Mallory Pike, #1 Fan Part 2
Sorry for my lengthy absence! I was enjoying a visit from my brother, middle school brat turned “lawyer for all the lands,” as our local paper memorably phrased it, and my adorable niece, who is, as she herself will tell you, too. . .”funny and cute.” And while I won’t claim she’s some kind of Gabbie Perkins, she does do some very funny riffs on “The Cat Came Back.”
Adorable Niece, in bathtub: Where’s Mama? Mama? (complete with inflected, second-syllable emphasis, MaMA)
Brother: She’s just getting another towel. She’ll be right back.
AN: Hmmm. The momma come back, da very next day, we thought she was a goner but the momma come back!
B: :records:
In fact, I am pulling off a BSC-style move at the end of the month in which my brother will fly me to Amsterdam to be a substitute nanny for two weeks. I do not expect to also solve a mystery or meet a man I luv but will never mention again, but if so, I will let you know.
And honestly, between the ups of the visit and the blahs of my job, going back to this book felt kind of like this.
But, as God is my witness, I WILL finish this recap before I leave the country. So allons-y, nos vamos, et cetera, et cetera.
Chapter 5
“A sick feeling churned in my stomach four days later as I stood in my front hall and read the words in front of me. Dear Reader, Thanks so much for your lovely letter. . .
What did it take to get through to this woman?”
I’ve picked up this book to continue snarking about ten times, and every time I get to that line I have to lie down due to the mind-boggling entitlement of that third line.
Not as adorable in humans.
Mallory goes on to grumble about how Henrietta Hayes must not be reading her letters, because surely she would have known “I was getting desperate.” Amazingly that’s not the turn-on you think it is, Mal. She talks about yet another Alice book, in which Alice stormed into a producer’s office and demanded to be allowed to audition, which apparently is “spunky” and not rude and entitled, and impresses the producer enough to let her audition instead of calling security.
And in a chilling message about the efficacy of fictional role models, this inspires Mal to grab her notebook and her stalking questionnaire and runs downstairs. Mrs. Pike asks where she’s going and Mal announces she’s going to Morgan Road to find Henrietta Hayes. Mrs. Pike demonstrates ace parenting by making no comment on her eleven-year-old going to a stranger’s house-whose address Mrs. P doesn’t even know-- unannounced for purposes of stalking and harassment. Even Girl Scouts aren’t supposed to go it alone, and they actually sell something people want, instead of entitlement and stupidity.
Mal rides her bike, and Ann is kind enough to make sure we remember Mal is not athletic, so that by the time she gets to the top of Burnt Hill Road, she is “panting like crazy.” There’s no reason for this except to make sure she looks red-faced, sweaty, and disheveled when she meets her idol, so, you know. Ann hates Mal.
Morgan Road is apparently another one of the “fancy” sections of Stoneybrook, but Mal is initially thrown when the house numbers go from 310 to 314. ZOMG where is 312? She then notices a “narrow dirt road” and “on a hunch” suspects 312 might be between 310 and 314. You can see why they are such great detectives.
In Ann’s laughable attempts at realism, Henrietta Hayes does NOT live in a castle. I have approximately 17 million complaints about the depiction of Henrietta Hayes, so I’ll try to pace myself.
Anyway, there’s no doorbell, so Mal opens the screen door to knock (idk, my screen doors were inside my outside doors when I lived in a house) and then slams the screen door closed, so Henrietta Hayes doesn’t think she’s “walking right into her house or anything like that.” Because that would be INTRUSIVE.
There’s no answer, so she prepares to leave her stalking questionnaire with a note, when the door opens. ZOMG! It’s Henrietta Hayes, who is “petite” and 50-something. She politely asks what’s this about, and Mal blurts out “I’m [THE] Mallory Pike [obviously], positive that Henrietta will recognize her from her letters. I don’t get why Mal can’t figure out that if you’re getting form letters, your originals probably aren’t being read. Henrietta politely crushes Mal’s dreams by not having heard of her, and says she doesn’t recall the letters, but invites her in anyway. Sigh. Mal “step[s] inside the home of the world’s greatest living writer. (The greatest in my opinion, anyway.)" Lord grant me patience.
Henrietta has lots of art and cushions and no microwave, which Mal thinks is super-classy or artsy or something when Henrietta boils water with a kettle. I’m surprised she doesn’t also have a bunch of cats.
Mal and Henrietta have a melodramatic exchange about the heartbreak of the form letters, which Henrietta takes an unnecessarily long time to explain, and also claims to have come up with the concept herself. Oh, okay. She also has an incredibly convoluted process of having the letters forwarded to her every day and handwriting the addresses from her home, instead of having it done by an intern or editorial assistant.
