I recently read The Bag Lady Papers by Alexandra Penney, a best-selling author who wrote “How to Make Love to a Man” back in the 70s.
Since then, she’s pretty much been living in the lap of luxury… until her life savings were taken from her by Bernie Madoff. To make end’s meat, she’s been writing these blog posts which recount her plunge from a life of opulence, to one slightly above middle class. Horrors!
Now, Penney is either a cunning entrepreneur or the worst author ever. The articles come across as being about the most pompous, self-serving individual you can imagine. But it’s autobiographical!!! Surely a decent author could make herself sound sympathetic? But, and here’s the thing, the articles look like she’s trying to do just that!
Before I reached for a bedtime Tylenol PM, I Googled the Hemlock Society. I wanted to know a painless way to die.
Sympathetic, right? But then…
I began to think about my options: I’d have to sell the cottage in West Palm Beach immediately. I’d need to lay off Yolanda. I could cancel the newspaper subscriptions and read everything online. I only needed a cell phone. I’d have to stop taking taxis. And who could highlight my hair for almost no money? And how hard was it to give yourself a really good pedicure?
Pedicures? Highlights? Come on. Two paragraphs ago, you were talking about suicide.
Believe it or not, I highly recommend reading these articles. Why? Because, if I didn’t know they were factual, I would have said the protagonist wasn’t believable. You wanna know how to write “rich and clueless”? It’s all right there in these articles.
**Her story has a happy ending. She was able to secure a book deal from an old friend. Looks like she’s back to sipping Crystal!
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I haven’t read it, but it sounds like she’s making fun of herself just a little, though I’m not sure how realistic the connection between paragraphs is. Sometimes to cope you need to consider how ridiculous your problem is.
I love how canceling the home phone becomes a solution. What is it, thirty bucks a month? I recall that being a solution for college buddies with cash flow problems. They didn’t have cottages to sell.
For the record, selling the cottage may not be much of a solution in the current economy.
-Oso
Scott. You simply have to read it. She actually sounds serious all the way through. And the comments! It’s rare to see people react so negatively to a scam victim. Some of the disses are priceless.
I need to lay off my Mexican maid too.
Wait.
I *am* my Mexican maid.
Wow, that’s some fabulously entertaining cluelessness right there. Apparently an understanding of characterization is not a necessary part of the skill set of a bestselling sex-writer. Though, in what I suppose is a damning-with-faint-praise kind of “defense,” the first bit with the suicide is a pull-quote from later in the article. It’s only after she contemplates a future bereft of pedicures that she begins to long for the sweet embrace of death–not as bad, speaking strictly in terms of narrative structure.
@Siliva. ROFL. I have a grumpy overweight white guy as my maid. The guy never shuts up.
@EJ I suspect you hit the nail right on the head. Turns out, the book she got a contract for was a cook book. No characterization required.
This paragraph from Part III is gold:
“The party is in a ravishing house with a blue tiled pool and slim, tall, swaying palms. The exquisite food, prepared by the hosts’ personal chef, is seriously fabulous. The dining tables are laden with orchids and crystal and old, heavy silver. I spot several large Warhols, some Schnabels, Basquiats…for me a world of the past.”
I had to make a quick leap over to the nearest can to vomit when I hit the word “ravishing”. The rest came up with “simply fabulous”.
Yeah, a curious writing style for sure. Ornate prose, and the “the exquisite food is seriously fabulous” bit. Really? That’s all you could come up with? If it’s some “homage to the way people really talk” then why is the rest of the paragraph so ornate??