When Jennifer Lopez holds forth, as she often has, on how she won’t really feel complete until she births a few babies, or when new mother Sarah Jessica Parker proclaims, as she recently has, that her infant son is a “wonderful burden,” whatever that means, are the mothers of America getting hosed?
Susan J. Douglas, who with Meredith W. Michaels has co-authored the buzz-gathering book “The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women,” thinks so. And it pisses her off.
“If you’re like us — mothers with an attitude problem — you may be getting increasingly irritable about this chasm between the ridiculous, honey-hued ideals of perfect motherhood in the mass media and the reality of mothers’ everyday lives,” Douglas and Michaels write. “And you may also be worn down by media images that suggest that however much you do for and love your kids, it is never enough.”
Using dual tools — fantasy and fear — the media has created a standard for mothers that is wholly impossible to live up to — and spawned a generation of guilt-plagued, anxious mamas who are far worse off than their mothers before them.
“The Martha Stewartization of America, in which we are meant to sculpt the carrots we put into our kids’ lunches into the shape of peonies and build funhouses for them in the backyard” has set the women’s movement back decades, say the authors, both of whom balance careers in academia and motherhood.
Douglas and Michaels dream of a day when the mothers of the world rise up, raise their fists at their televisions and at Catherine Zeta-Jones looking fit and well-rested as she snuggles her latest nanny-nurtured bundle of joy on the cover of People magazine and yell, “Give me a %$#$% break.”
A modest dream, to be sure. In fact, some might call it a bit pat or naive. After all, it’s hard to see how talking back to your TV and shouting from the rooftops will change much. But Douglas, a feminist, insists that “naming and denouncing the enemy” is a “crucial” first step, noting the galvanizing power of Betty Friedan’s 1963 book, “The Feminine Mystique,” and the consciousness-raising movement it helped spawn.
During a recent visit to New York, Douglas sat down with Salon to discuss the corrosive effect of the media on mothers’ self-esteem and her contention that the small acts of rebellion she prescribes will lead the way to a mothers’ movement of epic proportions.
In “The Mommy Myth,” you talk a lot about a trend you call the “new momism.” What exactly is it and why is it so pernicious?
The “new momism” is an extremely romantic and demanding myth of the perfect mother in which the standards for success are so high that no woman can achieve them. People then say, “Well, what about June Cleaver? What about the ’50s, isn’t this the same?” And if it was the same, that would be bad enough. Who wants to go back to 1956? But it’s actually worse. I mean, June Cleaver was not expected to drill the Beaver with algebra flashcards when he was 6 months old. June Cleaver was not expected to drive 10 hours round trip to a soccer match. June Cleaver wasn’t expected to home-school and, by the way, look sexy the whole time doing it. So even June Cleaver couldn’t meet these standards today, which are absolutely through the roof. So it’s actually different from the ’50s: It’s more intense.
How did we get here?
First of all, the media discovered that the family was changing in the late ’70s, early ’80s, and children became a big story. But endangered children became an even bigger story, and so you got these media panics. You got sensationalized stories about children in danger: razor blades in Halloween candy, pajamas that caught on fire by themselves almost, day-care centers staffed by Satanists and pedophiles. That was all out of proportion to the risks that real children were facing, but it made mothers terrified to let their kids out of their sight. So fear was important.
The other thing was fantasy. Again, the media responded to women when we were looking for role models. Who’s a better role model, in some ways, than a celebrity mom because celebrity mothers were working outside the home, but they were having children. So we got the explosion in the ’80s of the celebrity mom profile, something you just didn’t see in ’70s women’s magazines.
What’s so bad about the celebrity mom profile?
They create this impossible ideal of motherhood. You know, I had a kid that didn’t sleep. She got up at 4:30 and was up for the day, so I’d be at the supermarket at 7:30 in the morning, exhausted — I’d already been up for hours — in my husband’s sweat pants, the only thing that fit, sweat shirt covered with spit-up, hair that hadn’t seen a comb in two days, a kid screaming. I’m at the checkout line and there’s some celebrity mom saying, “Motherhood is sexy.” There she is, her perfect hair, her perfect makeup, no spit-up — her kid’s even made up, you know? The inside of her house is decorated in white furniture. She’s got a perfect, doting husband. And you’re there, like, “What is wrong with this picture?”
But it laid out a fantasy that a lot of us wanted to enter. A fantasy of a world where you could work and enjoy your children and it would be easy and stress free. Who doesn’t want to go there? This fantasy of course helps sell magazines. But the norms and the standards for motherhood that are in these celebrity mom profiles are also completely impossible. Occasionally you get the reference to the SWAT team of nannies and personal assistants who are making this woman’s life possible. But for mothers who don’t have the SWAT team, it’s a different story.
What about the role of race in all this? While the book primarily focuses on white middle- and upper-middle-class mothers, you mention that the “new momism” is something of an exclusive white club and that women of color have been portrayed as the anti-new-mom.
