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R E C E N T L Y

School girl
By Thylias Moss
I thought all girls -- regardless of color -- were heading toward vast opportunities. Then I learned the truth. An excerpt from "Tales of a Sky-blue Dress"
(10/12/98)

The gracefully aging boys of summer
By Joan Walsh
Is it merely a coincidence that the playing years of the major leaguer correspond to the period of peak fecundity of the American woman?
(10/08/98)

To spank or not to spank
By Albert Mobilio
A husband from the working class squares off with his gently bred wife
(10/07/98)

Spanking: A black mother's view
By Karen Grigsby Bates
The survival legacy of slavery taught blacks to spank more than whites -- and that's why you don't see as many black kids having public tantrums
(10/07/98)

Princess Monica
By Lori Leibovich
Why the Starr Report and the Tripp tapes make Jewish women cringe
(10/06/98)

BROWSE THE FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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----- ^{- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -} S^{--t--r--a--n--g--e--} brew- - - - - - - - - -
-------Love and art are the twin redeemers for the hipster heroes
------------and heroines of Francesca Lia Block's young adult novels.

BY POLLY SHULMAN | Francesca Lia Block writes young adult novels so far out of the mainstream that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Association of Suburban PTAs had banned them from information centers across America. Her youthful heroines and heroes rarely spend much time in school, and they're too busy singing in rock bands, surfing, having babies out of wedlock, communing with ghosts, taking photographs, driving around Los Angeles in vintage convertibles and living happily ever after to bother with homework.

In "Weetzie Bat," the first in a series of five novels about an extended L.A. family, the eponymous Weetzie rubs a magic lantern and asks the obliging genie who emerges to provide her and her best friend (a boy named Dirk) with true lovers and a living space. Dirk gets a cute surfer dude named Duck, Weetzie gets a filmmaker named My Secret Agent Lover Man, Dirk's grandmother leaves them her house and all is bliss until Weetzie decides she needs a baby and My Secret Agent Lover Man refuses to oblige. Without telling him, Weetzie sleeps with Dirk and Duck one evening -- her lover, she reasons, is sure to love the baby when it appears, and the child will have the advantage of three fathers. To Weetzie's surprise, My Secret Agent etc. storms out when she tells him she's pregnant. Eventually he returns, agreeing to accept the baby, Cherokee, as family. Soon after, another infant girl appears on the doorstep -- she's the result of a brief affair My Secret had with a lanky Wiccan while he was gone. Weetzie takes her in and names her Witch Baby. And despite some setbacks (such as when Weetzie's father dies of an overdose), they all get on with the business of living happily ever after, as the genie promised they would.

Stories like this may not be wholesome; they are, however, the stuff cult classics are made of, and Block has a passionate following among hip critics. A new novel -- "I Was a Teenage Fairy" (as in thumb-size, supernatural person with wings, not homosexual) -- and a one-volume edition of the Weetzie Bat books are sure to swell the numbers of her fans. The Weetzie collection, "Dangerous Angels," charts the development of this remarkable writer from an enfant terrible a decade ago to a brash yet delicate master.

Many readers will be enchanted by the glittering atmosphere Block creates. Here, for example, the younger generation of Weetzie's family has a jam session: "Witch Baby sat at her drums, her purple eyes fierce, her skinny arms pounding out the beat; Angel Juan pouted and swayed as he played his bass, and Raphael sang in a voice like Kahlua and milk, swinging his dreadlocks to the sound of his guitar. Cherokee, whirling with her tambourine, imagined she could see their music like fireworks -- flashing flowers and fountains of light exploding in the air around them." Other readers (including me) may find Block's relentless lyricism as irritating as a neighbor's wind chimes, especially in her earlier books. Her hipness -- or as Weetzie likes to put it, "slinkster cool" -- can also grate. The characters are all glamorously beautiful, and she provides each of them with at least one, more often three or four, talents and creative pursuits. They dance, sing, sew, act, film, paint, write poetry, declaim it -- they try their hands at every imaginable artistic endeavor (except writing young adult novels). Not even minor characters escape: The homeless boy Duck picks up when he's exploring his homosexuality, for example, is an aspiring furniture designer. But irritable readers who stick it out for two or three novels will be rewarded when they reach the later books -- swirling yet meticulously structured collages of resonant symbols and passions we've all felt, particularly as teenagers.

