Funny Is as Funny Does: Book Review of Life Will Be the Death of Me:...and You Too! by Chelsea Handler

 

Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too! by Chelsea Handler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Chelsea Handler is hilarious, and I could hear her sardonic voice as I read Life Will the Death of Me:...and You Too! In this memoir, Handler tells how the trauma of the Trump election lead her to therapy, which brought her to confront the trauma of her childhood: when she was nine and her oldest brother was twenty-two, he died in a hiking accident. Her family struggled under heavy grief, and as she describes it, they never quite came together again.

Handler discusses more than just her brother dying—there’s also drugs, her climb to the top, privilege, her dogs, and of course, drugs. A significant amount of time is spent discussing marijuana, as Handler recounts using pot as a sedative as well as trying a slew of varieties so she could settle on one for her designer line (California made recreational marijuana use legal in 2016).

Her dogs, supposedly Chow mixes (although this doesn’t hold under DNA testing) are her closest companions and the closest thing she has to caring for another individual.

While her book takes some side trips, Life Will Be the Death of Me:...and YouToo! does create an overarching narrative based on Handler’s journey through the coping strategies she developed in order to deal with her brother’s death and how they manifested in her adult life. Reading the book, I could not help but wonder how the pandemic impacted Handler’s ongoing pursuit of self-understanding and improvement. Did her forays into being more self-sufficient serve her well? Was she able to continue growing her empathy? Were her dogs able to abide the additional attention?

Would I teach this book? While I did find it quite funny and I was mostly satisfied with the narrative, there are so many amazingly written memoirs out there, many of them equally as funny.

More problematic from my standpoint as a reader was that it seemed that Handler had made all her revelations before writing the book, which made the writing feel as though it were a recounting or reporting and not a further probing or exploration of her discoveries. As Robert Frost said, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” While I would not teach the whole book, if I were teaching a memoir or creative nonfiction class to college students, I would consider teaching a chapter from the beginning and a chapter from the end as a demonstration of how a memoirist can discuss changes made to their behaviors and self-conception.

And—while I love dogs, there is something that feels a little too self-indulgent in spending so much time discussing your pets without fully considering how it applies to old behaviors and beliefs.

Still, Life Will Be the Death of Me:...and You Too! Is entertaining, in part because it has emotional  substance.

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The Plague, Retold as a Love Story

 

Piper by Jay Asher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Piper, written by Jay Asher and Jessica Freeburg and illustrated by Jeff Stokely, is a retelling of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” In this retelling, the protagonist is a young woman, Magdalena, who is unable to hear, but she can read lips and speak. She is treated abominably by the community: children throw rocks at her and a drunk man assaults her on the street. Her only friend is her caretaker, Agathe, with whom she jokes, works together to keep themselves from starving, and to whom she dictates stories. Her tales begin with actual events and then twist to amusement and just punishment for the characters involved, for example the drunken husband who dies outside of his own home, frozen to a stump by his own urine.

From the beginning of Piper, Maggie is longing for romantic love, and she imagines a kiss from a companion who can appreciate and love her and will not treat her like poo for being deaf. She thinks that the stranger who wanders in with his pipe and offers to get rid of the town’s infestation of rats might be that guy.

While Maggie grows fond of the stranger, he composes the song that will lure the rats, or as he describes it to her, he “learns” their song. But luring rats is not the only thing his pipe can do--he can lure any animal, including people.

Maggie and the stranger seem drawn together in part because both are outcasts. The stranger wanders from town to town, eliminating rats, but he is seldom welcome. Maggie was first marginalized because her mother was a fallen woman, and after a failed attempt to drown her, Maggie lost her hearing. For the reader, how Maggie and the stranger deal with their marginalization is telling--while Maggie writes stories as a kind of catharsis and justice, the stranger creates a more malevolent kind of justice.

Would I teach Piper? I do teach a unit on folk tales, and “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” would qualify, as it is categorized as a legend and does not originate from the United States, which is the other requirement for a text in this unit. We do look at modern retellings and compare them with older versions of tales. However, Piper does not have the same bite as many retellings or the fantastical white washing of Disney. Where Anne Sexton’s “Cinderella” gives a critique of fairy tales and marriage in general and our desperate belief that marriage be a perfect fairy tale, Piper acts as more of a warning for outcast young women who think that they can trust another outcast. Or a more general reminder that most people are stinky. Furthermore, Maggie is just too good. There is not a single unlikeable thing about her, including her forgiving and generous heart.

