I don’t want you people to think I’m obsessed or anything, but it occurs to me that you might think I’m a little warped, what with urging nice, upstanding citizens to read Flowers in the Attic and give it to minors. Especially when it’s such crap. But here’s the thing. I want people to read it, and read it gleefully, because it is such crap.
The glory of V.C. Andrews – and I speak here only of the early titles, which were really written by someone who at least went by that name and wrote the books, not some sad wreck of a ghost-writer who has to work in that voice, god help him – is that the books are written in truly poor form. The way I always think about it is, This is a woman who wrote books using the word “for” instead of “because” over and over and fucking OVER again because she really thought it sounded classier and more writerly. Even though no one, I mean, NO one, would use “for” that way in real life. I mean, you read the Dollanganger books (Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, and If There Be Thorns are the essential three; there are more in the series, but I don’t really count them) and they are just chockablock with speech patterns that are not native to anywhere except Andrews’ addled head. I mean, the dialogue in this book is crazy. But just the narrator’s voice – a girl named Cathy – is completely artificial. It goes beyond the beyond, and – if you are in the right mood, the right frame of mind, and the right age when you read it – there’s just nothing better. It’s candy, I tell you, cotton candy, in printed form. It’s dotted swiss lace made with sleazy gold polyester thread.
The plots are beyond comprehension; the names of the characters are laughable. To be honest, there’s nothing genuinely good about these things. But that is their charm.
I find myself wondering if any boys have ever read these things, and I have to say, the only boys I know who have read them are now gay men. If you catch your twelve year old son reading a V.C. Andrews book, then you know what end is up. It’s not required reading for boys. But I stand by my word, for girls, this is just essential.
Apparently Ms. Andrews died of breast cancer in 1986, and her last novel (which was the last of the Dollanganger series) was actually finished by her ghostwriter, Andrew Niederman. I once tried to read one of the later (Niederman-penned) Andrews books when I found it in the coffee break room at an office I was working in; it was devoid of the perverse charms that Ms. Andrews supplied with such florid ease. There’s clearly a cult built around the Dollanganger books, but I’m not sure I’d want to attend a meeting of its members… I think it might get a little too weird, even for Miss Edith. Though I am confident, confident, that the mint juleps served there would be excellent…
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
V.C. Andrews: A Few Serious Words on the Handling of Toxic Waste
It was last night, when I was feeling a little punchy, that I posted my handwritten blurb about V.C. Andrews’ low-gothic novel Flowers in the Attic. I realize that it’s a little hard to read what I wrote, so I’m going to make it clearer here:
GO AHEAD. TELL ME I’M TRASHY.
See if I care. The reality is, for what it is, V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic is a Great Book! I’m totally serious. This thing is so appallingly awful, I adore it wholeheartedly. Join Edith on the dark side…
I originally wrote some version of this when I was working in a real-life bookstore, and taped it up next to a copy of said book. It did inspire a few sales, perhaps – but I knew the book would have sold anyway. When I first read Flowers in the Attic, I believe it was being marketed as a romance novel, or something like it; you could buy it at the supermarket checkout counter, in a rack where things like Harlequin romances were sold. Trash, you know? But somehow, over the years, the angle for this book has changed. I think the publisher – is it Simon and Schuster? – has figured out that the people who really want to read this book aren’t women but young girls, girls who’re maybe eleven to sixteen years old. So now it gets listed in publishers’ catalogues as a young adult book, and that is where booksellers are urged to shelve it. Which seems a little crazy to me, frankly, but all right; I won’t fight it.