At the same time that the celebrity mom was going through the roof in the media, so was the welfare mother. There were awful attacks on welfare mothers from the right. Welfare mothers were supposedly responsible for everything wrong in America: [drugs, crime, loss of productivity.] And of course most of the welfare mothers that we saw in the media were African-American women. The stories were sensational, they were newsworthy, so they got focused on. And everybody thought, Oh my god, welfare is comprised entirely of African-American women who come from three generations of welfare families and who refuse to work and are neglectful of their children. The number of welfare mothers who came from several generations of welfare mothers, in real life? That’s a tiny fraction of welfare mothers.
It’s such an awful stereotype. I think one of the worst things that emerged from the ’80s was the stereotype of the African-American mother as a bad mother. Because of course we didn’t see middle-class African-American women, of which there are some, by the way, who love their children and are fabulous mothers. Look, we’re all in this together. If there are poor women whose children aren’t getting enough to eat, they’re going to crappy schools, they’re learning a way of violence very young, that’s not just a heartbreak for them, it’s bad for us as a society, and it’s morally wrong.
To highlight the contrast, you give a great example in the book of how Christie Brinkley is never described as having “three children by three different men,” but if she were a black woman on welfare, she would be.
Right.
Can we really blame the media for our sense of maternal inadequacy and anxiety?
We can blame the media and marketing. Mothers and kids really got discovered in the ’80s and ’90s, when niche marketing took over. Kids started getting divided into ever and ever smaller niches and there’s a load of products that you’re supposed to buy for each developmental stage. And if you don’t by them, your kid’s left in the dust. If you fail to buy a Leap Pad or Einstein Junior or the correct teething ring, 20 years from now, your kid will be working at the Dunkin’ Donuts and the other kids will be CEOs.
Politics have also played a big role. In the ’80s and beyond, the far right really slammed working mothers and single mothers, really sought to guilt-trip them under the frame of “family values,” which by the way had nothing to do with supporting everyday families. And of course they were central to blocking anything resembling federal support for decent day care; paid maternity leave, which sounds scandalous in this country, but you know every other civilized country has paid maternity leave, some for up to a year; decent public schools; after-school programs; healthcare for everybody, including for little kids so parents don’t have to worry about that. So mothers, rightly, looked around and they saw institutions collapsing all around them. And of course, what’s a mother going to say? “I’ve got to pick up the slack.” Mothers have been revered in rhetoric, but reviled in public policy.
You mention the vilification of the working mother by the far right. Do you see politicians on the left addressing the plight of these mothers at all?
I don’t hear any of the Democratic candidates [for president] talking about women’s issues. We had the so-called soccer mom in ’96, whose vote people wanted to get. But they are not talking to us — and they should be. I really think mothers are realizing that politically we have not been seen as citizens. We’ve only been seen as consumers, not as a constituency. And that’s got to change.
Have you ever been to Denmark?
No.
Oh, god. It’d break your heart. They have made a choice as a culture that’s very different than the choices we’ve made as a society. Their choice has been work is work and family is family — and family matters. So everybody leaves work between 4 and 5 o’clock. Everybody. Dads, moms. They go home and spend time with their families. You have a child, a baby nurse comes to your house once a week for, like, six weeks. So if you’re not sure what you’re doing, she helps you. Is their tax rate about 50 percent? Yeah. Would Americans put up with that? Probably not. But we can do a lot better than we’re doing now. And once you see a culture in which there’s really a commitment to family that makes it possible for fathers and mothers to work, it’s a revelation.
It sounds great.
Well, you know, Japan, France, Norway, Sweden, they all have day-care centers for little kids, and they regard it not as a special interest for working mothers: They regard it as an investment in the future of the country because it’s an investment in kids. If a kid goes into day care or nursery school when he or she is 2 or 3, by the time they get to kindergarten, they know their colors, they often know the alphabet, they’ve learned how to share with other kids, they’ve painted — all these cool things that are so enriching developmentally. Why don’t we think that that’s important? We should.
How did mothers get so disenfranchised?
I think they’ve been too busy dealing with their lives to notice or to take action. But there’s an incipient mothers movement going on in this country. You can feel it. You can hear it. Women are joining organizations like the Motherhood Project, the Motherhood Movement and MOTHERS (Mothers Ought to Have Equal Rights). There are Web sites going up: the Welfare Warriors, the Children’s Defense Fund, Ann Crittenden’s Web site. Mothers are saying, “I’ve had it.” And this is true of stay-at-home mothers as well as working mothers.
In the book you talk about the “Mommy Wars” the media has created between “stay-at-home moms,” which you point out is a friendly term, and “working mothers,” more formal and distant.