I was not overly impressed with Piper and most likely would not teach it because I did not feel enough surprise in reading the book. The best part was the introduction, which gives a fascinating history of the “The Pied Piper of Hameln” including quotes from primary sources that mention the incidents in the story. The consideration of how real life becomes legend started my imagination going, but what followed did not capture the same energy, including the love story.

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You Just Have to Want It Bad Enough (and Other Myths)

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Outliers: The Story of Success is Malcolm Gladwell’s challenge to our understanding of the formula for the American Dream: hard work, talent, and a little luck allows for people to rise to economic and career success. According to Gladwell, this is an oversimplification that ignores the opportunities and privileges which enable those who achieve the American Dream. Gladwell uses the term “outliers” for those who rise far above the pack, likening them to snow during a French summer. We do not question the hot weather, as it is normal, but the snow is so outside of our experience that we question and want to know what caused it. So with Outliers, we question the people who are so successful as to be outliers, outside of normal experience, to determine how they were able to defy the typical results of putting in huge amounts of labor. Gladwell does not ignore the incredible feats of successful people--they spend inordinate amounts of time and energy--but Gladwell points out that there are many other people who spend incredible amounts of time and energy and are not wildly, off-the-charts successful.

As Gladwell digs deeper into what creates outliers, he identifies several common factors, most of which are outside of our locus of control, such as birth dates, which he argues have incredible significance in many realms. He also discusses location, location, location in that it impacts your behaviors and ways of thinking (and is also fun to say: location, location, location).

While Gladwell makes a good argument for the impact of “cultural inheritance,” or the ways of being and thinking that we learn from our environments and are replicated from generation to generation, I did not feel entirely comfortable with the discussion. While he focuses on how cultural inheritance can be a benefit, it easily creates an opening to berate and criticize cultural inheritance that is less functional, and therefore an opening for all kinds of prejudice and generalizations. And, indeed, the book shows how some cultural inheritance is an impediment, while prizing American behavior that could be argued to be less than appropriate. On the other hand, understanding cultural legacies can help make positive changes to behaviors and customs as well as further understanding the concept of privilege, or the advantages that were not achieved but given.

Gladwell is a great storyteller—I often taught his “What the Dog Saw,” a profile of Cesar Millan, republished from The New Yorker in Best American Essays 2007 to teach about how to turn information into a narrative. Outliers is the first book I have read by Gladwell, and I see that the ability to place people on the page transfers in his longer work. The story of Chris Langan, in particular, stands out because it is a life of missed opportunity, in part because educational institutions failed him. As an educator, it reminds me that part of our jobs is bringing out the best in our students and helping them to solve problems instead of penalizing them.

We bring our own experiences to our reading, and as a mother, the book made me think about the habits I wish to teach and cultivate in my children, both of whom are already forces to be reckoned with, especially my daughter. Outliers made me reconsider my instinct to make them “be good listeners” and to appreciate the need to push back and question--though it is exhausting at bedtime, when my daughter is crying that I am “ruining her dreams.” I once asked her what those dreams were. I had interrupted her drawing a picture, and I was expecting to hear about how she wants to be an artist and draw all the time--but her answer was, “To get to do whatever I want.” To which I replied, “Keep dreaming, kid.”

In any case, I found Outliers both thought provoking and entertaining. It is a good thing to have contentions with an author and continue the conversation in my head.

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The Funny Business

 

Bossypants by Tina Fey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Tina Fey’s Bossypants is quite funny, though I would expect no less of Tina Fey. I loved her on SNL, particularly on Weekend Update with Amy Poehler, I loved her in 30 Rock, and I loved her in Mean Girls and Sisters. In short: Tina Fey is hilarious on screen.

Is she just as funny on the page?

The book is written in essay-like chapters which roughly follow a chronological order of her life from childhood to motherhood. There is not an overall plot or story and if there were an overarching message for the book, it would probably be that the public’s understanding of Fay is much more glamorous than she is in real life. That, and there is a double-standard for women. So, she tells a lot of truths.

