A couple of days ago I finished reading Jean Plaidy’s Rose Without a Thorn, a historical novel about Katherine Howard (5^th wife of Henry VIII—beheaded) and I’ve just started Cornelia Funke’s Inkdeath, the 3^rd and final novel in her Inkworld trilogy. Inkdeath is going to take me a while to read. It’s 663 pages long and even though it’s a young adult novel the prose is dense and rich like liqueur.

Funke’s Inkworld series is all about books and reading. One of the characters, Fenoglio, is an author who is magically transported into his own book. However another character, Orpheus, has the ability to rewrite Fenoglio’s book and alter the reality therein.

Fenoglio wonders, “…was there any worse fate than having to watch something else twist your own words, adding colorful touches—in very bad taste—to the world you’d made?” Reading this I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt as a writer of fan fiction. Like Orpheus, I delight in messing about with other people’s imagined worlds and adding lurid elements to their stories. I’ve always considered it quite a creative enterprise however Fenoglio’s dilemma does make me look at it from another perspective.

One thing I can take some consolation in is the fact that nothing in the Inkworld series is clean cut. Fenoglio, with his sense of authorship towards the world around him, is a very ambiguous character not nearly so much in control of the world he created as he would like to be.

When I finish Inkdeath, I’ve decided that I’m going to reread Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. I read it for the first time back in the fall of 2004 but I really plowed through it, I’d like to go back and do a more leisurely reading taking in more of the details.

I just finished reading Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart.  It was really wonderful.  It’s the story of a twelve year old girl named Meggie whose life with her bookbinder father, Mo, is disrupted when Dustfinger, a charming but untrustworthy figure from her father’s past appears at their house one night with a mysterious warning.  Gradually, Meggie learns that her father has the power to read people and things into and out of books and that nine years before he brought the Dustfinger as well as the villainous Capricorn and his henchman Basta to this world while accidentally banishing his wife into the pages of a book titled Inkheart. 

 

Capricorn, who has established himself as a crime lord, is after Mo hoping to use the bookbinders magical gift for his own gain.  Kindhearted but deserate to return to his own world Dustfinger is sometimes helps, sometimes hinders Meggie and Mo.  Their other allies are Meggie’s great-aunt Elinor, a devoted book collector, Farid a boy Mo reads out of The Arabian Nights, and Fenoglio, the author of Inkheart.

 

While Capricorn and his henchmen are certainly evil-- ruthless brutes who cheerfully commit arson and murder—Funke is not afraid to make her heroes deeply ambiguous.  Dustfinger’s loyalties are always questionable, Farid has a fascination for fire that sometimes make it seem as though he would be more at home among Capricorn’s followers than his enemies, Elinor lives in and for books and has little use for people, Mo keeps secrets from his daughter, Meggie herself is possessive of her father to the point where she isn’t sure that she wants to see her mother returned from the pages of Inkheart and Fenoglio takes an almost megalomaniac pleasure in the face that the characters he created have come to life.  Far from detracting from them, these flaws make the characters seem more human and in the end, even more heroic.

 

Inkheart is an exciting adventure story but it is all about books and the way stories can transform and enrich the world.  Books have great power in the world of Inkheart.  On the most superficial level Meggie, Mo and Elinor all love and value books, both for their content and as physical objects while Capricorn and his men are largely illiterate and actually burn books yet it is not that clean cut.  Books are not without their dangers.  This is illustrated by Elinor’s distain of real people and general disconnect from life as well as by the fact that the villain of the piece, Capricorn, actually comes from a book.  It is not just Mo’s power but Fenoglio’s skill as a writer that allows Capricorn to come to life.  The worlds that books open are far from harmless. 

 

I felt like Funke was very brave in introducing themes that couldn’t be easily resolved.  The easy way is to say “books should never be burned, books can’t harm anyone.”  Funke says “books should never be burned, but books just might have the power to burn you.”

 

There are two more volumes in the Inkworld Trilogy as it’s called, Inkspell and Inkdeath.  I’m looking forward to going to the library and devouring them.


German and English editions of Inkheart

On Friday I went to an exhibit at the Fenimore Art Museum called “American’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City 1800-1900 that spotlighted the Roman themed work of 19^th century American Artists. The exhibit included many painting of ruins and the commentary on these featured a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Marble Faun that I really liked:

“(America is) a land where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a common-place prosperity, in broad and simple daylight… Romance and poetry need Ruin to make them grow.”

Reading this I couldn’t help but add horror to Hawthorne’s list of ideas that require Ruin to thrive. Horror often mines ancient evils. Hawthorne himself looked back to his puritan ancestors in House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter. Later H. P. Lovecraft would create a dark New England of sinister in-bred ghouls and otherworldly terrors. Stephan King’s characters stir up paranormal discord by unearthing Indian burial grounds. America then does have its picturesque and gloomy wrongs, either uncovered or created, but I can see the appeal of European settings, of the “old world” and its imagery. Though it’s been tarnished by war, murder, injustice, evil and insanity America remains comparatively shiny and new.

In Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell there’s an amazing chapter where William Gull gives a tour of London spanning from druid times to the present day, revealing layer upon layer of history and mystery. It’s simply not possible to give such a tour of an American city. Because Native American culture and lore was essentially erased even the oldest parts of the country only go back a few centuries. The idea of a thousand or even two thousand years of documented, known, decaying history fascinates me.

It doesn’t surprise me that many of Edger Allen Poe’s most popular short stories are set in a mythical Europe and draw on centuries old imagery of the inquisition, skeleton filled catacombs and ancient family lineages. I thought of stories like The Pit and the Pendulum, Masque of the Red Death and The Fall of the House of Usher when I read Hawthorne’s quote.

I also thought of Hostel, a film I watched a couple of weeks ago for the first time. An extremely violent tale of American’s abroad who are lured to a hostel that provides victims for those willing to pay to murder and torture, Hostel was widely criticized when it was released for exploiting post-9/11 xenophobia and paranoia. Meditating on the quote by Hawthorne however I feel like it belongs in an older, gothic tradition where the American consciousness is mesmerized and frightened by the mystery and gloomy wrongs of an older world.

Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is one of those books that I’ve loved as both a little girl and a grown woman. Visually it appeals to me enormously, the illustrations are gorgeous, but beyond that I’ve always been fascinated by the story (simple and epic all at once), by Sendak’s sly sense of humor, by the sense of joy and the edge of darkness the book contains. In a lot of ways Where the Wild Things Are has always struck me as a story that works on a primeval, Jungian level charting the child’s process of identity building in a mythic fable. Growing up is like Max’s journey. You over step boundaries, you reject authority, you play with other roles and unacceptable behavior, you run amok but then hopefully you return your parents, your home, to love and safety and order.

I felt like Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are film did a really good job with the difficult task of adapting Sendak’s book. The movie is visually striking in its own right and doesn’t slight either the playfulness or the sometimes menacing edginess of the original.

Screenwriters Jonze and David Eggers stay true to the narrative outlines sketched by Sendak while fleshing out the story. We see a bit more of Max’s home life than the book shows. Nine year old Max (Max Records) is an extremely creative little boy with a rambunctious streak. His older sister can’t be bothered with him and his divorced, working mother loves and encourages him, but sometimes she kind of wants a life of her own. At school his science teacher talks about the sun dying. Wanting attention, confused, angry, sad and frightened all at once Max lashes out. First he trashes his sister’s room after her friends wreck the igloo he’s built. Then he behaves badly indeed when his mother has a (male) friend over for dinner, eventually biting her before he flees.

Max arrives in the world of the Wild Things to find one of them, Carol, in the process of breaking things. Max immediately identifies, as well he should. The Wild Things, especially Carol, are like giant, motherless children. Theirs is an id level world of joyful rough and tumble anarchy on one hand and frightening destructive violence on the other. Initially they consider eating Max but when he assures them he can do away with sadness and loneliness and make it so they’re happy all the time they make him their king. They all have wonderful, raucous fun together and Max sets them to work building the ultimate fort but the family of the Wild Things is no without it’s conflict and Max isn’t able to make them go away. Carol ultimately becomes as frustrated with Max as Max became with his mother and like Max lashes out.

The themes of the fallibility of authority figures and the currents of destructiveness that exist even in loving families are new to the film version of Where the Wild Things Are. There was a certain gleeful amorality to Sendak’s version but in the film it’s spelled out more clearly the ways Max grows through his experiences among the Wild Things—he returns because his time as king has taught him empathy for his mother.

Packing up my books. 

 

So many books too pack.  I’m sort of awed at the amount I’m accumulated in the past six years.  I’ve been able to weed out some but there’s a lot I can’t part with—my copies of the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia and His Dark Materials series, Angela Carter, Lovecraft, Maurice Sendak, stuff on women artists and Japanese pop art, graphic novels, manga.  Actually far too much I can’t part with. 

 

Because my father will be helping me load all the boxes of books that I’ve been packing I’ve been trying to arrange things tastefully in such a way as to avoid potential awkwardness.  For example I’ve been careful not to put anything like my copy of The Joys of Gay Sex where it’s too readily apparent.  There are some things you just don’t want your Reverend Daddy knowing about you. 

Back on the 25^th of June, at the suggestion of my livejournal friend nolan_ash who sent me a copy of the book, I started doing The Artist’s Way, a 12 week program created by Julia Cameron that’s designed to help you get in touch with your creativity. 

 

The program involved “morning pages”, three longhand pages written out everyday as soon as you wake up, a weekly “artists date” where you go do something that nurtures your creativity and a variety of exercises and affirmations most of which involve taking baby steps towards doing things that will enrich your life.  It’s a very spiritual program, very much based on the idea that creativity comes from a divine source and flows through everyone, which is something I’ve always believed. 

 

 Thus far, doing The Artist’s Way is turning out to be a really good experience.  It encourages small acts and it’s gotten me to do things like make a collage and go out to a coffee show, little things that are a big deal for me. 

 

Because I manage to do some writing and a little art here and there I’ve never thought of myself as creatively blocked however working the program has made me realize how passive and stagnant I am about a lot of things.  I’ve never really defined what kind of life I want, much less worked towards it.  I think I’ve always believed that I should take what I get so it’s very hard (and scary)for me to imagine what sort of life would make me happy and if you can’t imagine something you can’t exactly take steps to make it a reality. 

Early this year I was driving home from work listening to NPR as usual and I heard an episode of the show To The Best of Our Knowledge that focused on Science Fiction and Fantasy literature.  Along with pieces on my longtime favorites H. P. Lovecraft and Ursula K. LeGuin, there was also an interview with an author I was less familiar with, George R. R. Martin, about his multi-volume fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. 

 

Because several of my fandom friends (including etrangere who has pretty impeccable taste) have mentioned an interest in A Song of Ice and Fire I paid special attention to the radio piece and found it pretty fascinating.  They talked about the complex religious systems portrayed in the books and I also discovered that Martin was the author of Fevre Dream and The Armageddon Rag, two of the more imaginative novels I read when I was a teenager going through my vampire phase. 

 

Based on this, I decided I’d give the series a try and picked up a copy of the first volume A Game of Thrones at the library.  I think I was on the second chapter when a bullying brother pinched his sister’s nipples and complained that he had to sell her off instead of marrying her himself as was the family way.  By page fifty there was full on incest between another brother and sister.  At this point, I knew A Song of Ice and Fire was for me. 

 

It’s not just the incest of course, though that’s what hooked me.  A Song of Ice and Fire is a truly extraordinary series.  Martin has created a world that includes geography, history, politics, several different religious systems, class structure and the cultural differences of different cities, regions, countries and peoples and conveys it in perfectly realized detail.  Despite the hundreds of characters and scores of noble involved in the story I found entering the world the A Song of Ice and Fire fairly effortless.  I absolutely devoured the first book of the series as well as the second (A Clash of Kings) and am about 2/3 through the third (A Storm of Swords which is about 1,100 pages long). 

 

The basic story of A Song of Earth and Fire centers on the Seven Kingdoms, a land where summers that last for years are followed by long and brutal winters.  To the North, in Winterfell, live the Stark family whose emblem is the Direwolf and who’s motto is “Winter is coming”.  The serious minded, uncompromising patriarch of the family is Ned Stark, an old friend and battle companion of Robert, the king who sits on the Iron Throne after deposing the near mythical house of Targeryen some years before.  Once handsome, charismatic, fun-loving and warm-hearted, being king has broken down Robert’s body and spirits leaving him embittered and a slave to his appetites for food, women and drink.  When Robert’s chief advisor or Hand dies (under suspicious circumstances), Robert names Ned to the position.  The Stark family, including Ned’s wife Catelyn and their five children, four boys (one illegitimate) and two girls who ranging in age from 16 to 4. 