Right. I think it’s a big red herring. Of course there are tensions and differences between stay-at-home mothers and working mothers. But the media has suggested that they have become mutually exclusive categories. You know, stay-at-home mothers have often been working mothers in the past. Working mothers have sometimes been stay-at-home mothers. We move back and forth between these categories. And in my limited experience, stay-at-home mothers and working mothers bail each other out all the time. We carpool together, we watch each other’s kids. There’s been a real divide and conquer in the media. We’re supposed to be involved in this big catfight instead of saying, “What happened here?”
Are we mothers at all culpable here? Is it really Sarah Jessica Parker’s and Catherine Zeta-Jones’ fault that we’re feeling so stressed out?
Look, images in the media don’t come from Mars. It’s not like somebody manufactures them out of some alien material. They come from what’s in our culture. And people who work in the media are not all evil. Mass media is filled with all kinds of people, many of whom mean well — a lot of women work in the media too.
But there have been a series of very heavy-duty commercial pressures on television shows, on magazines, that have to do with selling products, that have to do with making women feel inadequate. After all, if you don’t feel inadequate, why are you going to buy the next product. It’s very important for selling things.
And if you talk to women who work in magazines, for example, or women who produce TV shows, they’ll tell you how they feel besieged by this stuff, too, but they have to put out certain kinds of stories, certain kinds of idealized images. Then these scare stories come out and they gain traction. And so what happens to the regular mother is that she sees in the media a construction of what seems like the norm. “Oh, if it’s in the media, everybody must believe it. If Kathy Lee Gifford can have this very high-powered job and still read the Bible to Cody and look beautiful all the time, then those are expectations that I guess everybody has of me.”
Should we really be basing our self-images on TV talk-show hosts and sitcom characters?
Well, it’s not what we should do, but it’s what does happen. The mass media is a kind of giant Home Depot of identities that colonizes our most basic hopes and dreams and fears about who we are as people, and as mothers.
But I think that we need to look to each other more to validate who we are. We need to use our common sense and just say, “This feels right to me. End of story. No, I’m not baking you 40 blueberry muffins at 10 o’clock at night so you can bring them in for snacks tomorrow. We’ll go to the store tomorrow to buy something.”
Are we presented with any realistic examples of motherhood in the media?
When “Roseanne” came on, the mothers of America said, “Thank you!” That show flew to the top of the ratings because it took the schmaltz out of motherhood. And I think “The Osbournes” took the schmaltz out of family values. And “Married With Children” was another one. A lot of people hated that show, but it was a huge hit. Why? Peg Bundy was the absolute anti-mom. She wouldn’t do anything. It was funny, because it was a relief.
The book is funny, but it’s also angry. Are you angry? Should we be?
Yeah, we should be angry. We’re not supposed to be angry. We’re supposed to be all sweetness and light and understanding. Well, where did that come from? You know, if mothers had never gotten angry in this country, there would never have been social change, including, I might note, widows’ benefits in the 1930s. We wouldn’t have child labor laws if mothers hadn’t gotten mad. Birth control would be illegal if mothers hadn’t gotten mad. So yeah, it’s time for mothers to get mad. I don’t know why mothers are not all opening their windows and saying, “I’m not gonna take it anymore.”
We have been completely let down by our government, and many of us have been really let down by our places of employment. There are still so many companies with no day care, no flextime, incredibly punishing hours. It’s so hard to work 60 hours a week and be a mother. I mean, it’s hard enough to work 40 hours a week and have a child. So I think mothers have every, every right to be angry. There are plenty of other interest groups much smaller than mothers who, because they got angry, got what they wanted.
So what’s the solution?
The most important first step is to rip the veneer off the Mommy Myth. It’s important for mothers to get together and talk back to and make fun of these ridiculous ideals in the media, and the book tries to lay out some examples of how to do this.
What happened with the women’s movement in the 1970s is that, once women began to see through the “Feminine Mystique,” which was a crucial first step, they then got political. They did start agitating for child-care centers and equal pay and we made a lot of progress as a result of that.
I think it’s time for mothers to get more political, and that is not as time-consuming as you might think. If every mother who has access to a computer spent five minutes, sat down and wrote an e-mail to her presidential candidate of choice, her congressional and senatorial candidates of choice, and said, “Excuse me, what are you going to start doing for mothers and children?” And if millions of mothers did that and kept doing that, I think the political agenda might change. Mothers’ voices have to be heard. But what the women’s movement taught us is that first you have to see things differently. First you have to see what’s keeping you down, and once you do that, then you can move ahead politically. I think that’s already starting to happen for mothers. Why shouldn’t we have the same things that European women have? We deserve it!
Kelle Hampton, the author of the eye-opening new memoir “Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected,” left for the hospital to give birth to her second child with “everything just — perfect,” packing not only the birth music, the blankets she’d made herself, the baby’s coming-home outfit, a special nightgown and a crown for the baby’s big sister, but also hand-designed, beribboned favors to pass out to visitors. Yet the moment her newborn daughter, Nella, was placed in her arms, Hampton’s concept of perfection altered in an instant: Though ultrasounds had signaled nothing unusual, Nella was born with Down syndrome.
