Chiclet Chick Lit

In virtue of two females in the house reading it I have discovered a new (to me) genre and given it a new (to all) name, which title appears as the title of this post.

Hermione is patron saint of females pre-sexual still satiated when tittering gleefully over Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson, with New Kids on the Block on the tiny turntable in the background. Readers in this genre are the next mini-generation up in a world where children are urged and prodded to grow up every 3 to 5 years.

Here it as if the boy band mated with James Dean and reverse produced a little Lord Byron with a teaspoonful sized Bronte plot. Chick Lit (the next generation up again) — a Bridget Jones’ Diary, say — comes as desire for Lord Byron clashes with desire for babies and the white picket fence.

That’s what happens when NKOTB gets older but doesn’t grow up and the women look around, “Wha’ happened?!?!” Hermione may be considered the candy cigarette and this new-christened  middlin’ version may be seen as the gateway drug.

Hermione notices sex whereas Chiclet Chick Lit involves the smoldering-eyed real possibility of sex. The girl still wants to walk on soft sand in the tender moonlight as the waves lap the shore but if she ends up jammed into a wet dune with a harsh and hairy moonbeam thrusting into it as nature crashes all around her there may be shock and ow, and of course blood, but it will be tastefully, skillfully rendered in some of its glorious detail for the reader, like fat.

It’s beautifully written and accurate to the audience as the girls who read it are of the age and beginning to think those thoughts — Hermione’s crowd pre-sexual; these girls, prehensile — and pernicious in its effects on life actually lived.

Because women after reading these three levels of books still want the white picket fence and a manicured lawn behind it besides but they have spent the last damned decade dreaming about boys who kick over fences and mate on manicured lawns because they so deeply feel, ya know?

Except they don’t.

Just as the woman realizes she doesn’t want to marry Lord Byron she see it’s all she’s known in all his maturity-stunted ecstasy. There’s a chance they’ll marry it and get all this knowledge, too late.

Don’t worry. There’s a genre for that too.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Just Win Baby

If Tim Tebow never plays another down as an NFL Quarterback it won’t be because he can’t. It will be because they say he can’t. I don’t even say “because they think he can’t,” since thinking — actually assessing the data they have in front of them — hasn’t been much involved here. And the bottom line

Read More »

The Country for Old Men

Walter Hartwell White is going to hell. Whatever else happens — whoever dies in the shootout, no matter what-all happens in the final three episodes, whatever he’s planning to do with the ricin recovered from his burned out house — that’s a fact. In fact, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan said that was the point, one which

Read More »

Hey Babe, Wanna Increase My Downline?

This wouldn’t be the first time someone “posted” a “blog” on their “website” while having nothing to say. Well, not nothing exactly, but certainly not being sure exactly what he wants to say. But then that’s part of what a blog is, or was. Or maybe that’s just the bad kind; definitely it’s the old

Read More »

Barbaric Yawn

One of the saddest things about Mildly Somnolent and Her Raging Nonesuch is she prolly thinks she’s transgressive, mayhap even original. Please. Madonna did it 30 years ago. Figure 15 more for Britney’s turn. Now it’s 15 again. See Ecclesiastes for explanatory of this clockwork snore — What has been is what will be, and

Read More »

Related

Unintelligent Design

Your plan is not working, they say. Ah, but my plan is working, we respond. (I just haven’t fully implemented it, yet … ) But look at the results you’re getting, they say. Things a’gonna change, just you wait, comes our reply. * The truth is, our plan is working. Mine is, yours is, theirs

Read More »

Do Piece — Love (Frankl)

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves her. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more,

Read More »

Dance With Who Brung Ya

We’re observing Columbus Day with doughy, deep-fried donuts dusted with powdered sugar. It’s hard to hate old Christopher when M makes zeppole. But we are supposed to hate him, we’re told. We’re told, I say! We’re told he to do so because he was a bad man — he was a very bad man. The

Read More »

An Epic For Our Time

Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” is like cram, the bread the dwarves eat for weeks as they explore The Lonely Mountain — and for much longer as men and elves lay them siege. It sustains but does not nourish, providing energy but no taste. But let Tolkien tell it: “I don’t know the recipe, but it

Read More »