The Ballad of Lucy Whipple by Karen Cushman

Also Known As: Seriously, Karen Cushman Is The Only Author In The World That Could Write A Book For Young Adults With Poignance And Humor Tied Into A U.S. History Lesson About Manifest Destiny.

Karen Cushman's first two books (Catherine, Called Birdy and The Midwife's Apprentice) were both unqualified triumphs in my mental library, so when I found The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, I let out an actual out-loud cheer. Having finished reading it -- finally -- I can say that the weird looks I got were totally worth it.

This is the story of California Whipple, told in first-person narrative and pieces of letters she writes back East to her grandparents, left behind in a Massachusettes town 40 miles outside of Boston after her father died and her mother, in a fight of American-ness up and moves the entire family westward during the gold rush, hoping to find gold nuggets littering the ground, dragging along a half-dozen children named things like Prairie and Sierra -- there was a point in the book where I said, "Oh God, it's like I've been trapped by the Park Slope stroller mafia or something." -- and a singular boy named Butte. (Proper pronunciation up for debate. To be kind, I have been saying, Bute -- like butane.) California decides her name is Lucy, since California is preposterous and loathesome.

California drags her heels the entire way, protesting and wailing and talking extensively about how she hates absolutely everything about the "town" in which they settle -- Lucky Diggins, California. Mining is hard and horrible, and Arvella Whipple, California's mother finds employment running the only boarding house in the joint for vagrants and miners, rough people with hard lives, and it becomes an increasingly endearing setting for a revolving cast of everybody from the Gent (possibly a serial killer, but very charming?) to Brother Clyde, a preacher come for lost souls who Lucy hopes will bear her away back to the East Coast.

The story -- all its hilarity and heartbreak -- is classic Cushman. Like with Catherine, Called Birdy, she pulls no punches. If the idea of Birdy's awful father slapping her in a drunken fit as he tries to sell her like cheese to the highest-bidding suitor horrifies you, so will the wretchedness Lucy and her family are forced to endure. But the rough edges, I think, are what make Cushman's books so enormously compelling, she writes some of the most imperfectly-human adults I've ever read, and the frustration of trying to understand them viewed again, suddenly, through the lens of a 13 or 14 year old girl is shocking. It's strange to shift back in time so quickly when for so long we've made our excuses for our more-or-less grown up behavior, but to remember it from the slightly shorter perspective of a pre-teenaged girl is humbling and also heartening, to know that even if you seriously, seriously hate your mother for all the crap she's putting you through, you still love her, and want only the best for her.

I loved Lucy, and I love the uncompromising strength and female cussedness about her -- I only wish there were more writers who could tap that core of awesomeness that dwells at the heart of every girl. Or at least that Cushman would write more books. Hey, I vote the Victorian era. I bet she could totally make me laugh about corsetry.

Recommended Reading?: Buy it now. Get three copies and mail them to your friends and their daughters.
Adults Will Love It As Much As Kids?: Absolutely.
Will I Pervert The Source Material And Ready Dirty Things Into It?: No -- I like to think that the dirty things Cushman writes into her books are intentional, and I like that she doesn't whitewash anything. (To that point, Bernard becomes my second-favorite character in this story.)

In which I nearly perish of exposure, continue to hate a celebrated Chinese invention

I really, really hate fireworks.

I'm not sure when it started or why, but all I know is that fireworks bore me. They're loud, yes. They're also very shiny and in recent years increasingly colorful, but instead of being filled with a sense of wonder and joy I take pictures without any real interest and muse (silently, as this is obviously an indoor thought) about how really, lots of fireworks just look like day-glo sperm. I went to Chicago to spend the Fourth of July and instead of watching the fireworks over the lake I spent it curled up in my friend's apartment reading manga and messing with her cats -- it owned.