Hampton writes with bracing, brave honesty about her initial response to Nella’s condition — “I think I cried for seven hours straight. It was gut-wrenching pain” — and her struggle to find hope, joy and an expanse of possibilities in what first seemed to bring only sadness. As on her blog, Enjoying the Small Things, the journey Hampton records in “Bloom” becomes a call — and not only to parents — to rethink our concepts of perfection, discover our capacities for resilience, appreciate the family and friends on whom we depend and, yes, find beauty where we may not have noticed it.
We asked Hampton, via email, about “Bloom” and the experiences and impulses that inspired it. It may be typical of the author that she immediately turned the task of tackling our questions into an event worthy of celebration, writing, “I’ll put some good music on tonight, light a candle, grab a beer, and completely enjoy the process.”
The Barnes & Noble Review: One remarkable aspect of your writing is your knack for tapping into emotions, both your own and your readers’. Has motherhood — and particularly Nella’s birth — made you more connected to your emotions?
Kelle Hampton: I feel emotions very intensely. Expressing them is another story. I think we’re all conditioned to mask certain emotions because we think they won’t be accepted or they’re “too much.” Motherhood definitely compelled me to express emotions more freely. The depth of love, the fear of losing, the need to protect, the unearthly joy — it was too much for me to contain. That’s why I started writing more. And writing something I was thinking seemed more acceptable than saying it out loud. Then with Nella’s birth, there were these contrasting emotions that were so difficult to deal with — grief, fear, sadness, shame. But once I expressed them through writing and realized other women related to them, it gave me the freedom to express myself in a way I had never done before.
BNR: ”Bloom,” like your blog, uses photos and text to tell your story. Why did you choose to combine both elements?
KH: The book is a testament to my journey that first year, and writing and photography played equal parts in my healing and perspective shift. Because the book deals with Down syndrome, a condition that has many negative stereotypes, the photos are a powerful way to showcase the beauty of these children and the beauty Nella brought to our family.
BNR: Early in “Bloom” you mention a book you read shortly before Nella’s birth, Donald Miller’s “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,” which spoke to you of “the power of challenges — how living a life of comfort does nothing to make us grow, and how hard times shape us.” But you also say you couldn’t fully grasp Miller’s message until you went through your own challenges. Can we learn life lessons from books or only from our own experiences?
KH: I’ve thought about this question a lot, especially from a parent’s perspective, because we make efforts to keep our children from pain and to give them happiness. No one wishes heartache for their child, and yet I know a lot of my happiness and contentment today comes from challenging experiences and sadness in my past. I think we can learn a lot from others’ experiences, and books give us an opportunity to do that. But life without any pain is unrealistic, and the great thing about reading books and learning from others is that when we do go through hard things, we’re more equipped to handle them and don’t feel quite so alone.
BNR: I initially assumed that, before Nella’s birth, you’d led a life without much difficulty. But then you discussed challenges you faced during childhood, in particular the breakup of your parents’ marriage when your father, a preacher, came out as gay. Did those childhood challenges help prepare you for those you’ve faced as a mother?
KH: My siblings and I talk about this a lot — the fact that we are so grateful for our past, even though it has a lot of pain, because it made us tough and definitely more compassionate. Once I started writing those chapters from my past, it really hit me how much those painful memories created a foundation for later challenges in my life. Does that mean someone who had a dreamy, heartache-free childhood is at a disadvantage for handling hard times as an adult? Not necessarily.
It’s important to me, as a mother, not to shield my children from life’s more disheartening realities but to bring awareness to them in a way that gives my children both a sense of gratitude for what they have and the motivation to bring positive change to their world. I want my girls to know that life isn’t going to be without pain, but I also want to equip them with love and confidence and a perspective that allows them to face these challenges when they come.
BNR: You learned fairly early in life to embrace difference. But still you struggled at first to embrace the ways Nella was different from the daughter you had envisioned. How has your sense of “perfection” changed since you had Nella?
KH: I’ve definitely shifted my views of perfection away from image and more to inner happiness, and that shift has taken away so much pressure and allowed me the freedom to really be myself. That, in itself, is happiness.
BNR: After Nella’s birth, your close circle of girlfriends — your “Net,” as you call them — stayed with you, giving you incredible support. What do you think is the secret to having such close female friends?
KH: I think women’s friendships get a bad rap in the media. They’re portrayed as catty, jealous and unsupportive. That saddens me because I know how amazing it is to be part of a group of women where you find love and support. I think women have high expectations for each other, and sometimes we are inclined to run or drop a friendship at the first sign of drama. I embrace my friendships with the understanding that because we are all women with fiery personalities, big dreams, and a hell of a lot of passion, some drama is inevitable.
You have to approach it with compassion and forgive mistakes, because we all make them. Of course, yes, you also need to make choices to surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you, who challenge you, who bring good energy. Those who don’t aren’t worth exhausting efforts.
