AS AN ADULT, I can’t bring myself to reread some of the books I loved best as a teenager. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is mortifying. Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat series gives me a deep down, pit-of-the-stomach cringe. (I collected feathers and dyed my hair pink because of those books. ::shudder::)
The debut novel from Portland writer Lidia Yuknavitch—who wrote the great 2011 memoir The Chronology of Water—inspired similar feelings of discomfort. But it took me a while to parse whether Dora: A Headcase was making me cringe because its perspective is so nakedly, self-seriously adolescent, or because in writing from that perspective, Yuknavitch’s prose strains for a youthfulness it never achieves. The answer is a little bit of both.
Dora is a fictionalized retelling of one of Sigmund Freud’s case studies, about a girl—pseudonym Dora—who fielded the sexual advances made by her father’s friend (“Mr. K”), while her father had an affair with the man’s wife (“Mrs. K”). Yuknavitch re-pots Dora in contemporary Seattle, where she emerges a foul-mouthed, pill-popping 17-year-old who runs with a wild posse of teenaged art-fag miscreants. But the recontextualization only goes so far: Dora’s psychiatrist is named Sigmund Freud, AKA “Siggy,” and his dialogue is lifted straight from Freud’s writings (“Your inability to admit your jealousy of your father’s lover creates a crisis in consciousness.”). There’s even an appearance by Carl Jung as Freud’s more magnetic counterpart.
Dora‘s narrative is crammed with references to pills and video art, cell phones and laptops—all the trappings of contemporary teenagerdom. But much of the action takes place in a sort of psychosexual liminal state, where every crack in the ceiling represents a vagina. In the novel’s most loaded scene, Dora laces Siggy’s tea with Viagra; when he checks himself into the hospital because his erection won’t subside, she secretly films the ensuing surgery and watches the footage with rapt, sexual avidity: “When they stick the needle into his cock his face seizes up like his penis might blow fire. I suck in air and clench my hands between my legs…” and so on. Soon, shady media interests begin conspiring to buy footage of Siggy’s surgery—and when Dora’s love interest (a Native American girl who calls herself “Obsidian”) is institutionalized, a weird caper ensues to bust her out. Amid all the symbolic penis-puncturing and high-wire plot hijinks, what’s lost is character: Dora’s friends are thinly sketched oddball clichés, and Dora’s own narration strains credulity. (“By the way, I’ve taken Viagra, and though it’s true if you are a girl it will drop your blood pressure to faint on the floor if you aren’t paying attention, it can make your cum job do loop de loops. They don’t like to tell women that. Typical.”)
Where the novel breaks new ground is in its frank descriptions of Dora’s sexuality—has a novel ever featured a teenaged girl explaining that she can almost get off on taking a giant piss? It also captures the electric, rattling-at-the-cages energy of being an unhappy kid: “I hate my twat. I hate my voice. I hate feeling anything about myself. I sprint my ass up to Nordstrom’s.” But this very real energy gets mired in Yuknavitch’s convoluted, Freud-busting conceit.
The book’s jacket calls Dora a “chick Fight Club.” But the Portland author the novel really calls to mind is not Chuck Palahniuk—who wrote Dora‘s intro—but Tom Spanbauer. Dora shares a poetic, outsider-art intensity with Spanbauer’s great In the City of Shy Hunters; both books are about sexual ambivalence, about creating your own family, about the transformative potential of art. (Also, being best friends with a giant black drag queen.) But Spanbauer’s characters are grounded in a way that Yuknavitch’s aren’t, and his novel of transgressive outsiders finding themselves demonstrates a subtley and control that Yuknavitch’s fiction debut never achieves.
Perhaps this “recontextualization” IS actually addressing Freud. Gosh, that’s what it seems like. Though you may be paid by the insipid word, you could have just written:
My teen years were uncomfortable, I still cringe at my own insecurity and I wish I was a writer instead of a pathetic gatekeeper.
actually i’m on salary.
Just going to put my two cents in: it really irritates me when a valid and well thought out response to something like a book review is answered by the author with nothing but a snarky quip. If you’re going to put your opinion of a work of literature out in the public eye, you can at least be receptive to the criticism of others who likely feel very passionate about the piece of work you just passed judgment on. Be a little more mature and I think you will see improved results.
Dear merc book reviewer Alison Hallett,
Please figure out a way to review books against a canon that extends beyond what limited personal collections decorate your coffee tables, like, maybe, non YA books, for a start- Dora transcends genres. Your review suggests a typically Portland contrarianism embellished by sloppy journalism. Did you read the introduction? The Chronology? These materials might rebut some of your misinformed assertations. Also, if books about teenhood make you uncomfortable, maybe you should ask yourself why….
@MargaretG Sorry, hun, but I can guarantee you that the author of Dora didn’t write the above “snarky quip.” I can’t guarantee that another very well respected, female Portland author didn’t write it however. It’s a small town.
I wasn’t talking about the author of Dora, I was talking about the author of the article.
I would suggest to Allison to consider, at least, the legitimate use of farce as a construct to pull off serious cultural criticism. By poking fun and using outrageous exaggertion as a device, farce is a viable form of serious literature. I fully own that I don’t have degree in literature and I am not of academia. I just know to look further when someone like Yuknavitch writes. She is deliberate and an expert at weaving multiple meanings into her work that teach, inform and transform the reader without knowing they are being transformed until after its all over. I am trying to reserve my own snark, because I want my observations to be taken seriously, but really? It must be either arrogance or some external factor that shrugged this review into existence, because I can not believe there was any serious thought that went into this. I hope these comments on this review are actually helpful to you, Allison, and you consider a deeper, more informed look at the books you review in the future.
With compassion,
Domi J. Shoemaker
@margaretg, that first comment is incredibly mean-spirited. I responded in a way that made me feel better. Try signing your name to things you write on the internet, you might find it changes your opinion of how anonymous shot-takers deserve to be treated.
@everyone else: It’s entirely possible that I’m on the wrong side of history here. So it goes. But for the record, I dislike writing negative reviews, particularly of local writers (particularly of local writers whose past work I admire, as is the case here), and I did in fact put a lot of time and thought into this review, knowing that it would be subject to exactly this sort of criticism.
I said what I want to say about the book already, so I probably won’t say too much more in this thread—I just didn’t want my only contribution here to be a bitchy response to a mean comment. Carry on.
TONIGHT: BOOK REVIEWER DOESN’T REALLY LIKE BOOK; FRIENDS OF AUTHOR LIKE BOOK UNCONDITIONALLY, ACT BUTTHURT ON INTERNET BECAUSE OBJECTIVE REVIEW DOESN’T AGREE 100% WITH THEIR SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT.
TOMORROW: TODAY’S HEADLINE – TOO WORDY?
yaaaaawwwwnnn
Hey guess what everyone! This is ONE person’s opinion of this book. Just because you like it and you like the author does not mean you need to bash someones opinion…take it or leave it and move the eff on.