To Lena Dunham, I say: I want to be JUST that kind of girl (well, almost)

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned", Lena Dunham

Fast Facts

• Dunham was reportedly paid $3.5 million to write this collection of personal essays
• At 288 pages, that's more than $12,000 a page (!!!)
• At the ripe old age of 28, Dunham has been nominated for 8 Emmy awards and won two Golden Globes
• She was the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America award for directorial achievement in comedy
• Jemima Kirke, who plays the rebellious best friend to Dunham's character in HBO's Girls, is one of Dunham's best friends - they met at St. Ann's School in Brooklyn
• And she's dating (and surely marrying, and having babies with) Jack Antonoff, the lead guitarist of the band Fun!

Background

Lena Dunham is relatively new to me, but I feel - as many people of my generation, and anyone who watches or reads her work, must - that I know her intimately.  I have spent the last several weeks binge-watching all three seasons of Girls, listening to Dunham's interview with Marc Maron on his WTF podcast, reading an essay from this book that was previewed in The New Yorker, and now, gobbling up Not That Kind of Girl on my commute.  (And, it's not enough.  I will probably buy and watch Tiny Furniture tonight, and then go cry that she hasn't created more.)

The book of essays and lists is separated into five sections: Love and Sex; Body; Friendship; Work; and Big Picture.

Despite some of the heavy subject matter, the book feels generally bright, well-paced, and easy to consume in large quantities that don't feel large at the time (much the way I enjoyed Girls).  Dunham is a very talented writer, and I am still most impressed by her New Yorker chapter "Therapy and Me", which struck me as impressive on its own.

The chapters, some admittedly more entertaining than others, but with an easy flow, are varied in format.  Some are lists, some are essays, some are dated letters written to ex-boyfriends and amusingly over-footnoted by Present Lena.

Reasons why I wish I could be Lena Dunham

To be a little more like Lena Dunham, I could write this section in quippy list form.  But really, the first place I need to turn to spark the deepest I'm-jealous-but-happy-for-her-and-society feelings is the Acknowledgments section.

Who does she acknowledge?  "David, Esther, and the whole Remnick/Fein clan" - whom she thanks for friendship, wisdom, and matzo brie.  Yes, Lena Dunham is on familiar enough terms with the editor of the New Yorker and his family that she not only writes frequently for the magazine, but she also eats meant-only-for-Passover treats with them.

Who else?  Mike Birbiglia.  Judd Apatow.  B.J. Novak AND Mindy Kaling (naturally).  David Sedaris.  Zadie Smith.  And of course, the book is dedicated to her friend and mentor, Nora Ephron.

(She's also BFFs with Taylor Swift.  See: recent interview with TaySwift in People.  Haters gonna hate, but even haters must turn a little green with envy at this revelation.)

How has this woman been alive almost as long as I have (I've only got 7 additional months of breathing-in-and-out experience on her,) and is so @#$(*&! accomplished that I can barely fathom it, and pens an acknowledgments section of a $3.5 million book filled with people that I love so much that, if I could only meet them and exchange just 7-10 words, I could die happy?  I'm inspired.  Inspired to wish I could be Lena Dunham.

But...

Reasons why I don't wish I could be Lena Dunham

There is a contingent out there on the interwebs that hates on Lena Dunham for exhibiting a "poor little rich girl" complex.  With this book, maybe Dunham was engaging in the over-sharing she is famous for, as would be natural in a memoir.  Maybe she was also trying to show her critics that her life hasn't been as easy as their simplistic Money = Happiness equation would allow.

Regardless, she does not paint herself in the most flattering light (and I'm not just talking about all of the Girls nudity.)  Her sexual escapades are far from romanticized.  Her struggles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and body image issues and therapy and dissociation are laid bare (pun sort-of intended). 

In a particularly difficult-to-read section, she details the rape perpetrated on her in college by the campus Republican (given Oberlin's leanings, his identity was probably pinned down 4 seconds after the book came out).  Dunham is brutally honest with herself and others, even as she sprinkles humor and wit throughout the telling of her most difficult moments.

Recounting such personal moments strikes me as a very brave act, but these moments also give me (very few) reasons that I don't wish I was her.

Bottom Line

This collection is engaging throughout, and remains true to Dunham's television style, which I also really enjoy.  Jealousy aside, it wasn't my favorite book in the world, but I would certainly recommend it to friends looking for an entertaining read.

Most of all, it seems striking that someone so relatively young could have experienced enough to write a memoir that feels comprehensive and full.  I'm looking forward to her follow-up advice in twenty years or so.  I also look forward to aging with Lena Dunham, and relating to much, but not all, of what she has to over-share.

