Kitty and the Midnight Hour, published in 2005, has all the hallmarks of its time: cover (tough girl pose, tramp stamp, ready-for-action braid, black leather), setting (a city, but not New York or LA), protagonist (middle class young white heterosexual female), plot (human woman faces tragedy and encounters supernatural beings), to subplot (romance with a mysterious guy who may be bad for her). It seems to be a very popular series, if the number of Goodreads reviews is any indication. This summer the tenth installment will be published.

Kitty is a Denver DJ who happens to be a werewolf. She was turned against her will not long ago, and is not fully reconciled to her fate. Kitty’s radio show, “The Midnight Hour”, accidentally becomes a talk show with a focus on werewolves and vampires after she takes a few strange calls on air. While her boss at the station loves the higher ratings, Carl, the alpha of Kitty’s pack, is unhappy with the attention Kitty is bringing to their community. Also displeased is the head of the local vampire clan. The existence of werewolves and vampires (who have worked out a détente) is an emerging secret (the NIH has even written a report on them) and Kitty’s show pushes Denver over the edge and into awareness.

Specially interested is a local police detective who is trying to solve a string of grisly murders that may be werewolf related. Kitty ends up helping her, which further antagonizes her alpha and the vampire leader, the latter of whom hires a bounty hunter to kill her on air. This scene, in which the assassin calls in to Kitty’s show as he enters the building and tells her exactly what he plans to do, was the best in the book: suspenseful and funny.

Kitty’s trying to find her place in the human world (improve her economic and employment situation) and the pack (move up from being on the bottom), and the book is strongest when focused on her journey. I’ve read a number of UF series with werewolves and I thought Vaughn did the best job I’ve read of portraying what it feels like to be a human in a wolf’s body and a wolf in a human’s body. Many readers put the book down in the early scenes because Kitty is so subservient to Carl (including sexually), which is a mistake in my opinion, because the point of the book is Kitty’s journey to higher status in both the human and werewolf worlds.

I did have some problems with the book, which I’ll list here:

(1) The gay best friend whose purpose in life is to serve Kitty and has no identity outside of Kitty’s needs.

(2) The only other female character who gets any development is a jealous scheming bitch who manipulates men and hates Kitty.

(3) Kitty is TSTL on at least two occasions. Sometimes I think the “Female Protagonist Meter” has two settings: (1) PASSIVE and (10) RASH.

(4) The subplot of a mysterious preacher who recruits vampires and is said to have supernatural powers is underdeveloped. Worse, it is highly derivative of the Fellowship of the Sun subplot in Charlaine Harris’s Living Dead in Dallas, published three years prior (fun fact: Harris blurbed it).

(5) Kitty is working on dealing with her werewolf life, true, but she doesn’t seem to have a trauma to overcome. Yet, in a brutal series of events, narrated dispassionately by Kitty, she was raped and later turned into a werewolf (a second invasion of her bodily integrity). Is sexual assault just so par for the course in UF that it doesn’t have any effect on characters who experience it?

(6) Kitty’s love interest has a mustache.*

*Ok, this is not technically a problem with the book, but it affected my enjoyment of it. Perhaps she’ll get him a razor in book 2.

I enjoyed reading Kitty and the Midnight Hour, although I felt nothing new here to anyone who has read Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Kelly Armstrong, and any number of other UF series with werewolves.  In sum, despite some problems, which emerged with greater clarity as I was writing this review, this book worked for me as a quick enjoyable read: I liked the author’s voice, the main character, and the portrayal of lycanthropy. I plan to read more in the series.

You can read an excerpt here.

Sea of Trees (May 2012, Winter Goose Publishing) is set in the Aokigahara forest at the foot of Mount Fuji. Japan has a high suicide rate (about 25 per 100,000 people, compared to the US’s 10.7) and Aokigahara is the most popular spot for suicide in Japan, with anywhere from 50-100 deaths, and many more attempts, per year.  The novella (104 pages) is narrated in the first person present by Bill, an American college student who has journeyed to the forest with his Japanese girlfriend Junko, whose sister Izumi killed herself in the forest. Junko wears a backpack containing some of Izumi’s things, but her exact purpose in visiting the forest — whose vast 15 square miles makes the notion of searching for one particular corpse absurd– is not clear. As experienced by Bill — and hence the reader — Junko is mysterious. He has a hard time reading her emotions or understanding her actions, and they experience frequent misunderstandings as a result. He’s all American college boy: he’s focused on her small, slim beauty, her shiny fall of hair, the alluring nature of her body, and her otherness. He wonders what she plans to do, worries about getting lost in the dark, and hopes very much for more chances to kiss her.

As Junko and Bill make their way through the eerily quiet, incredibly dense forest, with its lava rocks and thick brush, they stumble upon the personal effects – notes, combs, makeshift dwellings –  of the dead, suicide prevention signs posted by authorities, and the occasional fellow seeker. As they travel deeper into the forest, the mystery of Izumi’s death, and of Junko’s quest, begins to seem less practical and more supernatural…and suspenseful.

The large wooden sign staked along the path is half-gone, torn almost in two, some graffiti written on the intact part which Junko tells me says “There is no God. There is no hope.” I ignore her and trace my finger along what’s left of the color map, along the path we’re on, and figure, roundabout, where we are.

“Here,” I say, pointing.

Junko steps forward and motions to a large blue area on the map, north from where we are. There’s no path headed in that direction, just the color green to indicate forest between it and us. “And here is Saiko.”

“Yeah, but no path going there. Not from here, anyway.”

We both study the sign again, red Kanji scrawled along one side, the ominous warnings again reminding any who read it that they are loved and that they should turn back. It looks so far back to the parking lot where we started, and here we are, about half-way around the large loop of the main path.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I say. “I think we got on the wrong path.”

“How is that?”

“I think when we were at the fork we must’ve gone the wrong way. See?” I point to the board again, showing her a small path mostly cut off from the broken sign and how it loops around near the lakeshore. “I’m sorry.”

“There has to be another way.”

Sea of Trees is meticulously organized. Each chapter closes with an italicized vignette relating a different Aokigahara suicide. Russell may have been going for the Japanese aesthetic of evocative simplicity with the one word chapter titles (“Hope”, “Respect”, “Beauty” ), but they seemed a bit too obviously related to the content for my tastes. On the other hand, the vignettes and main narrative were interwoven subtly and effectively.

The tight organization and ordinary language propel the narrative and draw the reader in. Sea of Trees is a page turner, with compelling characters and plotting, but I had the sense that Russell was going for more, thematically, and I can’t say he ever got there. I was underwhelmed with the “big reveal” of the circumstances of Izumi’s death at the end, which were pretty banal. I also can’t speak to the characterization of Junko. I would be interested to hear from Japanese readers on this one. Does Junko and Bill’s relationship run afoul of the Asian Gal with White Boyfriend Trope/ aka Madame Butterfly trope? Junko is exoticized and sexualized, but not submissive, and she’s fairly complex. How much of her characterization can be defended by the fact that it comes to the reader through the experience of a young American college student who is likely to look at most women this way, at least some of the time? As for other women in the text, we have a beautiful model, a protective mother, and an adulterous wife … not exactly the wide possible spectrum.