 

The Stark’s are central to the novel and most of the chapters are narrated from the perspective of various family members yet at the same time other chapters are shown from the point of view of their enemies.  The novel is an epic but character driven.  The use of multiple points of view allows for an extremely complex chorus of voices but never for stagnant narration or the simplistic taking of sides. 

 

I like very much that women and girls are included among the characters that Martin follows closely.  Also, he does something very rare in a medieval fantasy; he spotlights characters that are not able-bodied.  Early in the first novel Ned Stark loses the loss of his legs in a fall yet continues to play an important role in the novel.  Perhaps one of the most important of the characters outside the Stark family is Tyrion Lannister, the younger brother of Robert’s Queen.  Tyrion is a dwarf, referred the disparagingly as “the imp” yet he too is an important player in the novel. 

 

A Song of Ice and Fire works on multiple levels.  Often, the books read like historical fiction telling of battles but just as often of statecraft, of alliances and the shifting ground of political maneuvering.   In many ways it dovetails nicely into my recent obsession with the Tudor and Elizabethan periods of English history.  There’s every bit as much intrigue and Robert, the golden hero who matures into an overweight, frustrated and harried monarch certainly bears more than a passing resemblance to Henry VIII (also his wife is cheating on him with her brother, a charge that Henry VIII made against Anne Boleyn….) 

 

Sometimes it’s easy to get so caught up in the politics and faux-historical aspect of A Song of Ice and Fire that you forget you’re reading a fantasy novel.  This makes the intrusion of magic all the more shocking when it does manifest.  The fabric of reality seems to tear for both the characters and the reader.  The appearance of magic in A Song of Ice and Fire is never casual or predictable.

 

Along with actual magic, there are fairy tales tropes woven into the books-- A girl given three wishes, a beauty loved by a beast, an exiled princess cast out with nothing who overcomes obstacle after obstacle on her quest to be Queen*.  As I’ve said it’s an extremely rich series that operates on many different levels.  I find myself simultaneously wanting to tear head-long through the entire thing and to go slowly making it last for as long as I can.

 

*This character, Daenerys Targaryen is my absolute favorite but this is a pretty casual overview of the series and I can’t talk about her too much without revealing several key plot-points. 

 

 

 

When I was at the library the other day greedily stocking up on graphic novels (Angel: After the Fall Vol. 1-3!  Assorted volumes of Deathnote!) I chanced upon a book called Lying In Weight by Trisha Gura.

 

Subtitled “The hidden epidemic of eating disorders in adult women”, this book is the first I’ve ever come upon that deals specifically with disordered eating in adult women.  Eating disorders are still very much associated with girls and young women and a great deal of the literature on the subject does focus upon this age group.

 

While I did suffer from binge eating, compulsive eating and bulimia as a teenager, I didn’t develop anorexia until I was twenty two or twenty three and despite treatment and maintaining a “normal” weight for a good decade my adult years have been very much centered around issues of food consumption and body image. 

 

Lying In Weight is the first book I’ve ever found that directly addresses my situation.  Someone who doesn’t meet the very specific DSM-IV criteria for anorexia or bulimia but who has lived for years with compulsive behavior based around food and exercise.  The term Gura uses to describe this is “subclinical.”  That’s what I am, someone who doesn’t meet the clinical definition of eating disorders but who definitely does not have a healthy relationship with food. 

 

Because it deals with the effort of disordered eating over entire span of a woman’s life from adolescence to old age and addresses treatment options Lying In Weight is, by necessity, broad in it’s focus.  There was a lot of material, such as the chapters on pregnancy and motherhood that while interesting (and very often heartbreaking) didn’t apply directly to me.  Still, there was a great deal in the book that I could identify with, particularly where Gura talked about inter-personal relationships. 

 

The other day I was talking to my brother-in-law about how it doesn’t seem like I’ve been able to make any kind of substantial romantic or personal connections during the time I’d been in Chicago.  My explanation was that I hadn’t tried hard enough but perhaps I didn’t want to try. 

 

Reading Lying In Weight, I realized this that in a lot of ways I am typical of a woman who has made her eating disorder the primary relationship in her life.  Keeping to my diet and exercise regiments are my top priority.  Getting too close to anyone threatens this so I’ve always kept my distance, despite being very lonely at times.  The one relationship I did have was with a man who was extremely self-involved and didn’t really notice or care about my disordered behavior. 

 

Another revelation that came to me while reading this book is that unless I make the effort to get better, to really heal myself, I could very easily function as half a person for the rest of my life.  My eating disorder isn’t going to go away on its own.  When contemplating this, what really frightens me isn’t the possibility of being a subclinical mess as a senior citizen, it’s that I can’t really imagine what my life would be like without the system of controls I’ve built around my eating disorder.  I feel like if I didn’t count calories religiously and exercise rigorously I’ll be completely out of control.  My recent foray into alcohol abuse only seems to illustrate this to me…

 

Still, putting aside my own concerns I think the appearance of Lying In Weight at the public library is a very positive sign.  It means that eat disorders in adult women are starting to get some attention and will therefore be taken more seriously by the general public making it easier for women who need it to get treatment. 

The first season of True Blood came out on DVD a couple weeks ago and I’ve been re-watching it.

 

I watched True Blood when without having read any of Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels on which it’s based.  Now though, having read several of them, the show really strikes me as a form of fan fiction.  The world of the books remains recognizable, the characters have the same names and many of the major events remain intact, but everything has been sexed up to the max and minor characters have been given personalities, histories and stories of their own in no way suggested by the source material. 

 

For instance in the series, Tara is Sookie’s best friend (with a long standing crush on Sookie’s brother Jason).  She works with Sookie at Merlotte's, has an affair with their boss Sam (Tara/Sam anyone), and is entangled with an alcoholic mother.  Yet Tara doesn’t actually appear In Dead Until Dark, the book the first season of True Blood is loosely based on.  Tara doesn’t make her appearance until the second book, Living Dead In Dallas, and then she appears only fleeting as an old friend of Sookie’s who is marginally connected with some unpleasant supernatural business, a bystander at best. 

 

The Sookie Stackhouse novels are told in first person from Sookie’s point of view, and tend to be very plot driven so expanding the roles of the minor characters like Tara, Jason, and Sam really serves the series well in many cases.  It makes for a more character driven version of the stories presented in the books and also offers more color and contrast. 