Secondly, if you want close relationships with friends, you have to be vulnerable. I know how much it means to me when a friend admires me enough to call, crying, asking for help or trusting me with an intimate conversation. Likewise, I want to do the same and reach out to my friends, revealing my own vulnerabilities. My friends are great for shopping, laughing, or going out for drinks, but the best, most beautiful moments I’ve experienced with them are far more serious. And when you experience heartache with a friend at your side, it is bonding in a way that can’t be forgotten.
BNR: Do you think women can support each other in ways that men (even husbands) cannot in tough times, and particularly those involving parenting?
KH: As much I support equal rights for men and women, there are certain gifts women possess that men don’t naturally have and vice versa. Even though Nella is [Hampton's husband] Brett’s child and he, of course, was the only one who could sympathize with that personal parental loss of receiving her diagnosis, there was something so comforting that came from my friends — women who understood, in a way Brett couldn’t, the emotional aspect of the end of a pregnancy, a mother’s expectations, the ideal birth experience.
BNR: You write that you knew immediately, before anyone told you, that Nella had Down syndrome and worry that you didn’t show her enough love at that moment. We all sometimes feel a disconnect between the mother we want to be and the mother we fear we are in a particular moment. Should we even have a concept of what makes the “perfect” mother? Does that give us something to strive for, or give us only impossible standards we’ll never measure up to?
KH: I think we all have this imaginary version of the perfect mother we want to be. There is a quote I love about the fact that there is no way to be a perfect mother, but there are a million ways to be a good one. I try to focus on that, to know that when I try my best, acknowledge mistakes, follow my instincts, and remind myself of what’s most important, that is perfect parenting.
BNR: I wonder, too, about the dangers of our expectations for our kids. If we have a preconceived notion of who they should be, we may fail to appreciate them as they are. That’s a lesson you say you’ve learned. Is it something you feel is important for all mothers to learn?
KH: Yes! I’m learning it with Lainey [Hampton's elder daughter] just as much as with Nella. I’ve been challenging myself not to push Lainey to be a leader all the time. I have a preconceived notion that kids need to be leaders, not followers, and my husband recently reminded me that we do not need to tell our children to be leaders; we need to tell them to be themselves. It makes us all happier — to sit back, to lead by example, to accept what we are given, and to love our children no matter what path they choose to take in life.
BNR: Motherhood can be a touchy topic. Some of the emotions and responses you talk about in the book are bound to incite strong responses — mostly positive, but perhaps also negative. Were you afraid, writing about such personal topics, that you might be misunderstood and attacked?
KH: When I first published Nella’s birth story [on her blog], I discovered right away that being honest about touchy things is not always well received. It was good for me to read responses, even those “Oh my God, what kind of mother would say they want to run away!?” remarks. It initiated a personal process for me of challenging myself to write what’s true — in a respectful way, of course — and not to change my writing to cater to other people.
BNR: Did you ever find yourself pulling back? Or did you just write through those concerns?
KH: There were parts that I went to write and stopped to ponder the effects first. And, most always, I proceeded, hoping that people will understand this is my journey. Memoirs are personal, and not everyone is going to shake their head “yes” to every line, and that’s OK. The other side is that it has been incredibly fulfilling to read e-mails from women who have said, “Thank you for saying that. I felt it too, but didn’t want to say it, and you make me feel normal for admitting it.”
BNR: Do you worry about how your kids will respond to what you write when they’re old enough to read and understand it?
KH: What I wouldn’t do to have my own mother’s thoughts and photos and words and things that inspired her preserved from when we were little. I hope my children, through reading everything I’ve written — the good, the bad, the beautiful — will always read between the lines and be inspired by the constant truth of “Wow, she loved us. She celebrated life.”
BNR: One of the things you consider is how much you let your sense of how society perceives you shape how you feel about yourself. Was writing this book a way of shaping your own identity — and taking charge of your own narrative?
KH: I can’t begin to explain what writing this book has personally done for me. I owned every word I wrote, and as I typed it, I believed it even more. Empowerment — that’s what it is. I realize how much stronger I am, how much more effective I am in living purposefully, when I take control of how I feel about myself, my family and raising my kids, write it down, and put it out there for the world to see.
BNR: It sounds like writing is deeply therapeutic for you.
KH: There’s something mysterious and enlightening about the space I give myself when I write. It’s when I take all those loose philosophical/emotional thoughts I’ve had throughout the week and weave them together. I learn a lot about myself. I face my pain and struggles head-on, and I overcome them through the process of expressing myself. And, for me, when I write I’m going to do something? It’s even more powerful than saying it. When I write, “I’m going to rock this out,” it’s almost as if I hear the band in the background with each letter I type. I feel motivated, eager, excited. I’m inspired in a way I can’t explain. Writing is powerful — and it doesn’t cost near as much as therapy does.
BNR: Is it the same with photography?