Then Mal tells Henrietta the whole pointless story of her first stupid proposal being rejected, to getting the “brilliant” idea of including Henrietta in it, Mal, for once, is suave enough to cite Alice Anderson as the inspiration for this invasive entitlement, so instead of Henrietta saying, “I’m very sorry, but I simply don’t have the time to drop everything to help a sixth-grader with her English project,” she gets all misty-eyed about how all she ever wanted was for Alice Anderson to inspire girls to new heights of rude and obnoxious behavior. So obviously, she’s going to help Mal out, and when Mal asks if she has time, Henrietta scolds her by saying “Would Alice ask that?” Yes, consideration of others is definitely a trait to reject. Also, if Henrietta wants to support and inspire young girls, perhaps she could volunteer at SMS or the library rather than indulge random stalkers.
So they do the interview, and Henrietta writes four hours a day and outlines another two, and I start steadily banging my head against the desk.
Look, I know it’s a running joke about how many things Ann knows nothing about. And I also know there’s a school of thought in writing that accuracy/realism shouldn’t get in the way of a good story. I disagree; to me it’s distracting if a lawyer, to “make it personal,” tries a case that professional ethics should have demanded she recuse herself from, or when people say use completely inaccurate depictions of “multiple personality disorder,” or brilliant academics have 2 PhDs in the same field (lol no) before age 30. I don’t know everything, but I read pretty widely and have access to Google, so if something just feels wrong, that will undercut the story for me, especially if the wrongness is crucial to the plot mechanics.
But fine. Ann knows nothing about foster care, or infant development, or adoption, or ballet, or diabetes. FINE. But if there’s one thing she should damn well know about, it’s being a children’s book author. So okay. Henrietta has written 11 books (5 Alice books) and 10 plays. That’s a respectable, but by no means outstanding or even terribly noteworthy for a middle grade author. It’s not clear to me whether she writes plays for children’s theater (a very niche market) or just plays with bland titles, but that’s an even less lucrative field than book publishing, for most people. So unless “Alice Anderson” is Harry Fucking Potter in the BSC-verse, no. Just no. You do not support yourself on 6 hours of writing middle-grade novels a day. You don’t even do it on a 9-5 schedule. You virtually almost always do it 1) in addition to a day job 2) while supplementing your income with freelance writing or editing gigs, ghostwriting and tie-ins, or teaching, 3) being married to someone who can support you or 4) having family money, being retired, a big insurance settlement (maybe?) or some other circumstance in which your day-to-day bills are covered.
And yes, even when I read this as a kid, I knew it was bullshit. Even compared to Ann’s ridiculous bio, it’s bullshit. So, I don’t know what the hell Henrietta does with the rest of her days, but I’m not weeping for her grueling six hours of writing and ten of futzing around time, assuming she sleeps about 8 hours a night. What the fuck. I’d almost say she deserves the curse of Mallory on her lolling-about ass, but honestly, no one deserves the shit Mal pulls off in Chapter 11.
Sorry. The rage, you know.
Henrietta says that she finds the writing easier than the ideas, which is fair, and tells Mal her inspiration comes from “life combined with imagination” (oy vey) and adds that sometimes she puts real people in situations she’s imagined. Ugh. Also, I know people come to writing in all kinds of ways, but that seems so much harder to me than just creating my own character to react to situations. I mean, I may occasionally draw on a certain part of a person I know-like using an expression my mom uses, or running a legal logistics question past my brother-but I’m not writing about “This is what my brother would do in this professionally questionable situation” or “this is what my mom would think about this.” Mal only hears “real life” and wants to know whether Henrietta is Alice or Alice’s mother, but decides that would be “too nosy.”
Instead Mal asks about how Henrietta felt when she saw her first play performed, and is shocked when Henrietta says she felt terrible, because it wasn’t nearly as good as she thought, since Mal, I guess, hasn’t reached the stage where she’s regularly horrified by her own writing and how much it gaps between what she wants it to do and what she’s actually done. That’s a pretty important stage for a writer, I think, but since Mal is so generally down on herself, if she can feel uncomplicatedly proud of her writing a few more years, she should go for it.
Mal shows off that she knows the title of said play (“Vacation at Frog Pond,”-definitely sounds like Tony-material) and Henrietta is all aflutter Mal did the bare minimum of research, which I guess fits with someone who feels she is so terribly busy working for six hours a day. Mal asks if she’s working on something now and Henrietta says “Always,” but not another Alice book.
Mal says she can’t stand the idea of not finding out what happened to Alice, “you know, in her life and all,” and Henrietta gets a vague and mysterious look.
I however will say here that a [SPOILER] Alice Anderson reunion book is a crappy idea that would be an incredibly hard sell to an editor. First of all, a reunion book only works for a HUGE property, like, say, the BSC or Sweet Valley-and it would be targeted at a nostalgic audience, not a contemporary one. Because middle grade kids only in very very rare circumstances want to read about adults, especially “realistic” adults. There may be adult CHARACTERS they love, but middle grade fiction almost always has protagonists slightly to somewhat older than their readers. (Kids read aspirationally, which Ann of all people should know as she writes about her crazy “sophisticated” thirteen-year-olds.) Also, think about how many people dislike the Harry Potter episode. A lot of readers DON’T want absolute closure. (I’d bet the Anastasia books are a million times better-and Anastasia a million times a better role model-than Alice Anderson, but I don’t want to “know” that she grew up to become a bookstore owner, or an analyst, or a novelist, or had a passionate reunion with Robert Giananni.)