So suffice it to say I was less than totally freakin' thrilled when my father's best friend's daughter (we'll call her BFF Offspring) came to me and exclaimed, "Linda! Guess what! I have tickets to a fireworks display an hour away from our apartment! Won't this be awesome?" to which I said, "Uh," since saying, "I would rather have all of my teeth pulled with auto pliers without anesthesia" probably would have made her cry. Make no mistake, BFF Offspring is awesome, and probably my best friend in China for various and sundry reasons, but her ability to take subtle hints ("You know, I really hate fireworks," I said; "Don't worry! It'll be great! We'll have such a great time!" she replied) is not one of them. My hangdog expression in place, I sucked it up last night and schlepped myself out to watch the sky have orgasms.

The show started almost an hour and a half late, by which point the venti mocha (BFF Offspring: "Wow! I didn't even know they made coffees that big.") had made its way through all my pleasure centers and to my bladder, which was on DEFCOM 5 and seriously pissed about it. Chinese people, being fond of tormenting the proletariat, obviously, had scheduled some kind of horrendous musical thing before the fireworks started, and I watched a middle-aged comrad march around the stage with his arms at right angles singing songs nobody had been forced to listen to outside of Chinese prison camps in two decades as the crowd booed and demanded refunds for their tickets (don't ask, I don't even know) for the American, South Korean, Spanish international fireworks competition. Did I also mention it was effing freezing? No? It was effing freezing. If I was a guy, I'd be sterile now.

"Ha ha," BFF Offspring laughed. "Do you want to give up and go home?"

"GOD," I said, stuffing my camera into my bag with numb fingers. "YES."

She grabbed my arm, achoring me to our white plastic lawn chair hell. "I was just kidding," she whined. "Let's just wait another ten minutes." I reminded her she'd said that to me forty minutes ago, and then I told her that if we were in America, and that I knew all my fluid profanity in Chinese, she'd probably be in tears and we would so not be friends anymore, and you know, it says a lot about how she has a good soul, because she just laughed and said, "You're such a kidder, Linda."

The fireworks did start, eventually, after some fits and starts, and everybody ooed and ahhed and talked about how loud! and bright! and colorful! and fireworky! they were.

And me? I still really, really, really hate fireworks -- only now, I'll always think of them in connection with nearly dying of exposure.

Stop! Somebody roll me into a taxi!

Being in China is always an interesting study in the power of the mind to forget good lessons learned: each year I come and go each year I say, "Next year, I'll find some way to arrange my trip for longer and ignore more of my relatives," each year I say, "This time, I won't let people bully me into eating so much," each year I say, "I will spend more time just walking around the city, and less in banquet halls questioning if my stomach is actually Mary Poppins' bag." Each year, these things fail to happen.

Shanghai is in a rush of building again, so the skies that were blue the last time I was here are gray and fogged over with excess again -- apparently the whole city is Really Excited (tm) about the 2010 World Expo. I haven't had the heart to report to them that nobody knows what that is, and maybe I'm wrong! Maybe everybody knows who that is other than say, me. Anyway, they're laying waste to vast swathes of the city, tearing limb from limb old houses with baked s-shaped roof tiles and squat rows of multifamily apartments tucked into one another like the knots along a Chinese staircase, banking the Suzhou River at the heart of the City. I've been here now...four days? And although we've walked along the business districts and eaten at all the finest restaurants and seen my -- shockingly old, now -- grandparents, I haven't yet walked along the Bund, wandered around the refurbished 1930s district holding an overpriced Starbucks coffee. I haven't spent time in People's Square, where the Shanghai art museum and a maze of stores and bakeries are crouched around enormous, German-sponsored shopping malls with hideous modern art displays in the lobby.

There's a lot left to look at and not much time left to do it -- which leads me to the inevitable Shanghai-related ennui, that sense of urgency that I love this city and don't have enough time to be here, which leads me to violent thoughts about my job and all my responsibilities and why don't I have employment here -- in Shanghai, which I like a whole hell of a lot better than Lexington Avenue or being trapped on the 5 line during rush hour traffic, my left boob jammed into a pole.

But preemptive sadness aside, I love it here and I wish I could stay forever.