Yom Kippur post: The Marrying of Chani Kaufman

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, Eve Harris

Fast Facts

• A recommendation from my extraordinary friend Masha
• Long-listed for the 2013 Man Booker Prize
• Written by half-Israeli, secular Jew who taught briefly at a religious school
• 384 pages
• Exploration of life in a London Orthodox community, from the perspective of its teenage newly weds and their clergy's wife
• Enjoyable and quick read, but not a favorite
  

Unlikely Choice


It is unlikely that I would ever have picked up this book, had it not been so highly recommended by my friend Masha, who is a human marvel.  I have some religious family and friends, but I would not personally choose (and it is hard for me to even imagine) immersion in an Orthodox belief system, community, or lifestyle.  But a window in to this environment piqued my interest, and the timing was perfect - I had a trip coming up with lots of plane time, and needed a new book.


What to Expect


The story opens with Chani Kaufman, a nineteen-year-old Orthodox girl, on her wedding day - wearing the same sweaty dress that her sisters and generations of women in her family before her have worn.  Harris spends a good amount of time describing body odors in the opening passages, and Chani contemplates (read: obsesses) about what her wedding night will be like.


The novel jumps around chronologically, detailing the weeks leading up to Chani's wedding - including 3 dates and a memorably awkward phone conversation - with her soon-to-be-betrothed, twenty-year-old Baruch.  The perspective shifts between Chani, Baruch, and Chani's mentor, a rabbi's wife or rebbetzin named Rivka, and Rivka's son Avromi, whose eye predictably wanders when he attends a secular university.


In the Chani/Baruch story line, Chani and Baruch fixate on sex; on what it means to marry someone with whom you've spent approximately an hour; and then on sex, some more.  There is some romance and even a bit of suspense in the telling of their fledgling relationship, but preoccupation with deflowering is really the focus.


Rivka's story is a little more complex.  Some 30 years before she was tasked with taking Chani to the mikvah spiritual baths and explaining basic reproduction, Rivka was a student in Jerusalem who fell in love with a student named Chaim, and together, they became religious.  Her reproductive difficulties in the present, and her struggling and evolving relationships with both her husband and her faith, are the most poignant parts of the book.


Culture Questions You Can't Get an Answer to on Airplane Mode


From the very start of the book, I wanted to know: is this author a member of an Orthodox community?  Perhaps that is a testament to Harris' level of research, or to my inability to catch her in an error due to my own lack of knowledge.  I couldn't find out for sure until I finished the book, because I started and finished it on a plane.


Now that I know that Harris is not and has never been religious, I find myself wanting to critique the novel even more.  Each character struggles with the Hasidic community that they have been born into or have chosen in different ways, and it seems too easy or simplistic to see Hasidic life as confining and full of struggle, if you're an outsider looking in.  I don't know if my devil's advocate view is somehow tinged with Jewish guilt for not being more observant, but I do wonder - how would I feel reading this if I were Orthodox? 


Would I be frustrated or upset that the novel depicts religious teenagers as far more preoccupied with sex than questions of faith?  That the strongest female voice in the novel, a rabbi's wife who became more observant after falling in love, has grown to resent and seek escape from her community?  That a prominent dramatic point in the novel focuses on the nasty antics of Baruch's mother, who threatens Chani against marrying Baruch because her family isn't wealthy enough?
Particularly pointed (and I'd imagine, offensive) is the critique of Chani's own very fertile mother, who seems to Chani "a stranger, an exhausted mountain of dilapidated flesh, endlessly suckling, soothing, patting or feeding"... "her mother had become a machine whose parts were grinding and worn".  Maybe that's an author grasping for descriptors, but that's a little cruel for my taste.


Worth Reading?


This is a well-paced and enjoyable read, and a fascinating one for anyone curious about particular rituals or cultural elements related to Orthodox Judaism.  Harris provides an interesting narrative, with just enough drama and romance to keep you baited, and a sweet ending.  With some of my misgivings and questions aside, I'd recommend this novel for a quick read - though I wasn't completely in love.

"World War II Whimsical" (a new genre?): All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

Fast Facts

• To my abject delight, Anthony Doerr was raised in none other than Cleveland, Ohio - hence, his sunny world view?
• 544 pages
• 10 years of writing
• Selected for the Fiction Long List for the National Book Award
• Not just another World War II tears-and-torture fest
• An ode to the wonders of technology, the power of family relationships, finding love and beauty in strange places, and the special terrors of the war
• My first Anthony Doerr book, but certainly not my last

(A Little Bit of the) Plot
The story focuses on two children as they become very adult adolescents during the war: Marie-Laure LeBlanc, an immensely clever young blind girl trapped in her great-uncle's house in a coastal town, and Werner Pfennig, a brilliant white-haired orphan boy from a coal mining town with a penchant for radios.

