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Literary Chicks

This week at the L.C.:

What I'm really doing when I claim to be working . . .

Link | 27 April 2006 at 09:09 AM |

Plagiarism 101

The literary world is all abuzz with news that in writing her first book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, Kaavya Viswanathan lifted entire paragraphs from Megan McCafferty's first two books, and stuffed them into her novel.

Things took a turn for the worse yesterday, when Viswanathan offered up a frankly unbelievable apology:

In an e-mail message this afternoon, Ms. Viswanathan said that in high school she had read and loved the two books she is accused of borrowing from, 'Sloppy Firsts' and "Second Helpings," and that they "spoke to me in a way few other books did."

"Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel, 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,' and passages in these books," the message went on.

(Surprised and upset!)

Calling herself a "huge fan" of Ms. McCafferty's work . . .

(Saying you're a big fan of the author you've plagiarized is a bit like a stalker claiming to be in love with the woman he's following around.)

. . . Ms. Viswanathan added, "I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words." She also apologized to Ms. McCafferty and said that future printings of the novel would be revised to "eliminate any inappropriate similarities."

(So here, she's basically saying: "Besides, when describing one of the characters I copied from her, I changed the gum she was chewing from Doublemint to Orbit . . . isn't that original enough for you? Jesus, what do you people want from me? After all, I was studying for the SAT's when I was writing the damn thing.")

Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little, Brown, said Ms. Viswanathan planned to add an acknowledgment to Ms. McCafferty in future printings of the book.

Future printings of the book? I think someone, somewhere, is in serious denial.

Although, it's fun to wonder what this acknowledgment might say: "Thanks to Ms. McCafferty, who provided many of the words used to write this book (although the plot was different, and I did change the wording some, and besides, it was all done totally subconsciously .) . . without you, it might never have been finished."

Lesson learned . . . plagiarism is bad, even if it does get you into Harvard.

Link | 25 April 2006 at 08:59 AM |

Life With A Toddler, Part 28

Dr. Phil claims that I can potty train Sam in one day. But for this miraculous feat to occur, I have to first get Sam a baby doll that wets itself.

The world is full of wetting baby dolls . . . but most of them are girl dolls (with the exception of Potty Scotty, who costs $50 . . . which is about $45 more than I want to invest in this probably doomed enterprise).

A friend recommended taping a plastic syringe onto a baby girl doll, to simulate a penis, which I thought was a brilliant idea. And another friend just happened to have a spare penis-shaped straw topper left over from a bachlorette party. So with a little tape, I nip/tucked Betsy Wetsy into Bobby Wetsy.


potty doll.jpg


George thinks that the doll is so scary looking, it's going to have the opposite of its intended effect, and that Sam will never go near the potty again.

Link | 24 April 2006 at 04:09 PM |

What's Your Pirate Name?
My pirate name is:
Roger Read
Even through many pirates have a reputation for not being the brightest souls on earth, you defy the sterotypes. You've got taste and education. Arr!
Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

Argh, Matey!

Link | 22 April 2006 at 03:21 PM |

The Reading Project: Book 9

And so continues my quest to read 50 classics in a year . . .

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

Picking books that are short is all well and good . . . right up until you realize that the text has been printed in 10 point font. Suddenly 140 pages seems a lot longer. And when the book lacks a plot, it’s even worse. Such is the case with my choice for book nine: Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov.

Besides, it's irritating reading a book when I can't pronounce the title. Rake's Progress claims that "Pnin" is pronounced much as you would "Up, Nina," minus the U and the A. But when I try that, it just sounds like I'm spitting.

Anyway, in the Everyman's Library version of Pnin that I read, David Lodge begins his foreword with the following proclamation: “Vladimir Nabokov was a literary genius.”

And I, ever the contrarian, have to disagree with Lodge on this point. Unless you define "literary genius" as "one who writes a book so boring, your eyes glaze over every time you pick it up."

Even worse, the dust jacket advertises that the book is a comedy. To this, I say: Ha! Ha, ha!

I get the feeling Nabokov was trying to make jokes, in this series of long-winded, meandering essays about Pnin, a Russian emigre employed as a professor at an American college. But any jokes that might be there -- and they're bad, for example, the line "Ping pong, Pnin?" (Get it? Ping pong, Pnin? Alliteration? Ho ho ho, nothing says funny like alliteration!) -- get lost in Nabokov's sloppy and longwinded prose. The man does not know when to leave well enough alone.

But maybe Nabokov should be graded on a curve. After all, English was not his native language. How many people can not only master a second language, but then write novels in it?