I mean, I suppose Madeleine L’Engle pulls it off, more or less. (By that token, maybe VC Andrews does, too, via copious incest. I’ve never actually read a VC Andrews book, although I did read a fascinating analysis about how she used the passive voice.) And I was always quite fond of Edward Eager’s books where the characters of one set are revealed to be the parents of the characters in the next. But “Knight’s Castle” is not a book about “what happened to Martha in her life,” except that she had kids who had magical adventures of their own. It doesn’t rest on an emotional attachment to Martha, or her inner life, or anything like that. Supposedly L’Engle worked for years on a novel about a fifty-something Meg Murray O’Keefe, that would have revealed what Charles Wallace had been doing, but I’d bet a thousand bucks it wouldn’t have been marketed as middle grade or YA.
SORRY. Digressions.
Mal asks all her questions and thanks Henrietta and then Henrietta decides to drag out this agony by musing she hasn’t really “given her a good sense about what the life of an author is like.” Damn skippy. So OF COURSE, she hires Mal as her “assistant” for three weeks while she works on two very special projects. And seriously, bullshit. Especially her mention of having Mal make phone calls for her. BULL. SHIT. I wouldn’t allow an eleven-year-old to make my business calls, because I am not on METH, ANN.
But Mal is, obviously thrilled, and claims this will allow her to see how books get published. Uh, selling a first children’s book manuscript is pretty different than a mid-career writer, but whatever. She’s canny enough to think Henrietta will be a good source of connections, and I can’t really blame her, I guess. My dad is pushing me to network with people he knew 30-50 years ago who are vaguely connected to “writing.”
Henrietta says it’s as if “fate” brought Mallory to her door (“fate” is spelled e-n-t-i-t-l-e-m-e-n-t) and Mal swoons at what a high-brow, literary thing this is to say. I wonder if Henrietta pads her income writing horoscopes and fortune cookies.
And that chapter is over.
Chapter 7
And just like Hell, we’re back the next day as Mal chippers on up to her first day. Henrietta shows off her writing space and fusses fastidiously about how she only just recently switched to a typewriter where her tiny mind is blown by being able to type two whole sentences and revise them before printing, because she “just can’t deal” with the idea of a computer. Eye-roll. I know people who think they write better by hand, and I HATE writing by hand (I have pain issues, so I thank God I at least live in a time where my fingers have a chance at keeping up with my brain), but either way, I hate when people are precious about it.
Speaking of precious, Mal plans that later on she will teach Henrietta how to use “a computer word processing program. Mom showed me how and it’s not that hard.” Oh, bless. (Did people, especially kids, still say “word processor” in the early-90s? I always thought word processor seemed like a totally goofy name, like it’s a word manufacturing robot, instead of, y’know, an enhanced typewriter, for practical purposes.)
Henrietta’s office has floor to ceiling bookshelves, and I kind of wondered of there being no mention of books earlier. A lot of writers I know-self included-are in a constant battle to find space for all our books, although maybe less so as e-books become more widestream.
(Personally, I have weird fussiness about e-books, which may be hypocritical in light of the above. I’ll put reference or non-fiction books, childhood favorites I’m reacquiring, and books I don’t quite know if I want to donate shelf space for on my iPad, but I can’t get myself comfortable to curl up with a brand-new-to-me novel as an e-book. Then again, I mostly read my on iPad while commuting or away from home, to cut down on how many books I have to carry with me, and I like to read in the bath, and don’t trust myself not to drop my iPad. /cool story, moi.)
Anyway. Henrietta appears only to have bookshelves in her office, three shelves of which are her author’s copies. Hmm. She also has books written by her friends, and books she “loves” and rereads, and I wish Ann could have worked in a namedrop to fill in my mental picture of Henrietta’s writing a bit. But Mal is too busy drooling over spotting an Amelia Moody book, and Henrietta says breezily that Amelia came to Stoneybrook to visit just last week. Sure she did.
Henrietta shows Mal a pile of stuff to file for different projects, which I don’t really get. I do accumulate a bunch of background reading/research/vague inspirations on my projects (even though nowadays I keep a lot of it on the computer), but for that reason, I would trust anyone else (let alone a random ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD) to file it, because a lot of the organization is intuitive and idiosyncratic. She tells Mal to make piles, including a “Don’t Know” one, and if the phone rings, to take a message or let the machine get it, since she doesn’t take calls during “her writing time.” (I do kind of wonder if her writing time is always conveniently after school hours.)
Just then, Mal spots a little pink room and asks if it is Henrietta’s daughter, and Henrietta rather dramatically turns gray and mutters about how that door should never be opened. (I truly don’t want to mock anyone’s grieving process, even a fictional author, but the narrative voice is pretty heavily infused with a Disney Beauty and the Beast Gothic-light vibe).
