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Books So Bad They're Good: Chewing on Chick Lit [1]

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Date: 2022-10-15

I admit that the first thing that came to mind when I heard the phrase “chick lit” was Chiclets, the once-popular chewing gum tablets that could be found at most drugstores and candy counters. They came in several flavors (most notably peppermint) and functioned as both a candy and a breath freshener until they were largely superseded by Tic Tacs in the 1970s and onwards. My uncle Oscar was particularly fond of the peppermint variety, and used to chew them when cogitating on the folly of his siblings, the foibles of politicians, and the general condition of the world.

They were also a very good way to distract himself when my aunt Betty, his slightly deranged sister, did something particularly outrageous, like threatening to put her used Dentyne in my mother’s hair when she got bored on a road trip, but that’s a tale for another day.

One thing that Oscar would never have imagined is that his favorite chewing gum would share a name with a sub-genre of the romance novel: chick lit.

Those of you who aren’t familiar with this once-ubiquitous variation on the usual “girl meets boy, there are complications, they live happily ever formula,” congratulations on your great good luck. The rest of us, who spent several years having trouble finding a paperback shelf that wasn’t about to collapse with fluffy, breezy, books about Rotten Jobs, the difficulty in finding a Good Man, Small Quirky Apartments, Rotten Bosses, Sassy Best Friends, Rotten Sex, Brunch With The Girls! followed by “Wine O’Clock,” Rotten Relationships, Designer Shoes, “Wine O’Clock” followed by Sleepovers With the Girls!, and maybe a cat or two, are still cringing every time we see a dust jacket with cartoonishly bright colors, women in sky-high heels and miniskirts, men in rakish suits, and cutesy-poo titles referring to some aspect of urban life and love. Women gobbled them up like, well, Chiclets, men scratched their heads, and those of us who’ve tried and failed to see the appeal of romance novels tried and failed to see the appeal of these.

Some of these books weren’t bad — Bridget Jones’ Diary, The Devil Wears Prada — but the vast majority were about as nourishing and substantive as a brunch of foamed bacon drizzled over an egg white and watercress omelet washed down by a bubbly glass of prosecco and accompanied by Pachelbel’s Canon in D on endless repeat. For all that these were supposedly hip, edgy, amusing takes on the plight of the modern urban single, at core they were the same old cautionary tale about how life in the big city is dangerous, lonely, and not nearly as much fun as it’s cracked up to be. It’s nothing new or groundbreaking, high heels and drunk sleepovers aside, and the Happy Ending With A Nice Young Man is about as timeworn as it gets. Romance comics...Mills & Boon novels...Douglas Sirk movies...Valley of the Dolls...change the setting, toss in more or less melodrama, put the protagonist in different clothes, and it’s about as chicklish as it gets.

Tonight I bring you two examples of what might be called chick lit, one old, one new. One, recently deemed a minor classic, was turned into a Technicolor melodrama that’s both terrible and mesmerizing. The other, by the authors of one of the modern chick lit classics, is so desperately mediocre it’s all but impossible to remember a single incident, character, or phrase in the entire book:

The Best of Everything, by Rona Jaffe — Rona Jaffe is best remembered today (if she’s remembered at all) as the author of Mazes and Monsters, a stunningly awful “exposé” of how playing Dungeons and Dragons inevitably leads to a psychotic break and other assorted mayhem. Loosely based on an incident where a troubled young man who happened to participate in a roleplaying game had run away from college after a failed suicide attempt, Mazes and Monsters was written in only a few days because Jaffe wanted to capitalize on the furor when the aforesaid troubled young man was alleged to have been playing Dungeons and Dragons prior to vanishing, and boy oh boy does it show. The book, which is dignified by the phrase “sensationalist trash,” was quickly made into an equally terrible TV movie that is notable solely because it stars Tom Hanks in his first post-Bosom Buddies role as a sensitive young man who loses his mind playing Dungeons and Mazes and Monsters.