One of my last hurrahs as a bookseller in an open shop came early last summer – perhaps almost a year ago, now I’m thinking about it – when a customer who I’d helped time and time again asked me for help with a thorny problem. This woman, an esteemed curator and scholar, had a granddaughter who was going away to sleepaway camp for the first time. The girl, maybe twelve years old, was a real reader, and Devoted Grandmama wanted to select three novels to slip into the girl’s duffel bag as a kind of surprise present. I thought this was nice, and said I’d be happy to help pick some things out. Grandmama wanted there to be different kinds of books. “She reads like a grownup,” she told me, “But at the same time, I think she needs things that are just fun. I was thinking maybe one should be a mystery?” I strode confidently to the mystery section and plucked a few titles from the shelf: some Agatha Christie, I remember; I think I picked up a Josephine Tey, too; and something else that I now cannot recall. Grandmama picked the Tey book, which turned out to be a personal favorite of her own. We selected some current light fiction – was it Prep? I can’t remember; I hope not, but it might have been – and then we needed one more. I asked Grandmama, “How protective are the girl’s parents? I mean, can you send this girl anything and it’d be ok?” Grandmama considered the question and told me that as long as something came from her, it was pretty much an anything-goes situation. “The girl’s twelve,” I said, meandering to the Young Adult section. I plucked Flowers in the Attic from the shelf and held it in front of me for Grandmama to see. “This book,” I said, “should be required reading for every young girl. However, it is filled with graphic sexual accounts, including incest, and really bad writing.” Grandmama laughed and asked why I was recommending it if it was badly written. I said, “I’ll tell you the truth: I don’t know. I just know that I read this book over and over again when I was that age, and almost all of my friends who read would say the same thing.” I called over to Kate, my co-worker, who was working the cash register. “Kate: Flowers in the Attic for a twelve year old girl?” Kate nodded her head vehemently and said, “Oh, you’ve got to. I mean, she’s going to get her hands on it one way or another anyhow.” I turned back to Grandmama. “The thing is,” I said, “Kate’s right. And,” I added, leaning in, as they say, conspiratorially, “if the kid gets it from you, you get infinite Cool Grandma points.”
Grandmama bought all three of the books, and we wrapped them up. Two weeks later, she came back into the store on her lunch break. I was puttering around in the basement but she came down to find me. She wanted to tell me that she’d gotten a phone call from her granddaughter, who’d read all the books and loved them all, but loved Flowers in the Attic best. “She thought it was great,” Grandmama laughed. “I certainly would never have picked it out myself!”
Ah, Grandmama; wherever you do your book shopping now, I hope there’s someone around to help you navigate so that you can always be the person who gives the kid cool books. In a couple of years, you might want to look into Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School….
GO AHEAD. TELL ME I’M TRASHY.
See if I care. The reality is, for what it is, V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic is a Great Book! I’m totally serious. This thing is so appallingly awful, I adore it wholeheartedly. Join Edith on the dark side…
I originally wrote some version of this when I was working in a real-life bookstore, and taped it up next to a copy of said book. It did inspire a few sales, perhaps – but I knew the book would have sold anyway. When I first read Flowers in the Attic, I believe it was being marketed as a romance novel, or something like it; you could buy it at the supermarket checkout counter, in a rack where things like Harlequin romances were sold. Trash, you know? But somehow, over the years, the angle for this book has changed. I think the publisher – is it Simon and Schuster? – has figured out that the people who really want to read this book aren’t women but young girls, girls who’re maybe eleven to sixteen years old. So now it gets listed in publishers’ catalogues as a young adult book, and that is where booksellers are urged to shelve it. Which seems a little crazy to me, frankly, but all right; I won’t fight it.
