Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: So far, so good.

I remember seeing this novel in bookstores a few years ago and admiring its cover. The cover art is a striking photo of a bright-red pair of girls’ shoes. The leather is worn, but its color (possibly enhanced by the graphic artist) is warm and vibrant. Each shoe has a strap that buttons into place, and the toes are reinforced with what looks like brass. The background is vague---maybe the painted stone of a building---but the colors are rich. The cover copy appears in complementary colors, and the book’s spine includes a pretty red brocade design.

I forgot about the novel in the three years since it first debuted in the United States. A couple of weeks ago, however, a coworker forwarded me an absurd news story from the Tacoma, Washington News Tribune about a school district that recently banned Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress from its curriculum. The trouble began when a high-school student reading the novel in his English class found some of the novel’s sexual content questionable and showed it to his mother. Mom was similarly offended, circulated a petition to ban the book from local schools...and the rest of the unsettling details are in the article: http://www.tribnet.com/news/story/5057442p-4985266c.html

This same coworker expressed annoyance that a story with so much value---specifically, information about Mao Zedong’s “re-education” of the middle class during his so-called Cultural Revolution---would be withheld from students. She said the novel touched on a part of Chinese history Americans know little about, and she believes it’s something kids should learn about in school. My response to this was essentially, “What was Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution?” I’d never heard of it, much less learned about it in school. She told me the bits she knew, and I found it almost impossible to believe. Sending formally educated, city-dwelling adolescents out to the countryside to forego all their intellectual pursuits in favor of hard labor and agricultural education? Very bizarre. They were separated from their parents for indefinite lengths of time during this re-education process. Meanwhile, formally educated, urban, professional adults were distrusted and monitored by the state, and in some cases, declared “enemies of the state,” as is the father of Luo, a character in the novel. Luo’s dad is a dentist.

So anyway, I had to read this novel to see what all the fuss was about in Tacoma, and because the bits of information my coworker had shared with me about China’s Cultural Revolution had really fascinated (and repulsed) me. She lent me her copy of the novel, and I’m now I’m a little less than halfway through it.

It’s absorbing, for sure. It’s a first-person narrative; the protagonist is unnamed but has three friends who compose the whole of his life in the countryside during his “re-education.” The friends go by Luo, Four-Eyes, and The Little Seamstress. They’re all kids between the ages of 13 and 20, and they’re each endearing in their own way. The protagonist, Luo, and Four-Eyes have all been sent to the remote Phoenix of the Sky mountain region for re-education; The Little Seamstress is indigenous to nearby Yong Jing. She is beautiful, smart, and charming, and both Luo and the protagonist have fallen for her. Luo, however, is the one to become her boyfriend, and they---gasp!---have sex standing up, beneath a tree, “like horses.” It’s an honest and sweet description and, as I was telling my coworker, Luo clearly says “like horses,” not “with horses.”
Ha!
So far, the story is unique, sad, hopeful...but not at all sexually explicit. We’ll see what the remaining chapters contain in the way of love and desire and sex.

I haven’t even touched on the main plot line, which is that Four-Eyes has smuggled a suitcaseful of classic Western fiction to the countryside with him. This is dangerous, of course. Luo and the protagonist finally coax a novel from Four-Eyes' stash---it’s a Balzac volume, “thin and worn”---and both boys read it all in one sitting, and are forever changed. Right now, where I’m reading, Luo and the protagonist are doing things for Four-Eyes in exchange for the opportunity to read another of his hidden books.

And with that, I’m going to excuse myself to go read some more!

The Devil Wears Prada: "Not so much," as Andrea Sachs would say.

My number-one guilty pleasure is reading fashion magazines, preferably while curled up on the couch with a cup of coffee and a long, lazy Saturday afternoon stretched out before me. Glamour, Cosmo, Marie Claire, Allure, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue: I read them. I know them. I can recognize their respective layouts, font choices, and front-of-book departments. And I know the names and faces of their respective editors in chief. Which is why I borrowed Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada from my local branch of LAPL after waiting an eternity for it to come out in paperback at Barnes and Noble. When it finally did, I decided I'd be a fool to actually purchase the thing when the library's givin' it up for free. It was the first wise decision I'd made in months.

I’d been wanting to get my imperfectly manicured hands on this gossipy little roman à clef about a girl who lands a job at "Runway" magazine to work as the assistant to editor in chief "Miranda Priestly." Let's review: Runway = Vogue; Miranda Priestly = Ed-in-chief Anna Wintour; and the protagonist, Andrea 'Andy' Sachs = Devil author and former Vogue assistant Lauren Weisberger. By the way, she's 26 years old, this girl. Or something like that. She's wee, is what I'm saying. Years shy of 30.