 

Except when in crashes and burns. 

 

There are more than a few sub-plots in True Blood that if they were fan fiction would be considered pure, unadulterated crack.  Some of the scenarios are so far out and extreme they’re just painful to watch.  Most of these involve Jason being remarkably stupid and having sex but the whole voodoo exorcism with Tara and the things with Bill’s “daughter” are also pretty bad. 

 

In fan fiction, there’s always the “out of character” factor to contend with, the question of whether or not the characters are true to the source material.  Watching True Blood after having read the books I do occasionally have moments where I find myself thinking “Sookie would not do that”, “Sookie would not wear that”, “Sookie would not masturbate on Bill’s steps”, or “Sookie would not use the f word in public”.  I suppose though that’s just part and parcel of an HBO (or Showtime) series.  In the realms of premium cable all characters cuss, dress scanty and are perpetually hot and bothered be they Miss Sookie Stackhouse or the King of England (see The Tudors). 

I’ve been very withdrawn for the last couple of weeks.  Questions of whether or not I should move back to New York have been on my mind to the point where it’s difficult for me to think about much of anything else.  I’m going to visit my parents in New York from the 18^th to the 22^nd and its sort of a scouting mission to determine if I want to move back.  If I get there and realize it’s impossible for me to ever live there again I’ll have to figure out someway of staying in Chicago when I’m not sure if there is a way….

 

In an effort to get away from my worries I’ve been spending much of my free time watching movies and episodes of the television series Mad Men as well as losing myself in novels.  I’ve read some really excellent stuff, including Tom Perrotta’s very funny, keenly observed Little Children and Atonement and Enduring Love by Ian McEwan who is poised to become one of my all time favorites.  His books are exquisite, every page, even paragraph seems infused with so many levels of meaning.  McEwan’s writing makes me feel the same way Henry James’ does, like I’m reading something at a level so high above anything I would ever attempt as an author.  Yet I find this inspirational rather than discouraging, they set a standard to aim for. 

 

Still, I feel like I’m consuming books and movies without digesting them properly, just using them to numb my anxiety and pass time rather than properly thinking about what I’m reading and watching.  Hopefully after my visit I’ll be able to figure out what I’m doing and be able to focus again. 

I just finished reading a really interesting book, Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence by Gerard Jones.  It looks at the positive role fantasies of violence, conflict and destruction can play in children’s development.  While many critics of violent television, comic books and video games say they lead children to commit acts of violence Jones assesses that fantasy and play of this sort offers a cathartic outlet and allows children to explore feelings like anger and fear and to work through their anxieties in the safe space of make-believe. 

 

Reading Killing Monsters really made me think on several different levels.  I hate to say this but in many ways it really highlighted for me some of the things my parents did wrong. 

 

Parents need to be aware of what their children are watching and attentive to age appropriateness and their child’s limits (if they have nightmares after watching certain things for instance) but they shouldn’t try to dictate their child’s interests.  For whatever reason, children are often drawn to things that adults disapprove of but within reasonable bounds they should be given the freedom to pursue their own interests.  If a child is drawn to monsters or ninjas or soldiers an adult shouldn’t tell him that it’s bad to like these things.  If a little boy pretends to shoot someone they shouldn’t be told that this is the same a really shooting someone or that such play is going to lead him to become a murderer.  This sort of reaction blurs the lines between fantasy and reality- playing is not being.  The adult is interpreting the play in a literal way and making the child take on their anxieties.

 

This of course is exactly what used to happen in my household.  Fantasy and reality were always very much blurred.    My mother gave fiction tremendous power.  She had a number of lifelong fears- such as people getting stabbed by scissors- as a result of things she’d seen in movies while growing up and she never wanted us to watch or read anything violent, angry or just not nice (sex was also seriously taboo).  Bad stories could get into your soul and hurt you. 

 

I was a pretty good little girl.  I liked Little House on the Prairie and my dolls best but as I became a teenager I grew increasingly interested in things that horrified my mother. 

 

I remember getting in a lot of trouble when she caught me reading a copy of Amityville Horror I’d picked up in the library and later on things like tarot cards and Anne Rice novels were regularly confiscated.  Occasionally letters pleading for me to love God and turn my back on evil were left in their place.  I hate to say it but this way of thinking got into me.  I believed my fantasies could call evil down upon me.  When I was about 15 years old there was a pack of coyotes in the woods near our house and two of our cats disappeared in rapid succession.  I felt like this was because of me, because my favorite character in New Mutants was a demon sorceress and because I had a stash of tarot cards and an H. P. Lovecraft novel tucked away.  I actually burned some of my cards and books because I felt I was contaminated by them.   

 

For years I viewed my teenage self as a holy terror not so much because of what I did (not a heck of a lot) but because of what I liked.  Witches, vampires, comic books, punk rock and movies like Sid and Nancy, Another Country, Blue Velvet and Heathers.   Reading Killing Monsters actually made me feel pretty normal.   I was doing what teenagers do- exploring, trying to define myself- she was the one blowing it all out of proportion. 

 

Having been brought up in such a restrictive environment, I try to be open minded but there are certain things in the popular media that I find really disturbing.  Over the summer I read the DC comic book series 52 and was really shocked by the level of violence (when did it became okay to show disemboweled intestines in mainstream comics).  I’m also very uneasy about the popularity of the “torture-porn” movies like Saw and Hostel.  Then there’s the whole Twilight phenomena which I worry is sending dangerous messages to young girls (watch True Blood instead, Bella’s nothing but a sad little fang-banger).   

 

And yet there are people I know and respect on line and in real life who adore things like Twilight or the Saw movies.  As a teenager I loved Sid and Nancy because it was rebellious and angry and adults hated it, not because I wanted my boyfriend to murder me.  Why should I think that loving Twilight will lead girls to accepting abusive relationships? 

 

In Killing Monsters Jones suggests that parents who are concerned about their children’s interest in violent or sexualized media ask their children what it is they like about Doom or Britney Spears or dinosaurs or whatever it is they’re into.  The answers will very often be rooted in the child’s emotional needs and unique concerns. 