So I'm giving the awful Pnin a C-, although honestly, it really deserves a D.

Link | 21 April 2006 at 09:41 PM |

Literary Chicks

My weekly blog is up at the L.C.!

This week: Why I hate Thursdays.

Link | 20 April 2006 at 09:08 AM |

The Reading Project: Book 8

The Stranger by Albert Camus

There’s an episode of Seinfeld where George is so insecure that his new girlfriend, Cheryl (cousin of Ping), will think that Jerry is funnier than he is, that George convinces Jerry to act somber around her.

So when Cheryl mentions over dinner that it’s her aunt’s birthday, Jerry sighs and says, “Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year has gone by and how little we've grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it's not to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably. Irrevocably. Happy birthday? No such thing.”

That line, Jerry’s bid to not be funny, pretty much sums up the plot of Albert Camus’s The Stranger.

The story begins with Meursault, a young Algerian man, whose mother has just died. ("Maman is dead.") He falls asleep during the vigil, remembers very little of her funeral, and is happy to return to Algiers. Once there he rather inadvisably begins to help out his friend, Raymond, seek revenge on Raymond’s ex-mistress, an Arab woman. Events escalate. The mistress’s brother, apparently not pleased that Raymond has slapped around his sister, follows Meursault and Raymond to the beach, and, along with a friend, instigates a fight. The fight ends when Raymond is hurt and retreats. Meursault later returns to the beach, and for no reason at all, Meursault shoots the Arab man, and is subsequently carted off to jail.

Originally written in French, The Stranger was translated in to English by Matthew Ward. In his foreword, Ward explains that Camus had intentionally been copying American writers, like Hemingway and Faulkner, when writing the book. Particularly in the first half of the book, the sentences are short and stilted, and the protagonist, Meursault, is hardboiled (what P.G. Wodehouse would have called “a twenty-minute egg”).

I could have told Camus that this was not the way to go. (Well, you know. If I’d been alive at the time he wrote the book, and if I spoke French.) It’s a lesson that writers of commercial fiction learn early on – you simply can’t copy another writer’s voice. It always rings false. And that’s certainly true in The Stranger.

But if you manage to slog your way through the tedium of the first half of The Stranger (excruciatingly boring details about Meursault’s neighbors, and meals, and having to listen to Meursault drone on to his girlfriend that love is meaningless, life never changes, blah blah blah blah blah), there is an unexpected surprise waiting for you: part two actually gets better. Much better. The story perks up, and you even learn the reason for much of the dull minutiae from part one.

The book peters out again in the end – prepare yourself for a final chapter where Meursault gnashes his teeth about the unbearable nothingness of being – but at least at that point you have something invested in Meursault’s story.

I’d round out the book’s grade to a B-: Act One is dreadful, Act Two is excellent, with a disappointing finale.

Link | 17 April 2006 at 12:41 PM |

Heard Around the House, Part 23

Me: I can’t believe you have to work today. It’s Good Friday!

George: Law firms don’t close on Good Friday.

Me: But it’s an important day on the Christian calendar! Making a Christian work on Good Friday, is like making a Muslim work on . . .

George:

Me:

George: Ramadan?

Me: Yeah, I just sort of lost that analogy right in the middle, huh? Anyway, that sucks. I was hoping you'd be able to watch Sam today so that I could go shopping with my mom.

Link | 14 April 2006 at 08:25 AM |

Literary Chicks

My weekly blog is up at Literary Chicks.

This week: Gwnyeth, and Madonna, and Britney, oh my!

Link | 13 April 2006 at 07:39 PM |

The Case of the Ambiguously Gendered Blue Hat

So here's the scoop: A Park Slope mom finds a hat in the park. The hat is blue. She sends out an email to nearby parents asking if anyone lost a "boy's" hat. Chaos breaks out.

Lisa, spitting mad, writes back, "I’m sorry, I know that you are just trying to be helpful, but what makes this a 'boy’s hat'? Did you see the boy himself loose it? Or does the hat in question possess an unmistakable scent of testosterone?"

Eyes are rolled. More emails are sent.

Some of the moms attempt to turn the ruckus into a joke.

"I’m sorry but, HOW DO YOU KNOW it’s for an older child? What does this say about younger children who happen to have large heads? Is something wrong with them??" jokes Susan.

"And along those lines, how do really know this is a “hat”? Doesn’t this just speak to our conventional understanding of what a “hat” really is?" Jennifer chimes in.

Others are not amused.

"Lisa, I can’t believe the amount of negative response your post has generated. You really touched a nerve. I’m really astonished by how constricted people are in their thinking," Abbey tuts.

