Post #6: Listicle

****SPOILERS****

Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl is nothing new. It makes for a decent read, but there isn't much between the lines. Every part of the story has been done before, and Flynn just put together the pieces. In doing so she ruins the reputation of women. A woman's life has improved in recent times, but this book definitely demonstrate equality of the sexes. All five female characters who play a fairly large role in this novel fit into some box that society has made for women.

Amy:
She represents the crazies. She is literally insane. When she doesn't get what she wants, she changes that by causing physical harm to herself and framing other people. In school, when a friend out-shined her, she responded by throwing herself down stairs and blaming it on the friend. Also in high school, Amy get bored with a relationship and spices it up by forging the boyfriend's breakup-induced attempted suicide. Just before dating Nick, another relationship got boring and this time she claims rape. Amy simultaneously plays the damsel in distress and the evil step mother in order to get the attention she lives for.

Mama Mo:
In no way is Mo a bad person. And while she's not a main character (mainly because she was dead due to cancer) she causes the Dunnes to move back to North Carthage. Mo was great: independent, caring, friendly. Her only downfall was letting her kindness mask other's bad-nature. It took her years to get out of an abusive relationship with Nick's father, and she let Nick marry someone who is clearly insane, even getting played herself. She wasn't the guiding light that many fictional mothers are, but her motherly care demonstrated a defense mechanism to avoid her problems. Mama Mo was the weakling, both emotionally and physically.

Officer Boney:
Another decent female character, but she innately fails. Multiple times she accuses Nick of killing his wife, even when he is totally honest with her. This behavior is "typical" feminine indecisiveness and kills Go's great qualities. She is only convinced right when Amy returns, but gives up easily when facing her. This show more weakness when, as a woman of authority, she does not complete the task or work to get what she wants.

Andie:
She's the adulteress. The whole book revolves around one major detail, and Andie is that detail. Amy has always been crazy, but cheaters send her over the edge. Her whole disappearance made Amy run away and frame Nick. Andie's involvement doesn't stop there, because she makes it even harder to clear Nick's name and in doing so helps Nick bring Amy home, which is the worst thing to happen in the book. She causes more problems than she solves, and is two faced like many other fictional cheaters.

Margo:
Go is a personal favorite of mine. She's the strongest female in the book, but she has some cliche qualities that ruin that. Every good trait is matched with a more detrimental one. For example, she's very supportive of nearly everything Nick does. When he wants to open The Bar, she helps. When he decides to clean out their dad's house, she doesn't argue. The counter to this is her close-mindedness when it comes to Amy. She couldn't be a friend for Amy in an unfamiliar place, and that was another thing that put Amy over the edge. Another example of conflicting qualities is her desire to offer refuge, and quickness to judge Nick.  Similar to Boney, she keeps her house open, but accuses Nick even when he tells her the truth. These flaws in character kill everything that was so great about her in the first place.

These problems make make the book realistic in a sense, but all of the women are archetypes that have been portrayed again and again in literature and pop culture. They all seem to be rather strong characters, but are as deep as a kiddie pool. The crazy woman, the mother, the failure, the cheat, and the best friend/sister. The female character that wins in the end is the insane one, and what message does that send to the world about how to live a successful life as a woman?

Post #5: Fiction vs. Nonfiction

As the title of this post notes, I believe in a strong difference between fiction and nonfiction. There are lines that may be crossed and crossed again within a book, as long as the reader knows.

When a book is marketed as a memoir, the book should be completely unfabricated events. The perspective of those events from the author may be included, but the actual events must be real. Like Laila Lalami said in her LARB One Minute Film, everyone experiences things differently and will retell them differently, but facts are facts, even in a memoir. The commentary on those facts may be different depending on the person, but the events can not change.

If the line is in any way blurred, I agree with Seth Greenland (in his LARB One Minute Film) and his theory of apocalypse. This sparked a thought of the book 1984 by George Orwell.  In this 1950's dystopian novel, Orwell predicts the future (1984) based on the state of the world he was living in. Government would be supreme, producing "novels" with no real plot line, writing the newspapers and textbooks, in charge of everything, and those who didn't work for the government were looked down upon. "Big Brother" was always right, and if they weren't they would make sure everyone thought they were by changing history they once wrote (in textbooks, etc.) and making it match the world around them. Nobody knew what was real and what was fake, and many people didn't seem to mind.

The world of 1984 is not one I would like to live in. While it does take an extreme stance on government, it also shows that if fiction and nonfiction blend, it will cause more questions, more lying, and more confusion than in necessary in the world. I would rather read something knowing it was a piece of fiction than be inspired by a "true story" that never really happened.

Paul Mandelbaum discusses how to include the fictional pieces of memoirs by owning up to the fact that they are not fact, and I could get behind this as long as it is clearly stated where the fiction begins. There is no problem filling in details or spicing up a story with some over exaggerated events, but I want to know what I'm reading.