**spoiler alert** I read the first paragraph of The Help, absorbing the words, but suddenly being caught off guard by the dialect. I stopped reading.
I**spoiler alert** I read the first paragraph of The Help, absorbing the words, but suddenly being caught off guard by the dialect. I stopped reading.
I shifted the book in my hands, flipping to the author's biography and photograph on the back of the dust jacket.
Staring up at me was this:
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Oh, sweet Jesus, I thought. An affluent, white Manhattanite. Great. And one who apparently fancies herself a master at Southern Black Vernacular. Even better.
I rolled my eyes and returned to page one, fully prepared to hate every word on every page, beginning with Aibileen's horrifically stereotyped "voice" written by this smug White Lady.
Look, I really don't subscribe to the belief that one must be a part of a culture in order to write effectively (or even stirringly) about or in the voice of that culture. Wally Lamb wrote convincingly as a twin in I Know This Much Is True (and as an identical twin, I can vouch for its authenticity). Nancy Farmer wove African culture beautifully into her science fiction novel The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm. Mark Haddon's Christopher Swinton character is a remarkable sketch of a child with autism. So clearly it can be done.
But I was not convinced about Stockett.
When Minnie's first chapter hopped along in The Help, I prepared myself for an unconvincing spin on Aibileen's narrative, a pasty twist of the vernacular that had been spewed out in the first paragraph. That is not what I got. Instead, her character was nothing like the other maid; her own voice was rendered in tough, bitter layers, providing a nice foil to Aibileen's complex struggle between resolve and resign.
NO! my brain screamed. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! DO NOT ENJOY THIS!
But the pages turned, and when I next looked up at the clock, a few hours had passed and I was well on my way to the halfway point.
Dammit.
And this was the pattern that followed in the 2 1/2 days it took me to read The Help; I found myself loving it and hating it simultaneously, but leaning more to the Love side of the dilemma. There are countless trite episodes in The Help, standard plot fillers that can be found in both heaving Harlequin romances and sucky Oprah Book Club fodder. But there are more moments of striking beauty, humanity, and humor, even if the ending is a bit of a cop-out. (No surprise that The Rich White Lady Saves The Day And Gets What She Wants.)
Is The Help Great Literature? No. Is it a fast and enjoyable read? Yes. It's also a fairly striking and genuine portrait of what life in the south was like during those tumultuous times. And for that... well, for that I quite liked it.
So congratulations, Whitey McWhiterson, I wound up not hating your book.
A fictional portrait of author Steven Gaines as a teenager:
The group of cool kids hang out by the Flatbush Avenue entrance of Erasmus Hall High SchoolA fictional portrait of author Steven Gaines as a teenager:
The group of cool kids hang out by the Flatbush Avenue entrance of Erasmus Hall High School, smoking cigarettes and bitching about the noticeable absence of girls at the party on Friday night.
With no fanfare (and certainly no invitation), Gaines rushes up the group, breathless and flushed, clutching notebooks tightly to his chest, papers jutting wildly from their corners. His eyes are crazed with excitement. "Ohmigod, you guys! Have you heard?!"
The cool kids pause and glare at him, eyes slit like serpents.
"Gloria Vanderbilt got turned away by the co-op at River House!"
Spencer, head of the cool kids, flicks his cigarette to the curb, and faces Gaines. "Who the hell cares? Get lost, loser!"
Gaines is unfazed and oblivious. "Ohmigod! There's CiCi and the rest of the cheerleading squad! I wonder if they know? See you guys later!"
So it goes with The Sky's the Limit, Gaines' starry-eyed, gossipy history about real estate in Manhattan, a book that somehow manages to be equal parts US Weekly, Architectural Digest, Flip That House, Celebrity Death Match, and Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous... often in a single chapter.
It's exhausting. It's exasperating. It's a hell of a lot of fun....more
My Book Club chose to read this Book for the month of June. I had owned it for years and never gotten around to reading it. Then I read it. The Book. A MiMy Book Club chose to read this Book for the month of June. I had owned it for years and never gotten around to reading it. Then I read it. The Book. A Million Little Pieces. It is the allegedly true but probably not story of a Man who smokes a lot of crack and huffs gas and drinks and drinks and drinks until he is so sick he blacks out and he worries his friends and his family until he is sent to a Clinic. He has no front teeth and his cheek has a gash. He is hurt from smoking crack and huffing gas and drinking and drinking and drinking. He is a mess. He needs help. He is a mess and he needs help. He does not want to be at the Clinic and fights all the Rules for the first 200 pages. But the Man meets some Friends who help him through the tough times, a Girl who he falls in love with, and a hard-nosed psychologist who does not give up on him. The Man is sure he can kick his habit without the help of God or Twelve Steps. This is his story. Allegedly. I like this book, I thought, when I first started reading it, even though I knew it was probably 80% bull. I will read it anyway, I thought. It is a fast read. Look at how fast I am reading this book! What a fast read. And then the Book started to annoy me. Why aren't there quotation marks? It is not like a Cormac McCarthy book that eschews punctuation for the sake of sparse, beautiful writing. It is just eschewing for the sake of eschewing. This is ridiculous. Why does the Man who writes the book capitalize some Nouns but not other nouns? Is the Man doing it because he thinks it's artsy? I don't think a memoir should be artsy as much as it should be factual. Why are there no paragraph breaks or margins? Is it because the Man is a Rule-breaker and Hard-nosed and because he has a Devil May Care attitude? I think the Man just thinks he's cool, and Cool Guys don't need margins or paragraph breaks. Why does the Man keep repeating things? He eats eggs. He eats cheese. He eats eggs and cheese. He vomits and vomits and vomits and vomits. He is scared and heartbroken and worried and mad and facing his anger and wanting to drink and do drugs and hurt himself. He is scared and heartbroken and worried and mad and facing his anger and wanting to drink and do drugs and hurt himself. I want to hurt him for writing lists instead of sentences. I also want to hurt him For Doing. Things. Like. This. But there's something about the book that made me want to read more. And I read it. I didn't throw it across the room in a fit of Rage. It made me not want to do Crack. But I've never wanted to do Crack. And maybe that's why my Million Pieces are still together....more
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