Lisa defends herself with a long humorless e-mail, ending with, "[Children] learn these labels and stereotypes from the everyday language used in our community. Yes, even in an innocent post about a lost hat."

And it goes on. And on. And on.

Think I'm making this up? Sadly, no.

Link | 11 April 2006 at 10:35 AM |

Monday Blues

I just ran errands around town for two hours, popping in and out of this store and that, and it wasn't until I got home and was unloading the groceries that I realized I'd had my t-shirt on backwards the whole time.

Sigh.

Link | 10 April 2006 at 02:02 PM |

The Reading Project: Book 7

Butterfield 8 by John O’Hara

You just gotta love books about sex. And that’s what BUtterfield 8 is about: sex, sex and more sex.

Don’t get too excited. The book was published in 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, so the sex scenes aren’t explicit. Certainly not like the porny Harlequin romance novels I was addicted to at the virginal age of thirteen. (Which, I have to admit, caused some insanely high expectations on my part later on down the line.)

But still. The sex theme is there, and more frank than I’d have expected from a book of this era. Pedophilia, molestation, voyeurism, homosexuality, and group sex all make an appearance, even if it’s just carefully alluded to, a whisper rather than a scream.

The story follows an assorted cast of New Yorkers just being hit by the Great Depression. They’re jaded and vaguely disappointed, and their lives all intersect in a Robert Altman sort of way: some of the characters become intimates, others are just passed by on the street.

The central figure of BUtterfield 8 is Gloria Wandrous, a very young woman, who despite her age is already world-weary. The book opens when Gloria awakens in a strange, empty apartment, where she spent the previous night with a married man, one Weston Liggett. Liggett is gone, and Gloria’s dress is ruined – torn by Liggett the night before – so Gloria helps herself to Liggett’s wife’s mink coat. She shrugs the valuable fur on over her underwear and rolls out the apartment, thus setting off a chain of events that will eventually lead to Gloria’s downfall.

Despite dated popular cultural references, many of which sailed over my head, I was riveted for all 228 pages. The writing is sharp, the pacing taut, and the characterizations among the best I’ve read. Grade: A

Link | 10 April 2006 at 10:13 AM |

Overheard

Proof that you don't have to be a woman in order to be a Mother Superior.

The Place: The Thomas the Train table at the Barnes & Noble

The Time: Just before lunch, a.k.a., the Toddler Hour

Sam and another little boy are contentedly playing with the trains, when a tiny baby girl wobbles over on unsteady legs. Her father follows close behind, gabbling at her in what sounds like Spanglish.

Random Mom: Is that Spanish you're speaking to her?

Smug Father: [smugly] Portuguese. Isabella’s fluent in Portuguese.

He continues to gabble at her, sounding not at all fluent himself.

Random Mom: Wow, that’s impressive. So she’s bilingual?

Smug Father: [puffing up like a blowfish] Yes. Actually, she’s trilingual. English, French and Portuguese. And she signs.

At which point, baby Isabella lets out an incoherent squawk, and begins to babble in baby-speak. Goo-goo, gah-gah, and so forth.

Smug Father: [only slightly chagrined] Well. She doesn’t say much yet. But her comprehension is really incredibly high.

Link | 09 April 2006 at 07:36 PM |

The Reading Project: Book 6

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

At the rate I've been going, there's no way I'm going to meet my goal of reading fifty classics in one year. But I’ve figured out a solution to the problem: shorter books.

Brilliant, no? Screw the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list (which I find highly suspect, anyway). Now my main criteria for picking books for the Reading Project is that the book must be (1) a classic (as determined by me), and (2) short. The shorter the better. And novellas are best of all.

The Return of the Solider by Rebecca West is just such a novella. Weighing in at only ninety pages (excellent!), it tells the story of an English soldier, Chris Baldry, who suffers shellshock during World War I that’s caused him to forget the past fifteen years of his life. He returns to his country home with no memory of his wife, Kitty, and their life together, and instead is consumed with thoughts of his old girlfriend, Margaret, who he’d long ago fallen out with.

Chris’s cousin, Jenny – the narrator of the story, who lives with Kitty and Chris, and is half in love with her cousin - is sympathetic to his plight. She’s desperately jealous of his rekindled - yet presumably chaste, considering both parties are now married - courtship of Margaret, yet she only wants Chris to be happy. She knows that regaining his memory will cause him to remember all the unpleasantness in his life - the war, the death of his only son, the unwanted responsibilities of his family’s business. Even worse, if Chris regains his memory, and his health is restored, he’s likely to be sent back to the horrors of the front. Plus, Kitty’s somewhat of a bitch, so no one’s rooting for her.

