Fast Women

Here’s the thing: I walk faster than God. I am from New York, and we are a walking people, but even New Yorkers can’t keep up. Midwesterners barely realize what’s happening as I weave through their molassal sidewalk clumps. Mostly people find me freakish. And by that I mean, I get commentary.

I get four types of commentary. Friends, women and men: “I saw you on the street and tried to wave, but you were already on the next block!” (They recognize me in the blur of movement because I usually have a good hat.)

New friends or acquaintances, usually women: “Thank god, you’re the only one I don’t have to slow down with.” We speed and chatter and become better friends. *

Strangers, invariably black men, often older: Laughter and remarks, variants of, “Where’s the fire?!”, or sometimes just an astonished, “Damn.” These ones are my favorite. There are few regular occurrences that improve my day as much as unexpectedly having an occasion to joke around with strangers, which is why I have the best name in the world.

Acquaintances, invariably younger white guys — and this is not the gender-neutral form of guys: Competition.

They’ll hear me or someone else mention that I walk fast, and they’ll immediately respond, “I bet I can beat you to the end of the block.” Which, I bet you can; your legs are longer and I’m not a runner and it’s just that my natural gait happens to be faster than anyone’s I’ve ever met. But, dude, I find it remarkably self-revealing that this is your reaction, because I notice that it’s not that you’re like me and have a self-identity built partly on walking faster than a hungry hippo, which could justify a certain amount of defensiveness. Or even that you desire a friendly competition, in which we shit-talk each other’s walk and race and then feel fondly toward one another because what bonds you like a mutual shit-talk? Those things I would understand.

But no. That’s not what’s going on. All evidence suggests that, although you have no particular investment in walking fast, nevertheless, the idea that this woman walks faster than you offends you. You must show her up. Well.

I fly a lot through Detroit**, and this occasions a long walk in their crazy neon-lit tunnel between terminals. My airport principle is that you avoid the moving sidewalk because people are not well socialized to place themselves in such a way that you can get around them, so it’s faster to walk alongside where you have more room to maneuver.

So recently I’m strolling through that tunnel and out of the corner of my eye I see this 20-something white guy walking slowly on the moving sidewalk do a double take as I come up alongside and then pass him. And then I see him speed up.

Now, normally I do not engage these races, but something about this dude, or the neon, or the lingering resentment from having earlier had to interact with the TSA brought it out in me. So I sped up, subtly, at first. And he sped up. And then I did some more.

And we got to be moving very fast, him on the sidewalk with his head turning to stare at me, and me next to him and just ahead, much faster than I usually stroll but maintaining my stroll gait (you should feel like you’re loping) and gazing around at all the pretty lights, and this went on for quite some while before the tunnel was over. I pulled through the end (I also have walking stamina); I stepped out a few feet ahead of him and onto the escalator that carries me to my Vino Volo, where everybody knows my name and I’m always glad I came. And I never once looked at him.

Yeah, I’m fast.

* Shout-out to the guy who spent our walk analyzing why I am so fast. His take? My hips are super-twisty, which lengthens my stride and generates momentum. This seems plausible because I definitely do generate an unusual amount of momentum when I walk. I know this because when I walk with very slow people (sorry, Emily), my options are to exhaust myself walking slowly — which I presume means I’m walking in a very different way, ’cause that shit is tiring — or to direct the momentum upward instead of forward. So I bounce.

Also, can I just say that everyone makes fun of my crazy heavy backpack in which I carry everything I own (“Are you… going on an adventure?”) and which gives me an unfortunate resemblance to a fourth grader, but just imagine how much trouble we’d have walking together if I didn’t handicap myself. I’m doing this for you.

** My layover choices are unusually sensitive to the presence of a Vino Volo.

A historical fiction of now

I’ve been thinking a lot about historical fiction, because I’ve recently read two books set in 2003.

I said before (though I’m not sure if I explained it well) that the intentional dated-ness is one of the things that really worked for me in SUNRISE OVER FALLUJAH: we know, if not “the end” to that story, more than the characters do. Walter Dean Myers doesn’t have to show us Birdie learning that there are no WMDs, because we know; it makes his belief more poignant.

(And actually, this makes me think that a very powerful story could be written that goes farther in this direction, and doesn’t have the characters experience the kind of disillusionment that Birdie does undergo in that story. This would really exploit the asymmetry of knowledge between the characters and the readers. Anyone have a good example of a story like this — doesn’t have to be about Iraq?)

More recently (by which I mean yesterday), I read Peter Cameron’s SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU. Emily and I have talked a few times about books set in New York, about which we’re bound to have strong opinions one way or the other; this one rang true to me. Partly that’s because, while it’s set in a far wealthier slice of New York than I usually intersect with (and an eminently parodiable one at that), it just happened to hit the details of my own haunts. This passage made me sit up and cheer:

I wouldn’t become part of the evil empire that is NYU if you paid me. (NYU has single-handedly ruined most of the Village, including the dog run in Washington Square: they built this huge building that casts its shadow over the park, so that areas of the dog run are perpetually in shade.)

I went to NYU, and hated it (great profs; lousy place), and they have ruined big chunks of my neighborhood, and they are an evil empire. Sing it, Cameron.

