Loved you to death after the watershed

[venta]

A few months back, I was killing time in a motorway service station shop. I forget exactly why I was doing this, or which services I was in. Anyway, I found myself browsing among their selection of paperbacks.

There were a couple of "bloke books", in the Andy McNabb or thriller vein. There were a couple of celebrity biographies. There were a lot of books that, if correctly applied, would change the way you eat, make you thin, restore your energy, or turn you into a wonderful cook. Alledgedly.

But the overwhelming majority of the available titles were personal memoirs of people who had suffered various forms of abuse. These are the books I'm writing about, so approach with caution if you think that's a subject you might not be comfortable reading about.

At my previous place of employment, The Book People used to bring a hefty dose of these memoirs every time they came by. I often used to start reading them in the staff room, then give up having decided that actually life was too short and maybe watching the microwave go round might be more fun.

In each case, there didn't seem to be much substance to the book other than detailing the abuse which had been suffered - though admittedly I never got past the first few chapters. One of the things which put me off more than anything else was that they were all written in the same, dull, matter-of-fact tone. Perhaps this is deliberate - after all, these terrible things were daily, matter-of-fact occurrences for the child who grew into the author. But for the reader, it just makes a tedious book. The more bad stuff happens, the less impact any of it has.

I read a few chapters of Ugly, Constance Briscoe's account of her childhood at the hands of an extremely abusive mother. It was a recitation of facts, told in childlike language and with very little discernible flair for writing at all. Recently, I discovered that Constance Briscoe is a judge, and thus presumably quite a smart person. This surprised me; I'd expect anyone with a decent education to be able to do a better job of telling a story.

There is, of course, the obvious flaw there: people who write these memoirs aren't setting out to create a great modern novel, they're intending to tell their story. Writing about these experiences can, I imagine, be very traumatic and perhaps literary style isn't the foremost thing in the mind. I could certainly believe that the writing can be a very therapeutic process; if someone who suffered an abusive childhood finds it a helpful thing to do then I'd very much encourage them to grab a pen and get started.

But here's what I don't get... While I'm sure some pulishers are lovely people who are kind to animals and everything, I don't think they'd print a book just because it was part of the author's therapy. If a book gets printed, someone somewhere thinks it will sell.

There are so many of these memoirs on the market that, unless the publishing industry is having some kind of collective brainfade, they must be selling. Publishers are clearly falling over themselves to find people who can write ever more horrific accounts of what happened to them during their formative years. So here's the question: who is reading them, and why ? I'm sure that such experiences could make a good (if harrowing) read, but I don't understand the appeal of a never-ending stream of similar subject matter.

The blurb on the back of the books habitually describes them as "uplifting" - the fact that someone can rise above this awful childhood and make something of themselves (or even not go stark staring mad) is life-affirming and inspirational. However, while I have the highest respect for someone who does survive such experiences, I don't find reading about them life-affirming. I find the books (in my limited experience) dreary and degrading. If I want my life affirming, I'll read Manalive or The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon and no one will at any point have to get raped in a dingy basement.

I'm horribly afraid that somehow, for some reason, people actually enjoy reading the tales of emotional and physical cruelty and revelling in the sordid detail. The paperback is the new Tyburn, and we can watch others squirm and gasp and suffer while masking it as a life-affirming tale of a child's triumph. It makes me feel uncomfortable when I see yet another pile of books, their titles a dead giveaway, and makes me wonder if all we're managing to do is exploit a little further someone who's already taken some of the worst things the world can throw at them.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

A friend who worked in a bookshop - I forget who but it might be claire_wain - said that people with sunken faces and pushchairs kept coming up to her and asking where the "true stories" section was. They meant the misery lit section. I fear these books might be some people's closest thing to finding other people who have had the same experiences as them.

[venta.livejournal.com]

If that's the largest part of the readership, and if people can draw comfort from reading that other people have suffered similarly, then I'd find it a lot easier to deal with. I'm still not sure I'd recommend it as the healthiest route to take, but it's still better than the idea that people buy this stuff for light entertainment.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

These books sell in their millions, so I really hope that it's only a small percentage of the readership that identifies with the horrific experiences.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

That may depend on the degree of identification required. There's always the 'Daddy wouldn't buy me a pony which is almost exactly the same as being kept locked in a basement and subjected to regular beatings for years' attitude.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

According to our friends who work at Waterstones (which shelves them as "Painful Lives"), they do indeed sell in vast numbers; the publishers are not fools. Almost exclusively to women.

The other curious thing is the rapidity with which a consensus on cover design emerged. They almost all have a very pale cover with a bleached-out photo if any, with the title in handwriting. So the aficionado has an immediate strong visual cue.

