Reading Addict

Jane Austen is my dirty little secret.  In feminist theory classes, I read her novels side-by-side with modern Harlequin Romances, and the comparisons are vast.  Without fail, there must always be a man, a manor, and a marriage.  But, as manipulated as I feel by Austen’s novels, I cannot help but become swept up in Regency England with its empire waist dresses, piano fortes, and strongly-held assumption that “a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Imagine my delight when I came across Shannon Hale’s Austenland, a fun romp through Austen’s England and the expectations it has created in a subculture of women.   

Of course, Austenland is formulaic.  It’s a contemporary Pride and Prejudice, and we readers want nothing more or less than the Austen version.  The novel’s heroine, Jane Hayes, is a thirty-something professional woman with a secret.  Stuffed behind a dying potted plant is the BBC double-DVD version of Pride and Prejudice.   At the end of many dismal days, Jane “dimmed the lights, turned on her nine-inch television, and acknowledged what was missing.”  Just when Jane’s obsession with Mr. Darcy (or the Colin Firth-in-breeches-version of Mr. Darcy) seems to be so consuming that it is threatening her ability to interact in the “real world,” her eccentric aunt dies and leaves her an all-expense paid trip to Pembrook Park.   Pembrook Park is a place where wealthy women who dream of a Regency romance come to live out their own Austen plot.  It is a place of no scripts and no written endings.  Here “on scholarship,” Jane hopes to exorcise her Mr. Darcy fantasies once and for all.  Surely, you see where this is going, right?  And, even though they know where this is going, Austen fans will fret and swoon with every twist and turn of the comforting (some might daresay predictable) plot.   

Austenland is not high brow literature; it is a guilty pleasure, much like watching the six-hour BBC double-DVD version of Pride and Prejudice.  And, were I in full confessional mode, I would have to disclose that I am halfway through this delicious version and feel no shame whatsoever!     

               In which we discussed the getting in touch with the creepy side of emotional isolation, the K-Mart Realists, and Haruki Murakami

 If you’ve read Haruki Murakami, chances are you haven’t read just one of his novels. They are remarkably accessible, yet, like your grandma’s terrarium, Murakami’s stories are teeming with energy below the surface.  If I may be so bold, I don’t think it would be a character assault to describe Murakami as a Japanese compatriot of the K-Mart Realists.  While Raymond Carver focused on all the nuances of love and relationships, Murakami’s themes deal with alienation, existential dread and angst.  (On a side note, Murakami paid tribute to Carver when he published a collection of essays entitled What I Talk About When I talk About Running, borrowing from Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.)  The novel After Dark finds a deeply withdrawn protagonist, sipping coffee and reading at Denny’s.  It’s a third person omniscient point of view, but I’d venture to describe it as ‘hyper-omniscience’.  The reader is guided on a journey from a camera view, looking down on our characters, that not only can see their actions but their thoughts and motivations as well.  But sometimes…sometimes his stories can be downright creepy.  And I mean that in the best possible way.           

Take Eri. Eri, the sister of our introverted coffee drinker, sleeps while a mysterious character watches her from her bedroom TV screen.  Oh, and our stalker wears a transparent mask.  And the TV turned itself on.  While reading, a sense of dread may well in your chest, not unlike the psychological terror evoked by David Lynch’s Lost Highway.            

This isn’t a book to pick up if you don’t appreciate a minimalist approach.  If you like your fiction with long, flowing, effusive narrative akin to Tom Wolfe (who once famously quipped about the K-Mart Realists, ‘Less is less’), or meandering stream of consciousness like Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, I’d look elsewhere.  But…If you want a quick read without sacrificing content, without sacrificing depth and meaning, without foregoing the complexities of emotional isolation, Haruki Murakami just might be your bag.   

I’m not really sure what I was thinking. A 32 year old guy picking up a teen romance.

Maybe it was because I had heard that it was the Second Coming of Harry Potter. My nieces and nephews, not to mention many of their aunts and uncles, some of whom are pushing middle age, were ravenous fans of J.K. Rowling’s fantasy series, and we’d had a few family debates on how The Deathly Hallows would wrap up the loose ends. If this new series had the same draw, I wanted in so I could keep up during the holiday visits.

Or maybe it’s because I’m a fan of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Or maybe because I was one of those basement dwelling gamers in high school. Or maybe it’s because all the hype piqued my curiosity. For whatever reason, I decided to check out Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, the first in her girl-meets-vampire series.

Well, Harry Potter it ain’t.

Twilight is not a bad book, but it is definitely written for an audience of which I am not a member. The story follows 17 year old Bella, who is repeatedly shown to be too smart and too fiercely independent for her own good. She’s an awkward wallflower who nevertheless seems to have just about every male character in the book tripping over themselves to ask her on a date, not the least of which is Edward the vampire heartthrob, who for reasons not clearly explained finds her irresistible. As such, the book is certainly a fantasy. I expected to have to put up with a sugary sweet love story, but after about 350 pages of Bella agonizing over just how impossibly wonderful her chivalrous bad boy vampire beau is, I was simply looking for a story, any kind of story, period. It’s only in the last quarter of the book that the plot gets moving, after we are introduced to Edward’s much more interesting vampire family, and the monsters finally come out to play.