But besides my own personal joy at seeing my enmity printed in bestselling book form, what I think worked about Cameron’s portrayal of New York was its specificity. When he described the protagonist’s feelings about a specific intersection I’ve walked by hundreds of times (LaGuardia and Houston), I couldn’t remember the details he described from my own wanderings, and I lacked the same associations this character had, but I got it. Not just because the narration was describing the city, but because the way this character described the city made me understand who he was. His character was bound up in it being precisely downtown New York in 2003, and vice-versa. That’s why it felt like New York, not like name-dropping New York.

I can’t get behind this mode of storytelling — this retelling of our own recent past — unreservedly: I saw, for example, that David Levithan’s new book is set on and after 9/11, and I cringed. I’ve had enough of that, thank you.

But in general, I’m intrigued by setting YA books so distinctly in a time we’ve just been through. Compare it to, say, Sarah Dessen’s studied timelessness: her characters are barely digital (keep in mind, I haven’t read her two most recent). I feel like a lot of YA authors are living out their own adolescences in their books, or some warp of their adolescence with their lives now. But contemporary teenagers’ lives aren’t necessarily the intersection of universal teenage angst plus, say, cell phones the way a thirty-something author might use them.* Like, how does it change teenage dating that everyone has a cell? I was extraordinarily privileged to have my own phone line in high school, and let me tell you, my high school dating life was different because of it.

My point is, there’s something else being portrayed in books like Dessen’s, that’s sold like it’s some universal adolescence, but it isn’t (and I’m sorry to always use Dessen as my punching bag, because I love her books, but they are also to me the best representatives of a category of book I can’t quite wrap my head around, or understand why I enjoy so deeply). The “timelessness” is really an experience that never quite existed for anyone: it’s, perhaps, what teenagers living in the ’80s would’ve been like in an altered reality that made pop culture more like today’s (or more cynically — especially since many of the lead characters and love interests in these books are more emotionally mature than half the adults I know — it’s what Gen X women, not just the YA authors but the growing number of adult women YA readers like me, project backwards to reimagine adolescence). And I wonder if the girls who are attracted to Dessen’s books are exactly the girls who are most inclined to try to fit their lives into some idea of what universal girlhood looks like, if that’s part of their appeal.

I’m not getting anywhere thinking more about this… opinions?

* And because I am, to my great surprise, an aspiring demographer, I will tell you that this phenomenon — where the experience of being a particular age at a particular time is something much more specific than just the effects of the age (universalized to any time) plus the effects of the time (for people of any age) — is called a cohort effect. UnderageReading: puzzle over book, name-drop tv show from fifteen years hence, snark, define jargon, call it a day.

Why I Love It/Page and Screen: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist: Why I Love it

I got NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST (the movie) from Netflix last weekend. I’m a fan of both Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, but this was a pretty lame movie, in my opinion. It did, however, help clarify for me why I liked the book by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan so much — which I did, very unexpectedly.

The book does not feel to me like an ode to NYC in all its glory — as Elizabeth mentioned, this was not my teenager-in-the-city experience. In fact I think part of what the book does well is capture the suburban teenager’s sense of adventure and freedom at a night out in the city, and the slight sense of smugness at “knowing” the city, which of course they don’t know or experience in the same way as a teenager who lives there like Elizabeth and I did.

Basically what I loved about the book is the consistent accurracy and immediacy of Nick and Norah’s thoughts — it just felt real to me as I was reading.  I especially like that both characters are pretty self-aware and self-analytical, but it still doesn’t stop them from being utterly confused about their crushes, or going in circles in their heads, or doing the things they’re perfectly well aware that they don’t really necessarily want to be doing, which is what I was like as a teenager.   And that aspect — the in-the-moment inner brain workings — doesn’t come across in movie.  So you’re left with just a story about two teenagers having a night out on the town, and they come across as very predictable, a little shallow, and a little annoying, all of which is true to the characters actions in the book, but in the book you’re not paying attention to their actions, you’re following their thoughts.  In the movie, you’re just following them, from one club to another. 

Plus, of course, the book has the ultimate bonus: not one but two MSCL references, which are not just thrown in but are used as a natural part of Norah’s thoughts, which is dead on — trust me, a teenager who loves MSCL will automatically use it as a reference point and will, without even trying to, relate aspects of their life back to scenes from the show. Plus, Norah thinks one of my favorite quotes:

Much as I want to learn more about Nick, I also want to take a time-out so I can tell Caroline all about him.  If Caroline were here, we could dissect Nick via My So-Called Life script/Jordan Catalano moments.

Rayanne:  I think part of him is partly interested in you.  Definitely.  I mean, he’s got other things on his mind.

Angela:  But that’s the part that’s so unfair.  I have nothing else on my mind.  How come I have to be the one sitting around analyzing him in like microscopic detail, and he gets to be the one with other things on his mind?

Rickie: That is deep.

Asked and answered

So I asked before what books capture New York better than NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST, and now I have an answer:

She had a master’s from Columbia in art history and told everyone she’d come to Alabaster to escape New York City–but then here she was, spending all her time discussing it in class. So ironic.

