The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Thursday, November 29, 2007 - 3B
Chick
lit's
goriest
author
By WHITNEY POW
Daily Arts Writer
When we think of author Meg Cabot, the
entire chick-litgenre flashes before our eyes.
She conjured "The Princess Diaries" (all 10
installments), the Heather Wells series and
the Queen of Babble series. She dominates
the genre with more than 15 million copies
of her books sold.
Her beginnings, however, weren't nearly
as successful.
"My first book was pretty much a let-
down," Cabot confessed. "It was smutty. The
kids in the dorms (where I worked) found
out about it, and they started a drinking
game based on the book. Every time I men-
tioned the world 'nipple' in the book, they
would take a drink. That was the highlight
of the book. It was pretty sad."
This debut romance novel was written
under the pseudonym Patricia Cabot and
titled "Where Roses Grow Wild." An Inter-
net search yields the cover and the novel's
name written out in swoopy, hold-me-Fabio
handwriting. Fabio is, appreciatively, not on
it, but in his place is a quaint rosebush.
"I didn't want my grandma or anybody
to read it," said Cabot, whose latest book,
"Big Boned," came out last week. "Fortu-
nately, I started writing 'The Princess Dia-
ries' around the same time, so I only had to
endure gang humiliation for a short time
before 'Diaries' came out."
Upon the commercial success of the first
book in the "Princess Diaries" series, Disney
immediately snatched up rights to the books
and proceeded to churn out two film install-
ments with Anne Hathaway.
Her books now contain Fabio-less covers
with sleek, no-rosebush marketing cam-
paigns, aimed not so much at the lost roman-
tic but a readership searching for slightly
more empowered protagonists - not only
is the heroine looking for the "right guy"
Putting your best
Face'forward
Don't ask her about high heels in New York City.
(often unfortunately named "Tad"), but for
a successful career.
"Not that finding a great guy isn't good,"
Cabot said. "Finding a guy is not necessarily
'the end'... The world moves on after that."
Chick lit's target audience is predominate-
ly young, white and female, and the books
often contain plots rife with problems every-
day girls presumably deal with - relation-
ships, shopping crises and body insecurities.
In comparison, chick-lit sales correspond
with the amount of redundancy: the shoe-
shopping, fashion-obsessed, skinny, well-
composed woman will end up with the sleek
and tanned Brad. Formula dismissed.
Cabot does attempt to defy some of these
conventions in her books, but they often rely
on cultural cliches. In the Heather Wells
series, the unconventionally -fat heroine
trudges through Hamlet-length monologues
about Krispy Kremes and how her unusu-
ally large breasts hit her in the face when
she jogs. In the Queen of Babble series, the
American heroine finds herself in Europe,
only to be ostracized by her cute British boy-
friendbecause herunbridledgossipymouth.
These recurring plot lines and themes are
still solidly strung through Cabot's books
and the chick-lit genre, but Cabot said one
particularly persistent theme has been dying
out: shoe fetishism.
"I think the shoe thing is definitely over,"
Cabot said. "And by the shoe thing, I mean
that for a period of time, on every single
cover there were shoes, and the heroine
seemed to like shoes and shop for shoes."
With any luck the death of the shoe theme
will give rise to the death of other cliches of
the genre. Already Cabot attempts to bend a
new ideal formula in "Big Boned," another
installment in the Heather Wells series. She
slips the book a genre twist: The book is a
mystery, and there is gore. Lots of it. At least
in the original draft.
"The Heather Wells books have a lot of
blood in them, and most chick lits don't have
any blood in them. I actually had my editor
tell me to tone it down," Cabot said. "The
books were kind of bloody, kind of gory,
almost."
It's not often that the heroine of a book in
the genre, only a chapter ago eating waffles
and taking a shower with her boyfriend,
finds the body of her dead boss in his office.
Cabot applauds the idea of the integrated,
expanded genre.
"I'm into mystery, so the more chick-lit
mysteries we can get, the better. I'm hopeful
that we'll see more of those. I'm paving the
way," Cabot said.
"But not for people with high heels," she
added.
acebook has some new friends.
And by friends, I mean ten-
tacles - devious ensnarers of
productivity, really.
This past May, the face that would
launch 30 million registered users
and nearly $1 billion bid from Yahoo!
opened up its site to outside develop-
ers - think wid-
gets for Macs. This
means I can take .
a quiz about The
New York Times
every day; I can
find out what nar-
cotic best describes ANDS
me as a person and SARGUS
(this would be my
current vacuum E
of time, space and
brain activity) I can test my geographi-
cal prowess.