Those concerns aside, Russell does a good job resisting the lure of cultural essentialism. Although Junko points out that “We are a very proud people. Very traditional in many ways. It is very hard for some to live with themselves after they have done something so horrible,” the novella as a whole presents suicide as it in fact is: a complex phenomenon with psychological, situational, cultural, and, yes, aesthetic elements.

The sense of quiet despair that permeates both Aokigahara and the vignettes contrasts pleasingly with Bill’s confusion and increasing terror. Sea of Trees paints the lines between life and death, hopelessness and peace, honor and pride, as vanishingly thin. I enjoyed Sea of Trees.

Sea of Trees was given to me by the author. You can read excerpts here.

The second chapter is equally good. In Cheshire, England, Jocelyn Fleming, the Duchess of Eaton is attending to her much older dying husband. Jocelyn and the ailing Duke had a platonic but loving relationship, more father-daughter or patient-nurse than husband-wife. With his dying breath, the Duke convinces nineteen year old Jocelyn she must leave England until she comes of age, to avoid becoming a victim of his scheming cousins. I have two things to say about this chapter: (1) there is more plot in chapter two of Savage Thunder than in most 300 page historical romances published today, and (2) the heroine is a virgin widow!

In one of many long descriptive passages which stop the action dead in this book, the duke takes several minutes off from active dying to ponder Jocelyn’s looks: “coloring was too flamboyant for the ton, her red hair too bright, like a bursting flame, her lime-green eyes too unusual in their paleness, and much too expressive. … Nor did she conform with other redheads, as there wasn’t a single freckle on her flawless ivory skin, skin so pale it was nearly translucent.” She has a “stubborn lift to her chin”, she’s “a touch over average in height”, “she had always been an active girl …  which would account for the narrow slimness of her shape.” And she had lost weight in the past month…”. This is a pretty classic move in romance, especially older romances: describe the heroine in terms that a contemporary white Western reader would identify as the epitome of beauty (skinny, athletic, tall), which serves both to make the heroine seem gorgeous, but at the same time sympathetic, because she fails to meet the beauty standards of her own time. It’s also a nice way to identify the hero, especially if, as in other books, he’s a member of her same social class: he’s the only guy (or one of the few, if he has a rival) who sees her beauty.

Chapter Three is set three years later. Jocelyn and her small army of servants have been traveling the world, and are now in the Arizona Territory. They’ve managed to elude “John Longnose” the hired gun who is always just one step behind. Longnose is, naturally, sadistic. Having been fired by the duke’s cousins for failing to retrieve Jocelyn before she came of age, now “he was going to kill that red-haired bitch for the pleasure of it.” Jocelyn’s immediate concern, other than making it to California where her ship, the Jocel, is waiting, is to have sex. Her main worry is that her new husband — whomever that ends up being — not be made aware of her late husband’s “affliction”, and that her late husband’s name not be “blackened with ugly gossip.” Jocelyn considered having a doctor do it, but “the thought of instruments being poked inside her to cut her membrane left her shuddering with distaste.” Encouraged by Vanessa, who advised that “A woman has needs every bit as strong as a man’s,” Jocelyn also thinks that “It’s time to see what the fuss is all about.” I wondered if there was also an inheritance problem with unconsummated marriage, but I don’t recall anything being said about that in the book.

A shootout with Longnose on a narrow pass leads to Jocelyn’s carriage being upended and her being rescued by a man with a “deep lazy drawl”, long straight black hair, and deeply bronzed hairless skin. “His strangeness unnerved her”, but she’s immediately attracted to him. Jocelyn decides pretty much then and there that she will take this handsome stranger as her lover.  He wants her right back, even though “he hadn’t been attracted to her kind in years.”

The conceit of this novel is that Jocelyn is unaware of racial prejudice, because she is from England:

“I was born in this country, but folks got a different name for me, lady. I’m a half-breed.”

“How interesting,” she said, aware his tone had turned bitter again, but choosing to ignore it. “It sounds like something to do with stock and crossbreeding. What does it have to do with people?”

He stared at her a moment as if she were crazy; then he swore under his breath before snarling, “What the hell do you think it has to do with people? It means I’m only half-white.”

His tone gave her pause, but still she asked, “And the other half?”

Again he gave her  a look that said she ought to be locked up for the safety of others. “Indian,” he bit out. “Cheyenne, in my case. And if that doesn’t set you back on your toes, it ought to.”

“Why?”

“Christ, woman, you ought to learn something about a country before you visit it!”

“But I always do,” she replied, only slightly wary that he had shouted at her. “I know a good deal about this one.”

“Then you must have missed the part about Indians and white being sworn enemies,” he sneered. “Ask in the next town you come to. They’ll give you an earful about why you shouldn’t be standing here talking to me.”

“If you have something against whites, as you call them, it hasn’t anything to do with me, does it?” she replied, undaunted. “I’m not your enemy, sir. Good Lord, how could you even insinuate that I might be, when I feel nothing but gratitude for your timely assistance?”

I’m sure I don’t need to comment on the ridiculousness of the idea that Jocelyn is somehow immune to the social prejudices of her day, or that Colt, who is himself the product of a consensual relationship between a white man and an Indian woman, and whose “half-breed” sister is happily married to a white man, is not aware of the complexities of Anglo-Indian interactions. Interestingly, Colt is described as acting white when he cuts his hair and puts on a suit, yet the fact that he has internalized anti-Indian racist attitudes passes without comment. More surprisingly, as this exchange shows, the narrative skirts perilously close to painting Colt as himself a racist (a “reverse racist” in today’s right wing lingo). Several times, Jocelyn accuses Colt of bringing his problems on himself by “flaunting his heritage,” an accusation which the text doesn’t fully rebut. And his half-sister Jessie agrees: he just has to get over his anger and self-loathing and realize he really is good enough to overcome his “heritage” and deserve the love of a pure white woman.

The narrative describes (stereotypes of) race and ethnicity as determinants of character and action over and over, So, for example: ”Some countries bred men more aggressive than others, or at least more bold in their desires.” And ”Getting a Mexican to agree to kill a woman was nearly impossible.” In her party are Philippe Marivaux, “the temperamental French chef” and Babette, the slutty French maid. There was a “sheikh whats-his-name” whose amorous attentions Jocelyn dodged in Morocco. The author takes pains to invoke positive stereotypes of Indians when describing Colt: “so damn proud”, “defiantly erect”, “the fierce pride of the Indian.” She  uses terms reserved for Indians to describe depraved white characters, like Colt’s attacker in the first chapter (“if any man looked like a savage, Pratt did”, “What you did here is the lowest kind of savagery, fit only for animals.”).