– THE DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU-BANKS, by E. Lockhart

The NYC I really miss

That at least seems to capture some essential truth about me upon moving from New York to Madison.

And while we’re on the subject, let me give a shout-out to Amy over at the blog “YA or STFU,” where we’ve been having ourselves a fun little rant about Nick and Norah since she posted a complaint about musical name-dropping in young adult books.

“There are absolutely nothing but rooms in The Plaza”

Eloise is a city child. She lives at the Plaza. I too was a city child. I lived on the Upper West Side. Being city children is really where the similarities ended. The Plaza was as fictional a place to me as the prairie in the LITTLE HOUSE books – I knew it wasn’t technically made-up, but it sure wasn’t in my real world. I never set foot in there until high school, when I would occasionally duck in to use the fanciest public bathroom in the city. Eloise got up to much more mischief than I ever did – truthfully, I was a little on the goody-two-shoes side as a kid.* I did once draw all over a few of my dolls in the course of an afternoon game of hospital, but I definitely was not in her league for imaginary games. And I was a bit shy as a child, not the sort that would have made friends with all the hotel staff even if I had lived in a hotel. So it wasn’t exactly identifying with the character that made me love Kay Thompson’s ELOISE. Reading it later, I appreciated the humor, the irony, the perfectly expressive and detailed illustrations by Hilary Knight. Maybe I appreciated all of that when I was little, too – or maybe Eloise was just fun, plain and simple. Whatever it was, ELOISE was definitely a favorite since before I can remember. I used to sprawl on the livingroom floor with the elevator/stairs escapade fold-out map open (I remember it seeming so big!) and trace that up and down journey for ages. I still have that same copy, and I’ve read it probably a few times a year ever since. And to this day any time I spot a mail chute, I think about pouring water down it.

Then a few years ago I began working as an organizer for the NYC hotel workers’ union. During the period I worked for the union The Plaza was actually closed for renovations, but I found myself wandering the basements and back hallways of many of the city’s other fanciest hotels. And the first time I picked up ELOISE after starting that job, it took on a whole new meaning – because now I knew hundreds of housekeepers (they don’t go by “maid” anymore), room service waiters, bell captains, front desk clerks, and even a few managers that make up the cast of characters in Eloise’s world. Occasionally in my imagination I would sub in some of the real-life characters I knew to her interactions with the staff, which led to some pretty hilarious dialogue. But mostly, now I had experienced the adventure and excitement of running around the plush labyrinth that is a large NYC hotel. I never got to slomp my skates. But I have been to the boiler room.**

*For the record: I was not the kind of goody-goody that tattled on other kids, just the kind that tended to worry about getting in trouble. Key genetic traits, like worrying and arguing, expressed themselves quite early on in my case.

**Aaaahhh, I wasn’t even thinking MSCL reference until I finished typing!

Nick and Norah’s (vs. Elizabeth and Emily’s) New York

Emily and I often agree about books, but one where we didn’t was NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST, the first Rachel Cohn – David Levithan collaboration, which became a movie with Michael Cera. Emily liked this a lot more than I did, and I’ll let her say why, but one reason I didn’t is that Rachel Cohn’s chapters in particular, especially early on, felt way too self-conscious.* I should have loved it — it’s all about my life! They even had a character from Emily’s and my high school (Hunter from Hunter)! — but it just felt like name-dropping to me.

And I think one reason is that even though it was supposed to be So Very New York, it didn’t really capture New York as I experience it. (Possibly this is because I was not really connected to the private school scene, but hey; there are reasons I’m grateful for that, and some of them I was reminded of reading this book.) What makes New York what it is, for me, is not the fact that you can apparently go see stripping nuns at 3 AM in midtown should you so desire. It’s littler stuff.

Like, Emily and I and everyone else we know from high school all had a problem when we got to college and realized that for normal people, interrupting them is not a sign of enthusiastic engagement with what they’re saying. It’s just… rude. And instead of riffing off our interruption to escalate the intensity of their storytelling, they would politely fall silent and wait for us. It was terrible! We started interacting with others and realized we were all That Guy.

Since I moved to Madison two and a half years ago, I recognize New York less by seeing its absence in other people than by seeing it lacking in myself. Like, when I was home for Christmas I found myself waiting for the light to change to cross the street in the second place, and doing so on the actual curb instead of a third of the way into the street in the first place. It’s like I don’t even know myself!

So how would you guys want a book set in New York to establish its world? Any you think do it particularly well?

Bonus question: How would you convey being in Madison? The only kids’ book I can think of set around here is Betty Ren Wright’s THE DOLLHOUSE MURDERS, which I like for a lot of reasons. Here’s how I would start setting a book in Wisconsin: with the observation that my entire state suffers from a bizarre conceptual difficulty. You’ll hear even the most intelligent and thoughtful of Madisonians say things like, “…a high of -12.” Am I the only one who sees that -12 degrees is, by definition, not high?!

* ReviewerX, whose reviews I generally quite enjoy, agreed with me on Cohn’s early chapters being particularly weak, and has a pretty funny review dramatizing one complaint I didn’t have — maybe because I, too, curse like a motherfucker.