Henrietta pulls herself together, apologizes for being agitated, and says the room was her daughter Cassie’s, who is dead now. Mal reacts with a combination of “shock, hurt, and anger,” which seems a little melodramatic to me, but says she’s sorry and Henrietta says she just never talks about it, which Mal accepts, albeit with a casual “Sure” instead of “I understand.” (In fairness, there’s no adverb or tag, so maybe it was a nervous “Sure” but it seems a bit flippant to me, in light of what I know comes next.)
Also, considering Mal’s obsession with whether Henrietta is Alice or Alice’s mom, it’s kind of bizarre to me she doesn’t seem to internalize the ramifications of this at all. Like, if she really truly believes this is just reportage, that means either Alice is dead, or Alice grew up to lose her only child. Awkward. But really, it’s both callous and weird that “dead daughter” makes no impression on Mal’s view of Henrietta.
So Henrietta departs to do some writing, and tells Mal to get her when she’s done with the filing, or in a couple of hours. Mal is amazed by how quiet the house, since there aren’t even ticking clocks, let alone rampaging wildebeests Pike kids. She jumps when the phone rings and runs to answer it, so Henrietta won’t be disturbed, and does so in an incredibly unprofessional manner-which I would expect from an eleven-year-old, which is why SHE WOULDN’T BE TAKING MY BUSINESS CALLS. Anyway, it’s some guy named George, who apparently knows about Henrietta’s new child labor arrangement, and he says he “loves” the Anderson family reunion idea. I don’t know if he’s an editor or her agent, but he’s bad at both jobs, for not understanding middle grade tropes or marketing patterns. Mallory squeals with pleasure, and runs off to tell Henrietta, thus defeating the purpose of having Mal take the call in the first place.
Henrietta isn’t writing, though, just staring at a framed picture of her daughter, and I can’t snark that. But she puts it aside and politely asks Mal what her damage is, and then tells her that she got the idea for an Anderson reunion from Mal, and invites her to brainstorm with her about Alice’s future. Oy vey. “She got her ears pierced, and she wore glitter and push-down socks EVERY DAY!” Of course, Henrietta’s only offerings are marriage or movie star (cause you can’t do both?), oh, and also there are some other characters.
Then we get a very weird exchange, in which Mal says she would be honored to contribute ideas, since “Alice Anderson is so real to me I feel like I’d be influencing the life of a real person.” Doesn’t that sentence imply that Mal understands that “Alice Anderson” is, in fact, not real?
Henrietta says pleasantly that some characters can take on a life of their own and says it is a “strange, almost magical” process, and sometimes they can even feel like the author’s friends. I’m not going to knock it, but I do sometimes look side-eyed at people who go way deep into the Aeolian Harp for the Muses shtick.
Mal replies that “the characters really are real, so they do have a life of their own,” so I guess she’s back to having forgotten what fiction means. I can’t really blame Henrietta for being unable to parse that sentence, though.
Mal files, Henrietta writes, and when she’s done, Henrietta insists Mal take a cab home, since it gets dark so early. Mal points out she has her bike, and Henrietta says breezily he can just put it in the trunk.
From the various NYC books, I know Ann has a major fetish for cabs. That said, a lot of small towns or suburbs don’t have a taxi company, so there’s no way to just “call a cab.” The only cabs I ever saw in my hometown were driving people back and forth to the airport so they wouldn’t have to pay for parking.
Also, does this mean Henrietta doesn’t have a car? Because I don’t have a car, but I live in a city with transit options and pay to have my groceries delivered. However, I DID live in a smallish city a year before I got my license and it was a goddamned PAIN.
Anyway, she invites Mal to dinner, and Mal randomly wonders where her husband is. Um. Is she assuming because Henrietta had a daughter, she must have a husband? Because nothing about her house says another person lives there. But Mal thinks she’s asked enough nosy questions “for today.” They talk about Alice, including the book Mal hasn’t finished where Alice has to choose between a part in a movie and going home to tend to her sick mother. Mal asks breathlessly what will she do, because I’m beginning to doubt Mal has ever read a book before, and Henrietta refuses to spoil it.
Mal takes her cab home and feels very glamorous and sophisticated, and hopes someone saw her. Most people aren’t creepy stalkers like you, Mal-although I suppose Stacey next door might have seen it and been seized with a case of NYC-stalgia. She greets Mr. Pike and Jordan, working on Jordan’s math homework, and she pompously says “Words cannot describe the greatness of being Henrietta Hayes’s assistant” and boasts she already gave her a book idea.
And then. Oh, Lord. Hold on tight.
Mal goes upstairs to work on her play. “I’d entitled it, “The Early Years.” It was the story of a young author in the early years of her life. Of course, the young author was me, but I’d fictionalized it a bit so no one would be offended.” Oh. LORD.
I know this is already hellaciously long, but this is so bad it begs for a line by line, and some of you might not have the book at hand and might have forgotten the glorious disaster that follows. So grab your drug of choice (I’m going with “grumpy cat” and/or “frozen Greek yogurt”-but not, you know, combined ) and settle in.