Therearecompaniesdevotedtomak-
ing these ridiculous little games and
"social utilities" to use founder Mark
Zuckerburg's cute buzzword. They're
on par with lolcatz, only not usually as
funny(icanhascheezburger.com? Beau-
tifully, pathetically priceless).
But soon after the introduction of
said platforms, Facebook made anoth-
er, relatively quieter move. The inde-
pendent company acquired Parakey,
which, according to its website, "is a
platform for building applications that
merge the best of the desktop and the
Web." Simply put, such a fusion would
have you facebooking as soon as your
computer turns on.
This isn't a revolutionary concept,
of course. There are plenty of sites
out there helping-us sort and organize
quirky quotes of the day, a to-do list
and our lolcats. Integrating a program
like Parakey into the Facebook fold is
a recipe for innovation not because the
idea is new, but because the site's user
base is unlike any other online.
Facebookhasmomentum-thekind
of momentum that, as of July, has the
site growing three times faster than
MySpace. It's progression has been
nearly squeaky clean, if you ignore the
backlash over the initial rash of plat-
forms. Its layout is straightforward,
usuallyclearandaestheticallypleasing.
It easily incorporated the sometimes-
creepy News Feed into the lexicon.
Ads are simple and tactful; there are
no pop-ups, no spam and little room
for blatant abuse (not that certain MSA
members haven't found creative ways
to make asses out of themselves). It'd
be hyperbolic to say the site is perfect,
but damn if it's not sticking to its guns
with the right amount of patience.
It's already spawned at least two new
verbs: "facebook" and "friend."
Moms and dads and clueless pro-
fessors aside, Facebook users are the
bread and butter for online media out-
lets. Young, (relatively) hip, culturally
spastic, endlesslyentertained byminu-
tia - Facebook's audience possesses an
enduring fervor that, if properly chan-
neled, won't fade after graduation.
Making your desktop integral to
Facebook's utility is brilliant. Photos,
videos, IQ quizzes, monthly calen-
dars - it will all be consolidated on an
immediately recognizable platform.
Good for Facebook, but (come on,
it's not like I'm going to marry Zuck-
erberg or anything) there's a glaring
absence on the site, an absence that is
its biggestweakness: news.
I'm not talking about keeping track
of your roommates' relationship sta-
tuses or if that guy down the hall is
going to the same partythrown by that
girl who friended you out of the blue
but then realized you were in the same
class with that weird teacher with the
tooth thing. Aside from clunky, obtru-
sive applications, you don't get many
peeks of the real world on Facebook.
The entire site is self-referential to the
point of nausea.
Yes, it is a "social utility." It's sup-
posed to be about parties and pictures
of beer pong and boilerplate political
groups. But it won't be anything more
until it brings in the stuff the big boys
and girls talk about. Maybe integrating
Parakey will change that.
Facebook meets Google Reader
meets my desktop?
Can't wait.
- Klein's only Firefox shortcut
is Facebook. We're worried. Help
him at andresar@umich.edu.
Design our website. E-mail grossman@michigandaily.com.
ECTURE PREV E
Where art meets, ir.uc
more art flows
E ':
i a
b rc V
..
;
, .
.o.r..
1K2008
By BRENT PANTALEO
DailyArts Writer
His idea may be open-ended,
but that's exactly how author and
New York University Prof. Law-
rence Weschler
likes it. L rence
Weschler
works to uncov- Weschler
er possible Tonight at
between works 5 p.m.
of art, whether Atthe Michigan
the objects are Theater
paintings, music Free
or even fossils.
He calls these
associations "convergences" and
unearths them by embracing the
mind's ability to freely associate.
He will bring his convergences
to campus today at 5 p.m. as part
of the Penny W. Stamps Distin-
guished Visitor Series, put on the
School of Art & Design. The lec-
ture will be held at The Michigan
Theater and admission is free.
Weschler is the director of
NYU's New York Institute for the
Humanities and artistic director
for the Chicago Humanities Fes-
tival, an annual presentation of
lectures, concerts and films. He
also wrote for The New Yorker for
more than 20 years.
His practice of examining con-
vergences in art, though, started
as a hobby.
"It's a whole different kind of
art form for me," Weschler said.
"It validated a way of looking at
the world."
The lecture will be primar-
ily based on his book "Everything
That Rises: A Book of Convergen-
ces," released last year. Weschler
will exhibit examples from his
book and discuss his findings.
Weschler doesn't impede his
practice of finding convergences
in art by creating an agenda. The
point is to emphasize whatever
the work of free association can
See WESCHLER, Page 4B
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