Jewish blues

I love it when my musical interests mash up. Pandora just played a slowish Dixieland version of "Sunrise, Sunset." So awesome! The Krewe of Jew could feature it at their parade. (No, AFAIK there is no Krewe of Jew, but there is a Jewish krewe, or was--I know I've heard of at least one. Which is awesome and could only happen in America--a Jewish organization that's part of a holiday that's liturgical in origin, where now EVERYONE gets drunk!)

Prep

Another book I'm (re-)reading right now is Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. It came out a few years ago and got terrific reviews, deservedly so. Just a fantastic book. It's from the POV of a girl named Lee Fiora, a middle-class Indiana girl who gets herself a scholarship to the Ault School, a thinly-disguised rendition of Groton (which Sittenfeld herself attended). There is little plot, certainly almost nothing of a narrative arc, although at the end Lee tells us what became of all the characters. It simply goes from term to term--"Freshman Fall," Sophomore Winter," etc. Each term/chapter deals with a cluster of events that may or may not be addressed later in the book. Many of these events are observed by, but don't necessarily involve Lee. It sounds deadly but she's a great character--she hoards information about other people, and ruminates about their lives, their motivations. She's constantly comparing herself to others, generally negatively (she's from a different class, and is not a great student, her scholarship notwithstanding), and yet she's so much...cooler, I guess, than she'll admit. She sounds like someone I would've liked to know at that age.

Sittenfeld's observations of that particular socio-economic and regional class are interesting. At one point, Lee's parents come to visit by which point Lee is acculturated enough that her parents embarrass her. Some of this is typical teenage mortification, and some is framed as "bad" behavior--Lee is a snob. Her father even hauls off and smacks her in the face. This struck me as off--NOTHING would justify hitting your child in the face short of a physical assault. Especially a father? Second--Lee's right. Her father IS a jerk. He's annoying, he doesn't recognize (or care to) when his behavior is inappropriate, he goes out of his way to embarrass Lee. Also, apparently Easterners are perceived by Midwesterners to be less friendly.

The book is compared to other prep school standbys such as Catcher in the Rye (which my dad loved when HE was in prep school, which tells me a lot about my dad!--an idealist inverted) and A Separate Peace. Both of those books are more plot-oriented, more of a journey. There's not much of a narrative arc in Prep except with her "relationship" with Cross Sugarman, a boy she meets and crushes on her freshman year during "surprise holiday," an annual unnannounced holiday. (Mount Holyoke had something similar every October, called Mountain Day. You knew it was Mountain Day when the bells rang longer in the morning and a cheer would be heard across the campus. I remember there was a banner hung from one of the dorms that said "Hey Mrs. K [President], when's Mountain Day?") ANYWAY, I love reading about Lee's little rituals and the details she notices about her thing with him.

Supposedly it's being made into a movie--I really cannot see how. It's a very interior voice, and so little seems to happen! Or perhaps it's that what happens is not the story--it's the ruminations Lee has about the events. They're going to have to have a lot of voiceovers. imdb has lots of speculation about the casting--suggestions include that girl from Twilight (which I only know from the posters, never having seen the movie or read the book) and Leelee Sobieski. The latter is too old, and the former looks too pretty. In my mind, Lee is skinny, intense, typically in an Oxford and jeans, chin-length hair.