With her trust in the twin redeemers art and love (especially at first sight), Block is as romantic as her more traditional colleagues in the juvenile fiction business. Yet she also understands that actions have consequences, a rare insight for a romantic. "Weetzie Bat," the first novel in the series and the weakest, is a fantasy in an old-fashioned sense of the word -- a wish-fulfillment story. In its first sequel, "Witch Baby," Block acknowledges that parents' unconventional lifestyle choices can be hard on their children. Perhaps because My Secret Agent Lover Man is ashamed of his behavior when he conceived Witch Baby, he and the rest of the household haven't told her that he's her father, so she feels like an outsider in her "almost-family." Partly for that reason, partly because of her witchy nature, W.B. stomps around like a preteen from hell, taping dismal newspaper clippings to the walls, cutting off her almost-sister's hair in the middle of the night, stowing away on Dirk and Duck's romantic trip, even outing Duck to his mother. Before she can settle down into the brooding artist she's meant to be, she has to meet the love of her life, an illegal immigrant boy named Angel Juan, and discover her true parentage. Because of the choices Weetzie and My Secret made while pursuing their own happiness, Witch Baby will always have a fierce, dark side. Though a bitch to live with, she's touching and easy to identify with.

"Weetzie Bat" and "Witch Baby" are structurally something of a mess. In the third book, "Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys," Block gets the structure under control. With the grown-ups away on a trip, the kids start a band, unleashing magical (and sexual) forces they can't quite handle; Block ties the whole thing together by giving each band member an enchanted, symbolic costume accessory. Her technical mastery stands her in good stead in the fourth book, "Missing Angel Juan," which is my favorite by far. Witch Baby is beside herself with grief when Angel Juan, now her boyfriend, goes off to New York to find himself. "You're always taking pictures of me and writing songs for me but that's not me. That's who you make up. And in the band, I feel like I'm just backing up the rest of you. I've got to play my own music," he tells her.

Witch Baby, of course, can't let him go -- she flies to New York to find him. Block perfectly captures the hallucinatory loneliness of a first breakup as Witch Baby wanders around the cold city looking for clues, camps out in the empty apartment where Weetzie's father once lived, forgets to eat. Her "almost Grandpa" Charlie, the ghost of Weetzie's father, steps in to take care of her. He leads her around the city, makes her eat, even gets her to take photographs (she's been too depressed for art) by becoming visible only when she looks at him through the camera.

Surprisingly, Charlie and Witch Baby have to teach each other the same lesson: how to let go. Charlie regrets the quasi-suicidal overdose that sent him out of the living world too early, and his remorse keeps him hanging around Manhattan in the form of a dancing blue light. By taking tender care of Witch Baby, Charlie atones for having been a less-than-perfect father to Weetzie. He also gives Witch Baby confidence that she's loved, which is what she needs before she can stop clinging to Angel Juan.

Block rearranges some of the most successful elements of "Missing Angel Juan" in her new novel, "I Was a Teenage Fairy." Both books feature a smartass, tough-but-sensitive adolescent and a supernatural companion. In "I Was a Teenage Fairy," though, these are a single character: Mab, a tiny, winged person whom the human heroine, Barbie, finds in the garden. Here, photography has sinister overtones -- Barbie, a model, is molested as a child by a photographer who wields his camera as an instrument of power. Barbie's mother, a frustrated model herself, has pushed her daughter into a career she hates.

Friendless, with an absent father and an all-too-present mother, Barbie needs a pal like Mab too much to outgrow her when she reaches the age of reason. "Even though she is past the age of imaginary friends, the friend she might sometimes think is imaginary is still with her. The friend has not aged at all; maybe their life spans are different, maybe she is just so small that no one would notice her aging, maybe she is just too vain to allow for wrinkles. She is walking along the girl's arm, balancing a box of cigarettes on her head." Mab is delightful -- touchy and full of attitude like Witch Baby, but wittier. "I could put you in my purse," offers Barbie, trying to talk the fairy into coming to a party with her. "Oh please," snaps Mab, "what do you think I am? An eye pencil?"

Barbie's world, it turns out, is full of people who can see fairies. It's a dubious distinction, pointing to an uncomfortable familiarity with neglect and abuse. But fortunately, since this is a Block novel, the damaging past can be overcome and a more-or-less happily ever after arrived at: All it takes are love and art. Like Witch Baby, Barbie has to face the right end of the camera, using it to tell her story. A bit mushy? Maybe, but not more than most adolescents. I suspect Block is following her own advice, transfiguring her pain into slinkster cool art -- and a good thing, too, for glitter-hungry, rebel readers.
SALON | Oct. 13, 1998

B O O K _ I N F O R M A T I O N:

DANGEROUS ANGELS: THE WEETZIE BAT BOOKS | BY FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK | HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS, 478 PAGES

I WAS A TEENAGE FAIRY | BY FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK | JOANNA COTLER BOOKS/HARPERCOLLINS, 160 PAGES