 

To me, one of the most important messages of Killing Monsters is the idea that children (and adults) are more than just passive consumers of media.  They don’t just absorb and imitate.  are flirting with masochism and being abused?  isn’t necessarily going to cause a girl to enter into an abusive relationship any more than my passion for Sid and Nancy think it’s romantic to be slapped around by her boyfriend any more than my love of Sid and Nancy Certain aspects of a game, book, movie or television show will speak to their needs and make them feel energized, empowered or secure.  Thousands of people can watch the same program, play the same game, read the same book but each will internalize it differently and take something different away from it.  Each person has their own relationship with entertainment they consume. 

 

This is something I’ve always believed and I feel that it’s very evident in fandom.  Wizard Rock, fan art and fan fiction show the diverse results produced when popular entertainment is used as a jumping off point for creative endeavor.  This is something Jones really stresses, the idea that media can and should be used.  That television, books, movies and video games aren’t an ends to themselves but a means of connecting to others, exploring concerns, sparking inspiration, defining what interests you and even expressing yourself.  In this way, a fascination with something that might initially seem dangerous or off-putting can actually be life enhancing. 

I’ve really been immersing myself in the world of True Blood lately.  In addition to watching each new episode of the television show as soon as I can download it I’ve also read three of Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire novels (the series on which True Blood is based) and am currently well into a fourth. 

For the last month or so I’ve been engrossed in Susanna Clarke’s novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.  It’s a huge book, a meticulously detailed 19^th century style novel.  In 1806 as the Napoleonic wars are raging, the reclusive Mr. Norrell takes it upon himself to revive practical (as opposed to theoretical) magic in England, where it has been dormant for the past three centuries. 

 

Of course Mr. Norrell has some very specific ideas of what magic ought to be.  Over the years he’s amassed the definitive library on the subject, yet he has no desire to share his books or knowledge with other magicians so that they might make the step from theoretical to practical.  In fact even the existence of theoretical magicians seems to irk Norrell.  His first demonstration of practical magic is tinged with his possessiveness of magic and malice towards those he considers unworthy of calling themselves magicians.  When the Learned Society of York Magicians doubts Norrell’s claim to be a practical magician (after all, it has been 300 years since magic was practiced) Norrell agrees to prove himself but the members of the Society are required to take an oath that if Norrell is capable of performing magic none of them will ever again study magic or call themselves magicians.  

 

Previous to Mr. Norrell’s rise in prominence magic and fairies were synonymous in the public imagination, something Norrell, an association Norrell is determined to see buried.  So far as he is concerned fairies are dangerous and should not be dealt with by a proper magician.  As such Norrell dismisses the magical legacy of the mythical Raven King who once ruled in both England and Fairie. 

 

An avarice hoarding of knowledge and an aversion to fairies are the twin pillars of Norrell’s vision of English magic and yet he violates both of his dearly cherished principles—and there are far reaching consequences.

 

When Norrell arrives in London, he is unable to convince the government to take him seriously or see the usefulness of his magic.  When Lady Emma, the fiancé of high ranking government official Sir Walter Pole dies Norrell strikes a deal with a fairy king referred to only as “the gentleman with thistle-down hair” to revive her.  Pole get’s his wife back and Norrell gets his in with the government but there is a considerable price to be paid.  According to the deal Norrell made, half of Emma’s remaining life belongs to the gentleman with thistle-down hair and he holds both her and household servent Stephen Black in magical thrall. 

 

Later Mr. Norrell meets Jonathan Strange, a young man presumptuous enough to practice magic.  Though largely self taught Strange is an imaginative and innovative magician.  Norrell is impressed and rather than crushing Strange’s magical aspirations takes him on as a student. 

 

Strange proves to have a very different approach to practical magic then Mr. Norrell.  While Norrell has remained in London and aided the British army from a distance, Strange encamps with Wellington and experiences the triumphs, discomforts and horrors of war firsthand.  His natural creativity emboldened by his wartime experiences Strange longs to venture deeper into magic.  He quickly grows impatient with Norrell’s cautious approach to magic and the way he hordes his knowledge and the two part ways.  They eventually become rivals, struggling to define English magic. 

 

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is taking me forever to read (I still have about 200 pages left at this writing) but I’m enjoying every minute of it.  Clarke flawlessly incorporates real-life historical elements into the world of the novel which has a complex and richly detailed past involving magic, magicians and fairies.  There is a great deal of wit in the novel that seems quintessentially British to me.  Clarke draws her characters with a spot-on sharpness reminiscent of Jane Austen.  Really a wonderful novel. 

I’ve developed something of a passion for the manga of Ai Yazawa, mostly Nana (I’ve devoured the first eight volumes) and also Paradise Kiss (which I’ve read the first volume of). 

 

Her series Nana was recommended to me based on a bit of Princess Tutu yuri I’d written and right before I lost my second job at Biff’s office I decided to take a chance and secured copies of the first eight volumes of the series from e-bay.  A rather significant risk, I might have hated the series, but as luck would have it Nana turns out to be one of the better manga series I’ve ever read. 

 

Basically it’s about two very different 20-year-old women, both named Nana who come to Tokyo, meet and whose lives become increasingly intertwined.   No science-fiction or supernatural elements, just a pair of girls trying to build their lives and become themselves. 

 

Nana Komatsu is an exuberant but essentially aimless young woman.  Good hearted but clueless she allows herself to drift through life in the wake of whoever she happens to be in love with.  When her friends, including her boyfriend, move to Tokyo to attend art school, she follows them.  On the train to the city she meets the other Nana, Nana Osaki.

 

Nana Osaki is a punk rock singer with very definite goals.  Her previous band, Blast, was a local success in the small city she is from but that ended when their bassist Ren left to join the major label band Trapnest.  Ren was also Nana’s lover and he asked her to come with him but she declined as it would have meant being relegated to “rock star’s girlfriend.”  Their affair was put on hold and in Tokyo, Nana O is determined to become a success at least equal to Ren, with her new band.    

 

Nano O is guarded as Nana K is open, sharing little about her painful childhood or her personal life.  Yet her music has the ability to move people deeply.  Through her music, she seems to speak for them. 

 

While there’s some cutesy stuff, overall Nana is much more adult- as in grown-up, than most manga I’ve read.  Also it’s more novelistic, things seem to develop, grow and deepen with each installment. 

 

Also it has a sensibility I love. 

