Cleaving with Julie Powell

Julie Powell: Too Bad, Critics, I'm Writing About My Sex Life

The Cleaving reviews are rolling in now—I imagine they’ve in fact peaked and will begin to fall off here in a bit. There have been some raves, and some respectful mixed pieces. And then there have been the pans. Which is where it all gets … interesting.

Reading bad reviews of your own work—and I assure you there have been more than a couple in my case—is not the most fun way ever to spend one’s time. I tend to do it by staring at my laptop with my fingers in a lattice across my face, horror-movie style, as if psychic blows could be evaded by squealing and squeezing my eyes shut. But I knew what I was getting myself into with this (well, sort of), and I’m a big girl. I can handle it. Besides, bad reviews can be enlightening, and not just because I’m a welcoming sea-sponge for constructive criticism. Somehow, it seems to me, there’s something particularly eye-opening about the pans for Cleaving, some way in which writing about the book seems to reveal as much or more about the reviewer as about the book being reviewed.

Take, for instance, Peter Gianotti’s piece for Newsday. Never could I have imagined when Julie & Julia was released back in 2005 that such a viciously negative review would make me giggle rather than cringe. In an oddly personal attack that opens with the condescension that most male critics seem to consider de rigueur when discussing “chick-lit” writers and then moves into a tone of righteous ire, Mr. Gianotti uses words such as “unhinged” to describe me, and is equally put off by the depictions of butchery (“an offal experience”) and those of sex, “rough and otherwise.” Peter clearly has very little regard for my prose, and that, of course, is the sort of thing it is the reviewer’s job to point out. (Though I would perhaps quibble with the literary taste of anyone who throws the “awful/offal” pun around as painfully as he does.) But he also seems to have taken violent offense at me. Which pleases me immensely, I was surprised to discover. Who knew? I wound up posting the review on my Facebook page as one of my favorites. I found that, as a writer, I was thrilled that I’d hit a nerve, and I called that one a win.

Several friends, snarkier than I, made some emasculating remarks about what in Mr. Gianotti’s past had caused this particular book about meat and adultery to get him so riled up. I’ll not speculate as to that, myself. But it is interesting to contemplate, in going over these reviews, what exactly it is that rubs some people the wrong way. There are a few different things, I think, and in the next few days I’ll try to address several of them, but I think a major issue is the TMI Problem. Apparently, I have tendency to overshare. Which seems to me, at first glance, a rather odd thing to be rubbed wrong by when reading a memoir. I mean, do you want to read a memoir by a person who undershares? I’ve been a professional oversharer for seven years now, so the label’s not news to me. I guess what is news is how surprising it is to everyone else.

Some have seemed to get enraged by my penchant for giving too much information; in others, I seem to awake a sort of passive-aggressive maternalism. One of the most hilarious examples of this perspective came from Addie Broyles of my hometown paper, the Austin-American Statesman. I’m on good terms with Ms. Broyles, or at least I was the last time I checked. But it’s fair to say she’s not a huge fan of the TMI either. “There's something to be said about modesty when it comes to writing about extramarital sex, the painful details of which I'm too embarrassed for her to share, just in case her family or friends are reading this.” Now, in full disclosure, Addie has met my mother, and so I can understand her worry that any incendiary information might, printed in this local newspaper, fall into sensitive hands. What I really love, though, is the phrase, “I’m too embarrassed for her … .” As if I had toilet paper stuck to my shoe or spinach in my teeth; as if, in other words, I wasn’t actually aware I’d written a book that contains explicit sex and other personal revelations. As if I needed to be protected from that information.

Now, of course I understand that we say this all the time. “I was embarrassed for her; she was acting like such a jack-ass.” But how can we be embarrassed for someone who isn’t herself embarrassed by her actions? I can empathize with someone who is keenly feeling humiliation. But if a woman, say, blithely walks down a red carpet in a dress shaped like a swan—to choose an example that betrays my age—any discomfort I might feel is not something I’m feeling on her behalf. It’s something her appearance is eliciting in me. Something about me.

Which brings me to a third response to TMI, one that writers and bloggers who use their personal lives as subject matter will recognize as more flattering, but also occasionally more unnerving: overidentification.

