I remember vividly the day I got caught. It was during my first residency for my MFA in Creative Nonfiction. There I was, in my dorm room at Goucher College, arguing the finer points of narrative arcs and story complications and turning points, when my girlfriend, no doubt looking for a fine example to make her point, reached over, picked up a paperback book from the floor near my bed, and shrieked: “How could you?!†My deep dark secret had been discovered – I liked to fall asleep reading “junk,†a/k/a dime-store novels or what some might call trashy novels, certainly nothing that qualifies as Literature and therefore not something that requires I pay much attention or recollect anything when I’m done. In fact, I remembered so little of these “quick reads†that too-often I purchased one only to find after the first chapter that I’d read it before.
OK, maybe I’m taking a little Frey-sian license here, as my memory of this event is not all that vivid – I do not remember which book she discovered, or even who the author was (maybe Nora Roberts? I know it wan’t Danielle Steele). I’m not even sure that she shrieked, although I am positive that she never let me forget about it…even to this day.
So what brings on this memory this morning? It’s Janet Maslin’s review in The New York Times, juxtaposing new books by Joann Harris (“Gentlemen & Players”) and Jackie Collins (“Lovers & Players). “In Playgrounds Tweedy or Seedy, It’s All in the Game†(the article’s title) Maslin says “gamesmanship may be sexier than any of the aboveâ€, where any of the above refers to such things as booty, politicking and name-dropping.
I read one of Harris’ books, “Chocolat,” and liked it (I also liked the movie), so I may well read this new one. I stopped reading Collins awhile back, so I’ll pass on her latest. But don’t get the wrong idea about me. I’m no more high-brow today than I was back then, it’s just that I traded in the bed-time paperbacks for one-hour tv-dramas, feeding my current addiction with CSI, Law & Order, Criminal Minds, Numbers, and, on the lighter side, Grey’s Anatomy.