Even when she invokes a negative stereotype in relation to Colt, she attempts to use Colt’s status as hero to turn it into something romantic: “brave, lethal and dangerous, the savage wildness of the Injun unleashed, striking fear into the hearts of civilized men.” Same for their first sexual encounter (one of only two in the book, by the way): Jocelyn is “thrilled beyond measure” but “frightened too… She couldn’t help it, not when she recalled that he had never once been gentle with her, and looked anything but gentle now.” She knows she will be “getting raw passion instead of lovemaking,” and her fear “In a primitive way… inflamed him even more.” He says, “It’ll be a rough ride… can you take it?” A little savagery is handy when it comes to getting saved from the bad guy and for sexxoring, I guess.

As far as the sex itself, I loved their first sex scene, even though I still don’t really understand it. Jocelyn is the sexual aggressor, and she’s been trying to get Colt to have sex with her the entire first half of the book. He refuses, because (a) he doesn’t believe a white woman can really want him, and (b) he’s afraid he’ll hurt her. The way the scene was written is so odd: on the one hand, we get all of these descriptions of Colt’s leashed savagery, his barely-there control over himself. The scene is permeated with a kind of danger and dread. He even says, “Scream now, Duchess, while you’ve got the chance.” Yet, he would not even be in her room if it hadn’t been for her luring him there on some pretense, for the express purpose of having sex with him. She’s actually not afraid, but thinks she has to pretend to be reluctant or he won’t have sex with her. When he commences dirty talk, she looks scared, but thinks “God, I hope so.” She holds back her moans, realizing Colt is mad for not being able to stay away, and realizes: “It was up to her to tame the fury before it got out of hand.” There are so many things going on I think I could write on it for a week and not figure this scene out, but one thing that occurred to me was the need to make sex seem scary in order to make it seem awesome.  Or maybe it was just the need to make feminine desire seem scary, displaced onto a hero who is frankly very much a beta, and rarely in any kind control over this heroine who has vast riches, her own small army, tremendous class and race advantage, and seems incapable of feeling fear, at least outside of the bedroom.

The second sex scene, much later in the book, is the infamous one on a galloping horse. It was pretty ridiculous: “By the time the horse came to a standstill, she had climaxed three times with soul-searing intensity.” More interesting to me is that afterwards, despite the fact that Jocelyn has now had two amazing sexual encounters with Colt, and can’t wait to get back inside his pants again, her desire continues to be described in the language of fear and danger.

Savage Thunder is 400 or so pages, and in addition to the plot-stopping descriptions, there’s actually plot-stopping plot. I mean, a scene with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday? Clearly the author was going for “epic”, so even Longnose and his henchmen get their own pov sections. As for the romance, while I was pleased that the relationship between Jocelyn and Colt was mostly pretty respectful (I dreaded the “distrust” theme planted in the opening chapter, because I’ve read and hated those romances where the hero abuses the heroine on some stupid suspicion), I wasn’t 100% convinced these two belonged together, I think because the emphasis was on their looks and sexual attraction. I was especially disappointed in the ending, one of those where Colt, after spending hundreds of pages pushing Jocelyn away, has a sudden and unexplained change of heart. I’m glad I read Savage Thunder, exposing me as it did to a virgin widow and horseback sex, but I’ll probably wait a little while to pick up another Lindsey.

Here are some tips posts I’ve bookmarked:

Book Expo America Tips for Writers by Jerry Simmons. This post was a useful overview of what the event is all about, with info like:

BEA is focused around the six big publishers, no doubt, without them the BEA would hold little relevance to the general public. As it stands today, the media is interested simply because of the celebrity authors and future bestsellers that are on display. Each of these big companies may spend well in excess of $1 million on this show so it is a big deal for them and they spend a lot of time in New York preparing.

Booth placement is key for this show and the sponsors do the best they can to make everyone happy. Size of the booth is indicative of how much money the sponsors are receiving from the big publishers. Having attended more than 20 I would have to say that the BEA as it now stands is as much representative of corporate publishing as anything else.

This post from Library Journal is librarian focused but I found it very useful.

After Seven trips to BEA, YA author Michelle Madow offers her best tips, such as:

10) If you see an author walking around at lunch looking for a place to sit, invite them to eat with you and your friends. In 2010 my brother spotted R.L. Stine looking for a seat and invited him to join us. We ended up eating together for an hour and having a great conversation! It was so interesting talking with R.L. Stine about his books, and learning about his writing process. He’s such a cool, nice guy!

Tips from BEA Event Director Steve Rosato, including eating a good breakfast, wearing sensible shoes, and having business cards. I actually did have business cards made up:

You guys know I got "Tripler" from "Triple R" right?

The black border won't appear on the finished version

The folks at Wastepaper Prose — readers and writers — have a very nice series of posts on BEA. I especially liked What the Heck Do I Do Now?

Ultimate BEA Party Guide 2012 (romance genre focused, some invitation only) from Andrew Shaffer. I’ve always wanted to attend a Lady Jane’s Salon:

Lady Jane’s Salon Monthly Romance Reading Series. Madame X. 94 West Houston St, Soho. 7pm-9pm. $5 cover or donated romance novel.

Romance reader and writer Katiebabs, also a seasoned BEA veteran, has a tips post from both points of view.

There is a BEABlogger Con, schedule here, on June 4. As I have mentioned here before, it is very author/industry focused. I declined an invitation to serve on a panel, as have many others, for that reason. A recent promo video, Get Your Swag Bag On is so insulting I don’t even know where to begin. Suffice to say that I am not attending BEA for the purpose of gorging myself on free books.

Here’s a partial list of bloggers attending BEA.

Thankfully, there is another option on the same day, the UNcon. Folks are suggesting topics they can lead discussions around. One of them is “authors on Twitter”, another is “negative reviews”. Both of those are more interesting to me than the topics on offer at the official con. that said, I’ll do what the people I most want to spend time with are doing, and right now that looks like BEA blogger con.

If you can’t make it to New York, you can participate in Armchair BEA:

So, what exactly does being a participant entail? First and foremost, you’ll be able to celebrate and participate in an event that happens each year in New York City, Book Expo America, from the comfort of your very own home, hopefully a snugly armchair! Secondly, and we hope equally as important, you’ll be able to meet new book bloggers and join together in a celebration of the wonderful community that comes out of book blogging. Last year we had over 600 participants, so you’re bound to meet some new great bookish friends! Lastly, it means participating, however you’re able to. This can be by posting, tweeting, discussing, or even by simply reading and commenting on participating blogs. Your level of participation is entirely up to you, but we hope you’ll find something to get you involved in this fabulous event!

Here’s a link to the brand new BEA Conference App and a link to the BEA show planner. I loved it that I could click on the events I want to attend and import them to the app and my Google calendar.

