling my eyes at the pretension. She doesn't talk about clothes, either (I feel bait-and-switched): instead, it's all casual segues from, like, an overpriced bra her mom wanted to buy to the abuses that she suffered in her childhood, from the pedal-pushers she wears to meet a former lover onto their torrid resumption of a tawdry affair. Ugh.
It seems like this is a subgenre within a sub-genre that might be doomed: the last book in this style I read was called something like "Little Black Dress," but it appears that I either hid it well enough to not be ashamed of myself for having bought it, donated it to some unworthy cause, or otherwise jettisoned it (and when I try to search on Amazon, all I get is a bunch of suggestions for "Mennonite in a Black Dress," which, no). That one wasn't quite as pretentiously depressing (depressingly pretentious?), but the narration was equally self-obsessed and tiresome, if in a fluffier mode. Perhaps - heavens forfend! - this implies that women with an interest in their own attire are tiresome and self-obsessed?
Nah. Out of a sample-size of two, I merely choose to believe that they're bad writers.
Really bad writers. Be warned, y'all.
* To be fair, it doesn't seem this one has gotten an MFA. Nevertheless, her work bears the deadly stamp. If you, Dear Reader, have an MFA, please do not take this as a personal criticism, but accept it as a tongue-in-cheek jab at your most loathsome classmate. In turn, when you jibe at self-important academics and their addiction to jargon, I will know that you do not mean me.
My Life in Clothes is the kind of book that I ought to like, at least on paper: each chapter is marked by some garment and its contribution to self-image. However. instead, I'm rolling my eyes at the pretension. She doesn't talk about clothes, either (I feel bait-and-switched): instead, it's all casual segues from, like, an overpriced bra her mom wanted to buy to the abuses that she suffered in her childhood, from the pedal-pushers she wears to meet a former lover onto their torrid resumption of a tawdry affair. Ugh.
It seems like this is a subgenre within a sub-genre that might be doomed: the last book in this style I read was called something like "Little Black Dress," but it appears that I either hid it well enough to not be ashamed of myself for having bought it, donated it to some unworthy cause, or otherwise jettisoned it (and when I try to search on Amazon, all I get is a bunch of suggestions for "Mennonite in a Black Dress," which, no). That one wasn't quite as pretentiously depressing (depressingly pretentious?), but the narration was equally self-obsessed and tiresome, if in a fluffier mode. Perhaps - heavens forfend! - this implies that women with an interest in their own attire are tiresome and self-obsessed?
Nah. Out of a sample-size of two, I merely choose to believe that they're bad writers.
Really bad writers. Be warned, y'all.
* To be fair, it doesn't seem this one has gotten an MFA. Nevertheless, her work bears the deadly stamp. If you, Dear Reader, have an MFA, please do not take this as a personal criticism, but accept it as a tongue-in-cheek jab at your most loathsome classmate. In turn, when you jibe at self-important academics and their addiction to jargon, I will know that you do not mean me.