| A Moment of Jen | |||
posted by Jen at 9/16/2004 10:35:00 PM According to the producers, and my TiVo, I'll be on the Jane Pauley show this Wednesday. Set your VCRs, as we used to say! Also -- and I solemnly swear I'm not going to turn this blog into my personal bad-review bitchfest -- especially with all the good ones -- but a critic who shall not be named has deemed LITTLE EARTHQUAKES -- and I quote -- "minor Weiner." Which, if you are pronouncing my name correctly, rhymes! I'm quite certain this was not the reviewer's intention, but man, I just cannot stop laughing at the sound of it. Minor Weiner! I'm going to suggest it to both of my brothers as a possible baby name. | # Wednesday, September 15, 2004 posted by Jen at 9/15/2004 10:38:00 PM Okay, so when we last left off, I was sitting in the green room of The Jane Pauley Show, feeling trepidatious. Yes, all of the guests who'd lost weight were expressing mixed feelings about their new selves -- but from where I was sitting, all I could hear was the audience whooping in praise of the before-and-after pictures. Then the comedian who'd lost 170 pounds asked me why I was on the show. "I write novels," I said. "Good in Bed?" Her eyes lit up. Her jaw dropped. "Oh. My God. OHMYGOD that is my FAVORITE BOOK!!!" she said. I was surprised. I guess I'm always surprised when someone who isn't, you know, related to me says that. Then the producer led me out to the studio, where I could hear Khalia Ali talking about her decision to have her stomach banded. My own stomach was flipping around in a most alarming manner as the makeup guy powdered my face, the sound lady adjusted my mic, and I took my seat across from Jane Pauley. "Jennifer Weiner is a phenomenon," she began. The audience cheered. The audience screamed. I have no idea whether there were people telling the audience members to do that or what, but it was pretty overwhelming. "GOOD IN BED," Jane began. "Well, I like to think so," I said modestly. More cheering. More screaming. Jane cracked up. "Hey, if Jane Pauley says it, it must be true!" I said, feeling incredibly pleased that not only was nobody booing, people seemed actually pleased to see a plus-size woman who wasn't planning on weight-loss surgery on the stage. So I said my piece. I talked about how I'd always been on the larger side, but that I'd never been pathetic -- how I'd always been active and athletic, always done well at work, always had boyfriends. "And sex, too," I said. "Sorry, Mom." I talked about how I came to write GOOD IN BED after going through a terrible breakup, and how I wanted to tell a story where a girl who looked like me got her happy ending without magically becoming thin. I talked about the ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY photo shoot, GOOD IN BED getting optioned by HBO, baby weight and the pressure to lose it as fast as the movie stars, and how, as the previous guests had demonstrated, losing weight doesn't guarantee you inner peace or a happy ending or anything, really, except that you'll be wearing smaller clothes. Finally, I talked about how I hope that my books help all women -- on diets, off diets, pregnant, new moms, and everyone in between -- to feel a little bit better in their own skins, and a little more at peace. "I want to have you back!" Jane Pauley said. So that was that, and all was well that ended well. Life is good...and the show will air some time next week, I think -- I'll post the info when I have it. L'shanah tovah to everyone who's celebrating...and for everyone who asked about why the reading in New York conflicts with Night Two of Rosh Hashanah, please note that I"m reading in Brooklyn at 5 p.m. on Saturday. Hope to see you all there! Jen | # posted by Jen at 9/15/2004 09:35:00 AM Happy day after publication, everyone! And I'm sorry about getting my crabby on the other day. My nobody-respects-my-genre rant notwithstanding, the truth is, I ain’t got much to complain about. Life is good. Life is actually terrific. Yesterday, I had to break with my pub-day routine of stalking readers in Philadelphia bookstores to see if they’re picking up my stuff to head to New York and tape an episode of The Jane Pauley Show. The topic? Women who’ve lost a lot of weight and still aren’t happy. At the beginning of the process, I wasn’t sure I was going to be happy. “So,” the producer doing the pre-interview by telephone over the weekend said, after we’d painstakingly covered the publication history and plots of my first two books, “how much would you say you weighed at your heaviest?” Oy vey. “Not going there!” I told her, as cheerfully as I could. “So were you overweight your whole life?” “No, not really….” “And you struggled with it.” “Well….” “You were unhappy.” “No!” I told her it was more complicated than that – that yes, I’d spent most of my twenties losing and regaining the same number of pounds, that I’d despaired of my figure and had an ongoing fantasy of waking up in Angelina Jolie’s body (minus the tattoos), but that I’d also been having a pretty kicking life that featured both professional accomplishments and boyfriends, and that all of the success I’d achieved had occurred without major weight loss. I hung up the phone feeling a little concerned about the direction the show was taking. That feeling only got worse when I arrived at the studio to get my hair and makeup done. “I lost eighty-five pounds,” said the svelte brunette the next chair over, in a tone of evangelical fervor. “I took control of my life!” Yikes, I thought, as my heart sank into my unreduced and stretch-marked stomach. Does that mean I’m going to come on as the woman whose life is out of control? I started lurking in the corridors to hear more about the other guests, and finally cornered a producer to learn that I’d be coming on after I Lost Eighty-Five Pounds; a pair of sisters who’d lost lots of weight in different ways and were dealing with issues of competitiveness; a stand-up comic who lost a hundred and seventy pounds and all of her bookings; a stylist who’d give two of the women mini-makeovers, and Khalia Ali, the boxer’s daughter, an absolutely stunning full-figured woman who’d designed a line of plus-size clothing. "Great!" I said. “And,” the producer