One of my last hurrahs as a bookseller in an open shop came early last summer – perhaps almost a year ago, now I’m thinking about it – when a customer who I’d helped time and time again asked me for help with a thorny problem. This woman, an esteemed curator and scholar, had a granddaughter who was going away to sleepaway camp for the first time. The girl, maybe twelve years old, was a real reader, and Devoted Grandmama wanted to select three novels to slip into the girl’s duffel bag as a kind of surprise present. I thought this was nice, and said I’d be happy to help pick some things out. Grandmama wanted there to be different kinds of books. “She reads like a grownup,” she told me, “But at the same time, I think she needs things that are just fun. I was thinking maybe one should be a mystery?” I strode confidently to the mystery section and plucked a few titles from the shelf: some Agatha Christie, I remember; I think I picked up a Josephine Tey, too; and something else that I now cannot recall. Grandmama picked the Tey book, which turned out to be a personal favorite of her own. We selected some current light fiction – was it Prep? I can’t remember; I hope not, but it might have been – and then we needed one more. I asked Grandmama, “How protective are the girl’s parents? I mean, can you send this girl anything and it’d be ok?” Grandmama considered the question and told me that as long as something came from her, it was pretty much an anything-goes situation. “The girl’s twelve,” I said, meandering to the Young Adult section. I plucked Flowers in the Attic from the shelf and held it in front of me for Grandmama to see. “This book,” I said, “should be required reading for every young girl. However, it is filled with graphic sexual accounts, including incest, and really bad writing.” Grandmama laughed and asked why I was recommending it if it was badly written. I said, “I’ll tell you the truth: I don’t know. I just know that I read this book over and over again when I was that age, and almost all of my friends who read would say the same thing.” I called over to Kate, my co-worker, who was working the cash register. “Kate: Flowers in the Attic for a twelve year old girl?” Kate nodded her head vehemently and said, “Oh, you’ve got to. I mean, she’s going to get her hands on it one way or another anyhow.” I turned back to Grandmama. “The thing is,” I said, “Kate’s right. And,” I added, leaning in, as they say, conspiratorially, “if the kid gets it from you, you get infinite Cool Grandma points.”
Grandmama bought all three of the books, and we wrapped them up. Two weeks later, she came back into the store on her lunch break. I was puttering around in the basement but she came down to find me. She wanted to tell me that she’d gotten a phone call from her granddaughter, who’d read all the books and loved them all, but loved Flowers in the Attic best. “She thought it was great,” Grandmama laughed. “I certainly would never have picked it out myself!”
Ah, Grandmama; wherever you do your book shopping now, I hope there’s someone around to help you navigate so that you can always be the person who gives the kid cool books. In a couple of years, you might want to look into Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School….
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Thinking About Joyously Trashy Fiction
It's time to revisit one of the unsung classics of post-modern American literature: V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Thus Was Adonis Murdered
A few days ago, I was writing about a book I’d recently read and found dissatisfying, and commented that I’d much prefer to re-read Sarah Caudwell’s novel Thus Was Adonis Murdered. Having said this, I plucked one of my copies of this book from the shelf and made it my current bedtime reading. I’m about 2/3 through it now – I fall asleep pretty quickly these days and can only absorb a few pages a night (don’t be fooled, Miss Edith may claim she’s out gallivanting every night, swilling Gibsons or Gimlets by the dozen, but more likely than not she’s propped up on the bed with a lot of pillows, cat at her feet, not even nursing a cup of hot Ovaltine, because she’s likely to spill).
Still, it must be said: Sarah Caudwell’s first mystery has to be one of the best mysteries published in the 20th century. Not because it’s so cleverly plotted, but because it’s so damn well-written. I mean, it’s FUNNY. If you like the kind of dry, dry British humor thing, or have a bug for or against Oxbridge, you must read this thing. It’s a hoot.
I was inspired to tell people, again, to read this thing because last night my copy experienced a dramatic event. This old paperback, which I believe my mother purchased in 1982, has been read so many times (by my mother and myself – you didn’t think Edith had a mother, did you? Well, I do, and if you think I’m bad, you should meet her some day; I’m diluted) that last night the front cover dropped off the damn thing. It just fluttered softly to the bed, detached from the book, leaving little feathery deckle-edges at the spine of the book. “Look!” I said in wonder to The Most Ethical Man in the World, who was feeding the cat. He came to the door of the bedroom. “That’s impressive,” he said.
I have read this book to death. And so: Thus Was Adonis Murdered. Repeated stabbings and repeated readings.
Still, it must be said: Sarah Caudwell’s first mystery has to be one of the best mysteries published in the 20th century. Not because it’s so cleverly plotted, but because it’s so damn well-written. I mean, it’s FUNNY. If you like the kind of dry, dry British humor thing, or have a bug for or against Oxbridge, you must read this thing. It’s a hoot.
I was inspired to tell people, again, to read this thing because last night my copy experienced a dramatic event. This old paperback, which I believe my mother purchased in 1982, has been read so many times (by my mother and myself – you didn’t think Edith had a mother, did you? Well, I do, and if you think I’m bad, you should meet her some day; I’m diluted) that last night the front cover dropped off the damn thing. It just fluttered softly to the bed, detached from the book, leaving little feathery deckle-edges at the spine of the book. “Look!” I said in wonder to The Most Ethical Man in the World, who was feeding the cat. He came to the door of the bedroom. “That’s impressive,” he said.