KH: After taking pictures for a while, you begin to look at life a little differently, continually scanning landscapes, people, situations for that “framable” shot. In those first days, taking photos of Nella brought light to her beauty and made me recognize how perfect she was — the new, wrinkled skin on her fingers, those sparse rows of tiny eyelashes, her soft cowlick of silky hair. And it went beyond Nella as well. When I thought my world was this depressing reality, I’d pick up my camera and see the opposite — oh look, a sunset. Vivid blue skies. My child holding an ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles. A dimpled smile. My husband rocking his new girl to sleep. I never stopped taking pictures of these things, and it sinks in after a while: Look for the good, and you will find it.
BNR: What are you most hoping readers will take away from “Bloom”?
KH: Life is full of challenges. But life is also as beautiful as you create it to be.
If Charles Homar, the narrator and antihero of William Giraldi’s debut novel, “Busy Monsters,” somehow showed up on your doorstep — on his way, perhaps, to murder a romantic rival, to capture the mythical beast Bigfoot, or to reclaim the giant squid-obsessed object of his affection, Gillian — you might want to shut the door politely yet firmly. Not only is Charlie seriously solipsistic, thoroughly trouble prone, given to talking as if he’s devoured a thesaurus, and occasionally weapon toting; you’d also assuredly find your foibles and failings flamboyantly recounted for the 600,000 readers of New Nation Weekly, where Homar’s memoirs regularly appear.
But as unpalatable as the fictional Homar would be as a real live person, he’s an absolutely delicious character, making a series of hilariously nearsighted (and outright bad) decisions to propel himself through this far-fetched (and downright funny) narrative.
Each wacky, action-packed chapter of “Busy Monsters” is an installment in the serialized memoirs Charles publishes in his weekly magazine column; he periodically pauses in the midst of his adventures to hammer out another segment on deadline “for my slave-driving editor.” Amusingly, the people Charles meets in each chapter have all read his preceding serialized installments — and have opinions on Charles’ story and style that may echo the reader’s own thoughts and responses. “I have a nagging suspicion that only about forty percent of what you write is true,” one character tells Charles upon meeting him. “I also think your people all speak alike.”
It’s a clever device, and less gimmicky than you might think, in part because Giraldi, who teaches writing at Boston University and is a fiction editor at the literary magazine AGNI, seems completely in control. The voice he has given Charles is singular and arresting; it’s flowery but a bit thorny, too — occasionally overwhelming like a heavy perfume — and filled with quirky turns of phrase, unexpected literary and cultural allusions, self-aware asides, and highfalutin word choices that would make Roget swell with pride.
The plot, too, is an exciting yet masterfully managed hodgepodge. “Stunned by love and some would say stupid from too much sex, I decided I had to drive down South to kill a man,” the book begins. A different author might try to stretch the suspense stirred by that opening setup into an entire novel; Giraldi settles that plot point in the first chapter and then takes us all sorts of other surprising places.
One moment Charlie is drunk with love and breaking into a Virginia state trooper’s home with blood on his mind and “a killer’s knife tucked into my boot,” the next he’s mad with heartbreak, firing a borrowed rifle at the hull of a squid hunter’s ship. The latter escapade lands him in a pleasant Maine jail, where he enjoys gourmet prison food and shares a cell with a computer geek interested in the Loch Ness monster. And then he’s off to Washington state on a misguided mission to impress his far-flung former fiancée by bagging Bigfoot, accompanying a man whose business card reads “ROMP: I BRING IT BACK DEAD.”
Let us pause here for a description of Romp, courtesy of Charles’ friend Groot: “Hunter. Scholar. Priest. Negro. Prophet. Man of jazz and all items sacrosanct. Shaves with obsidian. Has razzle and the necessary dazzle to mix it with. Also copulated with Florence Ballard [of the singing group the Supremes] in 1974.”
Giraldi’s characters are all similarly kooky and compelling. We meet people like Sandy McDougal, Charles’s wall-eyed ex-girlfriend, who has traded academia for alien abduction and taken up with a pint-size Filipino flim-flam man; Morris Hammerstein, an enlightened Jewish astronomer and family man who ends up boxing an angry lesbian (stereotypes are self-consciously abundant in Charles’ narratives) in his backyard; and Richie Lombardo, a famous body builder with a couple of Ivy League-educated Asian call girls named Mimi from Madam Chung’s House of Superior Entertainment going at it near the basement barbells in his luxe New Jersey manse.
After all his randy and reckless romps hither and thither, by the time Charles finally, in the story’s finale, makes a decent decision — “People? This is how I develop here, people: by taking charge of this situation in a sensible fashion, by choosing order over chaos, by pushing instead of being pulled. I am asserting my will,” he tells a passel of characters urging a more dramatic and dangerous choice — readers may be ready to see him go. The same cannot be said of this entertaining debut’s author. Having invited him in, we’ll want to see Giraldi stick around awhile.