Oh God. I'm DESERVE to die alone.

yin: when is your birthday again
linda: 11/28
linda: i talked to this old monk
linda: once on top of a mountain
linda: and he said i would find true love when i was 24
linda: so i guess the deal is
yin: XD
linda: if nothing happens in 09
linda: i'm screwed
yin: i think you found true love a while back: LE ALCOHOL
linda: yeah but the only babies alcohol can give me are fetal alcohol syndrome ones
linda: ...oh god we're horrible people

Weekend in Review

Instead of reading The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, I reread Scandal in Spring and am halfway through Never Seduce a Scoundrel (both highly recommended unless you're like, 12 and/or have too much self-respect for that sort of thing). Also, I tripped up an escalator -- which: AWESOME -- on my way to see Tropic Thunder with David (also highly recommended unless you're 12, not because you wouldn't enjoy it, but because your parents would be scarred by watching certain parts of the film with you), which was totally worth the bruising if only for the scene where Jack Black is tied to a tree or Satan's Alley. Don't ask. Just go see it.

But the actual reason I'm writing this entry is because my next door neighbors are taking their parrot for walks again and it keeps making leering noises at all the people on the street, and honestly, how often do you get to type the words: "taking their parrot for walks?"

Toeing the line

My friend Leah and I are both working on YA novels and the question of so-called appropriateness -- where's the line drawn? -- almost always comes up. Is the cut off purely topical (ie: sex, drugs, rock and roll) or how graphic something is (ie: explicit sex, colorful drug use descriptions, Jonas Brother's concert versus Nordic black metal where somebody once filed a lawsuit over being concussed by a sheep head thrown from the stage)?

Not kosher, New York. Not kosher.

It's kind of an obvious sign the world hates me when the day my gym membership comes through and I finally begin keeping a running log of stuff I eat is the same day a waffle truck decides to park itself in front of my office building.

For future reference, D: is my DESPAIR! face.

An aside about the Motherland before I start reading The Year of the Boar, and Jackie Robinson (Again)

Being of obvious Asian -- and then once you ask me, confirmed Chinese -- descent, I keep getting questions on how I feel about the Olympics. Do the comments the American press brigades there make bother me? Are you disappointed by the gymnastics scandal? The bad air quality? Are you horrified by the lip synching thing?

The lip synching and the gymnasts, I honestly could not even express to you in human languages how little I care. I mean, yes, it's crummy for an entire nation to come together and decide you're good enough, you're just not pretty enough to sing at the Olympics, and for that, she should be awarded therapy and have every copy of Seventeen or Elle Girl in her immediate vincinity burned so as not to exacerbate the situation. Otherwise, oh my God, must I remind you all about the SNL Ashelee Simpson debacle? It wasn't nice but it's not the end of the world. As for the gymnasts, as has been pointed out: if you can play the game, why not give them the freaking gold? If you can dive at 14, why can't you flip at 13? The Chinese gold medal girls Yang Yilin and Jiang Yuyuan were amazing, and they should be commended for having such extraordinary grace and skill despite being -- gasp -- a whole three years younger than everybody may or may not think. The air quality thing I've been harping on Beijing for years, so for everybody else to join in now -- the more the merrier.

As for the complaints about American media being too mean to China? Forgive the profanity, bitch, please. For full disclosure, I'm a proud member of the carrion-picking vulture class of newsgatherers. I'm not going to say there's never an emotional stake when you're covering news, but more often than not, you're carried along by the news cycle. Anyway! My point is: there's no such thing as the media is beating somebody up. Seriously -- you thrust yourself into the national cum international spotlight, you ask for it. Dear China: welcome to the world stage. Get better publicists. Love, reporters.

Now, the requisite to-be-fair graf: I came to the States when I was 3-and-a-half years old -- all the memories I really have of China are colored with not living there, being seperate, so the knee-jerk defense that I have of the country will always be tempered by the fact that I've watched from the in and outside -- that doesn't mean I'm less inclined to bash, it just means I do it with a little more intimacy.

