BPW takes on Mother Nature, To-Do Lists, and Esteemed American Authors

Mother Nature is making it awfully hard to feel good about my decision to move back to Montana. Everything else is great -- there are always events going on around town, sometimes so many that it's hard to choose what to do; people are nice; I have a social life for the first time in a few years that is not dependent on some stupid man; and the scenery is awesome. But, gawd, this freaking weather...

I know, I know: 40 degrees and rainy at the end of May? What's not to love about that? It's just that we had grand plans this weekend, to get out of town, do some car-camping and, possibly, some beer-drinking, but then it was just too darn cold -- even for my Montanan companions. Plus, the road to the camping area washed out this week and is now closed "indefinitely." Add that to the threat of snow at our destination, and we had ourselves a little camper damper.

Staying in town this weekend, though, gave me the opportunity to be somewhat productive. I use the word "somewhat" loosely; where someone else's "somewhat productive" is crossing off an entire item or two on their to-do lists, my "somewhat productive" is more like putting an asterisk next to a couple of items, as in "started on this task, got bored, played with my split ends instead."

For example, I started moving into my new place this weekend. After much searching, crying, panicking, and visiting only one house where the shower was full of vomit, I found a place that will do for now. I'm renting a room in a house, which means, yes, I will have roommates, which, as you can probably guess, is not quite where I wanted to be at this point in my life. But I didn't really have a choice. Finding a place where having a dog is not strictly verboten proved to be no easy task. I feel like I would have had a better chance saying to potential landlords, "No, I don't smoke, but I do plan on running a meth lab in the spare bedroom," at which point they would nod, hand me some keys, and say, "Hey, remember: no pets."

When I looked at the house, I clicked immediately with its occupants, The Climber and The Nurse. They're dating and The Climber owns the house. I like that the owner of the house actually lives there; if something in the house breaks, then it may be more likely to get fixed, an attractive notion to someone who lived in an apartment without air conditioning for 8 months in Florida. I'm on the fence about the whole living with a couple thing; on the one hand, hey, they're the ones who were looking for someone to live with them. On the other hand, I just listened to one of my married friends bitch about how much she wants their roommate -- the one to whom she's not married -- to get the hell out. I don't want to be that person.



The house is adorable, though not quite on the level of Che, yet. The Climber just bought it in December, at which time it was something of a "fixer-upper." It's coming along, though; just today when I brought over my special teak patio furniture (which, if counted as separate items, constitute the second, third, and fourth items I have brought to the house over the last two days; I wasn't kidding about the "somewhat productive" bit), The Climber was putting the finishing touches on the paint job in my bedroom. The new color can best be described as "creamsicle-esque."

In other "somewhat productive" news, I have gotten a tremendous amount of reading done on this crummy weekend. Again, take "tremendous" with a shaker of salt; I finished a book I started a week ago (How to Lose Friends and Alienate People), read the Steve Martin novella Shopgirl (a not-so-tremendous 130 pages, but a good read nonetheless), and finished three articles in the New Yorker, which took me two days. I'm a member of the MTV generation -- we don't have much of what one would call an "attention span" (although we can tell you all about how VJ Adam Curry's hair styles always mimicked that of Jon Bon Jovi; ah, the things that the mind chooses to hold on to...").

One of the New Yorker articles, "Big Bird: A biography on the novelist Harper Lee," has changed my outlook on life; I now see the world as a place where I am right all of the time, rather than just most of the time. What a fine world this now is.

So what if I'm given to a little hyperbole now and then? Overstating my claims gives me so much more conviction when stating my claims!

Anyway, the article is ostensibly a review of the new book Mockingbird by Charles J. Shields, but the article's author, Thomas Mallon, really gets into a review of To Kill a Mockingbird, a book I read in high school and a book which makes me cringe whenever it's mentioned as someone's favorite. Mallon articulates what I couldn't as a 15-year-old in my English class: reasons why the book's popularity is a little unwarranted. Had I articulated these thoughts on the book's improbable dialogue, Scout's grating precociousness, the too feel-good-edness of it all, I would have been kicked out of Mrs. Burnette's class faster than you can say, "What the hell kind of name is Dill?".

Now, why is this? Why would my English teacher gasp with dismay at my criticisms had I the command of the language that I so obviously possess now (all hail my mighty ego! It's hyperbole again, people) to say what I was thinking about the novel? Because To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those books in the canon that is just beyond reproach, one of the books that are placed on a pedestal simply because they have been critically hailed for so long. Woe be unto the high school student who dares to question the book's real value. Why, that's straying from the instructor's curricular material and we simply cannot have independent thinking in a high school English class, of all places.

This very elevation of certain pieces of literature has always driven me mad. In high school, students are forced (yes, forced) to read certain books (fun fact in the Mallon article, "by 1988 the book [TKaM] 'was taught in 74 percent of the nation's schools'"). I'm not arguing with the books on these lists ... well, maybe I want to argue about that a little bit, but not now. Rather, the real worthiness of these books is never really questioned. I found the same thing as an English major in college. Do the titles in the required reading for Brit Lit Through the 18th Century vary much from semester to semester? Nope, never. Just accept and revere the books on face value alone and regurgitate your professor's words extolling the virtues of the books in question so we can keep the cycle going.

Is it painfully obvious that I endured a tortuous semester as an English major under the tutelage of a former editor of The Chaucer Review?

Anyway, Mallon's article grabbed me because it took a critical look at a book we are taught not to look at all that critically. I suppose you can credit the book with starting conversations on racism; I had the pleasure (?) of reading the book during the O.J. Simpson trial, so some of our in-class discussions were punctuated with the occasional "What similarities do you see between Atticus and Marcia Clark?". I wish I were kidding. Still, the book is too easily lauded. I particulary like Mallon's summation, "...readers returning to the book after many years may find themselves echoing the film Capote's ['Capote' as in Truman, Harper Lee's childhood friend] boozed-up muttering about To Kill a Mockingbird: 'I frankly don't see what all the fuss is about.'"

Tru dat, Truman.