Before that, though, Jaffe was known for writing a surprisingly decent novel about the supposed horrors and pitfalls of life as what used to be called “a career girl” in New York in the early 1960’s. The book, which essayist Nora Ephron said was both trashy and painfully close to her own experience, certainly has its soapy moments, but it captures the essence of the pre-Feminine Mystique working world for young single women: the constant belittling, the sexual harassment, the pregnancy scares and faithless men who caused them, the lack of respect for even the brightest young woman, and how the necessity of getting and keeping a man can lead to madness and worse. Even The New Yorker ran an approving piece on it a couple of years ago, and it looks like for all its flaws, The Best of Everything is going to join Grace Metalious’ legendary Peyton Place as a minor if not entirely respectable classic.

And then there’s the movie.

Mother Mary Malone, the movie.

On paper, The Best of Everything should have been terrific. The cast included Hope Lange, Louis Jourdan, Stephen Boyd, Joan Crawford, and the dazzling Suzy Parker literally outshining the entire cast every time she unleashes her cascade of flaming hair. The script was by two Hollywood veterans, and the director, Jean Negulesco, had directed the likes of Johnny Belinda, How to Marry a Millionaire, and Three Coins in the Fountain. If any movie should have been an instant classic, this was it.

Except...not so much. Oh, there were bright spots — the cinematography, which makes even the main characters’ tiny apartment look enticing, the dreamy costumes, Suzy Parker’s glorious mane and even more glorious cheekbones, a fun little joke about the Seagram Building — but the cliched melodrama of the original is so glaringly obvious that the viewer has a very good idea of what is going to happen to each of the “career girls” by the end (spoiler: one has several affairs, one has a miscarriage, and one goes crazy and falls off a fire escape thanks to her stiletto heels getting caught in the grating). The movie made some money but didn’t crack the top ten or even fifteen at the box office, and thought it managed to earn two Oscar nominations (Best Costumes and Best Song), it lost both (to uber-blockbuster Ben-Hur and something called A Hole in the Head, respectively, and no, I have never seen the latter and don’t particularly wish to).

Worst of all, what is supposed to be the story of three young women is basically stolen by Joan Crawford. She had taken the part after the sudden death of her husband, Pepsi-Cola executive Alfred Steele, had left her deeply in debt, and her performance was so dominating that much of it ended up on the cutting room floor (allegedly for length, but co-star Diane Baker later stated that a scene where her character, a bitter, aging “career girl” who regrets her life choices, has a drunken meltdown was a show-stopper). Even so, Crawford so dominated the screen during her glorified cameo that the New York Herald Tribune’s review ended with “Miss Crawford comes near making the rest of the picture look like a distraction.” If that weren’t bad enough, Crawford, who was on the board of Pepsi-Cola thanks to her late husband, insisted on having a vending machine featuring Pepsi products in a corporate breakroom, seemingly in hopes of boosting sales and thus the value of her stock.

Whether this early example of product placement or not succeeded, The Best of Everything isn’t the best melodrama, best chick flick, or best anything of its time. It is fun to watch for the Pepsi machine, though.

How To Be A Grown-Up, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus — Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus are best known (if at all) for their first book, 2002’s The Nanny Diaries. This book, which hit the bestseller lists despite a predictable plot, stereotyped characters, and a child name (“Grayer”) that sounded like it was ripped straight from Lemony Snicket, was allegedly based on the authors’ collective experience as nannies to no fewer than thirty wealthy Upper East families during their time at NYU. This led to a brief but juicy game of “hunt the source family” among certain readers, and likely spurred at least a portion of its sale. That the family the heroine, Nanny Schuester, works for is a drearily familiar cliché of neglectful con man father, spoiled neglectful mother, and endearing child who loves Nanny because no one else gives a toss about him, didn’t seem to matter. The writing was breezy, the setting was one that’s very easy to hate, and authors’ former profession gave the book a glossy coating of authenticity.

That working for thirty families says more about McLaughlin and Kraus than anything going on in the actual families seems to have escaped everyone’s notice, including the authors’. Even if they worked for an employment agency, that is a lot of families; I’ve worked as a temp off and on for a good chunk of my working life, and I’m not sure I’ve worked for that many companies, period. If nothing else, neither could possibly have stayed with a family long enough to have more than a passing acquaintance with what actually was going on, especially since both were also full time students when all this nannying was going on.