I have read this book to death. And so: Thus Was Adonis Murdered. Repeated stabbings and repeated readings.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Two More Titles by Ann Hodgman, with a digression on bookstores in Connecticut
While Miss Edith is an entirely urban critter, with little interest in going to places where she can’t amble from a nice paper boutique to a café next door to a high-quality newsstand, every now and then she is dragged from her element and taken to a place where such pleasures must be abandoned. Saturday, a fine spring day, The Most Ethical Man in the World suggested that the car be taken out for a spin. (We own a car, but use it far less than most people. We’ve had it for I think almost eight years, and it’s got about fifty thousand miles on it. I’m told that this is about what normal people might put on their cars in one year.) Ethical Man’s notion was that we’d gather up some books we’d determined to get rid of, oh, eight months ago, and drive them to Book Heaven.
Lest you think we were going to the local dump, I hasten to say: It Ain’t So. Book Heaven, for those who live in Southern New England, must surely be the Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut. The place is what Whitlock’s must have been in its heyday: building after building filled with stuff, all kinds of book stuff, and then some cats prowling around for good measure. There are two goats, as well. Old regulars remember a huge friendly dog, Bandit, who liked to stretch himself out across the entrance to the main building, right near where the coffeepot and free Oreos are kept; it was good because he could always get petted and the odds of snagging a dropped Oreo were pretty high.
So: the Book Barn. It’s about an hour and a bit’s drive from our place, but on a nice day, so worth it. And we had these bins of books that had been sitting in the back hallway for, as I say, eight months, and it was Time For Them To Go. So we hauled them into the car and set off for Niantic. I did not pack a picnic lunch or an emergency kit with flares and blankets, just in case, but sometimes I feel I ought to. Niantic feels like another world to me.
We drove along the highway listening to the radio and made it to Niantic in excellent time. Randy, the buyer, zipped through our stuff and took most of it. We got paid, and ambled off to browse. One of the tricks we’ve had to develop over the years when dealing with the Book Barn is that there’s so much stuff, you can’t linger too too long in any one area, assuming you’re interested in more than one subject, which we are. You have to sort of discipline yourself. The Book Barn is actually two stores, you see; so not only are you dealing with multiple buildings (an entire building, for example, is devoted to mysteries and science fiction), but then there’s the store downtown, which is where all the cookbooks are now. Naturally this is exceedingly important; if we skip the downtown location, I’m likely to have a fit. But Ethical Man doesn’t mind doing two stops at all because at the downtown store you can find all the nautical books (Ethical Man does like his tales of 18th and19th century nautical nonsense) and, maybe more importantly, Frank the Cat.
Frank the Cat weighs possibly 82 pounds. I don’t know. He’s really really big. He’s just huge. Visiting him yesterday, we saw that one of his legs – his front right leg – was in a cast. I’ve never seen a cat with a cast before, so this was noteworthy. He was still getting around okay, just a little more awkwardly than usual. Apparently he jumped off the cashier’s counter last month because some customers scared him – I’m sure they didn’t mean to – and he landed badly and dislocated his shoulder. So poor Frank is in a cast for a few more weeks. He may be under the weather but he is still a completely friendly beast, huge, purrful, a great cat.
It was while browsing the cookbooks – and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to this, but I am easily distracted –that I stumbled on two more cookbooks by Ann Hodgman. Now, a few months back Edith waxed rhapsodic about Beat This!, you may recall. I’d now like to say that two other cookbooks by her, Beat That! and One Bite Won’t Kill You (with illustrations by the divine Roz Chast), are just as much fun to read as the first one I tackled. I read these two cookbooks last night, I just plowed through them, and I intend to cook from them both all summer long. I feel an even stronger affinity for Ann Hodgman now than I did before; reading the sort of appendix about food and equipment at the end of Beat That!, I noted with extreme gratification that she swears by two food-related catalogues that I use all the time, Penzey’s and the King Arthur Flour company. If you are ever looking for high-quality spices, even really unusual ones, and are feeling frustrated, don’t: find a Penzey’s catalogue, or go to them online . If you’re lucky, you live near an actual store location – if you do, go. It’s amazing. And as for King Arthur. Well. I could go on at considerable length, but I know you’ve got work to do. I’ll keep it to this, these two things. One: when the Most Ethical Man in the World and I got hitched a while back, and someone told me that I’d better do a wedding registry or I’d really regret it once I was inundated with useless crap I’d never want to use or look at, the first place I registered at was King Arthur Flour.
