From: drabkin <arcanis>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 19:39:44 -0700

Jennifer wrote:

People (all ages) appear to be reading them for many different reasons.
 From conversations, it does appear that teens recognize the emotional states Block depicts so strongly and believably. I responded immediately to the feeling of Los Angeles -- the setting was unbelievable! "Weetzie Bat" took me right back to the neighborhood I grew up in, where I haven't lived in many years. The evocation of place -- the way light fell, the almost-drunk feeling of riding in an open convertible through that peculiar, particular kind of light and temperature and air that's only found in Los Angeles at a certain time of year -- the way food tasted at the Tick-Tock restaurant in Hollywood (which was a real place, and they did have green icy sherbets in the middle of the meal), the way the sidewalks felt when you ran and skated over them... Anyway, you can tell I liked that book very much. And having grown up in that part of L.A./Hollywood, the descriptions of people seemed quite accurate too -Weetzie's father and mother, both types I knew. Grandma Fifi, and her little house in the Hollywood Hills (I could swear I used to drive past that identical house every day). Francesca Lia Block is a master of description. I know it's often thought that readers don't care for description or long descriptive passages, but that all depends on how it's done. Block knows how to do it. It doesn't hurt that she also understands how to express -- better than most -- that particular intensity of pain that teenagers actually seem to enjoy, that "it hurts so good" kind of emotion that horrifies their parents and that seems to appear in so much of their music. I wouldn't know what to call it -- it certainly is not that much-overused and much-misused buzzword "angst", but maybe it's close.

Marian Drabkin
Received on Thu 10 Jun 1999 09:39:44 PM CDT