 

While so much manga seems to focus on students in school uniforms who aspire to the student council, Yazawa’s characters are hip bohemians, artist and musicians in Nana, an enclave of edgy fashion designers in Paradise Kiss.   They shop at thrift stores and vintage shops and garner inspiration from the Sex Pistols and Velvet Goldmine- definitely my kind of scene.  In a way Nana reminds me somewhat painfully of my college years, especially Nana K’s desire to be included in Nana O’s circle of punk musicians.  

 

Though I’m quite late to the party, I’ve started watching the BBC series Torchwood.  I polished off the first season on DVD and am two episodes into season 2 via downloads.  Overall I like it quite a bit.  Season One was fairly uneven.  There were some good episodes but some truly baffling suspensions of logic were required (I’m sorry, but any solution that involves reading the complete works of Emily Dickinson aloud is not acceptable).   Still, it’s amazing what you can forgive of a show that makes just about everybody in its entire cast more or less bisexual.    

 

And when I say everyone I mean everyone.  The leader of Torchwood (an alien hunting organization that’s sort of the UK equivalent to Men In Black) Captain Jack Harkness  openly admits to lovers of both sexes, is sexually involved with a member of his team but still manages to have a kind of “unresolved sexual tension” thing going with Gwen.  In addition to holding up her part of the UST with Jack, Gwen has a boyfriend and has an affair with the team’s medic Owen.  This doesn’t stop her from kissing a woman processed by an alien in the second episode of the show.  Computer expert Toshiko, who seems to have a crush on Owen has an affair with an alien who is female in human form.    An episode is devoted to another team member, Ianto’s efforts to resurrect his girlfriend but it’s gradually revealed in future episodes that he’s become involved with Jack.  Even Owen, a compulsive womanizer and seemingly the straightest member of Torchwood makes out with a guy in the series premiere and during an apocalyptic moment suggests that both Ianto and Toshiko have end of the world sex with him. 

 

I sort of love this kind of stuff. 

 

Season One had a lot of promise which I hope Season Two will deliver on.  It definitely seemed to be off to a good start in the first episode (appropriately titled “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” when Spike (yes, that Spike—Buffy Spike) shows up looking for Jack to be his Drusilla.  Okay, it’s not Spike.  His name is Captain John Hart.  He’s brunette and American.  And he’s not a vampire, he’s some sort of time agent thing that I’d know about if I’d actually watched Dr. Who before watching the spin-off but basically it’s Spike engaging in violent making out with a really cute (if full of himself) guy and in my book, that is pretty stunning. 

 

On the literary front I just finished reading Sarah Water’s novel Fingersmith.  It’s the third novel I’ve read by Waters (I admit it, I have a thing for Victorian lesbians).  The others were Tipping the Velvet (my favorite) and Affinity.   

 

I’d seen a BBC adaptation of Fingersmith a couple of years ago so I knew the basic outlines of the plot, which is probably a good thing.  I’m less concerned with being surprised than I am with knowing what’s going on and Fingersmith is full of the sort of twists and turns and reversals that often times confuse the hell out of me.  Knowing where the story was going freed me up to focus on the characters, the wonderful period dialogue and the rich atmosphere that Water’s evokes.  This atmosphere is by turns sensual and sickening.  Water has a way of making you smell the 19^th century and what with chamberpots and close rooms on rainy nights reeking of dog and unwashed bodies it doesn’t always smell good. 

 

In Fingersmith, Waters seems to deliberately set out to write a sort of post-modern  Dickensonian novel brimming over with melodramatic contrivances such as switched babies, ghastly uncles, and dastardly plots as well as expanding Dickens social themes to include issues of gender and sexuality as well as wealth and class. 

 

Another bit of post-modern pseudo-Victoriana I’ve indulged in lately is Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige, about a pair of rival illusionists.  This was my second viewing of The Prestige.  I have to admit my first left me rather baffled.  As I said, I’m not so good a following plots and The Prestige is extremely complicated, a puzzle of a movie in much the same way Nolan’s Memento was.

 

The film’s complexity is encapsulated by its framing device—much of the movie concerns a man reading another man’s diary about reading his own diary.  Follow?  Of course both diaries were intended to be read and are full of deliberate misinformation.  Appropriate for a film that’s central themes are doubles, the creation of illusion and how things are not what they seem to be.  I definitely got much more out of the Prestige by seeing it a second time and I’d like to watch it again just to clear up some details I didn’t really follow.  Also having watched it, I’d rather like to see Nolan’s contribution to the Batman mythology.  I’ve been intensely interested in Batman as a sort of masculine   archetype since I was a teenager but somehow I never got around to seeing Batman Begins. 

The Vatican just issued an updated list of sins that includes pollution.

Somehow that makes me think of Good Omens where one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Pestilence retires and is replaced by Pollution.

Last week I had a craving to read something voluminous from the 19^th century and inspired by a post hyel had recently made as well as fond memories of the movie (James Purefoy, sigh) I decided to give William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair another go. 

 

I made a previous attempt to read Vanity Fair back in December of 2001.  I was living in New York and my parents and I went out to Chicago by train (the parents don’t fly) to visit my sister who was pregnant with her first child at the time.  I remember that I was reading Vanity Fair at the time because when you travel with a 10 pound book you don’t quickly forget it.  In the end I made it about half way through, about 400 pages of the 800 page edition I was working on, before abandoning it. 

 

It seems to be going much faster on my second attempt.  I hate to admit it but I think watching the film adaptation helped.  I can follow things much better when I have a general idea of the direction they’re going in.  Despite my literary background and considerable pretenses, I have limitations as a reader.  I can either garner the big picture or savor the details, not both at once and I think Vanity Fair works much better when you can appreciate all the jabs and jibs and witty asides.

 

I can’t help but think that it would do me good to be a little more like Rebecca Sharp, the novels anti-heroine.  She does have an amazing ability to make the best of whatever situation she finds herself in.  She might be a scheming little minx but she’s also fearless and I have to admire that.  Faced with the sort of dismal gothic governess situation that would chill the blood of a Jane Eyre, Becky Sharp simply takes over the household.  I imagine a dead car battery wouldn’t thwart her for a minute.  She’s simply impose on the nearest available person, enlist their aid through whatever means were required and driving away think no more of them. 

 

Interestingly, I started watching the anime series The Rose of Versailles which deals with the court of Marie Antoinette leading up to the French Revolution and all the villainess in it (Madame DuBarry, Jeanne and to a lesser extent Lady Polignac) seem to be homicidal versions of Becky Sharp.   Women born without advantages who know how to use what they do have, beauty, intelligence, charm and sexuality and who by shrewd maneuvering are able to rise in the world and gain power, women who use and discard others without remorse. 