Valery Spike sits at her writing table and looks out the window longingly. [Mary Sue name a slight variation on author’s name, with bonus unusual spelling? Check!]
Valery: How I wish I could write something truly great, something that would change the world and make people happy, especially children. [I thought you hated beauty pageants, Mal-Val (ooh, could I call her Malvolio?); you sound like you’re running for Miss America. Also pretentious.]
Enter Ranessa. Klutzy Ranessa trips over a chair as she enters. [Ranessa? For real? Oh, MAL. Also, takes one to know one. I get to call myself klutzy; that doesn’t mean it’s not rude for other people to do so.]
Ranessa: Ouch! Ow! Who put that chair there?
Valery (kindly): Why, it’s always been there, Ranessa. [I still can’t with Ranessa.]
Ranessa (with envy in her voice): It’s no fair, Ranessa. In this family, you got the looks, the brains, the talent, everything. It’s just not fair. [Oh my God, where do I even begin? The amount of cognitive dissonance that Mal can think this is autobiographical while whining about her zomg red hair, braces, and unsurgically altered nose is bigger than I can calculate. Also, upping my theory that Mal’s no better a reader than Ann-who wants to read about Little Miss Perfect?)
Valery (sighing): There’s one thing I don’t have-privacy. How can I ever hope to be a great writer in this family? Every two seconds there’s an interruption. [Oh, boo hoo hoo. Also, people unrealistically pour over the top praise on the Mary Sue, who takes it as her rightful due and complains about something? Check! Seriously, way to make Valery “sympathetic,” - “yes, Ranessa, I am so much prettier and smarter than you it isn’t worth commenting on. I’m so pretty and smart and special I can’t get a moment’s peace!”]
Enter Ricky [subtle] with a bucket stuck on his head.
Ricky: Help! Help! I’m stuck.
Ranessa tries to help him, but she falls over the chair and knocks him down again. They both roll on the ground. Margarita [yeah okay] enters, twirling a Skip-It over her head. [nice product placement! Also, Mallory, you’re an asshole. Klutzy people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones; they miss and end up beaning themselves in the head. ]
Margarita: Yippie-yi-kay-ah. I can’t skip over this, but I’m sure going to use it for something. It’s a great lasso.
As Ricky gets up with the bucket still on his head, Margarita’s Skip-It bangs into the bucket. With a loud clang, Ricky falls down again. [By the way, this sounds like a great scene to ask untrained elementary school students to perform, with no potential for injuries or mishaps at all.]
Mrs. Spike enters.
Mrs. Spike: Valery dear, I want you to baby-sit for your brothers and sisters, and scrub the floors, and take out the garbage. Could you also patch the hole in the living room wall? Okay dear? [Oh SNAP. Seriously, if Mal were using this to passive-aggressively needle her parents about using her as free labor, it would be 1000% better. Maybe not wiser, but better.]
Valery: All right, Mother dear. With all these children, I know you need the help. [and my sympathy just whooshed back down. Talk about smug, and there’s something pretty gross about Mal criticizing her mother’s reproductive choices. Some of the stuff the Pikes DO sucks, but it’s also kind of gross to tell people they have too many/not enough children. I suspect there are families with eight kids who don’t regularly dump their kids with sitters on vacation, who wouldn’t live them during a blizzard with no food in the house, and who expect all the kids to pitch in, not just the oldest daughter.]
Valery gets up and pulls the bucket off of Ricky’s head. Sighs deeply.
Valery: My family desperately needs me, so the world will have to wait for the stories I one day hope to write.
I can’t even. Although, might I point out that in addition to the egregious Mary Sue-ishness of the heroine, Mal’s pivotal first scene basically involves the heroine sitting at her desk and sighing. And a pretty boring version of Pike-antics, which weren’t that swell to begin with.
But like I said, Mal has yet to develop the taste or the ear or the humility to look at her work and deem it shit, so she is pleased. “It had comedy (the bucket stuff and all), tragedy (the poor writer burdened with an insensitive, needy family) and it was taken from my real life experiences.” Tragedy isn’t even the word for it, Mal. Nor is “comedy.”
Nor is “real life experiences.” I would make the Mary McCarthy/Lillian Hellman crack about “every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'", but Mal doesn’t deserve it.
Instead, she is filled with “quiet excitement” as she begins writing the further adventures of the “maniac” Spike family. “Further” adventures? Your heroine sat on her ass and whined while a kid rolled around with a bucket on his head. That’s not an adventure. That’s not even a scene.
Chapter 8
Stacey notebook entry from the Kids Club, in which she tactfully says the kids are excited about the play, but she has some concerns about how the other Pike kids might feel.
Mallory pretentiously deigns the kids “ready to start my play”-last week they did improve exercises and they did well, so now they are privileged enough to read her sacred words. Words you hadn’t written yet at the last rehearsal, you smug twit.
The kids read the scripts and Haley giggles, but canny Becca asks if Ranessa is Vanessa. D’oh! Mal tries to avoid the question by saying she’s changing the character’s name to Jill, because Ranessa is “a little too close” [YA THINK?] but she can’t get anything by those meddling kids!
