An older ('80s?) version of the FOREVER... cover
And one of the things that struck me about FOREVER… (which, remarkably, I had not read since a boyfriend introduced me to it in high school) is how so very 1970s it is. I mean, check this out, you guys; this is a scene between the 17-year-old narrator Kath and her 13-year-old sister Jamie:
“What were you two doing in your bedroom? [...] I know all about sex.”
“Congratulations!”
“Were you fucking?”
“Jamie!”
“That’s not a bad word… hate and war are bad words but fuck isn’t.”
The FOREVER... I bought at WalMart last month
And it’s funny to be reading it today, because on the one hand, I kept being struck by how much more political the characters were than in almost any books today. I feel this over and over again when I read YA books from the ’70s; the sense of social transition and the normalcy of political debate are just palpable. It’s a lot more fun than the blandly liberalized world of most YA publishing today, I think. (And, I mean… he names his penis Ralph. Does anyone not love this book — I mean, besides the people perpetually trying to censor it?)
But I have to say, I am sick to death of reading books where everyone’s parents have glamorous middle-class or upper-class jobs. (Renowned film critic! Philanthropist!) It’s a long-standing complaint of mine against people who’ve produced some of the literature and TV that rings emotionally truest to me in the small scale (Sarah Dessen; Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick); they only seem to write about their own world, in which everyone is some form of small-business owner, and near everyone is white, and after a while I just don’t believe in it anymore.
It’s hard to level that complaint against any individual book, but in a whole oevre it grates on me.* None of this changes that FOREVER… is a damn good story. Despite the artificiality I feel in the world being created by the publishing industry as a whole, I believe in Michael and Kath.
Although, not necessarily in how quickly they develop a sex life that many adults might be envious of. Just sayin’.
* I might also be particularly sensitive to this today because of how annoyed I was by one of today’s “Most Popular” articles in the New York Times, the latest in their never-ending series of uncritical lifestyle features on the thoughtlessly privileged, which features sentiments like, “Like most new parents, we just assumed our child would attend a private elementary school in Manhattan!”
UPDATE: Can you see this post? This seems to be the incredible disappearing post. I do not know why.
-->Feed me text
April 4, 2009 at 5:59 pm
As a young lad growing up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, my mom used to use those exact words to justify her swearing at home all of the time.
April 4, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Your mom sounds cool.
April 5, 2009 at 1:01 am
I can see it!
Also, I think I know what you mean about the parents with all the glam jobs. Though Forever is totally awesome, and I’ll always love it. And Judy Blume in general–she rocks.
That NYT art looks so, so snotty!
April 5, 2009 at 11:18 am
That’s a *very* astute point about Herskovitz and Zwick, and not one I can recall hearing before. In particular, MSCL’s Patty seems to be a victim of this narrow worldview.
Oh, and the existence of this comment might resolve your Schrödinger’s Cat-style conundrum.
April 5, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Some of my favorite Paula Danziger books have that 1970s-ness to them too – it didn’t register so much when I first read them, maybe because I was younger than the characters in the books so it was all unknown, but now its both jarring and endearing.
Also, yeah, I too recently re-read FOREVER for the first time in years and the one and only part that didn’t ring true was how quickly and easily they got to really good sex. Actually, now that I think about it, there seems to be a common portrayal in teen books with sex that the first time is awkward and maybe painful, but after that you’re set. Which I just don’t believe to be a common phenomenon, although perhaps there are a few exceptional (and super-lucky) teenagers out there.
April 5, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I got sidetracked by the link you provided (I read that article open-mouthed) but I am back to say… I noticed the 70s thing when I read Lois Duncan’s Daughters of Eve last year. It was almost like a comedy!
April 5, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Thanks for the comments, all.
Weaver: Yeah, this is something I’ve been thinking about in Herskovitz & Zwick’s work for a while — especially when they were scabbing on the writers’ strike last year. A book I love, THE MOMMY MYTH by Meredith Michaels and Susan Douglas, also takes them to task for the preciousness of their portrayal of parenting in THIRTYSOMETHING (which, by the way, I’ve never seen; it’s before my time).
MSCL and ONCE AND AGAIN still speak to me (obviously), but — more so in the latter — I am frustrated by the sense that the producers’ and writers’ sense of what the world is like is, um, not.
Emily and Lenore: I *totally* feel this with Paula Danziger (actually, it’s one of the things I really enjoy about reading CAN YOU SUE YOUR PARENTS FOR MALPRACTICE?, which remains my favorite of her books). I don’t know the Lois Duncan book (I think I’ve only read KILLING MR. GRIFFITH, which I loved), but now I totally want to check it out.
Usually the ’70s thing works for me, but not always… I read a simply atrocious book when Emily and I took a road trip together last summer, GIRL MEETS BOY by Hila Colman. Just…no.
April 5, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Oh, and Emily: on the sex thing: Totally. TOTALLY!
April 5, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Hey,
Thanks for posting on my blog.
Actually, the Women’s Movement dies in the 70s, which was a period of rightward reaction to the close of the students’ movement. So by the early 80s the Women’s movement is so weak that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) doesn’t go through, and so legally women’s rights are still not equal to that of men. You’re right in that what remained was liberals, who believed that consciousness raising was the method by which women would be freed. Of course it turns out that just KNOWING your position isn’t the same as fighting to change it. So the women’s movement dies a slow death under the right reaction in the 70s and 80s, and folds up into Naomi Klein and the Clintons in the 90s and 200s. So much for a radical, fighting women’s movement.