The structure of the essays does not feel as formal as a typical memoir or as deliberate as David Sedaris’s essays, but more like musings, something along the lines of a standup routine. The episodic telling is musing and it feels off hand, like a journal or conversation with an incredibly witty friend. The book contains several photos, though not in a glossy center section like some memoirs, but throughout the book on normal pages between blocks of text--at least in the paperback edition. The photos appear as evidence to prove her points, very much like a meme or, I am just going to leave this here. While I prefer non-fiction that conveys a tighter story, for Fey, I will make an exception.

In addition to the humor, what makes Fey’s book highly likable is the way she has of letting the reader in on secrets of the entertainment world, or really, the mechanics of how TV is magically made. Which means it is not magic but many pretty normal people working very hard. There is something terribly fascinating about demystifying a profession by showing the art and work of it. Show business, yes, because we admire (worship) our celebrities, but it is not just that. Most jobs can be immensely gratifying, depending on how you portray them. (Note to self: even teaching!)

Fey begins with her childhood and briefly mentions her much spoken of scar, but the book becomes introspective when she begins to tell of being involved in youth theater during high school and being taken underwing by fellow theater people, in particular gay boys and lesbian women. As she tells the story of her friendships and her burgeoning theater interests, she works toward a conversation about how she was guilty of prejudice herself, not in our usual view of homophobia, but in her using of the boys, in particular, as objects of her entertainment while not appreciating the full meaning of being gay--boys wanting to be romantic with other boys.

The fact that the book is better when Fey is being funny and exploring actual ideas reminds me of a true fact about comedy: the best comedy is not just funny but also discusses an important, complicated, and controversial tenet of society.

The funniest part of the book, the most Lizzing inducing, is a section in which Fey addresses internet trolls. I did not Google the specific postings to see if they actually existed, though they sound close enough to the stupid things people say that I would not doubt it. Fey takes a moment to respond to the comments, most of which are roasts of her appearance, with her own even funnier mockings of her appearance. This is the part of the book in which I laughed out loud. No, seriously, my kids were sleeping and I had to take deep calming breaths so I would not wake them up.

While Fey makes a point of saying the celebrities do not get to respond to the media or comments about them, in general, the book does respond to some of what has been said and written about her, in particular an inside recounting and explanation of her stint portraying Sarah Palin. If you did not know who Tina Fey was before Palin ran as Vice President on the Republican ticket, you sure did then. I do not want to spoil some of the best storytelling in the book, but as someone who still sometimes says, “I can see Russia from my house,” I appreciated the illuminating first-hand account Fey gives.

I am glad I read Bossypants. Reading the first couple of chapters, I was not sure that I would be, but even then, it was hard to put down. Very good for an entertaining read. And yes, she is just as funny on the page.

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Writer in Real Time: Reflecting on the Beginning of the Year

It is 5:00 AM and I have been up since a quarter to 3:00, making my mother’s amazing caramel corn recipe as my contribution to Fall Fest (Mill A School on Saturday, October 20, 2018 at 6:00 PM). This is not my first early morning this week. In fact, there have been a lot of early mornings and late nights lately, and they are not all due to an eighteen-month-old with the worst case of FOMO you have ever seen.

It is nearly three weeks since Simchat Torah, and I have spent that time reacquainting myself with my students and welcoming myself back to daily life. The Chaggim (Jewish holidays) came fast and furious this year, a mere two weeks after school was back in session. Two days out for Rosh Hashanah, one for Yom Kippur, another two for Succot, and then Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.

The Chaggim were wonderful—my daughter took her first steps on Rosh Hashanah. We spent time with our friends from synagogue. And, of course, we ate a lot of food. This was the first year my daughter was able to participate—last year she wasn’t even sitting up or eating solid food. This year she danced on Simchat Torah, I threw her up in the air, and carried her on my shoulders. She ate her first Laffy Taffy—okay, half a Laffy Taffy—we are pretty restrictive with the sugar.