I’ve by now spoken to quite a few people about their reactions to Cleaving, in both a professional and a personal capacity. And among a small minority of them I have noticed a certain energy cropping up, a … vibe, I guess you’d call it. Mostly, though not entirely, it’s been men I’ve gotten this vibe from, for whatever reason—with Julie & Julia, it tended to come from women. None of these people have been crazy; the conversations have all been above-board and beyond reproach. But there creeps in an intensity of focus, a buzz of empathy, one might say intimacy. Aroused by what they’ve read about in my book. About what I’ve “confessed.” Though confession implies a singular event—a priest, a screen, a booth, a whisper. Not a book being distributed around the country. And it makes me wonder. What if the next person who identifies is actually crazy? This is where stalkers are born. And I’ll have brought it on myself. I have shared too much information, perhaps. Not everything I write, even what I write about me, has to have as its goal to crack myself open like a lobster and expose my quivering insides. I can observe, report, keep a distance. Protect myself from unwanted intimacy, and others from being forced to deeply into my experience. Like so:

I’m propped up in bed in my room at the Savoy Hotel in Tulsa. In the room there is a dishwasher (though no dishes), a painting of a Gibson girl with a pair of salukis, a Parcheesi game, and a VHS tape of the original Little Shop of Horrors. There is no mini-bar, nor a liquor store within a couple of miles—I’ve checked. The pillows are goose down and the quills of the feathers stick out and poke into me. I’m drinking some Folger’s coffee, and am feeling a bit off because I got my period for the first time in three months while I was on the plane from Houston and it’s like I’m having some kind of internal hemorrhage—oops. That one got away from me …

TMI Girl strikes again.

Photograph of couple in bed by Medioimages/Photodisc/Getty Images. Drawing of butcher knives courtesy of Julie Powell.

 

Comments

CLEAVING doesn't slice close enough to the bone

By: Meindabindi | Mon, 01/18/2010 - 15:36

You don't have to like someone to like his/her book (case in point: I was annoyed by Dave Eggers' look-at-how-clever-I-am self-absorption in his memoir, A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS, but still the book worked, and I've grown to like him since then). One of the marks of a good read is that it can be about ANYTHING, even difficult subjects, and it works.

Not so with CLEAVING. The sex didn't bother me. The problem I had with this memoir is its lack of depth. The book is an exercise in narcissism. J. Powell will gladly wave every pair of her dirty drawers in front of your face, but she doesn't like self-inquiry. It's just Mememememechopchopchopmemememmemefuckfuckfuckmemememememetheend. There's no Psyche to balance out the Eros. The fact that she needs to spend x amount of hours rebutting every negative review is further proof of her insecurity. Real writers don't bother. They get on with the business of becoming better writers.

Cleaving

By: GurlButcher | Wed, 01/06/2010 - 02:37

Hey, as an apprentice girl butcher myself who is also going through the trials and difficulties of on my side a "supposed affair" i can totally relate to Julie, and as she says it is in fact a memoir, which by definition is an account of the personal experiences of the author, i say do a little research into what a memoir is before judging someone based on his/her life experiences. While i am sure a lot of you reviewing it live cozy little lives without struggle or strife, some of us have to dredge through the day to day, and for me picking up a butchers knife is exactly what i did and find it very therapeutic, and i am sure writing is something i will try as well, though mine tends towards poetry rather than a memoir. A good friend gave me this book today, and i look forward to reading it very much, regardless of TMI i am sure i will appreciate the fact that someone somewhere is having similar problems, and i am not alone. Keep writing Julie,

Dear Julie

By: Rylos2002 | Fri, 12/11/2009 - 22:22

I just finished viewing the movie Julie and Julia, what a wonderful movie and thank you for sharing your thoughts and there is no such thing as TMI when it comes to writing. You speak your mind and that is a wonderful thing. At least you don't leave people wondering what you were thinking and there are no gaps in thought that leaves things wide open to the imagination as to what you really were thinking. The movie took me on a journey and then I found your blog and that took me on another journey and then I found your new memoir and that took me away on still another journey. Thank you so much for writing it has renewed my interest in reading again. I soaked in the movie, the books and then I found Julia's book in my mothers library, God rest her soul. Wow I can't believe that you helped me get back into reading which had been dormant for so long, 10 years. From my point of view you ROCK JULIE! Thank you once again for taking the chance on opening and sharing yourself with us. I am a new fan of yours in Massachusetts, about 40 minutes north of Boston on route 93.