I’ve been struggling a bit trying to figure out what my goals are for the conference. Like every other blogger, I’ve received tons of emails from authors and publishers asking to set up meeting at booths, etc., and I’ve turned all but one down (I’m attending the Random House breakfast for “power readers”). As a blogger, I registered as “non editorial media.” I gather other bloggers are going to network, grow their blogs, and get industry news that will create great content. I’m most interested in seeing and meeting other bloggers, hearing what authors have to say about their work, and hearing what some publishers have to say about trends in various genres. I’m signed up to attend one breakfast, hosted by Stephen Colbert, and featuring authors like Jo Nesbo and Barbara Kingsolver, and I’ve noted the locations of a few of my favorite authors. I’m not sure about networking or growing my blog. I’m on the fence about the blog in general.

But one of the main things, for me — and my fellow working moms will especially understand this — is to be someplace where I’m not at anyone else’s beck and call. For three days, I don’t have to answer an email from a student or colleague, take an ethics call from the hospital, give a talk, make a snack, let the cats out, walk the dogs, pay a bill, straighten the family room, etc. etc. Just the freedom to walk through a crowd of people who do not need me for anything will be pure bliss. Between that and seeing old friends and new, I can’t wait for BEA.

I asked for, and received, a Kindle touch wifi 3g for my birthday a couple of weeks ago.

The 3G is a luxury, something that I absolutely did not need, since we have wifi in the house and my digital TBR pile is already insane. But, as the devil on my shoulder said, you never know!  I immediately paid the $40 to get rid of the sponsored ads and deals that appear at the bottom of the home screen, which I found very distracting, but I know others love this feature. I really love the Kindle Touch. I love the touch feature: no little click sound when I turn the page, easy to do at the gym while on a treadmill, highlighting and note taking is way way easier, and the whole device is just easier to work with overall. I like being able to adjust not just the text size, but the font and spacing. I purchased a way-too-expensive Kindle cover with integrated light, but it works great, evenly lighting the page and not adding too much weight. The only down side to the cover is that it is much harder to get the Kindle out of the cover now. I don’t like having the cover on when I don’t need the light.

As I was making my decision on what new e-reader to purchase, Barnes and Noble came out with a new Nook Simple Touch with an integrated light called GlowLight. The reviews have been really positive, and I seriously considered it, but opted against it for three reasons: (1) some (although not all) reviewers report that the contrast is not as good, (2) I am always asleep before or at the same time as my husband anyway, so bedtime reading with the light off is not a major need (I actually use the light more for car trips when he’s driving), and, the big reason: (3) I’m enslaved to Amazon. Yes, I know it’s possible to get all my Kindle books onto a Nook with easy to use programs, but the thing is, I’ve had an excellent consumer experience with Amazon, whether it’s buying books, buying other items, returning items, or getting help with the Kindles. I have no reason to make the effort to move my entire digital library over to another company. If Amazon comes out with a comparable device, which I fully expect by the end of the the year, I’ll seriously consider it.

I also own an iPad2 (or, rather, I bought it, and now I fight my husband and two children for a chance to occasionally use it), and I do more reading on that than I thought I would, namely, because I always bring it to the gym for cardio. I like the fact that with one device, I can listen to music, watch video, read a book, and check my email.  But I like having a dedicated ereader for two reasons: (1) although there is no data that I could find to support the common claim that eyes tire faster or more markedly with an LED device than a e-reader, the e-reader just feels better to read on, and (2) because the iPad has all of those other possibilities, namely the internet, I’m more easily distracted away from my book.

When I first got my Kindle I became very anti-paper. It got to the point that I wouldn’t buy a book if I couldn’t find a digital version. Over the years, the pendulum has swung back, and I do buy and read paper books about 15-20% of the time now. I’m happy to have both on offer for most books, and I hope it stays that way.

Although you might not think so, given modern technology, it’s a lot easier to find the “stuck together” trope (I’m sure there is a much catchier real name for it) in contemporaries than in any other subgenre of romance.  In historicals, there’s too much accountability to other people, so the closest you usually get is the road romance. Being stuck doesn’t work for PNR or romantic suspense either, because it’s not exactly actiony.

I’d like to take a minute and point out the great cover for this one. The cover is what actually first caught my eye:

It’s not 100% accurate as far as the way these two are physically described in the text, but yippee for something unique and visually arresting, suggestive without being erotic, featuring fairly average looking people, and an image that fits the plot. Well done!

Unfortunately, this story clocks in at one of my least favorite lengths, the novella (this one is 72 pages).  I have a very definite idea of how long a romance should be: 200 or so pages if it’s a category, and about 300-400 pages if it’s a standalone. That said, Maher does a nice job packing a lot of story and emotion, not to mention heat, into 24,000 words.

Snowbound With a Stranger begins with a group of preparing to go on a mountain hike. Dannie Marino is a nurse in a busy Brooklyn hospital, and she’s burned out. Really burned out. If you don’t want to see the ugly side of nursing burnout, avoid this book. Early on, for example, Dannie thinks:

She’d had a patient last week — a woman she’d come to know well over the past several months — who was sick with complications from lupus. Two young kids at home. An immune system like a fucking sieve. Sick all the time with every virus that passed through her children’s school. Yet she never complained. Not once. Flirted with doctors. Put makeup on every morning, no matter how bad she felt.

For some reason it got to Dannie. Worse than the sicker patients, the more demonstrably suffering ones. That woman’s iron will agitated her. She found herself avoiding the lady’s room, looking for excuses to let someone else check in on her. What kind of nurse did that make Dannie? What kind of person?

Dannie is “thirty-eight, divorced, childless”, and very down on herself. She wants to go hiking to get out of her own negative space, away from the city and hospital noise, to find some peace. She notices right away a really handsome man in their group, but puts those thoughts out of her mind, until she makes a very stupid decision as a snowstorm is upon them to go off the trail to pee (this is the one thing in the book that bothered me. Most nurses I know are way too practical to make such a stupid move.). Eventually, the handsome guy rescues her, and takes her to the cabin the group had originally planned to hike to, only by now they’ve all hiked back to the parking lot and left the mountain.

Handsome guy is Lee, a social worker in an oncology unit, with his own tragic past and his own need to get away from it all once in a while. Lee and Dannie had been instantly attracted to each other, and now that they’re stuck for a couple of days in a mountain cabin, well… you can guess how they pass the time. The author does a great job with the sexual tension, and the sex scenes are not too many or too explicit for the story. There’s a lot of character development as they talk and figure out what made them both want to go on the hike, what demons from their past keep them from moving on, and what role their sexual attraction might have in all of that. Dannie is a tough one – she may even put some readers off — while Lee, who does have his own issues, is the more naturally open, warm and caring of the two.

I appreciated that Maher didn’t turn these regular folks into sexual super-people. They don’t jump immediately into bed and perform crazy out of character gymnastics. They actually talk about what they are doing. Dannie says:

“I’ve been a straight arrow all my life. Do you know that?” Dannie shook her head. “Good student. Married my high school sweetheart. Stayed faithful for fifteen long years, though it nearly killed me. He left three years ago. I don’t know the first thing about how to do this.”

