Musings of an Inappropriate Woman

If you read one non-fiction book this year, make it this one.

It’s a rare book that I like so much that I start trying to push it on to everyone I come across (it’s been four years, if that’s any indication), but Brigid Delaney’s This Restless Life is one such book.

I’ve been bringing it up constantly - in every conversation, coffee and random run-in I’ve had with my friends. And there’s a good reason for that - because it seems to be relevant in one way or another to pretty much every conversation I have. Now, dear blog readers, I am pushing it on to you.

It’s about life as it is now - fast, unpredictable and constantly changing - and how that impacts both how we live and who we are. Or as I put it in my forthcoming Sydney Morning Herald review, which explores the issues in more detail, it’s about “isolation, globalisation, the impact of technology, and the impossible-to-shut-out pressure to always ‘move on, move on, move on’ to the next thing, that has characterised the coming of age of so many of us who are currently aged in our twenties and thirties.”

That’s not to say that I agree with everything in it. I don’t. Delaney is too bleak at times for my tastes, and too nostalgic at others. But for me, agreeing with everything in a book is not the point. The point is to be excited, challenged, stimulated. And it really is exciting to see someone tackling a big social and philosophical issue, and doing it well - so many books, especially in the fields I read and write in, can feel like minor variations on the same old themes we’ve been trotting out for 20 years.

If you’re interested in hearing more (and you should be), Brigid will be talking with SMH political sketch writer Annabel Crabb at Sydney’s Gleebooks on Thursday 27 August, at 6:30pm.

Reviewed: Himglish and Femalese, by Jean Hannah Edelstein

Published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 8 August 2009.

Most books about relationships fall into one of two categories: they perpetuate tedious and outdated gender stereotypes, or they whip the reader up into a flurry of insecure self-loathing in an effort to shift more copies. The most infuriating do both. 

On first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking that Himglish and Femalese: Why Women Don’t Get Why Men Don’t Get Them, by twenty-something US-cum-British journalist Jean Hannah Edelstein, falls into the first category. Its title, after all, is premised on the idea that men and women speak different languages, even if both of those languages happen to be English. 

But in this case, first glances are deceiving. As the intentionally familiar second half of title and kitsch 1950s illustrations hint, Edelstein’s tongue is planted firmly in her cheek.  

The title isn’t entirely misleading - Edelstein does believe that the sexes communicate differently, and the book is peppered with humorous translations of typical conversations heterosexual couples might have - but if the prospect of another round of the battle of the sexes makes you want to run from the bookshop, you needn’t be afraid. As the book’s bluntly titled chapter on conflict (Sometimes, Men Are Jerks. Sometimes, Women Are Also Jerks) suggests, gender essentialism, this is not.  

More than a self-help book, Himglish and Femalese is a witty traipse through the modern sex and relationships landscape. Edelstein ponders “ambigudating”, the ethics of “researching“ prospective partners online, the modern man’s love of the crème brulee torch and MasterChef, and why exactly everyone feels compelled to stay friends with their exes - all in a tone that is simultaneously prim and sassy.    

That’s not to say that Edelstein doesn’t have her share of genuine wisdom to impart. On commitment, she wonders if perhaps, instead of jumping ship when our relationships hit a rough patch, we should just ride the bad times out like we would any other relationship. “If you have a fight with your mother and sulk and don’t speak to her for a couple of weeks, you usually don’t start looking for a new mother,” she reasons. If you must start a dalliance with your flatmate or colleague, she warns, make sure you have alternative accommodation and employment lined up if things turn sour. But this advice, one often feels, comes second to Edelstein’s playful social anthropology. 

One British reviewer suggested that Himglish and Femalese was a throwback to the 1950s, a cry for simpler times when men were men and women were women. But I would argue the opposite: that instead it represents a new style of self-help book, one written for a generation that has come of age on the carefully constructed snark of US gossip site Gawker, the witty self-referentiality of Gossip Girl and the gentle sarcasm of Lily Allen. This is a relationships guide that is at once self-help and satire. 

