This week at the L.C.:
What I’m really doing when I claim to be working . . .

The literary world is all abuzz with news that in writing her first book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, Kaavya Viswanathan lifted entire paragraphs from Megan McCafferty’s first two books, and stuffed them into her novel.
Things took a turn for the worse yesterday, when Viswanathan offered up a frankly unbelievable apology:
In an e-mail message this afternoon, Ms. Viswanathan said that in high school she had read and loved the two books she is accused of borrowing from, ‘Sloppy Firsts’ and “Second Helpings,” and that they “spoke to me in a way few other books did.”
“Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel, ‘How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,’ and passages in these books,” the message went on.
(Surprised and upset!)
Calling herself a “huge fan” of Ms. McCafferty’s work . . .
(Saying you’re a big fan of the author you’ve plagiarized is a bit like a stalker claiming to be in love with the woman he’s following around.)
. . . Ms. Viswanathan added, “I wasn’t aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty’s words.” She also apologized to Ms. McCafferty and said that future printings of the novel would be revised to “eliminate any inappropriate similarities.”
(So here, she’s basically saying: “Besides, when describing one of the characters I copied from her, I changed the gum she was chewing from Doublemint to Orbit . . . isn’t that original enough for you? Jesus, what do you people want from me? After all, I was studying for the SAT’s when I was writing the damn thing.”)
Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little, Brown, said Ms. Viswanathan planned to add an acknowledgment to Ms. McCafferty in future printings of the book.
Future printings of the book? I think someone, somewhere, is in serious denial.
Although, it’s fun to wonder what this acknowledgment might say: “Thanks to Ms. McCafferty, who provided many of the words used to write this book (although the plot was different, and I did change the wording some, and besides, it was all done totally subconsciously .) . . without you, it might never have been finished.”
Lesson learned . . . plagiarism is bad, even if it does get you into Harvard.

Dr. Phil claims that I can potty train Sam in one day. But for this miraculous feat to occur, I have to first get Sam a baby doll that wets itself.

The world is full of wetting baby dolls . . . but most of them are girl dolls (with the exception of Potty Scotty, who costs $50 . . . which is about $45 more than I want to invest in this probably doomed enterprise).

A friend recommended taping a plastic syringe onto a baby girl doll, to simulate a penis, which I thought was a brilliant idea. And another friend just happened to have a spare penis-shaped straw topper left over from a bachlorette party. So with a little tape, I nip/tucked Betsy Wetsy into Bobby Wetsy.

George thinks that the doll is so scary looking, it’s going to have the opposite of its intended effect, and that Sam will never go near the potty again.

Argh, Matey!

And so continues my quest to read 50 classics in a year . . .
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Picking books that are short is all well and good . . . right up until you realize that the text has been printed in 10 point font. Suddenly 140 pages seems a lot longer. And when the book lacks a plot, it’s even worse. Such is the case with my choice for book nine: Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov.
Besides, it’s irritating reading a book when I can’t pronounce the title. Rake’s Progress claims that “Pnin” is pronounced much as you would “Up, Nina,” minus the U and the A. But when I try that, it just sounds like I’m spitting.
Anyway, in the Everyman’s Library version of Pnin that I read, David Lodge begins his foreword with the following proclamation: “Vladimir Nabokov was a literary genius.”
And I, ever the contrarian, have to disagree with Lodge on this point. Unless you define “literary genius” as “one who writes a book so boring, your eyes glaze over every time you pick it up.”
Even worse, the dust jacket advertises that the book is a comedy. To this, I say: Ha! Ha, ha!
I get the feeling Nabokov was trying to make jokes, in this series of long-winded, meandering essays about Pnin, a Russian emigre employed as a professor at an American college. But any jokes that might be there — and they’re bad, for example, the line “Ping pong, Pnin?” (Get it? Ping pong, Pnin? Alliteration? Ho ho ho, nothing says funny like alliteration!) — get lost in Nabokov’s sloppy and longwinded prose. The man does not know when to leave well enough alone.
But maybe Nabokov should be graded on a curve. After all, English was not his native language. How many people can not only master a second language, but then write novels in it?
So I’m giving the awful Pnin a C-, although honestly, it really deserves a D.

My weekly blog is up at the L.C.!
This week: Why I hate Thursdays.