Two is that the only time I’m ever tempted to get a credit card that has the logo of some company on it – you know, how people have Amazon.com credit cards, et cetera, ad nauseum? – is when I think about getting a card with the King Arthur logo on it. I’m not even sure what it would get me. I just love the King Arthur Flour company that much.
Anyhow. Ann Hodgman. It seems to me that her cookbooks ought to be talked about more. How come in all my years of bookselling and chatting about cookbooks with people, in all these years, no one’s ever mentioned her to me? It’s an oversight. The people who’re bemoaning the loss of Laurie Colwin essays on food can take a small amount of comfort in reading Ann Hodgman. It’s not the same, it isn’t. But it’s similar. It feels comfortable in much the same way. Clearly, she’s influenced by Colwin, which is another reason to like her in and of itself. It’s really the realism factor that I like so much. Hodgman, like Colwin, has a sort of no-bullshit attitude toward cooking. Most of the time it’s got to be easy and not too complicated. Sometimes, it’s true, you want to go whole hog. (Particularly in Hodgman’s case; she really likes her pork products.) But usually, not so much. I don’t have kids so I don’t worry about feeding small children but One Bite Won’t Kill You, which is about feeding your picky kids, struck me as pretty reasonable. Though I had to wonder, What kind of idiot kid doesn’t like shrimp? I guess there’s someone out there.
Also, I would like to offer Hodgman this: there was a child who loved squash. (She claims this has never happened.) Yes, there was: when I was in kindergarten, I actually got into a big ugly fight with a boy a year older than me, a real jerk he was, too – because I said that my favorite food was acorn squash. Which I still love. Though I might love delicata more.
So it does happen sometimes. Ethical Man, who doesn’t like squash, has told me that when he was a tyke one of his favorite foods was lima beans. When asked about this, how this can be, he’ll say happily, “It’s like eating bugs!”
All right, then.
Ann Hodgman, if you’re ever in New Haven, get in touch. I’d like to kiss the hem of your blue jeans.
Lest you think we were going to the local dump, I hasten to say: It Ain’t So. Book Heaven, for those who live in Southern New England, must surely be the Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut. The place is what Whitlock’s must have been in its heyday: building after building filled with stuff, all kinds of book stuff, and then some cats prowling around for good measure. There are two goats, as well. Old regulars remember a huge friendly dog, Bandit, who liked to stretch himself out across the entrance to the main building, right near where the coffeepot and free Oreos are kept; it was good because he could always get petted and the odds of snagging a dropped Oreo were pretty high.
So: the Book Barn. It’s about an hour and a bit’s drive from our place, but on a nice day, so worth it. And we had these bins of books that had been sitting in the back hallway for, as I say, eight months, and it was Time For Them To Go. So we hauled them into the car and set off for Niantic. I did not pack a picnic lunch or an emergency kit with flares and blankets, just in case, but sometimes I feel I ought to. Niantic feels like another world to me.
We drove along the highway listening to the radio and made it to Niantic in excellent time. Randy, the buyer, zipped through our stuff and took most of it. We got paid, and ambled off to browse. One of the tricks we’ve had to develop over the years when dealing with the Book Barn is that there’s so much stuff, you can’t linger too too long in any one area, assuming you’re interested in more than one subject, which we are. You have to sort of discipline yourself. The Book Barn is actually two stores, you see; so not only are you dealing with multiple buildings (an entire building, for example, is devoted to mysteries and science fiction), but then there’s the store downtown, which is where all the cookbooks are now. Naturally this is exceedingly important; if we skip the downtown location, I’m likely to have a fit. But Ethical Man doesn’t mind doing two stops at all because at the downtown store you can find all the nautical books (Ethical Man does like his tales of 18th and19th century nautical nonsense) and, maybe more importantly, Frank the Cat.
