Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Nancy Jo Sales’ The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped of Hollywood and Shocked the World, which disappointed me terribly. I thought Sales might use the case to get an interesting new viewpoint on the cult of celebrity and reality TV, the way that historical true crime writers use cases as windows on their time periods, and, well, she does use it as a viewpoint. It’s just not interesting or new. She echoes the thousands of other indictments of our cultural obsession with fame at any price - incidentally, I find it hard to think of any lower-hanging fruit; everyone loves to hate reality TV and celebrity obsessions - and adds nothing interesting or new.
She also has a source problem: the case involved seven suspects who were formally charged (and a few other possible suspects who never were charged), but most of them (including Rachel Lee, whom the others generally fingered as the instigator) refused to speak to her. In the end the book is based heavily on the testimony of just one of the burglars: Nicholas Prugo, who confessed everything to the police, and tended to paint himself as a sad, lonely, anxious boy, led astray by his glamorous mean girl friends and their obsession with celebrity.
Prugo seems painfully honest - his confession was the only reason the police had enough evidence to charge him - so I have no doubt he told the truth as he saw it. But Sales basically ends up accepting his story as the truth, full stop, because it fits nicely with the indictment of celebrity culture and reality TV that she wants to write.
Has anyone seen Sofia Coppola’s movie take on the case, which is also called The Bling Ring?? I think Coppola probably brings a more interesting perspective to the case than Sales did, so I’m curious if it’s worth watching. I did like her Marie Antoinette; it’s rather surreal and dreamlike and odd, very different from anything else I’ve seen. A lot of that movie is simply a deluge of stuff, and I feel like that would be a good approach to this story.
What I’m Reading Now
The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600, which rather turned me off by beginning with an impassioned defense of experimental prose, which is apparently the only way that a novel can be “art.” Three-dimensional characters or a well-paced plot are mere “entertainment” - and the author swears he doesn’t mean this dichotomy as a value judgement, but dude, if you didn’t mean it as a value judgement you would have chosen different words.
This is in the introduction. I’m hoping that he’s gotten it out of his system and will not let this argument besmirch his actual book, because I really am curious about the ancient tradition of novels. We’ll see.
What I Plan to Read Next
The 2015 Newbery winner has been announced! The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander. So obviously I will be reading that.
I might also read the Newbery Honor winners this year: Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson, and El Deafo, by Cece Bell.
Nancy Jo Sales’ The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped of Hollywood and Shocked the World, which disappointed me terribly. I thought Sales might use the case to get an interesting new viewpoint on the cult of celebrity and reality TV, the way that historical true crime writers use cases as windows on their time periods, and, well, she does use it as a viewpoint. It’s just not interesting or new. She echoes the thousands of other indictments of our cultural obsession with fame at any price - incidentally, I find it hard to think of any lower-hanging fruit; everyone loves to hate reality TV and celebrity obsessions - and adds nothing interesting or new.
She also has a source problem: the case involved seven suspects who were formally charged (and a few other possible suspects who never were charged), but most of them (including Rachel Lee, whom the others generally fingered as the instigator) refused to speak to her. In the end the book is based heavily on the testimony of just one of the burglars: Nicholas Prugo, who confessed everything to the police, and tended to paint himself as a sad, lonely, anxious boy, led astray by his glamorous mean girl friends and their obsession with celebrity.
Prugo seems painfully honest - his confession was the only reason the police had enough evidence to charge him - so I have no doubt he told the truth as he saw it. But Sales basically ends up accepting his story as the truth, full stop, because it fits nicely with the indictment of celebrity culture and reality TV that she wants to write.
Has anyone seen Sofia Coppola’s movie take on the case, which is also called The Bling Ring?? I think Coppola probably brings a more interesting perspective to the case than Sales did, so I’m curious if it’s worth watching. I did like her Marie Antoinette; it’s rather surreal and dreamlike and odd, very different from anything else I’ve seen. A lot of that movie is simply a deluge of stuff, and I feel like that would be a good approach to this story.
What I’m Reading Now
The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600, which rather turned me off by beginning with an impassioned defense of experimental prose, which is apparently the only way that a novel can be “art.” Three-dimensional characters or a well-paced plot are mere “entertainment” - and the author swears he doesn’t mean this dichotomy as a value judgement, but dude, if you didn’t mean it as a value judgement you would have chosen different words.
This is in the introduction. I’m hoping that he’s gotten it out of his system and will not let this argument besmirch his actual book, because I really am curious about the ancient tradition of novels. We’ll see.
What I Plan to Read Next
The 2015 Newbery winner has been announced! The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander. So obviously I will be reading that.
I might also read the Newbery Honor winners this year: Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson, and El Deafo, by Cece Bell.