Judging A Book By It's Lover: By Lauren Leto
I wanted to love this book SO HARD. But to be honest I would have given up on this book after the "Fan Letters" chapter but I felt like it was so glaringly, unashamedly bad that I had to finish so as to be able to critique it in it's entirety. You are welcome, dear reader. First off, the writer comes across as super pretentious. By the end of the first few chapters she makes it clear that only two types of books are acceptable: Russian Literature (which she obviously fell in love with in college...how different!) and "The Virgin Suicides", honestly if I had to read her tout that book one more time I might have done something regrettable. Like finish the book. wait...
According to Lauren every other book is trash, for example...
Kurt Vonnegut fans are creepy, pot-head morons.
You can only like Salinger if you're an angsty teenager (did you not catch that? don't worry she mentions it in every chapter).
Chuck Palahniuk is only for boys who can't read.
Sloane Crosley is a boring New York Jewish girl exactly like every other New York Jewish girl, she isn't funny and should never have gotten a book deal. Leto's obvious and unabashed envy of Crosley becomes almost laughable...or would if I could see through my book-rage.
Charles Dickens is only for pretentious 9th graders.
C.S Lewis is for people who pick their nose.
Michael Pollan is for girls trying to cover up their eating disorders.
Miranda July lacks substance and is for unoriginal girls.
It goes on and on. My mistake going into this book was thinking that it was going to be a slightly kumbyah bit about loving books and reading (YAY!) But it quickly devolves into an excessively negative book with the Author focused on trashing as many authors as she possibly can. It also becomes glaringly obvious that the Author's underlying reasons for doing so are her own jealous insecurities. Give me a break. The Sloane Crosley dig really drove it home for me, Sloane and Lauren are both young, attractive, dark-haired, New York based, Humor writers...Hmmmm.... Me thinks someone should suggest to Lauren the chapter in Bird By Bird where Lamott counsels, at length, on how to not sink into a pit of despair when a friend writer's number comes in. Read it Lauren.
There's a chapter about what your children will turn out to be if you read them certain books, I was really excited to read it and clung to the hope that it would be funny. Nope. They are all negative and I find her conclusions hard to grasp. Harold and the Purple Crayon? Serial adulterer. Where the Wild Things Are? Navel-gazing idiot Hipster. The Wind in The Willows? Boring crusty-nosed girl who hangs out at the library. Madeline? Horrifyingly obedient/annoying church group leader. etc. etc. etc. I might add that she, in all her 24 years of wisdom, offers no suggestions for what we should read to kids. Who cares? kids are pretty awful. We certainly do not want them getting all of this...knowledge.
I fully grasp that while I condemn her for her negativity I myself am reviewing her quite negatively. It could not be helped. I make no apologies. And I get that the author is trying to be funny. But it really, really, really does not come off that way. I am not without humor! Snarkiness! I love it! I really wanted this book to be funny. It's not. It's offensive and mean, which might have worked if it was somewhat founded or inspired in its conclusions. But it really just feels like grasping at ideas that might sound humorous. The author (did I mention yet that she's 24? I had my wisdom teeth out at 24, however I also had a 2 year old sooo...who am I to judge) has focused her efforts on tearing down the life's work of Dickens, Salinger, Vonnegut, Austen, Lorrie Moore, (insert author here). Thanks but no thanks Lauren Leto, the literary community just doesn't need this.
Also her writing is...weird. The first thing I learned in a lower level creative writing class was to trust the reader. Don't feel the need to blatantly spell everything out for them. So in her chapter "The Rules of Book Club" she does not need to flat-out say, "this is in the style of the rules of fight club from the book Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk." It's painful. Everyone understands what you're smacking at, Leto. Let it lie.
In another chapter she drones on about how AWFUL it is when beginning writers (in high school) try to learn from other authors. I, too, hate that, when teenagers start experimenting with things like language. Ugh. Enough. She then goes on, in another chapter, to give tips about how to effectively copy the style of other authors. What? WHAT?! P.S. it's all a ruse, and yet another template for her to all-knowingly discuss other author's shortcomings. Joan Didion? "Be redundant and scattered." Next.
This book is really awful. I don't think I've ever hated a book so much. (Except maybe The Giving Tree. I'm sorry Shel Silverstein, I still love you.) The author says she likes books and reading but it is hard to find evidence of that here. She is pretentious, negative, and fancies herself a gift to the literate world. She insults classic and contemporary alike, simply based on her own personal taste. She also manages to insult the reader, telling them that their poetry is awful and insulting their intelligence by teaching them (Gee thanks! what would I do without you, all-knowing Lauren Leto?) how to pronounce names like Kerouac, Proust, Ayn Rand, Dostoyevsky, etc. And also she teaches you how to understand the terms literary critics use like "morose," "cultivated," "digress," "inexplicable," and "compelling." Wow! Actually I wouldn't really mind either (Have you ever properly pronounced Dostoyevsky? Be honest. No joke, I'm not even sure I'm spelling it right.) if she didn't do it in such a condescending manner and if the rest of the book wasn't proof of her glaring smugness.
She attempts to write a few self deprecating essays, perhaps in an attempt to counteract all of the snootity. They are ineffective. They're also not funny. Spoiler alert: she misspells Spaghetti in a spelling bee. (GASP!) She then goes on to describe how her friends and family mock her. It reads as the equivalent of being a 10 year old and trying to explain a family joke to your best friend's Dad. Everything comes full circle towards the end when she writes about how depressing it is to be an aspiring writer in New York...how disheartening it is when another (OBVIOUSLY inferior) author gets a book deal, and how negative everyone can be (hmmmm...negative you say?). Her solution is simple, to murder them all. For real. She then gives suggestions on how to murder them...and not goofy or humorous ones...poison them, shoot them in the face while they are sleeping, whack them with a frying pan, carry a knife always so you can stab people in the gut. Oooook, Crazy-face. I guess bludgeoning someone with a frying pan can be considered humor if you're a cartoon character. Really breaking new ground there. Bravo.
At one point in the book she goes after Sarah Vowell saying she can't believe that Vowell doesn't drink coffee and that if she also said she didn't drink liquor then the author wouldn't believe Vowell had written her own books because, Leto says, she personally can't write without one or the other. To this I would like to say, no, Lauren Leto, you can't write...period.
And just so I myself do not fall victim to incessant negativity, as I have judged Leto for, I will say this: This book did inspire me in one way, which is to start a new Goodreads shelf. I think I'll call it "zero stars." Hopefully I can come up with a better title soon.
P.S. I'd like to thank the public library of Sacramento for allowing me to spend absolutely no monies on this book. And also for shipping it to me all the way from Sacramento. What a waste. But seriously, I really do have guilt about that.
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