But having to take seven days off from work when the world keeps whirling around me is always a challenge. Imagine not automatically having Christmas or Thanksgiving off, no one around you in tune with all the planning, shopping, and cooking you are doing, and that this happened at an especially critical time in your work cycle. Now put Thanksgiving and Christmas a week apart, make them both two days long, add in a fast day and you hosting two more days of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day and that’s kind of what it’s like. Sort of. But with more cooking and more time in church.

I am very grateful for the Chaggim. They give me a chance to take a good look at my relationship with G-d and with other people, and also give me a chance to do tshuva, and to celebrate. Focusing on the health of my soul and spiritual self once a year means that I can make serious change. It also eliminates a lot of unproductive guilt. The time spent with family and friends is literally irreplaceable. Certainly, the Chaggim are a great gift.

This year has been a greater adventure than usual, as I am taking classes to earn my teaching certificate. For the first time in at least ten years, I pulled an all-nighter in order to get a paper turned in on time. I am happy to report the essay was given an A+, but staying up after Shabbat and into erev Succot and then being functional for the first night was an experience I would prefer not to have to repeat any time soon.

But the overwhelming experience of this year’s Chaggim was not one of feeling other or stressed or even squeezed for time. No, it was one of gratitude. Good friends across the country, loving family, tight-knit community, fabulous coworkers, lovely students, mobility, and, of course, my husband and daughter. There were many years of Chaggim when I stood before G-d and wondered if I would be given my own family, and knew the desire for one was aching between myself and G-d. Now, seeing everything that I have been blessed with is like looking out at the awe-inspiring Pacific Northwest mountains. There is no effective way of describing it, but you want to share the feeling, you want everyone to know the peace and joy.

Writer OOO: A Look Back from Vacation Mode

It has been a beautiful summer with some brutal heat on the East coast. We have enjoyed visiting with family and friends, as well as spending time relaxing, which for me means as much reading and writing as I can fit in. As I prepare to begin another school year, I am reflecting, again, on the lessons that I learned during the past school year. Some things I already knew, but it was good to have them reinforced and articulated. Others were stumbling blocks that I had to acknowledge and will lead to changes during this coming school year. Here are my top five.

1. All of this will be on the test. Yes, I prefer to motivate my students and get them to do things for the sake of learning alone, but I have not yet managed to convince all of my students that writing and literature deserve to take over their lives and monopolize every moment when their eyes are open and to possess every dreaming moment, as well. So, since I need them to do their reading, take notes and pay attention during lecture, and actually memorize vocabulary and key terms, I will have to give tests. A bummer, but incentivizing their work more directly by giving them points for what they have learned should encourage them to study. 
2. It’s all in the syllabus. Starting out with clear expectations and sticking strictly to these expectations at the beginning of the year means that as the students reach these expectations, some loosening can happen as the year goes on. Especially important regarding late work policies—keep to deadlines at first, and students will follow them. Allow them to turn things in late at the beginning of the semester, and they will never turn things in on time. 
3. Mine is not the only voice. Listening to the students and getting to know what motivates them and what their concerns are helps to build the kind of rapport that supports mutual trust. It also means that I can begin to meet the students at their own levels and challenge them, especially by creating assignments that will interest them, speak to their strengths, and push at the areas where they could stand to grow. Of course, it does not hurt to have an idea about what they like and change some of the readings to match these interests. 
4. Never let them see you sweat. This one was given to me by a coworker, but it speaks to the ability to be flexible, remain at the front of the tour group, and accept when the unexpected happens. Since it was the first year for our school, there were a lot of surprises. Getting frustrated would not have been helpful, complaining would have been disastrous, and allowing the students to see either frustration or hear complaints would have been deadly. They did not need to know that the textbooks did not arrive on time or that the baby kept me up all night so that my zombie brain was guiding the lecture. They just needed me to be present and keep the tour going. Okay. I can do that. 
5. Ever tried. Every failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. When innovation is championed, trying new things is encouraged, logic tells us that some teaching experiments will be more successful than others. I tried some ideas out that I thought would be pretty brilliant this year. Some worked well with my students. Others were epic fails. Some could be saved with some tweaking. Some should never be spoken of again. Being honest about which worked and which did not, as well as why the successful ones worked and the fails failed means that I can learn, make changes, and hopefully have even better classes this year. 

I am excited about getting started with my students. We will have some new students, many returning, and lots of excitement ahead of us. Let the adventures begin!