The author even manages to work in some meta, as when Dannie says:

“I’ve read romance novels like this.” Her voice was shaky. “Two strangers trapped together somewhere getting it on. Every damn time the guy is an alpha, storngarming the heroine.”

Actually, Lee is not an alpha, which I think was the author’s point with this exchange. In the attempt to deal with some tough real life issues, the relative lack of humor, and the focus on average, flawed, and not overabundantly joyous people, this reminds me a bit of another snowbound book I really liked, Janice Kay Johnson’s Snowbound, and of Johnson’s writing in general, although Johnson writes longer superromances with a lot more angst and family issues and less sex.

I enjoyed Snowbound, although it didn’t rock my world. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever read a romance novella that rocked my world (no, not even the historical self-published author everyone else raves about), so take that with a grain of salt. If you like the snowbond theme and are interested in the real struggles of people who have been through a lot in life, you should check it out.

Snowbound with a Stranger is on sale May 28 in all the usual outlets. As I type this, see it’s $2.99 for Kindle, and $2.69 directly from Carina Press.

I received this debut novel (Grand Central, Feb 2012, 304 pages) from the author, and while it took me a few weeks to open it up, once I did, I couldn’t put it down.  These Days Are Ours is a snapshot of a few months in the life of Hailey, a recent college grad trying to find work and love in New York City six months after 9/11. the setting is captured perfectly, not just in terms of 9/11, although I thought that was weaved expertly into the story, but by references to the clothing, music, bars, cocktails, and other cultural references of the day. Hailey is extremely privileged — her mother is the publisher of Details and her step-father a “highest-up” at Conde Nast — but she doesn’t want to use her family’s connections to find work. But with a group of friends to go clubbing and shopping with, and a cushy landing pad in her family’s Fifth Avenue penthouse, Hailey’s job search is a bit desultory. In the meantime, Hailey has an extreme crush on Brenner, a recent Princeton grad with a prestigious fellowship and a future as a human rights lawyer. She and Brenner hooked up once, and Hailey would like to renew their acquaintance. Then she meets Adrian, a transplanted Pennsylvanian and recent Brown graduate who is solidly middle class but perhaps a better match for Hailey in the ways that matter.

These Days are Ours is not easy to categorize.  It’s written by a woman, with a woman protagonist, all of the reviews I’ve read are by women, and it has a Reading Group Guide at the end, which suggests “women’s fiction.” There’s the urban haute bourgeoisie* setting, the embarrassing flounces, the youth of the protagonist and her friends, a few scenes at Barneys, and several mentions of high end brand names, which suggests “chick lit.” And finally there’s a strong romance plot — Hailey and her two suitors are much more memorable than any of the assorted friends she hangs out with — and a HFN (“Happy For Now” in romance genre lingo). It’s listed by the publisher as “fiction” and that’s probably the way I’d categorize it, too. Given the controversy around the new HBO show Girls, I should make explicit what is probably obvious by now: there are no people of color in this book. (*ten points if you get the reference)

There isn’t much plot, and those looking for a meditation on 9/11 should look elsewhere. The reason to read These Days Are Ours is Hailey. The story is told from her first person point of view. She’s very much a character emerging from adolescence into adulthood. When we first meet Hailey, she makes it clear that marrying Brenner, whom she barely knows, is the key to her happiness. Through her admiration of Brenner, or rather, an idealized and 90% fictitious version of Brenner, we learn that Hailey’s parents’ divorce devastated her, and created schisms with her father, brother and mother that remain unhealed. Brenner’s social identity (like Hailey, a wealthy Jewish New Yorker) makes him a suitable match, but the fact that he has everything Hailey wants for herself — a crystal clear career path, a “perfect” family, and a sense of calm confidence — make him more of a foil than a romantic partner.

Hailey knows that she shouldn’t complain about the divorce because it happens to everyone, and that she shouldn’t fret about not having a job because she could just ask her parents, and she shouldn’t whine about feeling at loose ends after college because, after all, she went to college. Then there’s the little fact that in a Manhattan still covered in ash, the last thing she should be thinking about is herself. Trying to balance the extreme narcissism of youth with the more outward looking demands of adulthood is Hailey’s major challenge. She has to learn not to view everyone as either a hindrance or a help to her own interests but to see the world — and herself — from others’ point of view. I loved Hailey. I thought she was funny, smart, insightful, immature in believable ways, and deeply flawed.

Haimoff’s writing reminds me a bit of Nick Hornby, who once said, “Nothing happens in the books… I’m creating a person who’s a lot like the person who’s reading the books.” Hailey’s challenges, while unique to her character and situation, bring out more universal themes. Here are two examples, both from early on in the novel:

(1) Hailey spots a rival for Brenner’s affection:

The first time I saw her, she was wearing a denim jacket. People didn’t even wear denim jackets in 1998. But the day I saw her in a denim jacket, I thought maybe that was what was it. The denim jacket. Or maybe it was the pashmina scarf she wore the time after that, the periwinkle one that brought out her eyes. Maybe it was her fake-looking perfectly aligned teeth that she rarely showed, but when she did, made time freeze. Or maybe it was her hair. That perfect golden ad-campaign hair that, no matter how beautiful we all were in our own ways, we would have traded for in a heartbeat.

All of us felt our looks diminish around Victoria. The girls with silky brown hair and huge, almost black eyes; the slender dark girls with the dulce de leche skin and long lashes; the girls with birdlike faces and smoking bodies with great laughs and perfect nails. All of us had played with the same Barbies, saw the same cartoons, read the same fashion magazines. We all knew that she was the best one.

(2) Hailey stares out her window at Central Park, aware that Brenner’s apartment is on the other side. She actually fantasizes about another terrorist attack, one that will bring them running towards each other across the park:

He in his overcoat, me with windblown hair. It would  be wild how, with all the people in the city, it was the two of us who found each other. But that’s how it would be, and it wouldn’t feel strange. We would tell our kids about it when we talked about the great terrorist attacks at the turn of the millennium.

I enjoyed These Days Are Ours and I recommend it, with a couple of caveats, beyond the obvious one that this is not the book for you if you find rich white young people who complain about their lot off putting: I got the sense that Haimoff had to sacrifice depth at times for pacing and tone, and Hailey’s friends, while ever present, were so indistinct that I cannot recall their names or anything else about them. But I appreciated this novel for the compelling protagonist, terrific dialogue, wry humor, and the window into a world I know almost nothing about.

Finally, the title is a lyric from a Paul Simon song, “The Obvious Child”, off of The Rhythm of the Saints (1990):

And in remembering a road sign
I am remembering a girl when I was young
And we said these songs are true
These days are ours
These tears are free
And hey
The cross is in the ballpark
The cross is in the ballpark

When asked about that last line, Simon apparently answered, “The cross, the burden that we carry, is in the ballpark, it’s doable.” As a 43 year old middle class suburban mom, I may have little in common with Hailey, but that’s a lesson I think we all have to learn and re-learn throughout our lives.

