The title of this post is the name of one of the best classes I took at Yale. If anything prepared me to write Chick Lit, it was this class. (Actually, I named a character in my book Clarissa after Samuel Richardson’s famous heroine. We read the ENTIRE, unabridged version in “Women and TRON,” an accomplishment that caused the department head at the time to shut his office door before admitting in a whisper that he hadn’t.)
The funny thing about all this chick lit bashing (cf. Sittenfeld’s “slut” mud-slinging, and etc. ad nauseum) is that it follows in a grand and glorious tradition of belittling fiction that is primarily by and about the contemporary role of women. I don’t have clue one as to why this is such a popular pasttime, nor do I understand the naysayer’s assumption that if any particular piece of work in a genre is a mite fluffy or poorly written, the whole genre ought to be dismissed as so much trash.
I’m pleased as punch whenever I see an article such as the one that appeared in this week’s Salon by Rebecca Traister that reminds us all of the grand old tradition of chick lit, chick lit bashing, and why everyone needs to shut the hell up already.
I was happy to see her responding to those who blast Bridget Jones’s Diary as merely a modern send-up of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice and reminding them that Austen’s own Northanger Abbey was a send-up of the runaway bestseller The Mystery of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (which I read in TRON).
I was overjoyed by Margaret Atwood’s recognition of the validity of the genre. (I might even overlook this whole long-distance pen nonsense).
“Some chick-lit books are better than others. I thought Bridget Jones was quite a howl. There’s good, bad and mediocre in everything … So … if it’s about young women we’re not supposed to take it seriously?”
Traister writes:
“The urge to condemn chick lit is also born of a shame about our own femininity, a desire to distance ourselves not just from bad writing, but from retailed versions of womanhood that might affect the way we are perceived by men and by each other.”
The irony rests in the fact that though chick lit authors have been arguing that chick lit is more than cosmopolitans, rich boyfriends, and publishing assistants, the industry (driven by these prejudicial reviews and the public’s growing association of the chick it label with the steroetype, rather than the genre) has taken to saying that “No, these books are more than chick lit.”
I am reminded of the old science fiction argument. I was once told that serious science fiction authors never refer to their work as “Sci-fi”. “Sci-fi” is cheesy space operas with alien chicks in bikinis. If you’re talking about hard science science fiction, replete with serious philosophical examination of string theory or whatever, then you say “sf” or “speculative fiction” or something similar. I don’t know if that’s true; we’d have to ask someone with a PhD in the subject. I do kknow that it hasn’t seemed to hurt the success of the cable channel “SciFi.”
Lately, I’ve taken to calling my book “a comedy.” I’ve rationalized in my head that this might invite more male readers. But how many men are reading ShopGirl, even if it is by Steve Martin? (Come on, is that a chick lit cover or what?) Am I, as Traister asserts, submitting to the genre fear? Or am I attempting to let the potential reader know that if they want urban, swinging city girl out of my heroine Amy, they are going to need to give her a few years.
My book has several “shout outs” to the genre touchstones, but every one is twisted on its head, from the pink drinks to the job in publishing. The naysayers who like to make checklists of “chick lit plot points” will ave a field day with my story. But since when is it acceptable for literary criticism to reduce a novel to to its elemental inclusions, rather than seeing the work as more than a sum of its parts?
A pink drink is nothing more than window dressing, like the chase scene in a thriller. They are the set pieces through which an author can craft a transcendent tale.
November 1st, 2005 at 2:00 pm
Sometimes you don’t want a transcendent tale, just the window dressing. Like some food–not healthy, not nutritious, but tastes good, and that’s what its worth is all about. Call me cynical, but I think that’s the way most readers are
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November 1st, 2005 at 2:33 pm
I don’t think most readers are that way, but either way, I don’t think it makes much of a difference. If they read Bridget Jones and think she’s “a howl” or they read Bridget Jones and think it’s “a howl” AND that it perfectly captures a moment of feminine experience, then what does it matter? Either way, the reader is satisfied. You’re just more likely to satisfy both kinds of readers with the transcendent part.
Furthermore, the point is not whether to say that this kind of book is better than that kind of book, it’s that why can you say because a book has ABC elements, it’s just as bad as some other book with ABC elements, without the understanding that the author may have purposefully included ABC elements BECAUSE she was making a statement about genre expectations (cf. Northanger Abbey’s creepy house) or because she is using genre shorthand as a springboard to whatever it is she’s actually trying to say, or because she’s appealing to the genre’s readership.or becausse, dammit, her heroine likes pink drinks. Books shouldn’t be judged by a checklist of set pieces, props, or plot points. They should be judged as a whole, by what the book says and how it says it. And if all it says is, laugh, see? this is funny, then that’s okay, too.
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November 1st, 2005 at 2:52 pm
On ya, Diana! I hear you, love. As you say it’s so transparently the old and terribly tedious girl book=bad book. Yawn.
It gets so tiring when some generic elements are held to be worthy and lit’ry (middle aged male professor’s affair with beautiful young student) while others (human envoy to alien planet; girls in NYC drinking the pink drinks) are most decidely not. You know what? They’re all generic elements. It’s how they’re writ and how they operate that makes or breaks the book. Not the fact of their existence.
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November 1st, 2005 at 2:53 pm
Oh, crap. I see you have just written what I just wrote.
I’ll get out of your way now. . .
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November 1st, 2005 at 10:38 pm
[Diana and Justine wrote essentially the same thing]
Great minds think alike.
I do believe that if Bellow and company can write about the Dean’s December and about the professor having the affair with his young student, then we can write about the secretary–whoa, that’s Admin. Ass. to you–who’s harried and trying to start an affair with the adorable guy who delivers the office supplies. The chick lit voice is way more snarky, and the Bellow-and-crew voice is way more “eloquent” (in some way) or “literary,” but it’s a similar meme, you’re right.
I have occasionally railed against having chick lit heroines be dumb (and sometimes even TSTL). There is “Smart Chick Lit” out there, such as Carrie Pilby. I think the problem is that people hear about books (whether they exist or not, grin) in which heroines act dumb and do stupid things for no particular reason (and not just ONCE, but many times in service to the plot), and they don’t hear about any of the good ones.
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November 2nd, 2005 at 4:51 am
About ABC… it is sometimes an element of genre parody, too. Include a genre stereotype to mock it… but unless the book is openly comedic, those elements are often overlooked, or perceived as just one more cliche.
I don’t agree about judgement, though. With a film, you can say it was a good film even though the set designer should have been fired before the project started. In the book, the author is the same. If some element of her book is badly written or maybe not so badly, but you, the reader, simply don’t feel its effect–it is not a reason to search for the hidden virtues or try to judge the book as a whole. Most books, and here I agree with the anon, *are* the checklist of characters and set pieces. They aren’t trying to say anything anyway.
And if you see a model on the runway who wears artificial fur, but her head decoration is atrocious, you can of course praise the designer for his attention towards the PETA issues, but it doesn’t make the whole thing any more beautiful to your eyes. And it provably shouldn’t.
Same with elements of the genre. If an author, say, uses a stereotype for all those reasons you mentioned, if she is a good writer, it shouldn’t just stick out as a trivial boring stereotype. If it does, then her purpose of using it for some other reason has already half failed.
Besides, if having ABC elements defines a book so much, it can be judged because of them, then where is its essence? If the author is trying to say something, why is so her voice so quiet, it gets lost in the forest of ABC?
I mean… if I’ve read a book and all I can say about it is that it features a pink drink, or an alien invasion, or a middle-aged professor, and it’s my main and strongest impression…what does it say about it anyway?:)
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