I suspect that you're right, there is something titillatory / voyeuristic in reading these accounts. To what extent this is really exploting a sufferer further is in some doubt though -- eg. Constance Briscoe's siblings and mother have her up in court at the moment, claiming that she made the whole thing up.

[venta.livejournal.com]

The other curious thing is the rapidity with which a consensus on cover design emerged.

Yes, I'd noticed that too. I suppose plenty of other genres have cover-stereotypes, thus suggesting that actually the industry's evolved to a state where it's perfectly possible to make the proverbial judgement relatively accurately.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

There certainly are some unwritten rules about cover design - historical novels aimed at women tend to have a decapitation theme, for example. Not literally, obviously, but take a look sometime. They almost always show women cut off at the shoulders, neck or chin so you can't see their faces.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'd never noticed that one. I went to Amazon to look at the first historical-woman-novel I thought of, and you're right

(though that is a pretty terrible book and I wouldn't recommend it). (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Other-Boleyn-Girl-Philippa-Gregory/dp/0006514006/) ()

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I've read a few other Philippa Gregory ones. They're all right, but they're basically chicklit in a bodice.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Chick-lit in a bodice is fine, if that's the sort of thing you like reading (not you personally, but you in general). However I get grumpy about things like The Other Boleyn Girl for the same reason I get grumpy about Braveheart: people are going to read (or watch) these, and then think they're historically well-informed. Which, by and large, they very much won't be.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

How interesting, I wonder why that is. Perhaps the reader is supposed to emotionally project themselves into the romantic role depicted, and the sight of someone else's face would be jarring.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I think that's exactly why.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

My theory is that it has to do with worthiness. There's a certain kind of reader who appears to select books not so much for personal enjoyment as according to some unspoken set of rules concerning what one ought to read.

Any kind of suffering is a good candidate for being worthy since it clearly isn't entertaining (the two not quite being opposites, but nearly so). As well as childhood abuse it's also considered acceptable to read about horrendous poverty (particularly overseas), life-wrecking health problems or people devoting their entire lives to noble causes (and therefore spending them in constant and often depressing conflict).

Relatedly, I have a theory that this is why children's books are so popular with adults. Because for some reason it's considered more acceptable to read a children's book than to read a non-children's book with a similar sense of fun and whimsy.

(Or maybe I'm just horribly biassed, seeing as I quite like fun and whimsy!)

[venta.livejournal.com]

If you haven't yet read anything by Jasper Fforde, then I commend to you The Eyre Affair. It and its sequel (I've not yet read books 3 and 4) are the most delightfully fun and whimsical things and aren't (AFAIK) even marketed at children.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Since lathany has a copy it's hovered vaguely around my to-read list for a while. I shall promote it to top of the waiting list!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Be warned, these books aren't for everyone: I find them intolerably smug and twee. But I do seem to be in a minority.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Given that I won't need to buy a copy I'll just give it a try anyway. I can always give up part-way through.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Do report back if/when you get round to reading, I'm curious to know what you think of it :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Will do!

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

I'm 2/3 of the way through the second one and loving every page.

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

The first two were by far the best. It all went a little soul-less, turn-the-crank production-line after that

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

People who read Take a Break. I suspect it is the new Tyburn.

[venta.livejournal.com]

D'you know, I live such a sheltered life I've never opened Take a Break. I've no idea what it's like.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Goodness me. Take a look at what's in the current issue; it sums up the style well...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yikes.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

"Fat, pregnant and fatal!" sounds like the tagline for a wonderfully bad film.

[j4.livejournal.com]

It's a whole genre: misery lit. Horrible, horrible, horrible. The dark side of glurge.

people actually enjoy reading the tales of emotional and physical cruelty

Of course. See also "true crime", and the stories in "take a break" etc, both of which have been around for a lot longer than miserylit.

Mind you, if I wanted to theorise... people used to read gruesome accounts of martyrdom, and that was supposed to be spiritually enlightening. Maybe it was... or maybe it was the only way you could justify reading sordid stories on a Sunday. I suppose this is the secular version, but instead of going to heaven as a result of all their suffering, our modern-day martyrs go to the top of the bestseller lists.

[venta.livejournal.com]

It's a whole genre: misery lit

Hmm. I've now had a quick google, and it seems there are plenty of people making exactly the points I tried to do above, only better. That'll teach me not to be well up in my meta-reading.

Incidentally, I feel very guilty that I burst out laughing at that Wikipedia page. A genre so devoted to miserable childhood that even its Wikipedia page is an orphan!

[kissifa.livejournal.com]

I think they're the literary equivalent of soap operas, or child-abuse documentaries - you get a ridiculous amount of horrific things happening in one person's life, and it draws you in and stimulates your emotions a bit, even more so if you know it's a real-life account. Misery loves company, especially when the company's having an even crappier time than you, I guess.