Both their journeys are heart-wrenching, as they struggle to survive in unimaginable circumstances and in the midst of excruciating separations from their most cherished loved ones.  Their bright curiosity and talents, the mystery of a diamond hunt, and the lingering question of who will survive and how their lives will collide, dissipate some of the depressing weight of their circumstances.

(Maybe that sounds a bit like a book jacket, but I would hate to spoil such a highly-recommended read by giving any more away!)

Structure Makes it a Speed Read
Doerr bounces around time periods within, and briefly before and after, the war, using short chapters and shifts in point of view.  Primarily, you follow the perspectives of Marie-Laure and Werner, but you also uncomfortably spend time in the point of view of the antagonist, a Nazi sergeant major hunting down an enormous diamond (think the Titanic stone, but offering an immortality that Jack and Rose never enjoyed).

Each chapter is a morsel so perfectly proportioned that you'll keep saying "sure, I'll have another," until your eyes are burning and the sun comes up.  With such dark subject matter, how can you take so many of these sections at one time?

Well, because it's lovely.

What Makes it Lovely

Yes, this book is deeply dark and depressing.  But it has garnered rave reviews and captured attention because it offers some human redemption - something that books in all genres, not simply World War II fiction, could use in healthy doses.

That redemption takes many forms, and I'll offer a few of my favorites.

Radio.  Sometimes, I feel so surrounded by and inundated in technology that I forget the sheer wonder in it.  This book makes you feel genuinely excited by, and in thrall and terror of, the radio.  Doerr hits you over the head with this towards the end, but I forgive him for his final lack of subtlety because of how perfectly he puts you into the time period and into Werner's passion.  In an NPR interview, Doerr summed up his inspiration (the first recorded instance of creative inspiration on a New Jersey Transit train):

"I was on a train heading into Penn Station from Princeton, N.J., and we started going underground. The man in front of me was on his cellphone call — this was in 2004 — and the call dropped. And he got kind of angry, a little embarrassingly angry, unreasonably angry.

And I just remember thinking, what he's forgetting — really what we're all forgetting all the time — is that this is a miracle. He's using this little receiver and transmitter, this little radio in his pocket, to send messages at the speed of light rebounding between towers to somebody maybe thousands of miles away. He might have been talking to someone in Madagascar for all I knew. For me, that's a miracle.

So ... originally, the real central motivation for the book was to try and conjure up a time when hearing the voice of a stranger in your home was a miracle.

 (Reminds me of Louie CK's Miracle of Flight sketch, but less funny.)

Experiencing coastal France without visual imagery.  Marie-Laure and her father leave Paris for Saint Malo, on the Brittany coast.  Marie-Laure's experiences there, discovering the salt and vastness of the ocean, are absolutely gorgeous.

Daniel LeBlanc's model towns and letters.  Marie-Laure's father builds her perfect replica model towns of the places she lives.  The way he builds them, and the games he concocts for her, are described so tenderly that they are truly memorable.

Treasure hunt.  The book has a good, old-fashioned treasure hunt, and a suspense-building game of cat and mouse (allusion to Art Spiegelman partly on purpose.)  This adds a layer of enjoyable tension to the difficult subject matter.

Compassion for a German soldier, without total forgiveness.  I loved and pitied Werner more than anyone in the book.  I often wondered how I would behave in his circumstances and alarmingly, it is nearly impossible to think that I would have acted differently.  Making a reader step into Werner's shoes so thoroughly must have been a difficult, and impressive, feat for Doerr.

Something Happier for Your Dreary Fall?

I just finished a summer of bingeing some delicious book junk food:

1) The last book in the Discovery of Witches trilogy, in which the hot-and-heavy will-they-won't-they vampire-witch power couple finally have some babies and visit their string of beautifully decorated villas around the world, and

2) All three of the Hunger Games books (Thanksgiving cannot come soon enough for that movie!  I read the third book in a 24-hour blitz that needs some Jennifer Lawrence recapping, stat.)

After all my pleasure reading, I figured it was probably time for me to pick up Proust or something.  Failing that, I kept coming across All the Light We Cannot See, and I'm very glad that I finally pulled the trigger, because despite all the accolades, this was a tough book for me to purchase.  Who can jump from Katniss, Diana the witch and her hunky Matthew the vampire, to a depressing Holocaust novel?

If you're feeling post-summer melancholy, my recommendation is to battle the evil vampires and President Snow first, and afterwards pick up Doerr's beautiful book to assuage your guilt.