Stacey quietly asks if the play is about the Pike family, and Mal insists again that all great literature is “basically” autobiographical.
Stacey questions this and cites Peter Pan, and Mal retorts that J. M. Barrie is not considered one of the world’s great writers.
Aw, HELL no. Look, if you go around reading Remembrance of Times Past and Middlemarch and War and Peace and want to dismiss Barrie, or other children’s writers, or other fantasists, fine. I could bicker about your standards, but at least you HAVE conceivable standards. But from the girl who thinks this Alice Anderson drivel is gold and the work of the world’s best living writer? Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Mallory!
Also, since this is a bit of a hobby horse-there’s no direct line between popularity and the worth of a writer; otherwise Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown would be the greats of our era, and that’s just too depressing to contemplate. But massive cultural influence IS something to consider, and far more people have read Peter Pan (and thus understand references to clapping if you believe in fairies, thinking happy thoughts, Lost Boys, and Never-never-land, among other things) than any of those three books listed above. Not to mention that Peter Pan, along with Alice in Wonderland, was part of a massive shift in children’s literature, Peter Pan in particular has been a massively important text for psychoanalytic and Victorian cultural studies (Jacqueline Rose’s text is dated in some ways, but still widely referenced as foundational.) So again, STFU Mallory.
Lastly, J.M. Barrie was actually a kind of tragic figure, who seems to have suffered a major emotional derailment after the death of his fourteen-year-old elder brother and his mother’s subsequent severe depression, when J.M. vowed to take his brother’s place. He also may have literally suffered from a glandular disorder which resulted in an incomplete puberty. Further, the motif of never growing up recurs in his adult novels (in one, he makes an aside “nothing that happens to us after age twelve matters very much”) and a fascinating but disturbing play called ”Mary Rose.” (There’s an excellent chapter on Barrie in Alison Lurie’s “Don’t Tell the Grown Ups,” which is a terrific read for anyone interested in the study of children’s literature.) So, see, Mallory, that’s how people ACTUALLY can approach biographical criticism-motifs and patterns, not one to one equivalencies.
Sorry. I do digress. Stacey counters with Charlotte’s Web or Stuart Little, and while E.B. White is an excellent writer (not only in his children’s fiction, but his New Yorker work-and his literary marriage is the stuff nerdy fantasies are made of)-I’m not sure by which standard he is automatically great and Barrie isn’t. Anyway, Mal says those are fantasies, but there’s probably some things about E.B. White’s life that occur in the books, like how Stuart Little lives in Manhattan.
And yes, Mal, lots of writers do use their personal experience or expertise as PART of the fabric of their work. That doesn’t make it autobiographical, you illiterate twerp.
And really, I don’t think I can match 3_foot_6’s observation that if you need to win an argument with Stacey, just yell “New York!” and run, as Stacey forgets her totally legitimate concerns (not the literary issue, but the fact that having her siblings’ friends and classmates perform a nasty play about them is a ridiculous and inappropriate idea) by reminiscing about how much she loved Stuart Little because NEW YORK NEW YORK.
Mal says “exactly!” even though she admits this has nothing to do with her point, and concedes that maybe “little kid” books aren’t autobiographical, but books for “older kids” are (does. . .Mallory know that adults also read books?).
She cites Little Women, based on Louisa May Alcott having sisters and living in the North during the Civil War. Um, I’m pretty sure that description would apply to THOUSANDS of people. Also, Bronson Alcott was way more feckless than Mr. March, and Louisa was under much more pressure to support her family than Jo (the Alcott poverty was somewhat less charmingly genteel than the Marchs), and was a much unhappier person, who more or less resented Little Women as something she scribbled off to pay the bills.
Apparently the kids have been sitting there this whole time, so Mal asks what they think of the play, and some kid named Wendy says it’s pretty funny. Uh. Really? Also, do you think Ann hates the name Wendy?
Stacey is concerned that it’s a comedy, but Mal blows her off and assigns parts. Luckily they seem to have the exact number of boys and girls for the parts, so none of those cross-gender-cast hijinx. For no particular reason, they flip to a scene at the end, when Valery is sick, which Mal based on having mono and “not even being allowed to baby-sit.” It’s about as awful as you might expect, with Valery martyr-ifficaly saying she’s not too sick to help her family, Ranessa/Jill saying how unselfish she is, and Stacey, for some reason, reading Mrs. Spike blaming herself and Valery claiming it’s her own fault for staying up late to write, probably by candlelight in an unheated garret. Ricky grumbles about how Valery gets all the attention, because Mal must hate Nicky like Ann hates Mal (and also Nicky.)
Mal stops them and judgmentally tells us they were “pretty bad.” Mal, have you ever SEEN a school play? We’re not talking the actor’s studio. If the kids can speak loud enough to be heard and no one vomits or cries, you’re ace. The only one who is any good is Danielle, Littlest Cancer Patient, who reads with “some expression, not like a robot.” Seriously, could Mal be more unpleasant in this book? She’s channelling Dawn-levels of snottiness.