Wanted: Writers of the 21st Century

“Why is everything we read so old?” This was the question a friend’s teenage son posed to me over a Passover lunch. Good question. Of the longer works we are reading in my classes, the newest is Raisin in the Sun, which was first performed in 1959. Nearly everything else is from the Modern period or earlier. The school where I teach has “innovative” in the name--so how is it that I am teaching the same texts that I read in high school?

There are several reasons that high school classrooms focus on literature fifty years or older, and some of the reasons are better than others. The simplest answer is that we are teaching what has already been taught for years: novels which have proven their importance and literary worth and have effectively established their places in the literary canon. To teach a new novel requires a teacher to search through contemporary literature, reading widely and looking for books that are both appropriate for high school and appealing to high schoolers. And then there is a good chance that the book, even if it is a best seller and a darling of critics today, might no longer be discussed or even remain in print in ten or twenty years. We know the classics are good and have staying power. They have been placed in a literary movement and have been given context to what was written before and what is being published now. These novels have already been approved by the school board and risk little or no controversy. They are safe choices.

Not unreasonably, English teachers do not always want to do the extra work it would take to find a new gem. There is an excellent chance that their own literary education left off in 1950. Most college-level literature courses do not cover contemporary literature, and with the myriad demands of teaching, there is little time left for family, let alone leisure reading.

A better reason, however, has to do with the expectations for material to be covered in high school. Going into college, students are expected to have a basic understanding of the literary history of both the United States and Britain, as well as the literary movements and some of the major works and players. For example, it is reasonable to expect that a high school graduate has read Beowulf, Pride and Prejudice, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Grapes of Wrath. College literature courses will build on this knowledge, and if they do include one of the common reads, such as Great Expectations, the discussion supposes students will approach the with the knowledge of the plot and some of the central ideas already mastered.

Besides preparing students for higher learning, reading older books which are already established as canon means that students across the country are reading the same novels as their parents and possibly their grandparents. They are building a connection to their generation as well as to previous and future readers through the shared experience of studying literary works. Think of the conversations you have had about how much you loved The Great Gatsby or loathed Wuthering Heights. Or when you discuss how you identified with Holden in The Catcher in the Rye or Esther in The Bell Jar. Perhaps your roommate was just as mystified with Lord of the Flies. Sure, we all studied algebra and World War II, and we may have even loved these subjects, but they are not a lived experience in the same way that Romeo and Juliet is. They become a shared emotional reference in a similar way to the historical events that we live through. I have listened to many stories about where people were when they learned that JFK was assassinated and have many times shared the story of my experience of September Eleventh. But once history becomes history and not life, it is no longer a shared experience. I have the same emotional connection to JFK’s assassination as I do to his inauguration, which is only an interest in how it affected the country and not me, personally.

The problem with only reading from the literary canon is not that the works can be dry and challenging and therefore feel old, because a good teacher, a creative and passionate teacher can help you appreciate and find relevance in Oedipus. No, the issue with the canon is that it has all the diversity of a pack of strawberry Starbursts—they might be delicious, but you still feel that you are missing out on all the other flavors. To put it bluntly: the canon tends to be dead, white, and male. The works may be genius, but in excluding everyone else, there is a lot of the American experience (and many geniuses) which is excluded. Many times, inclusion means reading contemporary literature. But when we read something new, it feels as though we are pushing something out. There is only so much time in a school year and only so many books which can be assigned. How, then, is it possible to work in the contemporary?

One way is by teaching other experiences in poetry, short stories, and essays; all of which have an important place in literature classes but do not require the same amount of time for class discussion as full-length books. It can also be more manageable to find contemporary work in these genres—again, because they are of more manageable length. There are several anthologies every year that sift through the literary magazines for the best, such as the Best American series and The Pushcart Prize anthology. There is also less pressure to choose something that will be known forever and great variety in most of the anthologies.

We are not going to quit reading Pride and Prejudice in every high school across America any time soon, even though Austen is already past 200 and gets older every year. But we can include a discussion of a poem by up and coming Oliver Baez Bendorf and give our classes exposure to another voice and perhaps even validate their own experience. It is not a perfect fix, but it is a plausible start.