Hey there! It's been pretty quiet around here but today I have something special for all y'alls. Book Review Wednesday! (It is Wednesday, right?)
Yesterday I read The Help in the morning and Paying For It in the evening and I used my homemade Nancy Drew art card book mark in both ;) So... Conceptually, the two books next to each other would most likely prompt you to think that I would go for The Help (Black American 60s Female Voice) and have no interest in Paying For It (Privileged White Guy Pays For Sex)... Well, let me break it down for you. The Help is absolutely awful. It is a garbagey piece of garbage. Paying For It is both insightful and hilarious. It is fantastic. WANNA KNOW WHY?????????
Okay so I'm not going to bother doing any internet research on these books because even though I have the capabilities, a book should really stand on it's own and not need a bunch of internet research to raise it's credibility. And from my judgment of The Help, it's bound to have hundreds of thousands of pages of crap online to justify it, romanticize it, praise it, validate it... it fucking needs it. This is the worst pile of crap I've read since Twilight Eclipse and that's pretty much spelling it out for you right there: Kathryn Stockett totally Stephanie-Meyer-ed this book. She absolutely did. I feel like if you haven't read the book this makes no sense and if you have read the book, I'm stating the frantically obvious. I have a lot of questions about this book. At the top of the list, is HOW THE HELL DID THIS GET PUBLISHED. In the afterword of the book, she says and I will type it out for you right now:
"I don't presume to think that I konw what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the 1960's. I don't think it is something any white woman on the other end of a black woman's paycheck could ever truly understand"
So this sentence--while followed with other flowery sentences and preceded by hundreds of pages of flowery sentences--basically negates every single thing she has written. The plot of The Help is that a white woman (Skeeter, Kathryn Stockett, Stephanie Meyer, whatever you prefer) gets a dozen black maids to help her tell the story of the help in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963ish. Two of those black maids have significant voices in the book. The voice rotates between Skeeter (White), Aibileen (Black) and Minny (Black). All written by Kathryn Stockett. In The Help the book they write is called Help and it has a blue cover with a white dove. If there was truly a book published in 1964 called Help with a blue cover, comprised of authentic narratives transcribed by and edited together by a white author who published anonymously, and this was the follow up to the story where it explains the townspeople's reactions then I could accept that. But it's not. ...At this point my screen is filled up with words and I still haven't even really started ragging on this shitty book. If there was ever a freaking book for white women to feel really good about themselves and their part in history, it's this book. It's total crap. Everything about it. It's the most un-authentic thing I've ever read, in large part not just because a white woman is writing black voices but because the protagonist of the story is making choices in regards to the fictional Help that Kathryn Stockett did NOT make with her book The Help. Ugh this is really unarticulated but I feel really frustrated with this book! It's terrible. You should read it so you can decide for yourself if you think it's authentic or if you think it's just another white guilt counter productive piece of crap.
Now, Paying For It on the other hand, is so honest, funny, earnest and the fact that Chester Brown comes off a little clinicy, a little preachy, a little white, cis, privileged, hetero-- he's so upfront about it that it's really unoffensive, it's actually really endearing. Now, I already have my own views about both topics of both books, and I already pretty much agreed with Chester Brown already (possessive monogamy bad, sex worker rights good) and there are some things he says that I was not in total agreement with because they are from a white-cis-privileged-hetero~COMIC GEEK~ point of view that I don't think is applicable for every single human. But most of what he says is absolutely spot on and well written and extremely thoughtful and thought out. Unlike that damn Kathryn Stockett. It doesn't hurt that Paying For It is filled with hilarious anecdotes featuring some of the great comic writers of today. It doesn't hurt that there is an appendix with Seth's notes on Chester Brown's storytelling of something with him in it, and also notes by Chester Brown on Seth's notes on his work... Yeah, it's pretty great. The last chunk of Paying For It has a bunch of appendixes (appendici?) that are really valuable whether you agree with him or not. I wish The Help had a bunch of appendixes that made it a more valuable read. The only thing is has in the back besides the afterword (which is entitled Too Little Too Late) is a freaking Readers Guide which is a total waste of time... it's written by Kathryn Stockett and the first questions is "Who is your favorite character?" and the 6th question is the worst, "Do you think Minny was justified in her distrust of white people?" The Paying For It appendixes feature tons of excellent stuff, every complaint you could have about his view, he backs up with concise arguments. You don't have to agree with it. But the argument is there and it's honest and it's not trying to be something that it's not. Bonus great thing about Paying For It: It has a great argument for decriminalization of prostitution that I think is excellent that everyone should be aware of.
So it's taken me almost 2 hours to write this and it's not even very long. I highly recommend both of these books to everyone but be prepared, The Help is gonna suck.
Love ya,
Smog
p.s. I have pics and other stuff but imma wait and show you later :)
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