Indeed, that combination might be the secret to Himglish’s success. Edelstein frequently addresses her readers as female, but my male partner was the first of the two of us to tear into it - focusing his attentions on, perhaps unsurprisingly, the witty fictional repartee between the book’s Himglish and Femalese speakers, and the summaries at the end of each chapter. “The good bits,” he called them - although they were the only bits he read. 

Edelstein’s “Himglish” is based on the premise that men prefer to communicate more directly and succinctly than women, both in the number of words they use themselves, and the number of words they prefer to consume. Perhaps there’s some truth to this “different languages” thing after all.

Friends with book deals: AKA the art of reviewing people you know

Image: still from Friends With Money (2006)

Jean Hannah Edelstein’s excellent post the other day on the way she feels when she gets a bad review reminded me of something I’ve been pondering lately: namely, the ethics of reviewing work by people you know and like.*

The official line is that you shouldn’t do it. That reviewing work by people you know (regardless of whether you like them or not) invariably results in bias. But I don’t think that’s realistic. If you spend enough time working or writing in an area, and you’re not completely anti-social, sooner or later you’re going to get to “know” - at least in some capacity - the other people working in it. Many of them, you will grow to like.

But liking someone doesn’t mean agreeing with everything they say, or thinking that everything they produce is The Most Amazing Thing Ever. And I’ve always seen (non-fiction, at least) reviewing as being less about saying “this book is fantastic, go out and buy it” (although I tend to do that in person, when I’m really blown away) - or vice versa - than about saying “these are the arguments this book makes, this is how it fits into the broader debates in this area, these are its strong points, these are its weak points, these are the people who will probably like it” and so on. A bit like reblogging or commenting on a blog post, if you will.

But to say that - or to say the critical bits, at least - about someone you like? It always feels a bit awkward, a guilt alleviated only by the fact that not saying them would be a dereliction of duty.

Ideally, we’d all be able to separate ourselves from our work enough that the criticisms wouldn’t hurt - and I think the internet has gone a long way towards making this a reality. On the internet you’re forced to face people who think you’re an idiot (or, more typically, wrong or boring or just “not all that” - although they don’t always phrase it so politely) all the time. That’s not to say it doesn’t hurt, but the daily batterings surely, hopefully make it easier to face the bigger ones.

Maybe the problem is in the delivery. My favourite sparring partners are less about sparring than they are about discussion - none of us go into a conversation thinking we’ve got all the answers, and similarly, no one is pilloried for not having them. Or perhaps it’s because, when it comes to larger projects like books (or films, or plays, or whatever Big Final Thing you can think of), we’d like to think we’ve invested sufficient time and effort to actually come up with the answers. A critical review is a sign that we didn’t - in one person’s view, at least.

But I do know that not being critical is not the answer. Not because I’m advocating tough love, but because it’s boring. Good books - or what I consider to be good books, at any rate - are conversation starters. Wishing to stifle the negative parts of that conversation is human and understandable, but it’s also counterproductive.

So what to do, then? If you’re the person administering the pain, be kind - whether you know and like the creator of what you’re reviewing or not. Play the ball and not the player.

And if you’re on the receiving end, try to be gracious about it. Wait for the initial emotional reaction to subside, talk to your literary lamaze partner, and try to treat it as just part of the discussion (unless they’re just being an asshole, in which case stick to the first two points). One of my friends invited a critical reviewer out for a drink, another would respond to blog posts slamming his book (I assume more diplomatically than Alain de Botton).

I hope that some day when I’m on the receiving end of such criticism, I can be that calm and collected.

* Knowing how writers tend to think, I feel the need to state explicitly here that this post is not inspired by the experience of reading and hating Jean’s book. My copy of Jean’s book is yet to arrive in the mail.