MISS AMERICAN PIE: A DIARY OF LOVE, SECRETS AND GROWING UP IN THE 1970s Margaret Sartor: My girlhood was very little like the one described here. All the boyfriends, and drinking, and using the f--- word, the horseback riding and rah-rah pom - pom beauty queen stuff -- none of that was me (me, I was a Girl With Glasses!). But one thing I did love about this young heroine -- she has my crazy frizzy hair! On 2 November 1976, she writes, "Jimmy Carter was elected president and Daddy said he won because it was such a beautiful day all over the South. This would seem to suggest a connection between the presidency of the United States and the frizziness of my hair" (198). Now that made me laugh! Reminded me, in fact, of the boy at my high school graduation (a day of high humidity) who said, "Kitti, your hair looks like the Wrath of God." Gee, thanks!
GIRL WITH GLASSES: MY OPTIC HISTORY Marissa Walsh: What a smart, funny memoir and darling cover photo (take a look on amazon). Pretty sure I had that exact same outfit in 4th grade! Maybe we all did -- Haha! Reading in public because you just can't help yourself, or maybe to avoid human interaction? Walsh calls this "the girl-with-a-book thing" (148). She experiments with contact lenses, only to learn that even with her contacts in, she is still "the girl with glasses" (53). And she quotes Scooby-Doo, that episode when Daphne asks, "Velma, do you have a book for every occasion?" And Velma (a girl with glasses) replies, "Actually, yes." I love the idea of a life story chronicled by sequential eye-wear choices. You could also do it with footwear, winter coats, cars, hair, you name it. Fun!
SHE GOT UP OFF THE COUCH AND OTHER HEROIC ACTS FROM MOORELAND, INDIANA Haven Kimmel: ZIPPY is as cute and funny as ever (see below, 2004: GROWING UP SMALL & 2006), but by the end of this installment, she is wising up, sadly, and falling from innocence. Not that she ever loses her winsome sense of humor. She thinks that maybe she will have a detective agency with her sister when they grow up. Okay, says her sister: "'I would be the brains and you could do all the gross stuff.' I sighed. She had just named my dream life" (146).
In this book, Zippy's mother is the one who gets up off the couch (where according to Zippy she has spent the last few years "eating pork rinds and reading books from the bookmobile" 36) and enrolls at Ball State to complete a degree in English. Zippy's mom is a Girl With Glasses! Zippy observes that her mother "was forever quoting someone [James Joyce, for example], I can't describe how powerfully vexing it was" (261). Kind of like Velma, in Scooby-Doo.
In an evocative passage, Zippy recalls visiting the Laundromat with her parents, the smell of Tide & Downy, climbing into the large rolling laundry baskets:
"Plus you could buy individual boxes of detergent and fabric softener, even bleach, and there was nothing that made me grind my teeth with pleasure more than a real thing shrunken down small. The first time my dad showed me a toothache kit from a box of equipment from the Korean War and I saw the tiny cotton balls (the size of very small ball bearings), I nearly swooned. . . . Miniaturization was a gift from God, no doubt about it, and there it was, right in a vending machine in the place we used to do our laundry in New Castle, Indiana" (155).
Kimmel's description of Miniaturization nearly made ME swoon! Particularly since one of the most exciting books of literary theory I've ever read is Susan Stewart's ON LONGING: NARRATIVES OF THE MINIATURE, THE GIGANTIC, THE SOUVENIR, THE COLLECTION, which inspired my own book on the role of dolls and miniatures in fiction.
Email from a friend: "I agree with everything you said about ZIPPY; your comments are practically word for word what I nearly wrote down to you earlier today but then just didn't take the time to send. Doesn't it feature so many things that you remember from growing up, not only clothes and toys and household items, but also an almost non - specific feeling of the time. That is what I loved. It felt like it was my life without all the drama around it. The references to all the toys and songs and games: yes, it really did seem like she was describing our life in St. Charles, County. As for how she captures that detached, bemused voice -- so utterly charming, so critically astute yet nonjudgmental about her own life-- I just wish I knew! Similar to the narrative voice of Scout in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD or ELLEN FOSTER? Absolutely adorable.
Also, glad to hear I'm not the only one who found some of the time references oddly out of synch (e.g. no Barbies in 1972)! Wow! Even us poor kids in Missouri had Barbies in what -- 1964 or 65! Still, she made me laugh a million times:
"I had some disappointments with Santa, but not many. The only clear one I remember is the year I asked for a Skipper doll, who was an early, extra - perky friend of Barbie. Nobody had Barbies in Mooreland, and this could have posed a problem for the social Skipper, which might have been what Santa was thinking. Skipper was not the kind of girl to thrive in solitude. She wasn't doing much looking inside" (p. 266).
Before leaving this topic, I must say that I thought Skipper was Barbie's sister. I know that Barbie has a tiny little sister now (can't remember name? Chelsea? Tutti?), but I truly did think that Skipper was their middle sister, not a friend. I vividly remember my sister Di's Skipper doll who had long red hair and a red sailor style bathing suit -- very cute! And this was in the Midwest in 1965 or 1966. Apparently in Mooreland, however, no one has a Barbie in 1972 (?).
One thing that struck me when reading ZIPPY is that although the narrator is 8 years younger than I, it could easily be the other way around; so much of the descriptions seemed to be from the childhood of someone maybe a decade ahead of me, but then Kimmel does say that people in Mooreland were "not so much behind the times as they were confused about the times." I loved that!
And lastly . . .
LOOKING BACK: GROWING UP OLD IN THE SIXTIES (1973)
AT HOME IN THE WORLD: A MEMOIR (1998)
Great autobiographical / social commentary by Joyce Maynard.
For more on Joyce Maynard
check out my LIST on amazon: Joyce Maynard Treasure Hunt
and see my longer post
"Joyce Maynard Treasure Hunt" (27 May 2009)
on my literary blog of connection and coincidence
(www.kitticarriker.blogspot.com)
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