A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Not long ago, I was talking at my dear friend Ted about what is essentially the idea behind this blog – that is, the seeming ridiculousness of feeling one is entitled to critique works commonly acknowledged as “classics.”

“Like saying, ‘Oh, Of Mice and Men isn’t very good,’ for example.”

“Or criticising, like, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” added Ted.

I stared at him blankly.  “What is that?”

Ted gave me the eye of disbelief.  “Uh…it’s a really famous book…”

I am a university student and Ted did not finish high school.  Further proof that this means just about nothing at all when it gets right down to it.  So I hadn’t heard of Betty Smith’s “coming-of-age classic,” despite the fact that between the ages of ten and fourteen about 75% of the books I read could be described as YA coming-of-age novels.  Despite the argument that just about every book ever written about people under the age of thirty could be said to contain sprinklings of C.O.A., I am referring to the great preteen-targeted works of our time (Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, or, uh, anything by Judy Blume).

My little sister is fifteen and reads exclusively Teen Vogue, Seventeen, and books about boys and shopping.  Her English teacher once asked her, “Sophie, when you go to the library, do you only look for books under the ‘bimbo’ section?”  Unfortunately for her, she has an older sister who doesn’t consider herself above open condescension.  As a result, I’ve totally forfeited the best part of being an older sibling - the ability to steer her in what I consider to be “the right direction.”  One word out of my mouth concerning her media intake triggers a prompt, “Shut up, Maddy!”  It becomes obvious that I have damaged this part of our relationship almost beyond repair.  It requires a superhuman measure of delicacy to convincingly explain to her that it’s not her fondness for bimbo media that concerns me, because I read the same things (albeit less openly).  It’s more that I don’t want her obvious intelligence to be drained, leaving her wading forever in the soulless pop culture mire.

Coming-of-age is a very inclusive label.  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is about a saccharine preteen girl growing up in pre-hip Williamsburg at the turn of the century, back when it was a slummy neighbourhood inhabited by first and second generation white immigrants surviving on a diet of reconstituted stale bread, raw potatoes, and pork tongue.  Are You There, God?  It’s Me, Margaret is about a neurotic preteen girl growing up in the suburbs during the 1970s who, with her friends, chants “I must, I must, I must increase my bust” in hopes of, well, you know.  The friend who lent me her copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn says she loved it when she was a tween, and I might have liked it, too, but, ultimately, the C.O.A. novels that kept me coming back were closer to Gossip Girl – where, unlike in the former, any mention of consumption has nothing to do with the disease.

Don’t you hate when you read a magazine interview with some celebrity, and the interviewer asks the question, “What’s your guilty pleasure?” and the interviewee responds with something like, “chocolate ice cream?”  I have always resented the question because I feel it implies an expected puritanism, denial of pleasure, the idea that women should fear weight gain more than they should a world without ice cream (horrors!), etcetera.  However, I realise now that guilty pleasures have I, and theirs names are those old issues of NYLON I keep stashed for breakfast table reading.  But I haven’t bought a new issue in months.  I swear.  Because everyone knows that magazine’s gone down the tubes.  And I, for one, am a serious woman.