Thursday, September 3, 2009

"All That Glitters..."

The Books of Summer

So Eve, my sidekick, and I took a road trip this summer. Part of it involved driving for endless hours north on the Golden State Freeway, aka Interstate 5. One of the things we did to pass the time was listen to books on tape.

Eve is one of the most well-read women I know. My own taste tends to oscillate between the really good books that Eve has discovered (two recent examples are The Known World by Edward P. Jones and The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea) and obscure books that nourish whatever obsession I'm researching -- Lynn Gamble's The Chumash World at European Contact is a current example.

Having established our rather high-brow and eclectic reading credentials, it might surprise you that one of the books on tape Eve selected (there were extenuating circumstances, which I won't get into) was Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger, who also wrote The Devil Wears Prada. Back in 2006, Weisberger was ranked #4 on Trashionista's Top 10 "Chick Lit" list.

Chick Lit, you ask? According to chicklitbooks.com, "chick lit is a genre comprised of books that are mainly written by women for women." The site goes on to define the Chick Lit genre by explaining that, "The plots usually consist of women experiencing usual life issues, such as love, marriage, dating, relationships, friendships, roommates, corporate environments, weight issues, addiction, and much more."

Chicklitbooks.com also warns that, "There is much speculation that chick lit is nothing more than “trash”, “fluffy, mind-numbing garbage”, “formulaic vapid prose”, and more. I’ve heard it all, and then some. The problem I have with probably 99% of the people who say those things is that they haven’t extensively read into the genre. So why are they labeling something they have little idea about?"

I plead guilty.

However,  despite the fact that Trashionista claims that Marian Keyes is "arguably the originator of Chick Lit" because her book, Watermelon (1995) came out a full year before Bridget Jones's Diary, I think that The Golden Notebook (1962) by Doris Lessing -- another book I read this summer that dealt with "women experiencing usual life issues" -- may be the granny, or "Bubbe," of Chick Lit. Of course, it went by another name back then: feminism.

In her New York Times Book Review of Notebook, Elizabeth Hardwick says that the book "left its mark upon the ideas and feelings of a whole generation of young women," and the Washington Post reviewer said, "Doris Lessing writes about her own sex with the unrelenting intensity of Simone de Beauvoir, and about sex itself with the frankness and detail of John O'Hara." Lauren Weisberger could not be accused of that.

Chasing Harry Winston is such a promising concept for a book in this genre. Harry Winston Jewelers has outlets in all the great capitals of the world: New York, Beverly Hills, Costa Mesa (?), Paris, London, Dubai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Beijing, to name just a few. And the three material girl protagonists of the novel are approaching thirty and anxious about their status as "ringless wonders." Are they going to span the globe in search of proposals from Mr. Right in any of these exotic destinations? Not really.

Emmy, whose character was borrowed from Charlotte in "Sex and the City," does go to Paris. No proposals there, however. And there is a scene at CuraƧao, an exotic resort in the Caribbean -- alas, there's no Winston salon on the island, and nary a mention of the jeweler during the girls' visit.

Leigh, whose character is a hybrid between Carrie in "Sex and the City" and Lauren Weisberger herself, does in fact get engaged. There's no mention of where the rock came from, however. Aside from the aforementioned Caribbean junket, the farthest Leigh gets from Manhattan is the Hamptons on Long Island. No Winston boutique there. Citing a lack of passion, Leigh breaks off the engagement (returning her to the ranks of the ringless) and quits her coveted publishing job with plans to sell her apartment and get an MFA in creative writing (!?)

In fact, the only time Harry Winston figures in the plot is when Adriana, the Brazilian vixen whose character begins as an hommage to "Sex and the City's" Samantha and morphs into Carrie (complete with a sex advice column in Marie Claire magazine, soon to become a major motion picture), is taken to the Winston store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and presented with a pair of sapphire earrings previously worn by Salma Hayek at the Oscars (if memory serves - remember, I listened to the book).

Note: there is no Miranda from "Sex and the City" in Harry Winston. The closest we get is Emmy's little sister Izzie, who's a successful OB/GYN in Miami. Nope, Harry Winston's Bal Harbour boutique is neither visited nor mentioned on Emmy's visit with her sister, whom Weisberger named in honor of the doctor of the same name on "Grey's Anatomy," which is a favorite show of the nearly-thirty trio of protagonists.

Without making this post longer than it already is, I'd like to close with a paragraph from Winston and a paragraph from The Golden Notebook, which was read and simultaneously blogged about this past November in an interesting literary experiment conducted by a group of seven women writers, none of whom (as far as I know) has yet made Trashionista's Top 10 Chick Lit list. You be the judge of whether one paragraph appears more "trashy, fluffy, and vapid" than the other. I don't think you need to have "read extensively in the genre" to decide, by the way.

From Winston. The scene is Leigh's New York apartment, when she breaks off her engagement to Russell, the hot TV sports commentator:
"Russell, you're not listening to me. You know I love you but I can't stop wondering if things didn't move so quickly with us because of circumstances, you know? You start dating someone at this age and they fit all the criteria of being smart and successful and attractive and everyone else is getting married and they're all asking you when you're going to settle down. And it just chugs right along. What might have been a great, fun, yearlong relationship when you're twenty-five all of a sudden starts to take on a whole new meaning when you're thirty, thirty-two. Then, before you know it, you're getting engaged and committing your life to someone you don't necessarily know all that well. Because 'it's time,' whatever that means..." [I found this on the Google Books version (incomplete) of Chasing Harry Winston, page 243, excerpted from the Simon and Schuster hardcover edition, published in May 2008.]
From Notebook. The scene is Anna's London apartment, where she has been holed up for weeks in a twisted love affair with Saul Green, an American screenwriter who was kicked out of the Communist Party for being anti-Stalinist, then blacklisted in Hollywood for being a red. Saul has just left to see another of his women. Anna is 35, divorced, and has a pre-teen daughter who would be Meryl Streep's age now...
"Then there was a moment of knowledge. I understood I'd gone right inside his craziness: he was looking for this wise, kind, all-mother figure, who is also sexual playmate and sister; and because I had become part of him, this is what I was looking for too, both for myself, because I needed her, and because I wanted to become her. I understood I could no longer separate myself from Saul, and that frightened me more than I have been frightened... For with my intelligence I knew that this man was repeating a pattern over and over again: courting a woman with his intelligence and sympathy, claiming her emotionally; then, when she began to claim in return, running away. And the better a woman was, the sooner he would begin to run. I knew this with my intelligence, and yet I sat there in my dark room, looking at the hazed wet brilliance of the purple London night sky, longing with my whole being for that mythical woman, longing to be her, but for Saul's sake..." [pp. 587-588 from the Bantam Books edition, published in September 1973 by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, who published the original hardback in June of 1962. Note: my Bantam Books edition cost $1.95 brand new!]
Los Angeles plays a minor role in both Winston and Notebook, in the context of the creativity and power of the entertainment industry. Its natural beauty is not a factor for the sophisticated urbanites who must deal, somewhat distastefully, with the angel city's monopoly on the movies.

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