continued, “she just had the lap-band procedure!” Double oy vey. I sat in the green room with my heart in my throat, listening to Miss Eighty-Five describe the misery of her fat years. “I lost my twenties…I lost my thirties,” she said, as shots of a frowning, pale woman with multiple chins and an unfortunate hairstyle flashed behind her. Understand, I know that there are plenty of overweight women who do feel that way – like they were invisible and miserable until they got thin, and that's when their lives really started. Obviously, it’s not how I feel about my own life. I worry that, especially given the proliferation of formerly fat celebrities floating in their big-girl jeans on the cover of People after their weight-loss surgery, it’s the only story being told in the media about the lives of larger women: fat = undiluted misery; skinny = long-deferred happiness; with no room for gray, or for anything in between. And I worry that, through the sheer force of repetition, not to mention the before-and-after features on every weight-loss advertisement and fitness magazine, that that story becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy...simply because it's the only story girls and young women ever get to see. “I lost eighty-five pounds through diet and exercise!” the woman continued. The audience whooped and cheered to shots of her waving weights in the air as she jogged on a treadmill. I cringed. Oh, God. They’re not going to cheer for me. What if they boo? More this afternoon, complete with my now-obligatory happy ending. Right now the nanny's here, the baby's sleeping, and I'm treating myself to what I just bet will be the only movie I get to see for the next few months. Meanwhile, a mostly nice review from the Washington Post, whose author feels I belong more with Terry McMillan and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez than Cathleen Schine and Lorrie Moore. (Register to read it, or find a password here.) Fair enough, since I’ve read everything by Terry McMillan and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (DISAPPEARING ACTS is one of my favorites), and struggled through only a single Cathleen Schine book before deciding she wasn’t for me. My one complaint: how could a reviewer named Debra Sussman Susser have failed to comment on a character named Becky Rothstein Rabinowitz? It’s only like my favorite joke in the whole book! | # Monday, September 13, 2004 posted by Jen at 9/13/2004 01:28:00 PM A while back, I had to do a Q and A where they asked what the worst thing about being a novelist was. I think I made up some bullshit about character economy and how hard it is to make choices about what stays and what goes in the final draft. I lied. If I’d been honest, I would have said that the worst thing, hands down, is the bad reviews. Last week, however, I learned that I was wrong. The bad reviews are not the worst thing. The worst thing is when your mother calls you on the phone to read you your bad reviews out loud. “Did you see today’s New York Times?” my Mom demanded. “Um, yeah. I was kind of hoping you hadn’t.” (For those of you who missed it, LITTLE EARTHQUAKES was part of Janet Maslin’s semi-regular Big Dumb Book Roundup. Yup, there I was, between the porn star and the celebrity politician, being called “formulaic,” which, all things considered and given the company, wasn’t actually all that bad.) “Isn’t it great?” said Mom. “No, great would have been if she’d actually liked the book.” “Jenny,” said my mother sternly. “Your book got mentioned in The New York Times! That’s terrific!” Honestly, I am truly grateful for the mention. I know I got off easy, given that the Times mostly ignores chick lit, unless it’s been produced by a Vice President’s daughter, or it’s goring an insufficiently veiled ox. The one line that really frosts my cupcake – and you’ll forgive me if I’m paraphrasing, because I can’t bring myself to actually read the damn article – wasn’t about my book, but about my readers. According to Ms. Maslin, LITTLE EARTHQUAKES has narrow appeal and will only be enjoyed by readers curious about the details of breast-feeding, anesthesia and delivery. Which is like saying that MADAME BOVARY will be of interest only to adulteresses. Or that THE DA VINCI CODE will be enjoyed best by code-breakers. (Not that I’m necessarily comparing my work to either Flaubert or Dan Brown who, I’m betting, have never before found themselves in the same paragraph.). Granted, I am biased. But I think that LITTLE EARTHQUAKES will appeal to readers interested in smart, funny, well-developed characters and the struggles they go through, whether those readers young mothers, older mothers, mothers-to-be, women who could care less about having kids themselves and – brace yourselves – men. Will LITTLE EARTHAQUAKES be of especial interest and poignancy to new mothers? Probably. Will it be of interest to those readers exclusively? For my sake, and my publishers’, I sincerely hope not. But that’s the typical reflexive, simplistic, sexist take on chick-lit for you: produced by women writers who aren’t smart or creative enough to see past their own eyelashes and create vivid imaginary worlds; consumed by women readers too stupid or silly or self-involved to even want to read about something that hasn’t already, or might someday, happen to them. If you’re Tom Perrotta or Benjamin Cheever writing about the joys and frustrations of family living, universal appeal is a given, and it’s Literature with a capital L, worthy of everyone’s attention, not to mention a full review. If you’re me, well, if it’s by a new mommy, it’s only going to be for new mommies, so get to the back of the bus with the politicians and the porn star. (And did I mention that it’s T minus twenty-four hours until the book comes out?) Meanwhile, on to better things. I did an interview with my friend Elizabeth, the coolest literary mama I know, over here. Topics include a hint about what happens in the sequel to GOOD IN BED. And there’s a great review of the new book here, and a wonderful profile -- including some very smart points about the critical establishment's misreading or non-reading of chick lit -- here. | # |
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