Last week, we hoped to spark conversation — and further suggestions — with a list of five amazing books to hand daughters this summer. We’re not leaving the boys behind. Here is our list of five great books for boys of all ages (books that will also, of course, appeal to girls, too). If your (or your kid’s) favorite book has been left off this list — John D. Fitzgerald’s “The Great Brain”? Norton Juster’s “The Phantom Tollbooth”? The Lemony Snicket books? Or, for the sports-minded child, Dan Gutman’s Baseball Card Adventure Series, or Kadir Nelson’s remarkable “We Are the Ship”? — blog about it on Open Salon: Just make sure to tag your post “Building a bookworm,” and we’ll cross-post the best ones onto Salon itself.
And now for our list:
“Frog and Toad Are Friends” by Arnold Lobel (Ages 4-8)
The thing about Lobel’s Frog and Toad — see also the equally wonderful “Days With Frog and Toad,” “Frog and Toad All Year” and “Frog and Toad Together” — is that, despite the whole amphibian thing, they’re so damn human. Toad is crabby, self-doubting and, let’s face it, somewhat prone to depression. Frog has a sunny, can-do disposition. And they may be an odd couple, of the Oscar and Felix variety, but they are also kind, supportive, considerate, loving friends. And though these stories are, of course, beloved by children of both sexes, the way these two very different fellows take care of each other — and delight in each other’s company — seems like a particularly valuable example for young boys.
“Diary of a Wimpy Kid” by Jeff Kinney (Ages 9-12)
Kinney’s “Wimpy Kid” series may not be writing at its finest, but it has struck a major chord with boys, capturing the attention of even the most reluctant readers. Described as “a novel in cartoons” — with lots of drawn illustrations, a lined-paper format and a font that looks like handwriting — it has an undeniable charm, evoking the misery that is middle school in spare, deft strokes. Its beleaguered narrator, Greg Heffley, isn’t the most sympathetic character, selling out his best friend Rowley when the occasion suits him, but he has a keen eye for demoralizing details. Like the cheese that lies rotting and repulsive on his school blacktop, spawning the terrors of “Cheese Touch.” “It’s basically like the Cooties,” Greg explains. “If you get the Cheese Touch, you’re stuck with it until you pass it on to someone else. The only way to protect yourself from the Cheese Touch is to cross your fingers.” If that doesn’t take you right back to middle school, well, you’re luckier than some of us.
“Danny the Champion of the World” by Roald Dahl (Ages 9-12)
If there is a more moving depiction of the relationship between a son and his father in all of literature than the one in this rollicking adventure tale, we’d sure like to know about it. “It is impossible to tell you how much I loved my father,” Dahl’s narrator, Danny, tells us. “When he was sitting close to me on my bunk I would reach out and slide my hand into his, and then he would fold his long fingers around my fist, holding it tight.” But Danny’s love for his dad — a filling station owner and widower who is raising his only child in a gypsy caravan — is apparent in every line, every moment of this story. Danny’s dad, he tells us, is an “eye-smiler,” whose eyes flash and twinkle when he is amused, but who never much moves his mouth. “I was glad my father was an eye-smiler,” Danny writes, “because it is impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren’t feeling twinkly yourself.” This gentle, funny, genuinely wonderful book will leave boys (and their parents) eye-smiling and deliciously amused.
“The Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan (Ages 9-12)
Start your son on this first book in Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and watch him read away his summer. When we first meet Percy, he just seems like a troubled kid on the verge of getting kicked out of yet another school. In fact, he’s gone through six schools in six years: Bad things just seem to keep happening to him. It isn’t long before Percy (short for Perseus), and we, learn that those strange things he thinks he’s been hallucinating are actually real. Mythological monsters and gods — satyrs, minotaurs, centaurs — really are populating his life and he himself is a half-blood: His father, whom he never knew and had been told had been “lost at sea,” is, in fact, Poseidon. This popular series is a great read for any myth-minded kid who cut his teeth on “D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths.” Come to think of it, it’s a great read for any kid. Come to think of it again, it’s just a great read.
“The Giver” by Lois Lowry (Young Adult)
This book about a futuristic world that initially seems utopian (no crime, no poverty, no illness, abundantly good manners), but, as it turns out, is less than ideal (no color, no music, no sunshine), is creepy yet altogether compelling. As it begins, 11-year-old Jonas is apprehensively anticipating his Ceremony of Twelve, when he will receive his adult Assignment from the Committee of Elders. Will he be a Nurturer or a judge, like the parents who are raising him? Will be a Caretaker of the Old, like his friend Fiona? But Jonas does not receive a conventional assignment: He is selected to become the community’s next Receiver of Memory, tasked absorbing the collective recollection of pain and pleasure, which the community has long since eschewed in pursuit of comfort, stability and Sameness. Jonas meets daily with the previous Receiver, now the Giver, and learns to appreciate a world with choice and compassion — and love.
Memorial Day is just around the corner, and school is nearly out. Even if you’ve planned a full summer of activities for your kids — camps, trips, days at the beach — there may come a moment when they look at you, bored and beseeching, wondering how to fill those long, hot days. What then?