I'd like to be sharp, like Becky, but I suppose like everything thats a double edged sword.  It can be empowering or it can be evil.

I was scheduled to be off at the market Saturday, Sunday and today then yesterday I ended up having to call in because I had to take my car into the shop so I’ve had an unprecedented four days off.  Keep in mind of course that three of those days I’ve been working at the office but still, it’s nice to get away after the craziness of Thanksgiving week. 


I spoke to Mum last night and she pretty understanding about my working during her visit (I requested time off but was scheduled anyways).  I will have one day off during her visit, Sunday, so we can do something that day.  I’d like to take her down to see the windows of the State Street Marshall Fields (previously Macys).  My sister took her children and was showing some pictures she’d taken on Thanksgiving and the displays looked absolutely gorgeous—they’re scenes from the Nutcracker Suite, which is one of my favorite holiday stories. 

One of the versions of the Nutcracker I love the most is the picture book illustrated by Maurice Sendak.  I just started reading The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present, which I found in the library yesterday.  It’s a huge, beautiful oversized art book and the text is by Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner.  While I love Sendak’s earlier wrote, (Chicken Soup and Rice, What Do You Say Dear and Where the Wild Things Are were staples of my childhood) I’m fasinated by a lot of the things he’s done more recently-- dark, melancholy children’s stories like Dear Milli and Outside, Over There (which I've always thought influenced the film Labyrinth), art in his “old world” style, and more adult illustration and theatrical design (including The Nutcracker and the Holocaust themed dance production he created  with the Pilobolus Dance Theater at my old alma mater SUNY College at Purchase which is the subject of a documentary, The Last Dance). 

I’ve known for years that Sendak considers Mozart and William Blake huge influences but I was interested to learn that another is Herman Melville, particularly his novel Pierre or the Ambiguities which Sendak did a series of illustrations for.  I’ve never read Pierre. I know of it mainly because several years ago I saw a film, Pola X, that updated and adapted it (I actually saw his movie when I was on a visit to Chicago, at the theater in the  Fine Arts building on Michigan Avenue which has since closed).   I think I’d rather like to read it now if only to understand what’s happening in Sendak’s beautiful illustrations that evoke both the ballet and the works of William Blake. 

I’ve been reading Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, which is essentially a biblical style mythology/history of Middle Earth.   It’s proving slow going on account of all the unfamiliar words—names of characters, races, and places.  Because of my learning disability I’ve never been able to “sound things out.”  Since I can’t do this my method of reading is based around recognizing common words and patterns of letters.  Words that I haven’t encounter before are pretty much lost on me so I have to repeatedly go back to figure out exactly what or who is being referred to. 

 

Not surprisingly I find myself being distracted by books that are, simply, easier to read. 

 

Last week I polished off A Ruby in the Smoke and A Shadow in the North, the first two (of four) Sally Lockhart Mysteries by notorious corruptor of children and enemy of the faithful Phillip Pullman (I’ll get into that in a later post).  While this series isn’t quite on the same level as Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy it was quite enjoyable.  They’re atmosphere heavy Victorian thrillers with plucky orphans, smart mouthed office boys, opium dens, illusionists, evil industrialists (Blake supposedly is a great influence of Pullman’s and I can tell when he describes the dark satanic mills of a factory  that makes weapons in A Shadow in the North) and murderers who go around cutting people’s throats.  They have well drawn characters and a bit of wry satire and social commentary thrown in as well. 

 

My holiday weekend reading was Laurie Lindeen’s memoir Petal Pusher, which recounts her days as a member of the early 1990’s all-girl indie band Zuzu’s Petals.  I was actually a fan of Zuzu’s Petals back in the day.  I still have a cassette of their first album “When No One’s Looking” kicking around somewhere and I’ll occasionally find myself quoting random snatches of their lyrics “God calls on the telephone, she has a temper…”  “Wish I may, wish I might find what I’m wishing for…” “Cinderella, you’re dreaming.  Wake up your conscience is screaming…” “Aye carrumba and I surrender and I guess it’s got something to do with my gender…”  So when I stumbled upon Petal Pusher at the Bucktown library I couldn’t believe my luck. 

 

Reading the cover blurb, I was rather shocked to learn that Lindeen has multiple sclerosis, a disease that I find especially baffling and frightening.  Also that she’s married to Westerberg from the Replacements which doesn’t mean a lot to me.  I was obsessive about indie and punk rock for many years but I only ever paid attention to the women.  As a result I’m intimately familiar with many obscure bands while there are Gods and giants I’ve never listened to.

 

Excited as I was to read Petal Pusher I ended up having pretty mixed feelings about the book.  It seemed sort of sloppily written, jumping between past, present and future through a sort of free-association that I couldn’t always follow.  Also it seemed like there were huge areas of her life Lindeen really didn’t want to go into.  Having MS was something she repeatedly states she didn’t want to think about and therefore seems to sort of side step the subject of living with her disease in favor of a lot of antidotes about life on the road and gossip about the Madison, WI and Minneapolis, MI rock scenes that seem sort of petty in comparison.  There were some good bits but overall I never got a sense that being a musician or a member of Zuzu’s Petals was something that was fulfilling to her and I honestly found myself wondering why she bothered.  I was kind of disappointed.

 

I found myself really disturbed by the section of the memoir where Lindeen describes having an abortion, particularly at the end of the scene where she writes about being picked up by her band mate who will be in the same situation in a few months.  Part of what bothers me is knowing that these are educated women in their late 20’s.  It seems like there are so many options available to them that they shouldn’t have to be having abortions.  Because as much as I support legalized abortion and the right to choice I’ve never been able to go along with the “it’s just a piece of tissue” argument.  I hate the idea of anyone having to go through something like that…  Maybe I’m just particularly sensitive about this issue right now because last week I gave a co-worker, a 20-year old girl, a ride and somehow she ended up telling me about how she’d had an abortion in June.  She works in a supermarket, lives with her parents, has taken a couple of college classes… It’s almost like Sophie’s Choice, you can have a child or you can have a future.  No one should have to make that kind of a decision.    