The Twilight series has developed quite a following, so it certainly appeals to a great many people. I didn’t hate it, but my attitude toward it can be adequately summed up as ‘meh’. That said, I can see how it would appeal to young adult readers, fans of supernatural romance, or fantasy readers in general.

If you’re looking for a contemporary fantasy/horror with a little more meat (and blood) to it, however, I recommend Descendant by Graham Masterton, a grim tale about an American vampire hunter during WWII and the Cold War, or Robert McCammon’s The Wolf’s Hour, about a British spy who also happens to be a werewolf. If you are looking for a good bit of dark, violent escapism, these are worth a look.

I am a 30-year-old woman in love with a teenage vampire.  This is not a “National Inquirer” headline.  I am embarrassed, but I do not attempt to keep this fascination under wraps.  I am in literary lust with Edward Cullen, the hero/antihero of Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” quartet.  I thought I would never say this but Edward Cullen makes me want to be 17 again.  I am slightly mollified that while he looks like a 17-year-old boy he is actually a 108-year-old vampire, but I still feel a bit dirty.  Edward is brooding, arrogant and exhibits frightening stalker-like behavior.  He is also incredibly romantic, a fierce protector and deliciously inscrutable.   Edward can read minds, everyone’s but Bella’s.  The facet of this series, most especially “Twilight” book, that most draws me is the inevitability of our teenage vampire’s relationship with the heroine, klutzy every girl Bella.  He has no choice but to love her as she is.  He loves her despite her mediocrity and his inability to read her.  Meyer made a masterful stroke in making Bella mundane, because it is easy to discredit her and push her off your mental pier, and place yourself in Edward’s arms. 

Edward Cullen may not be a novel hero for the ages.  He is derivative and trapped in a ludicrous, gushing young adult book that is still worth reading because it evokes genuine emotion.  When I first read “Twilight” pre-sequels, and way before the movie, I was immediately obsessed, but the only other fanatical people I could talk to about the book were the teenage girls that frequent my library.  We would squeal and swoon together. Edward is just another handsome hero in an established literary line marching back through the history of the novel—swoon worthy fictional men that give you unrealistic expectations of men and relationships.  From Edward Ferrars in “Sense and Sensibility” to Edmund Bertram in “Mansfield Park” to Edward Rochester in “Jane Eyre”, Edward Cullen is a white knight saving another princess making real life for their readers unsatisfactory. 

Meyer has sampled and sifted through the great romantic heroes in literature to create her Edward.  Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters created some of the most romantic and most imitated heroes.  The Bronte’s heroes are brooding and inscrutable.  Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff is the prototypical stalker of literature.  Austen’s heroes are sometimes charming, always dashing and gentlemanly.  Edward Ferrars in Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” faces opposition from family and friends to marry Lucy Steele.  In “Twilight,” Edward Cullen faces opposition from family and friends to love Bella.  Edward Rochester in “Jane Eyre” falls in love with Jane because her simplicity and plainness contrast so much with the women to whom he is accustomed, similar to Edward and Bella.  In fact, Bella, the heroine of “Twilight,” spends her time between obsessing over Edward and finding danger reading “Wuthering Heights.”  While Edward Cullen watches her sleep (read stalks her), he reads a few pages of the book on her bedside table, “The Collected Works of Jane Austen.”  The authors are to blame.  They create these paragons of the page, these testaments to testosterone that lead to unrealistic expectations. 

 In which we discussed how to irk the roommate, those bothersome boy-men, and a laugh out-loud memoir.  

‘Nick Hornby is a 40-year-old 15-year-old.’These were the first words spoken to the roommate upon finishing Hornby’s Fever Pitch.  Not that the roommate cared one lick; his expression, not exactly the embodiment of mutual interest.  What modicum of curiosity that initially existed, I’m sure were burned like calories while he cleaned, vacuumed, yard-worked, dusted, swept, mopped…the house-cleaning usually split evenly between the roomies.  But not while Nick read Fever Pitch.  Instead, while one roomie toiled the other teared up with laughter.     

But back to Hornby.  This observation, about Hornby’s books somehow expressing a sort of stunted male emotional maturity, isn’t the first.  Most of his books are about men who are essentially boys.  In fact Hornby once quipped about High Fidelity, “Here’s another boy-man who can’t commit to anything beyond his record collection”.  Others have called his “male confessionals” about self-centered egoists.  To that I would add they’re likeable egoists; egoists who have the ability to cause the reader to feel better about their own egoist tendencies, but egoists all the same.   

Fever Pitch was a thoroughly engaging read, much to the chagrin of the dust bustin’ roommate.  Hornby’s memoir deals primarily with his love affair with the Arsenal football (soccer to us Yanks) team of North London.  It’s fluent and lucid, meaning that while the writing isn’t too sparse, it’s also of an everyman style that lends itself to the memoir, allowing the reader to clearly ascertain the author’s thoughts and motives.  Also, this novel is FUNNY.  Laugh out loud funny (again, much to the chagrin of the roommate).  Because this memoir is told through the lens of an unhealthy obsession with a sports team, some of the requisite adolescent angst, the peer pressure, the acne, the gee-golly-Jane-would-you-like-to-dance moments are used sparingly.  Instead, you’ll find poignant passages about identity.  About class conflicts.  About using a football team as a metaphor for one’s life.  But trust me; the humor is the eye-catcher here.