Hand them a book. A really good book. To help you out, we’ve put together two lists of great books for kids, one tailored especially for girls, one curated with boys in mind, though of course all the books on these lists may be enjoyed by kids of either gender. This week we’ll start off with especially engaging reads for girls of all ages (the boys list will appear next Thursday):
“Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse” by Kevin Henkes (Ages 4-8)
Plenty of people have other favorites by Henkes — “Chrysanthemum,” “Owen,” “Sheila Rae, the Brave,” “Chester’s Way.” But “Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse” stands out for its emotional nuance. Lilly, a young mouse who wears fabulous red cowboy boots, adores her teacher, Mr. Slinger. One day, Lilly brings her new purse to school, and is seriously excited to show it to the class. Asked to wait, she can’t quite manage to restrain herself, repeatedly interrupting the class to show off her new treasure. When Mr. Slinger takes the purse away until the end of the school day, Lilly, infuriated, gets revenge by drawing a mean picture of him and slipping it into his bag. Then, on the way home, she finds that Mr. Slinger has written her a sweet note, “Today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better.” Lilly is filled with sickening regret. But she apologizes and is forgiven and, best of all, manages to forgive herself. Mr. Slinger’s words, and Lilly’s acceptance of herself — on good days and bad — are lessons that any fabulous little girl (or grown woman) who occasionally struggles to control her impulses can take to heart.
“Eloise” by Kay Thompson, Drawings by Hilary Knight (Ages 7 and up)
There’s a reason this book about a 6-year-old girl making all manner of mischief in New York’s Plaza Hotel, originally published in 1955, is beloved by girls and women everywhere. Actually, there are myriad reasons, Knight’s breathtakingly elegant, deliciously expressive illustrations significantly among them. But mostly, it’s Eloise herself — that never-bored, perpetually inventive little girl, who orders everything from room service with a definitive “and charge it please, Thank you very much,” torments her tutor, adores her nanny, misses her absent mom (though she’d never say so), braids her pet turtle Skipperdee’s ears first thing each morning (“Otherwise he gets cross and develops a rash”), and generally spends her days, well, pretty much as she pleases. She’s a far cry from the overscheduled, helicopter-parented children of today.
“Ramona the Pest” by Beverly Cleary (Ages 7-12)
There are those who would make a strong case that Barbara Park’s more recent Junie B. Jones series is the better girl-starring series for this age group. Then there are those who remember devouring Cleary’s books by the pile when they themselves were around 7. Those people will point to the books’ enduring popularity, and the fact that the adventures (er … misadventures) of the irrepressible Romana can still deeply absorb girls — and yes, boys, too — just transitioning to chapter books, and make them laugh and laugh. If Ramona is a pest, she’s a pest many children can truly relate to.
“Little Women,” by Louisa May Alcott (Ages 9-12)
Ah, the March sisters — coltish tomboy Jo; frail, sweet Beth; beautiful, practical Meg; pampered, artistic Amy — living in genteel poverty with their mother, Marmee, in their New England home and struggling to make the best of things while their father is away, fighting in the Civil War. As wonderfully warm and endearingly romantic as you may remember them to be, the stories that make up the novel are surprisingly insightful, fresh and modern. It’s a book worth returning to, if you haven’t picked it up since childhood, and a lovely book for girls in the midst of their own.
“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” by Judy Blume (Ages 9-12)
For many girls and young women, this book pretty much wraps up their preteen years: the angst over their changing bodies (or bodies that aren’t changing fast enough), the confusion over fitting in socially and staking a claim to their own beliefs, the deep desire to know right now what life will bring them at its own pace. Blume’s protagonist, 11-year-old Margaret, whose family moves to the New Jersey suburbs from New York City when she’s on the brink of sixth grade — that universally difficult year — contends with all of this, chatting with God in her bed at night though she has been raised in a non-religious home. Grown-ups who read this book years or even decades ago (it was initially released in 1970) can probably conjure images of first bras and first periods. And while they may recall how personal and real the book felt, they may have forgotten how funny it is, too.
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Is your favorite book sorely lacking from this list? Let’s face it, any list of five great books for girls is, by definition, woefully inadequate. Where, you might ask, looking over this handful of literary selections, is Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “The Secret Garden”? Or Roald Dahl’s “Matilda”? Or L.M. Mongtomery’s “Anne of Green Gables”? Or Astrid Lindren’s “Pippi Longstocking”? Or Madeline L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time”? Or Alice, or Madeline, or Coraline? Or, frankly, a host of other long-loved favorites?
If your most treasured read hasn’t been included here, don’t shake your fist in the air and curse the gods at the injustice of it all: Blog about your own summer reading suggestions for kids on Open Salon (make sure to explain what makes them so great). Don’t forget to tag your post “Building a bookworm.” We’ll be cross-posting your submissions on Salon in the coming weeks.