They reassign the parts, giving Danielle the role of Valery, and do a scene with the triplets “Myron, Atlas, and Gordon.” Incidentally, Buddy seems to be the only male BSC-client. Mal asks Charlotte to read the Claire part, “Delaware,” which used to really confuse me, because seriously, who the hell is named Delaware? It’s not exactly a glamour location. I guess it’s because it sort of rhymes? IDK, Blaire, Adair, Cher. . .um, Legionnaire? Mohair?
Charlotte objects to playing a “baby’s part” and I can’t decide if it is more realistic or more irritating for an eight-year-old to be all offended at being asked to play a five-year-old. Maybe both. Mal pointlessly tells her a great actress can play anything, and Charlotte hilariously snarks she is NOT a great actress, and she just wants to work on costumes. Mal blows this off, because no one remembers what happens when Charlotte goes on stage, and says she’ll make “Delaware” six, but Charlotte points out the dialogue will still suck. Point to Charlotte.
Mal grumbles she’ll rewrite the part, because God forbid Mallory ever have to make revisions, and goes on to another scene, in which Valery has finished her play, and the triplets use it to build a fire. “(This never happened to me, but it seemed like the kind of thing the triplets might easily do.)”
Seriously, Mallory? First of all, way to blatantly rip off Little Women. Secondly, that “autobiographical ONLY” is getting mighty thin, hmmm? Thirdly, if the triplets habitually start fires, I feel I should have been informed, and perhaps Frodo should be rehomed.
Lastly, that is a pretty fucking awful thing to imply the triplets did. Have we ever seen them be that kind of malicious to Mal, or destroy her property? (They even kept their grubby little hands off the trunk until she gave permission.) Do they tease her? Sure. Do they take advantage of their parents’ using her as a live-in nanny? Yup. Are they particularly sensitive to her feelings? No. But to go from that level of annoying brotherness to the real anger or nastiness of destroying hours or weeks of labor? No. Shut up, Mal.
Mal gets in another silent dig at Charlotte’s lack of acting ability before she and Stacey start casting, and Stacey says “We know Danielle will play you. . .I mean, Valery,” but Mal doesn’t appreciate what a burn this is. She’s too worried about Danielle’s health. Not, you know, because she’s a child battling cancer, but because zomg! she might miss rehearsals and mess up Mallory’s masterpiece, including the incredibly tacky sickbed scene. Seriously, this level of self-involvement seems way more sociopathic than usual for Mal. Stacey says no one else could do it (yeah, the role is SO DEMANDING), and they agree to give her an understudy.
The cast, for future reference:
Valery. . .Danielle
Myron. . .Bruce (?)
Atlas. . .Peter (?)
Gordon. . .Buddy
Margarita. . .Wendy (?)
Jill aka Ranessa. . .Haley
Delaware. . .Sara/h Hill (Danielle’s understudy)
Ricky. . .Tony (?)
Sissy, Valery’s BFF. . .Becca (because she’s black)
Mrs. Spike. . .Charlotte (apparently she doesn’t say much, so she’s easy to cut)
I guess Mr. Pike didn’t even rate a crappy insulting doppelganger. Also, I have to say it seems pretty irresponsible of Mrs. Simon not to ask to see a copy of the play.
Mal tells them to memorize their lines and she and Stacey depart. Mal asks what Stacey is thinking about, and Stacey says she’s concerned about how the other Pikes will feel when they see that play, saying it is a little “exaggerated.” Or, you know, insulting to all of them while aggrandizing Mal.
Mal defends her right to exaggerate for dramatic effect, and Mal claims she won’t let the other kids see the script. Stacey rightly points out that’s ludicrous, since their friends are performing in it. Mal doesn’t have a reply to that, so she whines that if she can’t write about her life and the people in it, she can’t write ANYTHING wah wah wah. Stacey is like, “um, write about other people?” and Mal snots that wouldn’t be HONEST, it would be a “big lie.”
Stacey says basically Mal is full of shit (but more nicely) but tells her it’s up to Mal, but she should be prepared for trouble. Mal considers this a “real dilemma” and wonders if she should ask Henrietta for advice, but then rejects the notion, because OBVIOUSLY Henrietta’s family are the perfect Andersons, so they obviously could NEVER object to being depicted as funny and kind and adorable. “But a writer has to draw from the raw material he or she has been given, and, like it or not, I was stuck with the Spike family. “
Mallory, you are an asshole.
Chapter 9
Mallory has a conference with Mr. Williams. I have to believe he didn’t read her damn play, since he praises her work, and then asks what other sources she’s consulted about Henrietta. Mal asks why she would do that when she has Henrietta to ask, and considering Mr. Williams told them NOT to do a report, she kind of has a point. But Mr. Williams says ominously that sometimes people don’t reveal everything about themselves, and seriously, within the scope of this project, I don’t know what the fuck he’s doing. We also learn Henrietta wanted to be an actress (zomg! LIKE ALICE) but found she couldn’t find parts she wanted to play, so she started writing. Uh-huh. Also, Henrietta tends to evade or change the subject when Mal asks about her family. MYSTERIOUS. (Or, being generous and gracious enough to help a child with a school project shouldn’t obligate you to confide every detail of your personal life. I talk to people about what it’s like to major in English or get an MFA; that doesn’t mean I’m willing to do postmortems on my social life.)