I haven’t read this allegedly amusing masterpiece, but then again the very idea of a Brazilian fills me with such horror that I’d rather reread Holy Blood, Holy Grail or another book about Merovingian Jesus and his smokin’ hot baby mama, Mary Magdalene. Even I have my limits.

I did manage to work my way through How To Be a Grown-Up, though. This is due entirely to my BFF, Beata, picking up the thing at a library sale, saying “this is perfect for your diaries,” and shoving it into my less than eager hands. I was less than impressed with the cover (a grayscale picture of a woman’s lower legs and feet, one clad in what seems to be a Chuck Taylor sneaker, the other in (of course) a spike heel, all colored the full pink of a 1950’s bathroom tile) and the synopsis (middle aged woman who married her childhood crush is dumped by the crush, gets a job with a start-up, and ultimately grows up and finds herself) sounded like any of half a hundred other books. There was nothing at first to indicate that it had wobbled out of Badbookistan in its mismatched shoes, let alone was worth a diary.

Gentle readers, believe this: I will never doubt Beata’s judgment about Books So Bad They’re Good again.

The problems with How To Be A Grown-Up extend far beyond the cover and the plot. Each and every character, from the narrator, Rory (who clearly inspired, at least in part, by designer Tory Burch), to the ludicrous start-up she works for (“JeuneBug,” a luxury website for children even though it’s their indulgent parents will actually end up buying the overpriced strollers and widgets and suchlike for the their tots). The supporting characters are stereotypes, every single one, and the plot is about as believable as one of those Saturday morning cartoons starting Penelope Pitstop, the Ant Hill Mob, and Muttley the sniggering dog.

Then there’s the actual writing, which may have been intended as light and amusing, but includes gems like the following:

I walked to the doorway of the conference room in a fugue state, like Bette Midler in Stella Dallas, just trying to get a glimpse of her daughter’s wedding.

The Better Midler version of Stella Dallas???? Really? Really?

As the elevator chugged up to JeuneBug in its ominous way Monday morning, I decided I had hit on a brilliant plans.

Everyone knows that ominous elevators are so very much worse than regular old creaky ones.

Only it was Blake. Standing next to boobs. Big boobs. The nipples were hidden behind two half jack-o’-lanterns, but still. Boobs. Big ones. Where was he? What could he be at now, at our age, that looked like a college party? What was happening to us? Oh God, what if I was wrong — what if he wasn’t just taking his professional frustration out on me?

Based on this paragraph, I’d say Blake was indulging in a fetish for, well, mammary glands, but then again, I’m just a girl from Pittsburgh. Who knows more than one term for “breasts.” Really. I do.

The whole book is written like this, in a weird tight first person that reads like someone’s idea of a what a middle aged woman with a childish husband is like, not an actual middle aged woman with a childish husband. Choppy sentences, shaky grammar, attempted stream of consciousness that would probably make James Joyce have an aneurysm...let’s just say that if this is how McLaughlin and Kraus normally write, I’m amazed they got into print, period, let alone made back their advance.

The worst, the absolute worst phrase in the entire book, though, comes right at the end. Rory meets up with her new romantic interest by chance, and we have the following:

I smooth down my skirt. Blot the sweat off my forehead. Fix my ponytail. And stand there. “Rory?” I look up and all at once there he is, in a khaki suit and tanned. Lightning strikes below my belly button.

There’s a lot more words after that, but me, I got nothing.

Nothing, that is, beyond profound relief that there are only two more pages before this book, and my time with it, are blessedly done.

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Have you ever read any chick lit? Seen either The Best of Everything or The Nanny Diaries? Laughed at the scene in the latter where Scarlett Johansson wears a patriotic costume while speaking to the guy who later played Captain America? Owned a house with a dull pink bathroom? It’s a crisp fall night in New England, so grab a cup of hot cider and share….

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