Some of the recent raucous accusations of ethnic elitism from the county's peanut gallery have called to mind a recent conversation. An out-of-state fan remarked by e-mail on Miss Jane's use of the random Yiddish phrase by her saucy femme fatale, and suggested that it whiffed of the book. Ironically, of all Miss Jane's ethnic characterizations, it is these which are most frequently lifted from life. If Smitty is occasionally perplexed by the idioms of a lady from Scarsdale, his redactor has heard most of those turns of phrase in context, some in identical situations. It has been, if not yet a long, a satisfyingly varied life. One cannot claim to perfect literacy in all the cultures of this mighty nation, but one never recoils from exposure.
Really, it is vexing to be told one is ethnically condescending. For every gentleman who has asked Miss Jane if there is a real Dvorah and whether her telephone number may be obtained by a smitten reader, there is a lady who wishes that someone like Shelley Selby would cross her path. A European-born professor of the humanities sent an encomium to Mercedes de la Roja. As the last two were crafted of the whole cloth, I think Miss Jane can be exonerated of any zeal to tarnish the image of minorities, or indeed to make any statement at all about the relative value of this culture or that gene pool. A novelist is but a portraitist and her characters sometimes walk into her parlor and request a sitting. Heavens, look at Margaret Ellen Stannard, blonde and fetching with her name straight out of a Midwestern family Bible! Morality police, take note.
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8 comments:
"Jane" reminds me of a girl's prep school in 1965.
There were no African American students so the rich elitist kids picked on kids of Jewish, Italian, Eastern European, etc., descent and kids whose parents didn't have a lot of money.
Reality is that "Jane" and her elitist friends want to re-segregate Arlington. The purpose of the dime novels is to help evict anyone from Arlington who isn't upscale, white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant.
Dear me, are you here again? If no one wants to visit except Mr. Or Ms. Social Crusader, I really ought to give the Parlor a break and let the maids turn it out for a day or so.
Is it my fate to be everyone's Rorschach in very deed? One reader complains that Angelo Pastorelli -- a character of Italian descent with poor parents -- is too much of a hero, another insists that the author is "picking on" such people. In fact, I do believe the W.A.S.P. characters in either novel are predominantly unpleasant ones. I must review my dramatis personae, just to be certain, but really, Mr. or Ms. Crusader, it is far past high time that you set out the chain of reasoning by which "comic caricature of county politics" becomes "plot to re-segregate Arlington." Otherwise you will have to re-enroll in the freshman-year logic class.
Let's not be too critical. Like Yorktown H.S., circa 1965, Jane's novels include token ethnics and minorities.
I had actually released the most recent comment from "Yorktown '66," otherwise known as Linda and Great White North and so onward, and was in the very article of typing in the passcode that would post it to the blog when the little angelic voice that sits on my right shoulder said: No.
Ms. or Mr. Monomaniacal, Wrongheaded, Humorless and Redundant, you are welcome to take all the pot shots at a mischievious author that you wish to take. I find them more than riotous. But I will not allow you to invoke the name of a charming, gracious lady who had more class in her pinkie finger than today's crop of office-holders and -seekers could buy with their combined net worth -- solely to pursue a bizarre allegation that has more to do with some *idee fixe* of yours than with the content of my literary trifles. One lampoons the deserving; one does not conscript the decent and honorable *post mortem* into a ridiculous crusade against books whose total readership would doubtless leave seats unfilled in the Til Hazel Auditorium. I suspect that in the next few days a number of people will be doing Internet searches on that lady's name, and I will not allow those searches to lead them to *your* inane and splenetic fumings. Go immerse your head in a bucket of ice chips, sir or madam, while you contemplate the bounds of decency, pray do.
I read both novels. Followed the local issues and County Board for 18 years. I don't see how anyone can avoid concluding that, in both novels, Jane Barcroft made the diversity and affordable housing advocates into the bad guys and the Arlingtonians who support the status quo the good guys.
Moreover, this blog appears to me to be not only elitist, but obnoxiously so. My 2 cents.
Of course the novels read that way to you, Ken darling, since you are so obviously Linda and all the other people who have had problems about the books being "elitist" and what-ever-else. There could not be two people in Arlington County so obsessed and humorless as to believe there was any agenda in these two foolish books other than to poke fun at everybody. It is even less likely that two such people could have *read* the books. Have you considered volunteering at your local shelter or other public service organization? It is a wonderful way for those with time on their hands to restore a sunny outlook.
Jane, Ken is right.
Of course you think Ken is right, since you are the same person, though I laud you for thinking to repeat one of your proliferant noms de plume. Dear me, is that the best you can do? "Ken is right"? What about Barbie?
I seriously begin to wonder whether I am doing something like "enabling," as it is called in the self-help patois.You know quite well, though you will not admit it, that I know who you are, and that you are singular -- delicious irony, while you accuse me of being plural. You know, also, that what you have been doing on this blog for weeks is behavior so widely known in Arlington County, over which so many eyes have been rolled, that it was caricatured in "Murder Out of the Ballpark." Alas, the character I created to go with it was far more interesting and emotionally engaging than yourself. What a force you are to be reckoned with! What a mighty influence you exert on the politics of Arlington County -- hunkered behind your computer keyboard making up names for yourself, and scolding an anonymous author of comic fiction read by a few dozen people, on a Weblog that no one else ever visits! The thunder of it rolls from horizon to horizon.
Quite in earnest, my dear old thing, you need to find something useful to do. So do I. I ought to at the very least be applying myself to the third manuscript (I left poor Smitty quite crossed in love again), not playing at this nonsense, which has the feel of conversation with a two year old who has learned to repeat the same phrase ad nauseam. I shall check in on this blog once a week, until someone who is recognizably not yourself drops in, if ever, and tidy up your issues all at once.
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