1. I decided to take a break from Twitter, so I deactivated my account. I believe I’ve got a month to reactivate it, but I don’t mind starting over if need be. I love Twitter, but it’s too much of a time suck right now. How do I know this for sure? Well, I signed up for Rescue Time, a free program that tracks what you are doing on the web. Suffice to say I did not like the results over the past few weeks. The thing about Twitter is that it always feels like a really short break. But adding up those many short breaks a day is a terrifying thing.

I’ve been trying out some other productivity tools. Freedom is a good (free) program, for Mac users, that turns off the web for a set amount of time. It’s great when I need to write a draft of an ethics consult or a syllabus (For PC users, Self-control does the same thing).

When I’m writing a paper or presentation, though, I need the internet. So, I downloaded Anti-Social, another Mac program, by the same people who brought us Freedom. Anti-Social, which costs $15, blocks a predetermined set of known time wasters (the usual suspects, including Twitter and Facebook), and then any other sites you enter in, for a set amount of time. The nice thing about Anti-Social (as opposed to browser specific programs like Leechblock, which only works when you are in Firefox) is that you can’t get around it by opening another browser.

I do have Leechblock, and one nice thing about it is that you can set it to give you a certain amount of time on a specific site. You see the timer counting down in the right hand corner of the browser bar. After that, you can’t get into the site until the next day. Or… you just open Safari. (You can see why I needed Anti-Social)

This article from The 99 percent lists a few other productivity tools.

Anyway, I did not expect my break from Twitter to alarm so many people (who then emailed me). I’m sorry I didn’t tweet about it first!

2. Classes ended Friday, and now it’s just two final exams and the usual end of semester chores. This academic year has been marked with greater than usual involvement in theses. I directed an honors thesis of a biology student in bioethics. It was the first time a bio student was allowed to write an ethics thesis at my uni, and everyone was pleased with the results. He’s heading to medical school, and I feel so proud of him for having made ethics a central part of his undergraduate education. I believe it will make him a better physician.

I also sat on a master’s committee in rhetoric. That student wrote on the history of sex reassignment surgery from its inception in the 1930s to about the 1970s. She focused on the way medical discourses helped to create the “transgender person.” Fascinating stuff.

Third, I’m directing a PhD in feminist bioethics. She’s working on the intersection of law, politics, and medical discourses in abortion “counseling.” This student was named our college’s outstanding T.A this year and I’m so proud of her.

And finally, a master’s student in English showed up on my office doorstep asking to do an independent study on feminist perspectives on urban fantasy. It’s like manna from heaven! We’re going to set up a reading list and try to get a lot of it done this summer. I hope to blog about it.

Whenever I complain about my current job, I have to remember that if I were at a larger university with loads of faculty specializing in these areas, I would never get to be involved in so many wonderful projects.

3. Reading, etc. 

I’m reading a bunch of books at one time:

The classic Fabio cover

Savage Thunder, Johanna Lindsey, romance ($3.99 on Kindle)

The Sheik, E. M. Hull, romance (free for Kindle, also available free all over the web)

These Days Are ours, Michelle Hamioff, general fiction (sent to me by the author)

Virginia Lovers, Michael Parker, general fiction (sent to me by the publisher)

I’ve also been watching Mad Men. I am about six episodes into season 1, and am enjoying it quite a bit. Great for long cycles at the gym.

Finally, we saw Pirates! yesterday and LOVED it. So funny. I’m still chuckling over one pirate named “The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate” (he’s a woman) and another called ”The Pirate who Likes Kittens and Sunsets.” The film is based on a series of books by Gideon Defoe.

Have a great week!

I’d like to make three points about it, from my own point of view as a philosophy professor who specializes in feminist ethics, and as someone who does a good amount of clinical ethics work outside the academy:

(a) The important of the apology: I’ve seen some bloggers asking what the point is of an apology. Of course, no apology has the power to reverse time and undo the moral wrong that has been committed. But I don’t view ethics as a ledger you keep clean. Ethics is a way of being in community. The Story Siren’s plagiarism created rifts in the community. In particular, it damaged the trust on which the book blogging community is based. A good apology can help begin the process of moral repair. What we got from The Story Siren, beginning from the moment she asked her victims to keep quiet, continuing when she deleted her own plagiarism post, and then again when she reworded her own (already inadequate) second apology post, was the kind of apology that seeks to repair personal damage and restore personal social status, much like the celebrity and politician apologies we see on TV every week.

A restorative apology is not focused on the self, but on re-building community. Since The Story Siren appears to be moving on, business as usual, I doubt one is forthcoming. I’m sorry that she has opted not to take this opportunity for educating and strengthening the book blogging community.  I won’t bore you with my idea of the elements such an apology would contain, but I will make a prediction based on my many years as an ethics consultant working with health care providers who have made medical errors: without a meaningful attempt to take responsibility and restore trust, The Story Siren will never fully recover. With them, she may become more admired and influential than ever.

(b) Blogging is writing: I’ve been distressed to see the many defenders of The Story Siren who have claimed that there is nothing new in blogging, so there’s no possibility of plagiarism. My own undergraduate students sometimes say the same. Putting aside the question of plagiarism and “common knowledge”, I see this as part of a general view of blogging that it is somehow not writing. My fellow academics will defend their blogs by talking about how it helps them “with their writing”, by which they mean … other writing: journal article writing, monograph writing, grant writing, etc. Authors will say blogging helps them “with their writing”, too. By “writing”, they mean novel writing, short story writing.

But blogging IS writing. It may not be the same kind of writing as writing a novel or a journal article, but it is writing. I’m sorry that so many YA bloggers think so little of what they do. It’s as if, to some of them, creating blog posts is like taking a piss. You’ve got to go, and it just flows naturally. But that’s not my experience as either a creator or reader of blog posts. I see bloggers talking about how they are wrestling with a difficult post, editing a review for the tenth time, killing themselves trying to make sure their tone and words are appropriate for their post. Even The Story Siren’s “apology” post nods to the effort book blogging takes by making reference to the “pressure” she was under.

When I look at the book blogging community (by which I mean everyone who writes about books), by and large, I see a hard working, reflective, self-aware group of writers.

(c) Women and moral autonomy: Perhaps the most distressing facet of this whole thing is the tendency to characterize legitimate ethical questions and well-grounded moral judgment as jealousy, hatred, pettiness, or some other selfish and nonrational phenomenon. I have seen the same thing happen in the romance community. I think I’m uniquely situated given that my main job is teaching the history of ethical theory, and my other job is to help manage ethical conflicts in a large hospital, so I’d like to share what this looks like to me.

The history of Western moral philosophy, as diverse as it is in other respects, is, by and large, a history in which women are absent. Beginning well over two thousand years ago, and continuing through to the twentieth century, moral philosophers have claimed that women cannot be moral agents for a variety of reasons including their powerful emotions, their weak wills, their inability to grasp rational moral principles, their biology, and their social roles as caretakers. A moral agent, by the way, doesn’t just take morally praiseworthy and blameworthy action, but also makes moral judgments about other moral agents. I’m not going to throw quotes at you, but before you dismiss them for being philosophers, recall that these men, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, etc., are products of societies which largely agreed with them.