 

I never want to be in a position where I have to make that choice.  I’ve never been pregnant and if I can help it I’m never going to be. When I was with my ex-boyfriend I remember it was an area of contention between us that I used birth-control.  He was Catholic (though obviously selective in his morality as he was divorced and had two children by a woman he had never been married too, plus having non-marital sex with me plus being a liar) and considered it wrong that I was on the pill.  He was always telling me I was neurotic and that he’d never known any women who were as uptight about using birth control as I was.  He may have been partially right.  I have a lot of issues regarding bodily integrity and view becoming pregnant in a sort of David Cronenbergian manner.  Still, I don’t really see how it’s possible not to take something like birth control really seriously considering the consequences.  I know I can’t be a mother, I simply don’t have the resources emotionally or financially and the idea of having an abortion just seems very devastating to me. 

On Wednesday night I went to see a reading by Lydia Lunch at Quimbys (an underground book/comic book/zine shop on North Avenue).  I was a little hesitant to go because I’ve been feeling off lately and really don’t want to do much but stay home and watch movies. 

 

Lydia Lunch looms large in my personal pop culture hierarchy.  She was one of the women featured in Re/Search’s Angry Women anthology, a book that went a long way towards shaping my feminist sensibilities.  She was also one of the first American women in punk rock and her scary, sexy little girl persona would be a huge influence on Courtney Love’s archetypical  kinderwhore persona.  Despite this impressive resume, I’ve never really been a fan of Lydia Lunch’s work.  Her music never really impressed me and I found her writing ugly, extreme and disturbing without being illuminating.   Also I’m a little scared of her. 

 

Still, I decided to attend the reading.  Lunch turned out to be one of three authors reading that night, the others were Arthur Neresian and local boy Joe Meno. 

 

Neresian started off with an excerpt from his novel Swing Voter of Staten Island.  It was a sort of science fiction action adventure crossed political parody.   Something about tying Ann Coulter to the roof of his car like a deer.  It was juvenile and very violent and not nearly as funny as it should have been. 

 

Lunch was next.  I was sort of relieved by her physical presence.  She’s not very big which made her a little less frightening to me (she and illustrator Bob Fingerman did a comic book called Bloodsucker a few years ago that featured a character that looked like Lunch performing acts of sexual vampirism.  I know you shouldn’t confuse authors and their characters but I guess I sort of see Lunch as the Bloodsucker character).  She read from Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary which was written a decade ago but only recently published in the united states.  Before she started reading a stoned out young kid, maybe about 19 or 20, with a fresh, vacant face came up and sat at her feet then kissed her shoe.  Careful what you wish for, silly boy.  After all, this is the woman who sent Nick Cave scampering.

 

The excerpt Lunch read (which she assured the audience was all true) was about her experiences as a teenaged runaway in New York City in the 1970’s, basically living by stealing, turning tricks and occasionally stripping.  A potentially terrifying situation but Lunch denies fear, presenting us instead with a seventeen year old heroine who is the most dangerous creature on the streets, out of exploit everyone she encounters, a sort of a reversal of Sade’s hapless Justine.  From what Lunch read, Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary does seem to take a very Sadian worldview where everything, especially sex, is really about power, about using, about fucking someone else over. 

 

Lunch may be a predator but I’ve always considered myself prey, so I have a hard time identifying with her writing.  Maybe it’s because I am at heart hopelessly Christian and middle-class but I’m not sure if I believe in her brand of fearless amorality and not sure if I want to.  Still, her performance did a lot to enhance the material.  She brought a lot of humor and bravado to her reading and was quite engaging all things considered. 

 

Joe Meno was the final reader, following Lunch.  Quite a few people in the audience left after she finished, which I thought was sort of rude.  How hard is it to stick around for fifteen more minutes to support a local writer?  Of course I have a soft spot for Joe Meno.  I’ve haven’t gotten around to reading any of his books (Hairstyles of the Damned, How the Hula Girl Sings, Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir) but I’ve seen him read about half a dozen times at various venues around the city.  He’s an expressive reader and real cute to boot.  He looks like a nice little boy (even though he’s in his 30’s—33 to be exact, two years younger than me and all those books published.  Sigh.) then you notice the sailor tattoos.  I actually found the piece he read, from his first book Tender As Hellfire which was just put out in paperback, quite engaging.  It was narrated by a twelve-year old kid, all about a haunted barn, taxidermy eyes and an annoying girl, and was really funny and actually made me wonder what the rest of the book was like.  I’d actually seen a copy of it at the library just a few days before. 

In Dan Savage’s Savage Love column a woman calling herself “Auntie Mame” wrote in about her five year old nephew who she suspects is gay.  Apparently the little boy enjoys “putting on make-up, watching and dancing along to musicals with vampy women (like Chicago), playing dress-up.”  The boy’s father however had strictly prohibited these activities and his Aunt wondered if it was okay to let her nephew do these things he was visiting her even though his father didn’t want him doing them at all.

 

Dan Savage responded by saying that she should love her nephew unconditionally, provide him with a safe space in which to be himself and to “lie lots” if necessary.  I imagine Savage is going to take a certain amount of flack for this suggestion.  Parental authority is a touchy subject and a lot of people are going to disagree with the idea that it’s ever all right for an adult to lie to parents about their child or expressly go against their wishes and rules. 

 

Still, I have to admit when I read this it reminded me of something I was thinking about when I read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden earlier this year.  In almost every enduring childrens book—from Where the Wild Things Are to Harriet the Spy to Harry Potter- there are almost always situations where children disobey parents or authority figures, break their rules and sneak around behind their backs.  I find this interesting, almost like a system of checks and balances.  While children are told they must do as adults, especially parents say they’re also sent the message through stories that adults and parents have limitations, that sometimes they don’t know best and that staying safe and doing as your told isn’t always the right thing. 

 

The Secret Garden is almost a reversal of the Adam and Eve legend.  Mary is essentially set loose on the grounds of a great house and the only thing forbidden to her is the secret garden.  She insists and finding it, entering it, bringing others in and in the process changes the lives of all involved for the better. 

 

Somewhere in this world there are parents who don’t want to control their children, who want them to grow, but I didn’t have parents like that.  Even when I was in fourth or fifth grade I still thought I could live by their rules all the time.  I remember I’d get indigant when classmates say “Oh my God,” because that was swearing and according to the parents that was wrong. 

 

I can’t help but think that I was encouraged to look beyond my parent’s very restrictive worldview by reading books.  Trixie Belden for instance was always doing dangerous things, sneaking around and spying but she always ended up helping people and solving mysteries in the end.