So she goes to the library and greets Mrs. Kishi, who somewhat creepily says she keeps files on “all” the local authors and illustrators. Like, it’s not exactly that it’s wrong to keep clippings of special interest, but I kind of wonder if she just hands out their contact info willy-nilly.
She hands over the file, sparing Mal the labor of having to use the periodical guide (oh, bless). After a few articles rehashing what she knows, she finds an article from People magazine called “Henrietta Hayes: The Happiest Writer.” I don’t read People, but is it common to have lengthy profiles of random midlist, middle grade authors? I don’t mean JK Rowling or Stephen King or Nora Roberts, who are bona fide household names, more or less, but an author bookish Mal had never even heard of until a few weeks ago? Allegedly there supposed to be an Alice Anderson tv-movie. Considering how long it took to make movies of A Wrinkle in Time and A Ring of Endless Light (and how much those movies suuuuucked), a big fat whatever. (Like I said, I’ve never read Flowers in the Attic, but the movie is amazingly, wonderfully, hilariously awful, and apparently up for a remake. Death by cookie!)
Mal takes a few notes on details of Henrietta’s early life before she gets to the SHOCKING REVEAL.
Even though Henrietta’s stories all feature tight family bonds and happy endings, she was orphaned at age three by a house fire and grew up shuffling between foster homes until she went to college on scholarship. She married another writer, G. N. Rogers which ended in “bitter divorce” and a prolonged custody battle for Cassie, then fifteen, who was killed in a hit-and-run three years later, and yeah, that’s a big pile of horrible. Also, the headline writer at People is an asshole--you write that kind of headline, maybe, for someone whose PAST is marked by personal tragedy, but is now in a happy situation, not just because they write cheerful books.
Mallory, waxing Dawn-ish and sociopathic, is shocked--not at how much Henrietta, a woman who has been nothing but kind to her, has suffered and overcome, but how someone with an unhappy past could have written the joyous testament to the human spirit “Vacation at Frog Pond.”
Mal goes to look up G.N. Rogers, after dismissively saying she’s never heard of him (like that says much). She obnoxiously says he seems like an unpleasant person, based on the fact that his books are “dark and forbidding” with an air of hopelessness. Shut up, Mal (and Ann). By that token Stephen King, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Kazuo Ishiguro, Suzanne Collins, and Edith Wharton must all be or have been unpleasant people. In fact, all horror writers, all writers of dystopias, and a lot of literary fiction authors must be awful people. Conversely, there are people who find Ender’s Game very moving, but I can think of about ten thousand people I’d rather eat dinner with than Orson Scott Card. Actually, there is an author who thinks horror writers should all burn in hell, but she’s also an apologist for eugenics, homophobia, and myriad other awful things, so I wouldn’t want to have dinner with her, either.
(Okay, I do think Bret Easton Ellis is probably an unpleasant person, but that’s based on stuff he’s said as himself, not in his texts. Also, I’ve met Jonathan Franzen twice, and he’s. . .exactly as you would expect him to be, pretty much.)
ANYWAY. Mrs. Kishi sees Mal looking pale and asks if she’s feeling sick and offers to call her parents, but Mal says she’s fine and leaves, still stunned. Again, not feeling any sense of sympathy for Henrietta, but having the sheer audacity of assholishness to feel betrayed. “What would Hemingway think of Ms. Hayes?” Um, I’m pretty sure he would have thought the books were sentimental, bourgeois pap regardless. But considering that he was also friends with Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford, and Isak Dinesen, and also was, you know, not a blithering idiot, he could probably grasp that there’s more to fiction than straight autobiography. (Pro-tip: Ford Maddox Ford was not Katherine Howard.)
But Mallory makes the incredibly convoluted deduction that 1) all good writing is autobiographical, because. . .reasons, 2) Henrietta Hayes’s books aren’t autobiographical, so 3) therefore, they cannot be good books and are all lies. Even if they SEEMED moving and compelling and honest, that cannot possibly be those things, so clearly, she is not a good writer after all.
Sigh. Even as a Death of the Author girl, I think there are revelations that can profoundly impact the way you read the text. William Mayne, a children’s fantasy writer, was convicted of molesting young girls, and for a lot of people his books are completely tainted by that. There are lots of people uncomfortable that Anne Perry has made a living from crime novels in light of her committing murder at age 15. But feeling betrayed because a writer whose works you love had a sad childhood? No. Just fucking no.
So Mal sulks on home, wondering how this will affect her English project. What a sweetheart.
OK, I know I normally do five chapters at a time, but this is already almost 8000 words and 16 pages (good God), so I’ll wrap it up here for now.
Mal is called on her bullshit, coming up next.