I wish I could say that the opinion that women aren’t fit to identify ethical issues and make moral judgments — that is, act as full participants in the moral community — is a relic of the past. But I can’t, because I’ve seen too many times the way women’s legitimate ethical concerns are brushed off as … jealousy, hatred, pettiness, or some other selfish and nonrational phenomenon. How else to explain that when a male physician refuses to perform a procedure he thinks is unsafe or unwise, he is applauded for his conscientious objection, but when a female nurse attempts to do the same, she is reprimanded? The physician gets kudos, while the nurse “needs more education.” I’ll spare you many, many variations on that theme I have seen in my career.

My point is that the very ability to name something as an ethical issue, and to hold others accountable for it, requires a certain amount of social power. Historically, and at present, some groups have less of that power than others. I’m sorry to see some women participate so eagerly in a tradition that casts women as morally stunted, selfish children, unable to think past their own out of control emotions.

Thanks to everyone who has written in the past week on this.

I watched John Hughes’ 1986 film Pretty in Pink on TV last night, and I just so happened to be reading You Couldn’t Ignore Me if You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation by Susannah Gora (Crown, 2010) at the same time. Credit to Gora, especially Chapter Six,  ”SITTING PRETTY: Ringwald and Hughes Reteam for Pretty in Pink, a Rose-Tinted Look at Teenage Love” for most of the list below.

1. The poster. The Breakfast Club (1985) was released just a year prior to Pretty in Pink (1986), and its poster featured the characters staring unsmilingly at the camera (Annie Leibowitz’s camera, to be precise). According to Gora, this was a departure from teen film posters which tended to emphasize the funny or silly, even when they contained serious elements (see, for example, the poster for Fast Times at Ridgemont High).

2. The Ringwald-Hughes reteaming, sort of. Ringwald had already starred in Sixteen Candles (1984) and The Breakfast Club, both written and directed by John Hughes. As he had done with those films, Hughes wrote the part of Andie Walsh for Ringwald. But he left directing duties to first time director Howard Deutch, who was until then best known for cutting film trailers. The studio, Paramount, wanted a bigger name for the female lead, someone like Jennifer Beals, who was famous for her role as the welder-exotic dancer in Flashdance (1983). Luckily, Beals turned them down.  Can you imagine an actor best known for this shower scene as Andie?

3. They wanted Charlie Sheen for the role of Blane McDonnagh. Or, if not Sheen, some lantern-jawed jock type. When Andrew McCarthy showed up, at Ringwald’s request, Hughes and Deutsch were puzzled:

“‘Him!? He’s just sort of this little shy, twerpy guy.’

After the audition, Ringwald went up to Hughes and Deutch and said, “That’s the kind of guy I would fall in love with.”

McCarthy grins thinking back on it. “I wasn’t gonna outcool a guy,” he says. Vulnerability and humility were what he “had to offer. And so I accentuated that.” (Gora, Kindle Locations 2696-2703)

4. They wanted Anthony Michael Hall for the part of Duckie. But Hall had been in four Hughes films in two years (Vacation, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, and The Breakfast Club) and wanted to try new things. He also felt the “two guys and a girl” plot was a rehash of Sixteen Candles. What did he make instead? Out of Bounds. Never heard of it? Me neither.

5. James Spader won the part of Steff by being a jerk in the audition process, walking in with a cigarette, putting it out on the floor, acting like an arrogant jerk (Gora, loc. 2779). He had starred in Tuff Turf (1985), a teen music-dance film the cheesy likes of which today’s teens will never know. Unless… they click here to see Spader’s character leap out of bed, in his boxers, holding two pistols, and shoot a fly off an Einstein poster on his bedroom wall (scroll ahead to 8:10 or so. It’s worth it, I promise.). I had a huge crush on Steff as a teen and felt then, as now, that all of the sex appeal of McCarthy and Cryer together wouldn’t fill one one Steff’s ever present silver flasks. Was there ever an actor who could rock a linen suit, unbuttoned shirt, loafers, no socks, and Bonnie Bell lip gloss like Spader? And he wore this to school!

6. Bit parts. Did you know that Gina Gershon had a small role in Pretty in Pink, as one of the rich bitches? That “comedian” Andrew Dice Clay was in it, playing a bouncer? That it’s the future vampire slayer, Buffy Summers — Kristy Swanson — who winks at Duckie at the end? And that Dweezil Zappa, who was Molly’s boyfriend at the time shows up briefly, too? Here’s a 1986 People pic of Molly and Dweezil.

7. A tragic death. Alexa Kenin, who played Andie’s mouthy friend who smoked in gym class, died before the film released, and it is dedicated to her and to a set decorator. According to the website findagrave.com, she was either beaten to death or died of an asthma attack.

8. The music. Hughes himself listened to music –namely British new wave bands like Depeche Mode and the Psychedelic Furs — that wasn’t yet well-known in the US. Ringwald loved that kind of music, too. Although Director Deutch wanted American rock, and would have preferred the Eagles, Hughes won out. I have to agree, watching the film again last night: the soundtrack was excellent.

The songs that the kids in Pretty in Pink are listening to, says music critic Rob Sheffield, “are by bands that only obscure, gloom-obsessed, gloom-obsessed, big-hair New Wave-y kids were listening to at the time—yet the movie presents that as the lingua franca of Midwestern American adolescence.” (Gora, Kindle Locations 3225-3226)

That said, there were two things I didn’t like about the soundtrack. One problem was having the Psychedelic Furs re-record “Pretty in Pink” to sound more upbeat and less dramatic than their original version. Thankfully, the lyrics remain pretty dark:

Richard Butler explained the song’s meaning to Mojo magazine November 2010: “The song was about a girl who kinda sleeps around, and thinks it’s really cool and thinks everybody really likes her, but they really don’t. She’s just being used. It’s quite scathing.”

The second really wounded me: failing to use Nik Kershaw’s 1984 original version of “Wouldn’t It Be Good”, opting instead for a new version with the Danny Huston Hitters. WTF??!!! “Wouldn’t It Be Good” was my favorite song and video of 1984.

One more bit of music trivia: did you know Suzanne Vega wrote “Left of Center” for the film, and for Andie specifically? I did not!

9. I liked Andie a lot on a re-viewing of this film. Boy, was she tough. I hadn’t remembered that. She supported her father emotionally and financially. She helped Duckie with his homework and Iona with her man problems. She was way more mature and strong than either male lead. Here she is, ripping Blane a new one for dodging her phone calls after asking her to the prom. And Blane actually cries! He was pretty milquetoast, it has to be said, pinballing the entire film between a domineering bff and a usually pissed-off redhead.

She goes to the prom alone. Nuff said.