My Side of the Mountain

Also Known As: It's Not Just You, I, Too, Photoshopped All The Various Ways Child Molesters Could Have Come Into Play Here

So by the fourth time I said, "Oh my God, that guy could be a child molester! Get out of the car! Rape whistle! Amber Alert!" I had to put down My Side of the Mountain and remind myself that I was reading a book that predated our current fearfulness of, well, everything for children -- and it makes me both love and dislike it.

In the context of 2008, it's hard to read about a city kid named Sam Gribley escaping to the Catskill Mountains with some flint, $40, and a dream of finding his family's failed homestead. Did I mention he hitchhikes along the way? With truckers? And then shows up in random strangers' homes and sleeps, unassuming and unconcerned with obvious potential danger? If nothing else, had this book been written in the last five years, short of being trafficked into the sex trade, he would have at least had his organs meted out onto the black market. Of course, when Jean Craighead George wrote the book in 1959, I'm sure none of that stuff ever happened.

(To that point, there's a hilarious note in the beginning of my copy of the book talking about how the manuscript was originally rejected for encouraging children to run away from home, with the decision reversed when the publishers decided that running away from home into the forest was okay, just not running away from home into the city. There's probably some kind of legitimate logic to that, but all I could think was, "HELLO. THE UNABOMBER LIVED IN THE FOREST.")

Anyway, the fun stuff: Sam ends up -- after managing neither to die nor be forced into prostitution -- living in the heart of a hollowed-out tree, making himself acorn pancakes on a lid of a tin can and smoking trout, taming falcons etc. and so on. He kidnaps a baby falcon! And kills a bunch of deer! And rabbits! And turtles! And fashions bowls of their remnants! And Sam's so comfortable with rendering death unto the woodland creatures it's instantly alien to a modern day reader, who mostly interacts with the flesh of dead animals through sterilized supermarket packaging.

And then there's Sam's method of playing fast and loose with fire, of inviting strangers persued by the police and into his home, no questions asked. Sam's dear for being trusting, but I spent a lot of time trying not to rend my hair and wanting to slap up all the adults around him for not holding him hostage until child services could come collect him. I suppose that goes right back to my first comment though, about how childhood has changed so much since Sam hacked up deer in the Catskills. I love how free Sam is -- how after two days of being run away, no SWAT team bursts into the forest to airlift him back to his Nintendo DS -- but at the same time, I'm past the age where I can see it only for its romance.

I mean, setting aside the part where he totally would have died from exposure or being eaten by bears or BEING KILLED BY CONVICTS HIDING IN THE FOREST HELLO ARE YOU A MORON SAM? -- and only if his mother didn't beat both the weather and the grizzlies AND HELLO BANDITS to the punch by beating him to death -- the book is charming. But I can't say that it has aged well. Some stories invite you to skim over the more ridiculous elements -- From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler -- but My Side of the Mountain feels too spare, to dismantled, a little too much to swallow for the reader over the age of 12.

Recommended Reading?: Absolutely, it's still a classic. Plus, twig fishhooks.
Adults Will Love It As Much As Kids?: Not necessarily, although I guess it depends on how afraid you are that kids will be eaten by bears -- so your mileage may vary on this one.
Will I Pervert The Source Material And Ready Dirty Things Into It?: God, yes. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I had to bite my lip and lecture myself, "It's not what it reads like. It's not what it reads like. God, I'm going to hell."

OH MY GOD. WHAT ARE MY NEIGHBORS DOING TO ME?!

It's 11:02 p.m. and they're cooking something that seems utterly divine. I can smell something from the celery or celeriac family and the faint tang of tomatoes and the rich sweetness of pork and I am absolutely dying of starvation smelling this from my opened windows. HEY NEIGHBORS: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? STOP COOKING. THIS IS LIKE, DAY ONE OF MY NEW DIET AND YOU ARE ALREADY RUINING IT.