Julie---I loved your first

By: Deeanndria | Thu, 12/10/2009 - 01:09

Julie---I loved your first book; I haven't yet got the second. However, I have a bone (! quite allusive) to pick with you. I live in Tulsa, honey, and there is most certainly a liquor store within two miles of you: Grand Vin in Utica Square. (My house is just down the road from your hotel----why didn't they book you into the Ambassador or the Mayo?) The Savoy is a residential hotel; also, don't rely on the internet to give you accurate info about whatever city you're in!

From oversharing to overacting

By: speeddatinggirl | Wed, 12/09/2009 - 17:16

As a fellow Amherst alum and blogger, I'm probably one of those people who identifies excessively with Julie. But I totally share the tendency to overshare while writing about my sex life. It hits me once in a while that I've posted something that I would never talk about with people who I know are reading the blog (e.g., picturing my teenage cousins catching up on my booty texting). What concerns me more, though, is the point that maybe Bo was trying to get at, of whether the awareness that my love life is my material changes the way I live it. Is doing something wacky because it will be interesting to write about broadening your horizons in a positive way or turning your life into fiction?
http://speeddatinggirl.wordpress.com

Never let Riley - I mean Eric - read this book!

By: Oldbuffyfan | Tue, 12/08/2009 - 21:46

I loved the book, and I think that if your DH was ok with you writing it, who are we to cry TMI? It's funny that the graphic description of a pig being killed warranted no comment, but a couple of explicit sex scenes caused outrage and condemnation.

That being said, it is so excruciatingly honest about your sexual connection to the other guy, I don't know how he could read it and come back from that.

Maybe we should read it as a cautionary tale of why you shouldn't marry young. Most of us get the Spikes of this world out of our system in our twenties, then we meet the good guy and realize that is who we deserve. Not some asshole whose confidence in the sack gives him way too much power over us. You picked the wrong decade to be in that basement with the walls collapsing around you, getting unspeakably hot sex from the bad boy!

It's not your fault that people were expecting Amy Adams with the perfect marriage. Don't let the misogynists and the puritans knock you down. You spoke your truth and if they don't like it, too bad.

She's So Unusual

By: Bo | Tue, 12/08/2009 - 20:46

Powell's a stunt writer. First book was a stunt, 2nd book is a stunt, and I'm afraid there will be a third. She's not writing about anything other than her own wacky shenanigans, and if she didn't have any wacky shenanigans, she wouldn't have anything to write about.
She's not a terrible prose stylist, but she needs to stop trying for cute and easy.

Feeling for you

By: broylesa | Tue, 12/08/2009 - 20:15

Hey, Julie! First off, we were and hopefully are still on good terms. It's incredibly difficult to write a review of a book whose author you respect and like. Especially on such a personal book as this one. I think you are a terrifically talented writer and at the heart of this book is a topic, as I told you, that I find fascinating and think is so important. I'm glad you wrote a book about how unperfect marriage is and how easily we trick ourselves into defending behavior that hurts people we love.


I didn't mean to feel an emotion for you, but you're right that there's a sense of maternalism in that review. That does come from the time I spent with your parents and speaking up for you (and female authors everywhere) after people said the first book was disrespectful to Julia Child and too flip for their liking. I, too, think that critics too often automatically dismiss female authors and hold them to a different standard. Every page of the book, I thought to myself, "Would my reaction be different if Julie were a man?"


The answer, ultimately, was no. We all struggle with the decision of how much to share, and my only wish for the book was that an editor had said to you about certain details and scenes, "You needed to write these parts more for you than for your readers." It still could have pushed the boundaries of a memoir about marriage without crossing that ever-moving and ever-personal line of TMI.


I can't wait to read what you write next. I tried to balance out the negative with the positive, and I hope my honesty hasn't burned a bridge between us. Austin is lucky to be able to call you our hometown girl.

Addie Broyles

Feeling Embarrassed

By: anngirl1138 | Tue, 12/08/2009 - 16:50

I have a little sister who is never embarrassed by anything cringe-worthy thing she has done, but it's because she lacks the capacity to know when her actions cross boundaries that most people recognize. When people feel embarrassed for someone generally they recognize that the person they feel for isn't embarrassed for her/himself. It could be that the person is like my sister or it could be that the person has achieved a state of comfort with themselves that doesn't need the approval of society. Regardless, the embarrassment emanates from a sense that most people would be embarrassed by the revelation or behavior enough to not share it widely and anyone who does tmi probably has something wrong with them.

It's definitely the downside of mining one's life for blogs/books and I tend to agree that there is something different about those of us who choose to do it which isn't easily understood and so is more easily dismissed or pitied.