Frank the Cat weighs possibly 82 pounds. I don’t know. He’s really really big. He’s just huge. Visiting him yesterday, we saw that one of his legs – his front right leg – was in a cast. I’ve never seen a cat with a cast before, so this was noteworthy. He was still getting around okay, just a little more awkwardly than usual. Apparently he jumped off the cashier’s counter last month because some customers scared him – I’m sure they didn’t mean to – and he landed badly and dislocated his shoulder. So poor Frank is in a cast for a few more weeks. He may be under the weather but he is still a completely friendly beast, huge, purrful, a great cat.
It was while browsing the cookbooks – and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to this, but I am easily distracted –that I stumbled on two more cookbooks by Ann Hodgman. Now, a few months back Edith waxed rhapsodic about Beat This!, you may recall. I’d now like to say that two other cookbooks by her, Beat That! and One Bite Won’t Kill You (with illustrations by the divine Roz Chast), are just as much fun to read as the first one I tackled. I read these two cookbooks last night, I just plowed through them, and I intend to cook from them both all summer long. I feel an even stronger affinity for Ann Hodgman now than I did before; reading the sort of appendix about food and equipment at the end of Beat That!, I noted with extreme gratification that she swears by two food-related catalogues that I use all the time, Penzey’s and the King Arthur Flour company. If you are ever looking for high-quality spices, even really unusual ones, and are feeling frustrated, don’t: find a Penzey’s catalogue, or go to them online . If you’re lucky, you live near an actual store location – if you do, go. It’s amazing. And as for King Arthur. Well. I could go on at considerable length, but I know you’ve got work to do. I’ll keep it to this, these two things. One: when the Most Ethical Man in the World and I got hitched a while back, and someone told me that I’d better do a wedding registry or I’d really regret it once I was inundated with useless crap I’d never want to use or look at, the first place I registered at was King Arthur Flour.
Two is that the only time I’m ever tempted to get a credit card that has the logo of some company on it – you know, how people have Amazon.com credit cards, et cetera, ad nauseum? – is when I think about getting a card with the King Arthur logo on it. I’m not even sure what it would get me. I just love the King Arthur Flour company that much.
Anyhow. Ann Hodgman. It seems to me that her cookbooks ought to be talked about more. How come in all my years of bookselling and chatting about cookbooks with people, in all these years, no one’s ever mentioned her to me? It’s an oversight. The people who’re bemoaning the loss of Laurie Colwin essays on food can take a small amount of comfort in reading Ann Hodgman. It’s not the same, it isn’t. But it’s similar. It feels comfortable in much the same way. Clearly, she’s influenced by Colwin, which is another reason to like her in and of itself. It’s really the realism factor that I like so much. Hodgman, like Colwin, has a sort of no-bullshit attitude toward cooking. Most of the time it’s got to be easy and not too complicated. Sometimes, it’s true, you want to go whole hog. (Particularly in Hodgman’s case; she really likes her pork products.) But usually, not so much. I don’t have kids so I don’t worry about feeding small children but One Bite Won’t Kill You, which is about feeding your picky kids, struck me as pretty reasonable. Though I had to wonder, What kind of idiot kid doesn’t like shrimp? I guess there’s someone out there.
Also, I would like to offer Hodgman this: there was a child who loved squash. (She claims this has never happened.) Yes, there was: when I was in kindergarten, I actually got into a big ugly fight with a boy a year older than me, a real jerk he was, too – because I said that my favorite food was acorn squash. Which I still love. Though I might love delicata more.
So it does happen sometimes. Ethical Man, who doesn’t like squash, has told me that when he was a tyke one of his favorite foods was lima beans. When asked about this, how this can be, he’ll say happily, “It’s like eating bugs!”
All right, then.
Ann Hodgman, if you’re ever in New Haven, get in touch. I’d like to kiss the hem of your blue jeans.
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