10. The clothing. Ugh. For all the Andie’s vaunted fashion sense, I never liked how she dressed.  I understand it even less now. I am prepared to acknowledge this as a personal failing. But… could she have looked any more matronly than in the gray getup she wore on her date with Blane?

And, while I realize her prom dress showcased her grit and creativity and nonconformity, and I do love the neckline, couldn’t it at least have fit her body?

Ok, have at me *ducks.*

11. The ending. Everyone knows by now that Hughes’ screenplay called for a different ending. As Gora writes:

[Andie] is reinvigorated when she and Duckie reunite at the prom, in an “us against the world” climax. “It was sort of romantic,” Cryer says of the sequence, “but mostly, they were friends. There was not a kiss.” In that last shot, with Duckie and Andie twirling together in the center of the dance floor, oblivious to the stares, the movie seemed to be saying: there will always be Blanes in the world, but in this moment, that doesn’t matter. (Gora, Kindle Locations 2888-2891)

Test audiences booed. Gora says “60%” wanted Andie to end up with Blane. So they reshot the ending, having Blane show up alone, looking remorseful, and tested both versions with audiences, with the new one winning handily.  The new ending, although not favored by the director and others behind the scenes, had many advantages: it pleased the target market, was therefore more commercial, capitalized on the sexual chemistry between Ringwald and McCarthy, and, perhaps less plausibly, sent the message that economic divides could be bridged by love. On the negative side, it made the film fluffier, more of a fantasy, and sent a mixed message about both McCarthy’s and Ringwald’s characters. Are audiences supposed to forgive Blane’s after a ten second speech (“You said you couldn’t be with someone who didn’t believe in you. Well I believed in you. I just didn’t believe in me. I love you. Always.”) and puppy dog eyes? Was Andie truly strong and self-respecting or not? To this day the director, Howard Deutch, regrets it:

“I thought the new ending was heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. I thought it was unfair and wrong, and that’s not what the movie was intended to be. It felt,” he says, searching for the right word, “immoral.” (Gora, Kindle Locations 3045-3047)

12. Duckie. As much as I didn’t think Blane deserved Andie, I never understood how anyone could think Duckie was appealing as a love interest for Andie. To me, he was like an annoying little brother. He wore lederhosen and porkpie hats, for goodness sakes!

To the filmmakers, Duckie was the heart of the movie, but to me, Duckie was, at best, comic relief, and at worst, a deeply annoying scene chewer. Apparently, Ringwald agreed with at least part of my assessment:

“Actually,” Ringwald continues, holding nothing back, “I think he seemed gay. I mean, if they remade the movie now, he would be, like, the gay friend who comes out at the end. He wouldn’t be winking at a blonde [Kristy Swanson], he would be winking at a cute guy…I feel bad saying that I really fought for Robert Downey, Jr.,” Ringwald allows, “because it sort of seems like I don’t appreciate Jon’s performance, which I totally do—it’s just, it really did affect the movie.” Cryer is indeed aware of Ringwald’s feelings surrounding all of this. He points out that on the 2006 “Everything’s Duckie” edition DVD of Pretty in Pink, “Molly dropped the bomb that she would’ve been fine with the original ending if Robert Downey, Jr., had played Duckie…But since it was me, she just couldn’t see it. It was like, wow, so I’m that unattractive? Thanks, Mol!”(Gora, Kindle Locations 2935-2941)

I agree 100% with Ringwald. If they had cast Downey, the original ending would have worked perfectly.

13. Blane’s prom scene hair. They had to call the actors back to reshoot the new ending. By then, McCarthy had shaved his head and lost tons of weight for another role, so they used a wig. It’s truly appalling. I wasn’t able to find a good image, but here’s a link to the scene (skip to 2:01).

14. Classy. The 1970s and 80s inaugurated period of quickly widening class distinctions in the US. There’s been some interesting academic work on the Hughes films, a lot of it focusing on the way the romance narratives intersect with class distinctions. Here’s a bit from an article called “Postfeminist Cliques? Class, Postfeminism, and the Molly Ringwald-John Hughes Films” by Anthony C. Bleach from Cinema Journal (Vol 49, Issue 3, 2010, pp. 24-44):

Like Bernstein, Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner suggest that Hughes’s teen films have “the makings of a socialist discourse,” as they “make class differences the basis of their romance plots.”‘ What his films actually accomplish with this “subliminal” discourse seems to be equivocal, though. On one hand, Ryan and Kellner claim that his films appear to “mobilize persistent populist anger against unjustifiable differentials in the distribution of wealth” by using romance narratives that show teenagers from different classes superseding class differences in order to join together. On the other hand, these same films can’t seem to think outside of these class differences: “none . . overtly advocates a leveling” of them. What Hughes seems to be saying in his films is that “the metaphor of romance . , . promotes the persistence of class differences by suggesting that they ultimately make no difference.” Regardless, his films do express “a desire for such leveling” of class differences, although on a “personal/emotional” level rather than on a “structural/rational” one…

Jon Lewis also discusses the ways Hughes’s teen films emphasize the importance of individual solutions to class differences: “Hughes’s little dramas of class warfare end . . . with the triumph of individuality”^ Lewis claims, importantly, that it is the female protagonist whose place in the narrative allows her to upset the social order of things. He argues that the protagonist’s “populism,… [her] democratic benevolence, coordinates a victory of romance over cynicism.”"‘ Further, he claims that Hughes’s teen films insist “on the clairvoyance and persistence of the feminine.”" These critics suggest that one reason why Ringwald and these films are endlessly remembered today might be because a young woman is the one figure across the films who attempts to navigate the class differences of her social milieu.’

15.  “Seminal! Iconic! Generation-defining!” Really? I like Gora’s book, but there are a lot of overblown claims like these:

there is one generation who was particularly, and permanently, affected by these movies: the post–Baby Boom cohort born in the late 1960s and 1970s, labeled Generation X. For these people who came of age in the 1980s, this cinematic world and its players made an indelible mark upon their formative years. (Gora, Kindle Locations 246-248)

“these are the films that define every teenage generation.”

“Maybe the reason today’s teens relate so deeply to these films is because the movies helped create the very notion of the teenage experience as we know it.”

“the shared experience of a generation forever changed by the movies of their youth.”

These films “captured and defined something that is very powerful and meaningful to people.”

I was a white suburban middle-class heterosexual American high school girl from 1983-1987 — the target audience if there ever was one –  and I would deny every one of these claims. This is actually the first time I’ve seen Pretty in Pink in at least 20 years, and I only watched it because it was on TV. I can’t recall if I saw these movies in the theater or on video.  I certainly wouldn’t say they had a big impact on my life or on my friends’ lives. It’s been enjoyable re-watching some of these old Hughes films, but no different than re-watching Terminator or Blade Runner or Lucas or The Sure Thing or any of the other movies I saw at the same time.

That said, it’s been fun taking this little trip into film history. I’m working on a post on Some Kind of Wonderful. Stay tuned!