Last time I was in a motorway service station, I was quite surprised to find a DVD shelf with a significant selection of pornography. It gave me this horrible image of what kind of things people might be doing as they drive along watching those little in-car DVD screens which will end up killing us all. Motorway service stores stock flowers so you can grab your significant other that forgotten gift as you came home from your business trip. Now you can give them porn too! Hurrah!

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

people actually enjoy reading the tales of emotional and physical cruelty and revelling in the sordid detail
I think so, unfortunately. The same way that they enjoy looking at photos of accident victims or YouTube videos of puppies being thrown off cliffs. There was a particularly nasty "YouTube rape" story I read about last night that makes me fear for human nature somewhat. It's titillation rather than empathy for some of the readers.

I don't doubt that what feanelwa mentions is also true for others - that it's the closest thing they can find to their own stories, and that gives them some comfort. "She went through the same things and she went on to be a judge - that means I don't have to be stuck in this miserable life." (Except that mostly it still does. Reading isn't going to magically change your life without some action from you, too.)

[edling.livejournal.com]

I noticed something like that when I was in W.H. Smiths recently (I think it was them)- an entire section devoted to 'Tragic Life Stories'. It struck me as odd at the time...

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

To be charitable, it's possible the matter-of-fact tone of the writing might be the only tone the author could manage when describing such things.

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

Who reads them? Well my sister is one reader. But then she is a trainee psychologist so it probably counts as research.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I could certainly believe that the writing can be a very therapeutic process; if someone who suffered an abusive childhood finds it a helpful thing to do then I'd very much encourage them to grab a pen and get started.

Yes, I can see how that might help; I personally like writing things out. However, like you, I don't find I want to read the experiences of these strangers who have suffered horrific things.

I found the comments thread interesting - there's definitely a dedicated market out there. And it isn't to look at the cover art either.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

I don't understand it either, and it worries me. It also worries me just how many people want to read all about serial killers. Not even the fictional kind - the real life 'true story of Manson' kind. I remember a shop in Beccles which had a display entirely dedicated to these. Just horrible. But then, I also don't understand how people could watch hangings, or why people want to go to the London Dungeon. I can only assume that for most people this stuff doesn't feel 'real' in some way. I really, really, don't get it.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

The point of them, I suppose, isn't the misery, but the redemption - they're not so much victim stories as survivor stories. I mean, I don't think any of them end up with, "And it was a horribly scarring experience that I'll never recover from. I'll probably go kill myself now." No, it's all, "And now I'm a successful lawyer/mother/teacher/model/insert aspiration here despite of what happened to me." Triumph of the human spirit stuff.

Whether that's why people actually read them, I don't know. I've read a couple (the first of Dave Pelzer's ones, Alice Sebold's account of her rape as a college student and how the rapist was convicted, and one about Munchausen Syndrome by proxy), and it's interesting enough to get into the mind of someone who's experienced great pain or neglect and to understand how they deal with the world after that. I suspect there's a certain element of voyeurism in there too.

Mind you, I don't mind a bit of gloom in my reading matter. I know people who won't even read depressing fictional books - particularly ones where likeable characters die. d_floorlandmine is still struggling to read The Sparrow, because it's abundantly clear from the start that this is a story of something that's gone horribly wrong and probably killed almost everyone involved. And it's so well-written that of course you're half in love with the characters by the time you get to the foreshadowed tragedy. I don't think I'm going to convince him that even starting The Time Traveler's Wife is a good idea either, incredible as it is.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I loved The Sparrow. I was just thinking the other day that I ought to re-read it.

I think possibly my problem with memoris was that, by and large, the discounted books brought to my old workplace by The Book People were the remaindered and the unsellable. Which probably means I've read a self-selecting sample of the less successful (and therfore possibly less well-written) ones. They might well have been trying for redemption and human spirit, but I think they missed the bus.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd agree that the point is the redemption. I saw, and read much of, a book compiled from the experiences and aftereffects of/for women who had been raped or sexually abused, which was produced by a help agency for such victims. Its aim was exactly the one of getting out the message that there are many, many victims of this sort (many more than any offical figures suggest), they, and the intended reader, are not alone, and to share the strategies adopted by the victims to cope with the pschological and emotional aftermath/consequences. The book was lent to me by a friend who had had similar experiences and had been reading it to help her with her own subsequent difficulties. As I recall, it was also intended to help friends and partners of victims to understand all, or at least some of, the concerns a victim of abuse might have. Some of those emotional traumas are very, very real, and the consequences last for the whole of the victim's life.

That book with other of the early examples of the type were almost certainly targeted at other victims, with the intention of providing support and encouragement. The explosion in the market and the number of false accounts being identified suggests that a well intentioned idea is being hijacked for titillation and profit. Which just proves what a sad and morally corrupt society we live in.

Naturally readers and contributors to this are the best of society, and are neither sad, nor morally corrupt.