The Stranger by Albert Camus
There’s an episode of Seinfeld where George is so insecure that his new girlfriend, Cheryl (cousin of Ping), will think that Jerry is funnier than he is, that George convinces Jerry to act somber around her.
So when Cheryl mentions over dinner that it’s her aunt’s birthday, Jerry sighs and says, “Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year has gone by and how little we’ve grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it’s not to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably. Irrevocably. Happy birthday? No such thing.”
That line, Jerry’s bid to not be funny, pretty much sums up the plot of Albert Camus’s The Stranger.
The story begins with Meursault, a young Algerian man, whose mother has just died. (“Maman is dead.”) He falls asleep during the vigil, remembers very little of her funeral, and is happy to return to Algiers. Once there he rather inadvisably begins to help out his friend, Raymond, seek revenge on Raymond’s ex-mistress, an Arab woman. Events escalate. The mistress’s brother, apparently not pleased that Raymond has slapped around his sister, follows Meursault and Raymond to the beach, and, along with a friend, instigates a fight. The fight ends when Raymond is hurt and retreats. Meursault later returns to the beach, and for no reason at all, Meursault shoots the Arab man, and is subsequently carted off to jail.
Originally written in French, The Stranger was translated in to English by Matthew Ward. In his foreword, Ward explains that Camus had intentionally been copying American writers, like Hemingway and Faulkner, when writing the book. Particularly in the first half of the book, the sentences are short and stilted, and the protagonist, Meursault, is hardboiled (what P.G. Wodehouse would have called “a twenty-minute egg”).
I could have told Camus that this was not the way to go. (Well, you know. If I’d been alive at the time he wrote the book, and if I spoke French.) It’s a lesson that writers of commercial fiction learn early on – you simply can’t copy another writer’s voice. It always rings false. And that’s certainly true in The Stranger.
But if you manage to slog your way through the tedium of the first half of The Stranger (excruciatingly boring details about Meursault’s neighbors, and meals, and having to listen to Meursault drone on to his girlfriend that love is meaningless, life never changes, blah blah blah blah blah), there is an unexpected surprise waiting for you: part two actually gets better. Much better. The story perks up, and you even learn the reason for much of the dull minutiae from part one.
The book peters out again in the end – prepare yourself for a final chapter where Meursault gnashes his teeth about the unbearable nothingness of being – but at least at that point you have something invested in Meursault’s story.
I’d round out the book’s grade to a B-: Act One is dreadful, Act Two is excellent, with a disappointing finale.

Me: I can’t believe you have to work today. It’s Good Friday!
George: Law firms don’t close on Good Friday.
Me: But it’s an important day on the Christian calendar! Making a Christian work on Good Friday, is like making a Muslim work on . . .
George:
Me:
George: Ramadan?
Me: Yeah, I just sort of lost that analogy right in the middle, huh? Anyway, that sucks. I was hoping you’d be able to watch Sam today so that I could go shopping with my mom.

My weekly blog is up at Literary Chicks.
This week: Gwnyeth, and Madonna, and Britney, oh my!

So here’s the scoop: A Park Slope mom finds a hat in the park. The hat is blue. She sends out an email to nearby parents asking if anyone lost a “boy’s” hat. Chaos breaks out.
Lisa, spitting mad, writes back, “I’m sorry, I know that you are just trying to be helpful, but what makes this a ‘boy’s hat’? Did you see the boy himself loose it? Or does the hat in question possess an unmistakable scent of testosterone?”
Eyes are rolled. More emails are sent.
Some of the moms attempt to turn the ruckus into a joke.
“I’m sorry but, HOW DO YOU KNOW it’s for an older child? What does this say about younger children who happen to have large heads? Is something wrong with them??” jokes Susan.
“And along those lines, how do really know this is a “hat”? Doesn’t this just speak to our conventional understanding of what a “hat” really is?” Jennifer chimes in.
Others are not amused.
“Lisa, I can’t believe the amount of negative response your post has generated. You really touched a nerve. I’m really astonished by how constricted people are in their thinking,” Abbey tuts.
Lisa defends herself with a long humorless e-mail, ending with, “[Children] learn these labels and stereotypes from the everyday language used in our community. Yes, even in an innocent post about a lost hat.”
And it goes on. And on. And on.
Think I’m making this up? Sadly, no.