I actually don’t think the kids in forever have a very satisfying sex life. Most of the time the guy cums when they’re just getting started. What do you think is so good about it?
Anthony
April 6, 2009 at 12:06 am
Anthony: Thanks for the reply!
On your point about the women’s movement timeline: my sense is that there’s a lot more going on in the early ’70s than you’re giving it credit for. The women’s movement starts late in the ’60s, and in some ways, to my mind, is far more advanced in the early ’70s than in the ’60s. Certainly this is true on abortion rights and the inclusion of lesbians in the movement, but I think it’s true of the movement’s general posture as well.
The (brief) labor upsurge in the early ’70s also connected with the women’s movement in some very cool actions, for example in a phenomenal campaign by flight attendants that challenged both the sexism and the economic exploitation of their treatment (which were linked; e.g., flight attendants routinely fired at age 35 because they were “no longer attractive” never accrued seniority benefits), and successfully demanded solidarity from male TWA workers. Unfortunately, actions like this were relatively rare.
The earliest attempts at a backlash in the ’70s were not successful, although as we all know, they sadly continued, and became extremely successful by the ’80s. (Although even then, I have to say that I was surprised, when I read in more depth about the women’s movement last semester than I had previously, about how much was won in the ’80s. It seems to me that there was both a continuation of certain kinds of progress set in motion by the ’60s-early ’70s movements, and a backlash that starts immediately eroding their gains, all at the same time — into the ’80s and even the ’90s, where more is won around date rape, for example.) You’re right in that the Hyde Amendment, restricting Medicaid from paying for abortion, was obviously a huge defeat coming as early as 1977, but I don’t think that’s the whole story of the ’70s. I learned last semester that the earliest large-scale attempts at overturning women’s movement gains centered around trying (unsuccessfully) to overturn anti-child-abuse laws… how’s that for family values??
To return to FOREVER…, there is, to me, a particularly ’70s flavor to Kath’s grandmother, the NOW activist who’d run for Congress. I think there was a cohort of women just like her in the ’70s, who were a product of the women’s movement (and, of course, contributed to making it happen). I suppose the frustration I was expressing in the post is that they’re all we generally see of the movement in popular culture, but they were also a minority; where are the stories about the immense personal transformations working-class women underwent? It’s, again, not a critique of FOREVER… per se as much as the whole genre it’s a part of.
And now, to conclude this ridiculously epic comment with your sex question… my memory of the book is more like what Emily describes above: they have awkward sex where Michael comes right away the first two times, and a single run-in with impotence later (which he handles in a believably annoying way). But the rest of the time, they’re consistently having mutually orgasmic straight-up intercourse all the time, almost straight out of the gate. I ain’t buying it.
April 6, 2009 at 12:12 am
Oh, and to everyone who commented about the NYT article (Sadako and Lenore)… isn’t it awful? The real question is why I continue to read these crappy articles, knowing they’re just going to piss me off. It’s an affliction.
One of the public elementary schools discussed in the article is actually the one I attended, P.S. 87. It was considered a very good school when I went there (even though I had a shitty experience, that just reflected bad luck with both teachers and classmates, or more accurately, with the parents of some of my classmates). My mom had to write a ridiculous essay to get me in, since we were just out of district.
Former classmates have recently posted our old class pictures on Facebook, and you can see that even though it was an in-demand school in Manhattan, it was actually still quite racially diverse when I was there in the early ’90s. (I suppose it’s striking to me because middle school was, sadly, the last time I attended any school with a substantial number of Black or Latino students.) I doubt that that’s still the case. And now all these kids whose parents are these idiots the NY Times is writing about will be taking it over. Sigh.
April 6, 2009 at 12:59 am
haha I love this post
I really need to read this book!!!!
April 6, 2009 at 2:48 am
What struck me most about the article was that – oh now public school is cool and trendy – oh but only these three schools. It’s like they want to transfer the private school experience to public school so they don’t have to pay for it, but they still don’t want to have to mix with the riff raff.
How about investing in schools in your own zone to improve them? I can understand not wanting to send your child to a “crap school”, and honestly I know nothing about the Manhattan school district, but it seems to me that this would be a great chance for education to improve for all.
April 6, 2009 at 2:54 am
A thousand times WORD, Lenore.
But sadly out of the mindset of the NYTimes interviewee. Oh, excuse me, “the New Yorker.” Because these are, of course, average New Yorkers. With average, six-figure incomes.
April 6, 2009 at 2:41 pm
[...] ’70s culture doesn’t last Forever… [...]
April 7, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Oh man, you should see the cover of my 70s copy. I think it just has a locket on the front with their pictures in it. On a weird note, I didn’t read it until I was in my 20s and an older guy I dated remembered his high school girlfriend reading it when it first came out
April 10, 2009 at 12:28 pm
[...] girl” should be able to see the cover and feel like it’s her. Which kind of re-raises my frustration with her sense that all girls are white and thin (and, actually, blond, if they’re going to [...]
January 6, 2010 at 12:21 am
[...] if that is what Dessen’s doing, it was a funny strategy to reply to the criticism that not everyone in the world is a small business owner by having a central character this time around be a very large business [...]