The prose is wonderful - lovely yet not too dense. And the story is so sharp and riveting, that you’re willing to forgive its opaque moments and indefinite ending.

TROTS was like a scoop of lime sorbet, acting as a nice palate cleanser after the dreariness of The Heart of the Matter and West with the Night. I rate it an A-.

Link | 07 April 2006 at 03:21 PM |

Thursday Roundup

Today's the release date for Before: Short Stories About Pregnancy From Our Top Writers. I wrote an essay for the collection, called Trying Again, which is based on my experience of attempting a second pregnancy after losing our first son.

On a lighter note, my weekly blog is up at Literary Chicks. This week: what he's really thinking about.

Link | 06 April 2006 at 08:27 AM |

The Reading Project: Book 5

I challenged myself to read 50 classics this year, and I'm posting reviews of the books here on my blog. I'm already hopelessly behind schedule.

West With The Night by Beryl Markham

I really, really, really wanted to like this book.

The theme of Beryl Markham's memoir, West With the Night, is Girl Power. (Maybe I should say Grrrrl Power?) Markham was raised in early twentieth century Africa, where she learned to hunt with the Murani, set off on her own at the age of seventeen to become a horse trainer, and was the first person to fly a plane solo westward across the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s all exciting, gripping stuff. Or, at least, it should be. Instead, the book is pretty much a lesson in how literary writing can be so crushingly dull, it makes you want to bang your head against the wall while sobbing, “Make it end! Make it end!”

As a commercial writer, I have one main goal – to move the story along. I want my books to be well written, of course, and for the characters to be rounded and intriguing. But that all comes second to the plot, to the pacing of the book. Commercial writers don’t have the luxury of wasting pages in esoteric contemplation of how dewdrops cling to rose petals.

Markham doesn’t feel so encumbered. She’s perfectly happy to witter along about the dull minutia of her life. At one point in WWTN, she rambles on for three paragraphs about her lamp.

Three paragraphs. About a fucking lamp. And then, two pages later, she returns to the lamp yet again.

Now, let me be clear: I love lamps. In fact, I’m a bit obsessed with lamps. My New Year’s Resolution this year was, “I resolve not to buy any more lamps.” (And I’m doing really well: It’s already April, and so far I’ve only bought two.) But not even I could go on for three paragraphs about a lamp. And neither should Markham. Why? Because it’s boring.

There’s some controversy over whether Markham actually wrote WWTN (popular theory has it that it was penned by her third husband, Raoul Schumache, a screenwriter). I think they might be right, because the narrative has a distinctly masculine flavor to it.

This purports to be memoir, and, indeed, Markham recounts, in excruciating detail, a horse race she’s watched or a flight she’s taken. But where’s the emotion? What was she feeling when, at a ridiculously young age, she left her father’s African farm on horseback, alone, and with no plan other than to work with horses? Who was the first man she kissed? Did she ever fall in love? Where’s the romance?

These are details we want, and without them, without a glimpse into the woman that Markham was, it’s hard to get to know her, much less like her – which, by the way, she doesn’t make any easier, what with the occasional shockingly racist comment and the elephant hunting and what not.

Some critics have commented that the controversy over the book’s authorship has kept WWTN from becoming a classic. I disagree. What keeps the book from becoming a classic is that it sucks. It gets a C, and only because it thankfully stopped short of 300 pages. Any longer, and it would have been in solid D country.

Link | 04 April 2006 at 08:16 PM |

Heard Around the House, Part 22

George: Hi! I'm home!

Me: [to Sam] Daddy's home! Go show him your new haircut.

Sam: Hi, Daddy!

George: Oh. My. God. What happened to his head?

Me: I cut his hair. Don't you like it?

George: It's just so . . . so . . . short. Why'd you give him a buzz cut?

Me: I started off cutting it, and it was uneven, so I had to keep taking more and more off.

George: He looks like a soldier. Or a convict.

Me: Well. It is getting warmer out. I thought this would be practical. So you really don't like it?

George: No. I really don't like it. I think he looked better with hair.

Me: I thought I did as good a job as the barber.

George: No. You didn't.

Me: But the barber gave him a really bad haircut last time. It's better than that.

George: Ummm . . . no, hon, it really isn't. It's uneven. And choppy. And what are these long pieces? It looks like you completely missed a few spots with the razor.

Me: [defensively] Well, he was moving around a lot while I was cutting. Geez. I did the best I could . . .

Link | 01 April 2006 at 02:45 PM |