Fat Poets Speak 2: Living and Loving Fatly (blurb)

Hehe...this one is fun.

Fat Poets Speak 2:  Living and Loving Fatly


The idea that fat poets -or even fat people- should be able to love anyone, or be loved by anyone, let alone fatly, would have been revolutionary about thirty years ago. In some ways, it still is. Some people do not wish to grant fat people, let alone fat poets, the right to love. Or often, to live.

Fine. They can go back to their caves.

In this volume, ten poets, including the editor, write about what it is like to live their days negotiating minefields of "Fat Country," where one has to feel one's way carefully, lest one be harassed or assaulted. They write about what it is like to want and need safe spaces that remain elusive for many fat people. They write about the exhilaration of finding ways to rebel against the fat hating world, about marching for their rights, and about accepting and even celebrating their size - all in the context that fat is a descriptor, no more, no less. It is a shape. It is not a curse. It is not a prize. It is simply what one is.

The celebration comes when one realizes one has gotten through another day and not allowed the haters to get the upper hand.

What the fat poets have to say will at times amuse you, anger you and excite you. You owe it to yourself to read and listen.

Beverly Gray Books - Historical and Descriptive Blurb

Series books started to be all the rage in the 1930's, and not only for girls (The Hardy Boys Series targeted young boys, and there were already a few British series appealing to this audience). But in the USA, girls' series exploded in popularity which continues to this day. Most popular: Nancy Drew books. However, series which appeal to both boys and girls command a much larger share of the market now (specifically Harry Potter. Other fantasy series).

But there was something peculiarly cozy about having series for girls. They emphasized emotional bonds and conflicts, not shooting and sports. Most of them centered around mysteries/mystery solving, like Nancy Drew, like the Dana Girls, like Cherry Ames, and although incidents that were violent sometimes drove the plots, they were all explained and solved in the end, with the ability of the heroine/female protagonist key.

However...there was one series that drew me like no other. I speak of the Beverly Gray books, bequeathed to me by my mom, bought for her at a stationery and book stores about three blocks away from where she lived in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx, during the 1930's, running into the first year or so of the 1940's.

Beverly Gray and her friends met in their first year of college. That drew me, to begin with - I wanted to go to college. Their college was in a suburb of Boston, and they all seemed to live in New York or in its suburbs. All common ground, since I lived in a suburb of NY (Long Island at the time) and liked the idea of going to college in the Boston area. I liked the way they talked, although people who knew more assured me that college girls never talked like that.

But what drew me even more than the setting were the situations in which they found themselves and the places they visited. They went on a world cruise on a yacht with some of their man friends.. They visited Europe and Asia and even the South Pacific. And Beverly herself met one of the most interesting villains I have ever read about - the evil, suave, Count Alexis de Franchiny. Whose brother, it turns out, was a pirate - a tall, tanned, dark haired but also verbally adept pirate. And I was at the age where such interesting villainous men were meat and drink to me. (I still appreciate them, although my taste in villains has changed slightly. Just slightly.) They were both after a map left to the yachters by a dying man in a Limehouse, London tavern. See?  So much more sophisticated than your average series for 8-12 year old girls!

I got through all my mom's books in the series, but by the time I was ready for more, I had also outgrown the Beverly Gray books and had moved onto adult novels, not to mention Lord of the Rings, which I read in Social Studies Class by hiding it in the inside of one of the 1920's desks ubiquitous in my Junior High built during the 1920's.

Girls' series books did a wonderful job of presenting worlds in which girls could lose themselves when pre-adolescent and early adolescent anguish occurred. The Beverly Gray books went one step further; they helped girls to dream of other places, other countries, other worlds, not only to lose themselves, but place and people that danced on the edge of realizable future journeys.

And some wonderful villains.

Breadgivers

Descriptive Blurb for Breadgivers, by Anzia Yezierska

Anzia Yezierska was very possibly the first woman to write about American Jewish immigrant life in authentic Yiddish/English dialect. And no, I don't mean those cutesy Yenglish words like "shmutz" and "chutzpah." Interestingly, Yezierska doesn't use these words in her novels. Instead she uses English words written in Yiddish idiomatic form. "He should rot in the gutter with a pumpkin for a head."

The result is that the reader is transplanted to the early 1900's on the Lower East Side more completely than in any other literary venue she will ever be privileged to visit.

The actual story of Breadgivers is one that echoed to some extent in the overwhelming number of apartments -"tenements"- on the Lower East Side during this time:  intelligent young woman feels trapped by her parents, and especially her father, who wishes to study Torah as he did in the Old Country but does not wish to educate his daughters. Some, however, do not move out, but obey their parents and make marriages which render them unhappy and trapped once more. Sarah, however -Anzia's alterego- moves out and experiences hardship, poverty and near-starvation. She meets someone who is not of the ghetto - Thomas Dewey's alterego (Anzia's romantic involvement)- but who treats her as a subject for his sociological study, not as an actual person. Eventually after heartbreak and determination to become a teacher even though she is laughed at and discriminated against at an Ivy League College, she does make headway, becomes a teacher and finally forgives her father.

The uniqueness of Breadgivers lies not in the story line or plot, but in the accuracy of the representation of its characters' emotions amid pitch perfect, letter perfect dialect. Rigorous realism, which was then belittled as "obsolete" after Yezierska wrote more books and some short stories as well.

Funny how Mark Twain's dialectal stories and books was never ridiculed as obsolete. Then again, he was not a woman and was not Jewish.

My great grandfather, a Torah scholar and tutor in the Old Country, made sure that his four daughters (and his three sons) were all able to read Russian, know Russian history, and know enough Hebrew to pray, although they spoke Yiddish in their home (until they came to the USA). However, he would only pay for college for the sons. This remained a sore point with the four daughters, one of whom was my grandmother. She eventually forgave him. I cannot be one hundred percent sure, but I  think the others did, as well.

