From: Maia Cheli-Colando <maia>
Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 23:06:34 -0700

I first encountered Block's books five years ago at a Borders in Eugene. The covers were interesting, the titles catching... still, they didn't seem like something I would want to take home. But with this being the topic on CCBC, I attempted the "homework" and picked up four Block titles from the library yesterday: /Weetzie Bat/, /Witch Baby/,
/Girl Goddess #9/ and /I Was a Teenage Fairy/.

I won't make it to /Teenage Fairy/. I read /Weetzie Bat/ and /Witch Baby/ last night and today, and found those disturbing. But still I carried on through /Girl Goddess # 9/ until the end of /Rave/. And that was enough for me. I'll be happy to send the books back with my husband tomorrow; as I told my daughter, I'm not old enough for these.

Tonight lying in bed after finishing all that I could stand of /Girl Goddess/, I felt a great need to wash my brain. I considered reading a book by Robin McKinley or Patricia McKillip, a drink of port or peppermint tea, a walk on the beach? (I've settled for a cup of soy milk, two thick chunks of dark chocolate, three lovely cherry tomatoes, and writing this post. Comfort food now; comfort books may be next!)

If I had to pick a single word to describe the mind-view of these books, it would be narcissistic. Appropriative and strung-out come to mind too. I hardly know where to begin in what I didn't like about the writing, so I guess I fall to the other end of the spectrum Merri describes. I realized, after reading /Weetzie Bat/ and /Witch Baby/, that I was angry. The charicatures, the Hollywood-like appropriation of culture -- a little Jamaica here, a little Cherokee/Coyote there, a little western witchcraft -- the absolute lack of rootedness or sense of the world outside these characters' minds gave me the creeps. It didn't even occur to me, as one reviewer wrote, that so many of the characters are wealthy, because it all felt desperately cheap to me.

Fantasy I love. Urban Fantasy can be brilliant. It's not the Fantasy of the books that disgusted me, but rather the narcissism. And the obsession with things you can buy, clothes you can wear, and ways you can paint mental and spiritual distress all over and inside your body.

So I went online to read other folks' responses to Block, and a few interviews. I was startled to read that Charlotte Zolotow was Block's editor. I was unsurprised to read that Block is obsessed with fashion, by her own account, and that she had not written her books for youth. Several reviewers mentioned Block's willingness to tackle tough topics: AIDS (the disease of no name), transgender operations, sexual preferences, racism. And on the surface, she does. But how does she handle these issues? In /Girl Goddess/, a /junior high school student/ buys a plane ticket, flies across the country, tromps around Golden Gate Park and then LA on her own, all because she is unwilling to hear from her mother directly that she is also her father. And, is it realistic that the girl confronts for the first time in junior high school that
"Tuck has two mommies"? In /Witch Baby/, one child plays with kachinas and butterfly wings while the other shaves her sister's head and pins horror stories to their walls? (Leaving aside whatever Electra issues were playing out with the dual globes and Witch Baby's desire to crawl in her mother's lap to whisper secrets into her father's ears.) In
/Rave/ a fifteen year old girl is both a straight-A student and an unrefusable groupie; she dies from a heroin overdose. And in /Girl Goddess #9/, teen girls go unsupervised to the mansion of a rather raving lunatic performer.

I guess for me the most pervasive description of narcissism in these books comes with the genie in the lamp. Dirk has a Duck, Fifi dies and leaves them a castle-cottage, and Weetzie has a Secret Agent Lover Man simply because Weetzie wishes it so. Even their lovers' names don't belong to them. They aren't /people/ of their own. And the protagonists are each -- Weetzie, Witch Baby, Dirk -- obsessed to the point of self?use with finding a person to obsessively love. What happened to the rest of life?

I don't get it. I don't know what else to say.

Maia

Merri Lindgren wrote:

t about Block's other titles, such as Wasteland, Violet & Claire, I Was a Teenage Fairy, or Girl Goddess #9? Let's hear your thoughts.
Received on Wed 08 Jun 2005 01:06:34 AM CDT