Moving on, then: Weisberger, who from this point forward shall be referred to as PLRG (Poor Little Rich Girl), would certainly NOT be a bestselling author had she chosen less-scandalous, less-juicy, less-Page Six–ish, less-autobiographical material for her debut novel. This book sells because people want to read about what a huge bitch Anna Wintour is. That's it. Ain't nobody buyin' it for its literary value. Anyone who reads Vogue, works for Vogue, works with Anna Wintour, has heard of Anna Wintour, admires Anna Wintour, or despises Anna Wintour was, I'm sure, literally sprinting to the bookstore to buy this freaking book when it cam out, if they hadn't already preordered it from Amazon. In a way, then, PLRG is an effing genius for taking her story to Doubleday, choosing a provocative title, and standing by looking cute as the marketing team worked its magic. In another way, though, she's a sellout. She jumped the shark before she even got in the water. She eschewed good writing, an imaginative story, and thoroughly developed characters for a slick, glossy, thinly shrouded exposé of a well-known, powerful fashion icon. And hey: It sold. It continues to sell. After all, it is deliciously entertaining to read about an intimidating, seemingly omnipotent celebrity getting called out on her outlandish, outrageous mistreatment of those around her.

But a whole novel in which the author reveals the nasty “truth” (or some semblance of it) about Anna Wintour does not sustain a reader’s interest for long. About halfway through The Devil Wears Prada, I found myself uttering, “I get it, I get it. She’s mean. She’s nasty. She never says ‘Thank you.’ She’s vague in her demands. She spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on designer clothing, extravagant meals, and travel. I get it. So what?” And it doesn’t help that the protagonist, who readers are sure to equate with the PLRG herself, is not particularly likeable. She whines and complains about how skinny and beautiful and tall her coworkers at Runway are, yet she’s a self-described five feet ten inches and 115 pounds. Um, hello? That’s tall and skinny, Honey. And she’s outfitted in designer duds by sympathetic fashion editors who wince at her sensible shoes and conservative suit jacket. Furthermore, she charges nearly every one of her meals, cocktails, and lattés to Runway’s expense account. Oh—and a Town Car takes her anywhere she needs to go on the island of Manhattan, whether she’s on the job or off. Poor her.

Andrea (that is, Weisberger herself, the PLRG) all but comes out and says she’s slumming it by stooping so low as to work at Runway, a mere fashion magazine (in the hope of moving straight to the staff of The New Yorker in a year; more on that later), yet she takes full advantage of the fashionista trappings available to her. At one point she even makes a comment about how working for a fashion rag is at least better than working for some totally lame trade magazine—and then she mentions Popular Mechanics as an example, which is neither totally lame nor a trade magazine. Having worked in trade publishing myself, I want to laugh at PLRG for being so condescending and stupid. It’s difficult to empathize with or feel sympathetic toward characters who are condescending and stupid.

Another unpalatable aspect of the Andea character is that Andrea always lets us know when she’s performed some act of charity. She buys Starbucks coffees for the homeless. She buys a sandwich for her driver. She mails a cast-off designer dress and shoes to a teenage girl who had written to Miranda requesting a prom dress months earlier. Give me a break, please. It’s not Andrea who’s purchasing the coffee and the sandwich and the dress—it’s Runway. Andrea’s expensing all of these items, of course. And she even admits to buying the coffees because of the pleasant “fuck you, Miranda” feeling it gives her. How's that for virtue?

Time to address Andrea’s/PLRG’s desire to work for The New Yorker. First of all, what editor or writer doesn’t dream of working for The New Yorker? Join the club, Sister. We’re a million strong—and growing. In this novel, Andrea seems to think she’s the only one in publishing with such a lofty goal. I don’t get it. Could she really be that naïve?

Secondly, she doesn’t seem to realize that it’s nearly impossible to get a job there. I’m amazed that this girl thinks she’s entitled to a job at The New Yorker one year out of college. She earnestly seems to believe that working twelve months as Anna Wintour’s personal assistant is enough to qualify her for the coveted position of The New Yorker staffer. Furthermore, she talks of “writing for” the magazine. Ha! Dream on, sweetie. Think “editorial assistant,” if you’re really, really lucky. Or maybe “receptionist,” if you’re only a little bit lucky.

I fear I’m coming off as Bitter, party of one. And that may be true. I read this novel from a niche perspective: A writer and editor who dreams of working for Condé-Nast but knows it will probably never happen. I’ve edited a trade magazine; I’m currently editing corporate publications. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not The New Yorker, or Vogue, or even Popular Mechanics. So I’m turned right off by Andrea’s/PLRG’s sense of entitlement, her naïvete, and her hypocrisy (fashion bores her, yet she’ll happily sell the $38,000 worth of designer clothing she’s been granted by Runway in order to pursue a writing career after being fired from the magazine).

I was willing to give this novel a chance, I really was. Unfortunately, like a delicate, gem-encrusted stiletto sandal, The Devil Wears Prada turned out to be all sparkle, no substance.