Valley of the Dolls

Strictly speaking, a blurb is a summary, not a review. But there are other kinds of blogs, as well:  descriptive. Historical. Literary.

So if I were to write a blurb on, say, the novel, Valley of the Dolls, I would probably be tempted to veer into some kind of descriptive or historical territory.

First of all, Valley of the Dolls is a roman a clef - thinly veiled fiction inspired by real life. For years, the three main female characters, and the barely subordinate fourth, were generally recognized as imitating real actresses with whom Jacqueline Susann worked. Just as important, the hothouse/almost incestuous connection between publicity departments and Hollywood is portrayed in a thoroughly detailed manner.

The three female protagonists share an apartment and parts of their lives. Anne Welles, the icy New England beauty, falls for a public relations man who ends up sleeping with another previous inhabitant, Neely O'Hara (Judy Garland echo). Neely O'Hara employs manipulation of any kind to get what and whom she wants, as does Helen Lawson (Ethel Merman echo). She is fiercely bi-polar, but that is at least partly because her managers and directors keep putting her on drugs so she can lose weight. Even Jennifer North, the most photogenic of the three lovelies (Marilyn Monroe echo, with a bit of Carol Landis thrown in), is pushed to lose weight and take drugs (which may have partly been responsible for her breast cancer, which then causes her to commit suicide because she sees that men only value her for her body, not her mind or individuality).

Dolls. Pills. Dolls - the semi-obedient women who have little choice but to let others manipulate their bodies and minds if they want to get ahead in Hollywood. Dolls - beautiful images of porcelain that break easily when someone tries to bend them past resistance.

Jacqueline Susann was involved in all phases of Hollywood production and writing, as well as publicity. She does an honest, if soap-operaish, job of demonstrating its falsity and illusions and woman-hatred. In the late 1960's, few had spoken with such frankness about the hard, nasty work of being an actress or TV star, and the contempt of male directors and managers for these "dolls" they regarded as bodies to manipulate to meet the illusory images Hollywood, a male province at the time if ever there was one, demanded.

At the time, Valley of the Dolls was considered sensational and garish. But no one said it was dishonest. It stands today as a crypto-feminist critique of the way Hollywood regarded, publicized and then smashed the talent, hopes and dreams of its actresses.

Blurb for The Bible

Great books deserve to be blurbed, too!

1. The Bible
   
   A powerful and sometimes angry God. Two people alone together in the middle of a a vast wilderness. A mysterious tree. A recipe for love and danger..
   
   Adam lived with Eve before he lusted for her. Eve had words with a snake. They looked at each other naked. Things were never the same afterward.
   
   "I cried." Donner Blitzen
   
   'I laughed." Blitzen Donner
   
   "I like McIntosh." Alvie Summor
   
   "I liked the fig leaf. Sounds quite fashionable." Lorella Vodo
   
   "Great read. Can't wait for the next books to come out." Eunice Goodshoes
   
   "I want the T shirt." Willy Williams

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2. 

   
   

Half A Wish

Here is another blurb for an imaginary book. One day soon I will get back to real books.

Half A Wish is a book whose female protagonist Fara is born with three nipples. At first her parents are advised to seek out surgery for her "condition," but along the way she becomes fond of her third nipple. Some boys in high school try to rip off her top to view it, so in response, she takes an instagram photo of it -and only it- and posts it, saying that her third nipple is more intelligent than they are.

Since it is the last month of her last year of high school, she doesn't care much how they respond. But one psycho  near the state university she attends is intent on "outing" her. In response, she forms a club called "The Third Nipple," after which he tries to find her. But in solidarity, all the members of her club and all her dorm mates paste third nipples onto their skin.

He is temporarily worsted, but comes back with a new threat which Fara must surmount by herself, with all the courage she can muster.

Fun by any other name

According to wiki:   "A blurb on a book or a film can be any combination of quotes from the work, the author, the publisher, reviewers or fans, a summary of the plot, a biography of the author or simply claims about the importance of the work. Many humorous books and films parody blurbs that deliver exaggerated praise by unlikely people and insults disguised as praise."


Now it is a terrible thing, but the blurbs that are often the most fun to write are  a) Parodies b) blurbs of one's own books c) blurbs of imaginary books.

When we write the blurbs of imaginary books, we then get into the territory of Jorge Luis Borges, the surrealist writer from Argentina, one of my great favorites. 

I have written many blurbs about actual books. They are featured on my Facebook page, also entitled Blurbin' Legends. 

So for fun..let's see..


Women in the Mirror is a novel about a man, Edwin, who has twenty imaginary fiances. He is friends with a few of them, knows of the others through friends and invents the rest. At night he looks into the mirror and sees one fiance floating beside him for hours at a time. 

One night he has a nightmare in which several of them visit him and try to kill the others. He then realizes that he is going to have to end his imaginary life or somehow transition to reality.

He tells his best friend, Aaron, who happens to be gay, about his problem. Aaron suggests that he accompany him to a gay bar. As Edwin and Aaron step into the bar, Edwin feels for the first time in a long time that he is at home and starts to realize that he may be gay.

When Edwin gets back to his apartment, he starts to see men in the mirror. But these men seem to have something else in mind besides marriage.

It takes Edwin a little while longer to figure out what this might be. When he does, he goes back to the gay bar alone and meets Cicero, who takes him on a journey that shows him what his body wanted.

His mind, however, keeps floating back to the female brides. He knows  now that he will have to figure out what he wants and why he wants it and what he is and is not.


Someone should write it if I can blurb it :)