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Literary magazine. |
 Unoriginal Sins
March 26, 2009
This piece originally appeared in The New York Times and is reprinted here by permission of the author.
The beach book, the novel that we take with us on a languorous summer vacation, when we demand that reading be a pleasure and not a chore, the one "serious" readers apologize for even though they shouldn't, is known more formally as genre fiction. The thing that makes genre fiction so appealing is the exact same thing that can make it such a bore: it's predictable. If the recent rash of novels classified as chick lit were laid end to end, you would have the literary equivalent of a tract-house development. Sure, some of the houses are beige and others are cream, but they all have the same two-car garage, great room and marble counters in the kitchen. That's why people buy them. That's why Alloy, the book-packaging company that helped Kaavya Viswanathan with "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life," specializes in chick lit, the latest incarnation of the romance genre. I doubt that I'm the first to notice the glaring similarities between romances and chick lit with the bright, plucky heroine catching the eye of the right guy by the final page, but in the spirit of recent events, let's say that I am. This is because the pleasure of the predictable romance novel (or chick lit) is the knowledge that a bookish girl can win. A good romance/chick-lit book is really about two things, discovery and appreciation. A chick-lit novel tells the reader that good humor, imperfect looks and quick wit are desirable even if the world at large seems to tell the bookish girl otherwise. And who else would be reading a novel but a bookish girl? Ms. Viswanathan is a bookish girl who might have had more success at fiction if she didn't bear the burden of the overachiever. Overachievers don't generally become writers because the skill set is so different. As I tell my writing students, if you want to be a writer work on the finer points of gossip, eavesdropping and voyeurism; basically the pastimes of the underachiever, ways to while away the hours. If you care to add smoking, drinking and carousing to your repertoire, you wouldn't be the first (though you might want to watch the whining that can sometimes be a consequence of the drinking — it's more unattractive than you think). It seems that the first person to see Ms. Viswanathan's darker, unfinished novel was her college admissions consultant, someone who, for a nice chunk of change, will get you into that Ivy League college of your choice. The book went on to Alloy, which transformed it into the young-adult chick-lit "Opal Mehta," which borrowed heavily from Megan McCafferty, Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot and my favorite, Salman Rushdie, whose name is so often linked with the first three writers. (I love the idea of Mr. Rushdie telling the tale of an American teenager fretting over the imperfections of her figure, swooning over that cute guy who sits behind her in math, all the while trying to determine how much beer is too much beer.) The mystery of the "Opal Mehta" affair is why would you succumb to the pressure to produce yet another chick lit by-the-numbers book unless you were more motivated by being a writer — and so young! — than actually writing. Ms. Viswanathan's collaboration with Alloy would be more understandable if she had been kicking around the publishing scene for a spell, got really drunk (see above) and really whiny (again, see above). This is a way of saying that it isn't surprising that a faux writer might want to write a kind of faux novel. At its best, genre writing can transcend its given genre. Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett wrote little crime noir classics that often threw an unwelcome light on the ways a person will treat another person given the right circumstances. And Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" blew the bodice off almost all other romance novels. But if you aren't compelled to write, because you're maybe an overachieving future investment banker, then a paint-by-number approach might be the way to go, bookwise. It would take an underachieving, gossipy, voyeuristic, bit of a slacker to write a genre novel capable of pulling away from the pack. In the writing life you can't avoid failure. Or, to put it another way, someone who is driven to write is usually not the same sort of person who would work with an expensive college counselor to ensure admissions success. That's a little like expecting a claustrophobe to take up a career in a coal mine. And you can't trade on your youth because being young isn't enough to even know your own story, let alone tell it. Some of the best books ever written about youth are by writers long past those dewy days. "At 68, I'm every age I ever was. I always think that I'm not just 68. I'm also 55 and 21 and 3. Oh, especially 3." George Carlin said that but since I'm in such strong agreement, I might as well have said it. Or, as a character in "The Squid and the Whale" argues when caught plagiarizing a well-known pop song, the lyrics were exactly what he would've written so it really is his song. One could say that a chick-lit book comes with such specific requirements to be considered chick lit that enormous similarities to previous books within the genre are almost inevitable. Or you could just write your own book. Log in to comment freely Comments: 14 Get an avatar |
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