Jezebel
Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer/reviewer/blogger Lizzie Skurnick re-reads Judy Blume's 1971 novel 'Then Again, Maybe I Won't', which helped many a young girl learn about hard-ons, wet dreams and the downsides to sudden wealth and suburban Long Island.
Who says March is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb? That's a load of bull. All it's done this March is rain. I'm sick of it.Thank god the phrase for "wet dream" is the same in England. I say this not out of any allegiance to Royalist nocturnal emissions, but because I'm using the English edition of this book, and have been thus saved a harsh repeat of my 7-year-old initial read: namely, not knowing what the hell Judy Blume was talking about.
In fact Judy Blume, at least for me, required an unholy amount of pre-Wikipedia diagram and explication. I still remember well — WELL — porting my instantly well-thumbed copy of... YES, WAIT FOR IT...Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret (you'll have to provide the clash of trumpets here yourself) over to my mother to ask her what a "period" was...
[your own memory here]
...and she fixed me with a beady look, picked up the book and looked at the back cover, then nicely provided me with a diagram of a sea-skate-esque uterus, including attendant ovaries and a path-of-egg line resembling those of the "Find Your Way Out" maze games I was fond of playing at the time. (This led, I know see, to an undue amount of anxiety until the actual cycle occurred.)
And it didn't end there. Other "Show, Don't tell"-inspired queries: Deenie ("Do I have scoliosis?"), Tiger Eyes ("What are 'Fat Man' and 'Little Boy'"?), Starring Sally J. Freedman, As Herself ("Who is 'Esther Williams'?"), Blubber ("What does 'Tu me manques beaucoup' mean, and can I have a French tutor?"), Iggie's House ("Judy put a black person in her book YAY!!!!"), It's Not The End of the World ("Are you When are you getting divorced?"), Forever (Actually, I was FINE on this one, except for the "hard" part, which had already presented a great difficulty in the book we are dealing with today).
Anyway, leave it to Judy Blume to make the story of a priapic boy [redun.-Ed] who requests a pair of binoculars to spy on his next-door neighbor heartwarming. (Unrelated: Michael Chabon did this with stories about bearing the offspring of a rapist and molesting a child in Werewolves in Their Youth, and I've always wondered if he set that as a goal. Blume, as we all know from Wifey, is just straight-up deviant.) Written in the years before being working-class was considered a virtue, Then Again, Maybe I Won't is the story of one Tony Miglione, Jersey City resident, lover of basketball, younger sibling of Ralph — who's a teacher and lives upstairs with his wife, Angie — and Vincent, who died in Vietnam. Son of Vic ("Pop"), Carmella ("Ma"); grandson of Grandma ("Grandma"), who does all the cooking and cannot speak, because she has no larynx, which doesn't creep Tony out because he loves her.
The "crisis" in the novel — Shoutout to Creative Writing Workshop, 1992! — occurs almost immediately, when Angie gets, insofar as one can, inadvertently pregnant. (I'm going to go out on a limb and assume, due to the presence of several Father Pisarros in the narrative, that she and Ralph are using the rhythm method.) Pop, heretofore a general contractor, also goes out on a limb and sells some electrical cartridge thingie to a businessman named J.W. Fullerbach, which immediately gives the family the means to move out of Jersey City to the leafy environs of Rosemont, Queens. (Literally a deus ex machina! Shoutout English 125a, 1991!) Before he knows it, Tony has been transplanted from playing basketball at the Y with characters named Big Joe and Little Joe to hanging out with his polite, shoplifting neighbor Joel, who has an inground pool, a hot older sister, and a mother who calls Tony's mother Carmella Carol because it's "easier."
On reread, I'm most struck by how Blume manages to make this novel of class neither cutesy nor polemical-but only about a very singular character's growth during a certain profoundly charged time. This character can be experienced so fully that the reader, I don't know, BURSTS INTO TEARS at the local coffee shop-having forgotten the primary peculiarity of even a happy childhood that Blume depicts so well: That for this brief window, one is subject, for the better or worse, to the machinations of almost every adult in one's life.
Meaning one might get yelled at for not putting the paper under the mat on one's daily route. Meaning one might lose said route and move to a new town next door to a rich kid who makes prank calls from his parents' bedroom, which has a circular bed on a pedestal, and this STRESSES ONE OUT. Meaning one's mother might insist on one's calling adults "sir", pick up lint from the new carpets constantly, and acquire a maid that usurps one's grandmother's role such that she secretes herself in her bedroom except to visit one's brother's grave. Meaning one's dad might buy a new car because one's neighbors notice the truck and ask if one is having work done on the house. One might have erections constantly and have to carry a raincoat or a stack of books at all times to conceal one's condition, and one might lie to one's parents to ask for binoculars for birdwatching, then use them to watch the older girl across the way undress. One might become an uncle, be forced to take piano liessons, decide everyone's a phony, go ahead and let one's friends get caught by a security card and sent to military school. Pretty much everything might STRESS ONE OUT so much that one might get terrible stomach pains out of anxiety and eventually wind up in the hospital, after which one's dad, cutting one a break, would prevent one's mother from imitating the neighbors and sending one to a military academy as well-and one might come into one's own enough (heh) to put the binoculars away.
OMIGOD I AM TIRED OF SAYING "ONE". But anyway, what can I say? Tony is one of the most wonderful pilgrims ever to progress through the YA landscape, even more poignant because — and men who read Jezebel, speak up — I *think* this is kind of an accurate depiction of how teenage boys actually think, right? Yes? Woe betide us, yea, verily, stuck in the sad, sad end times where the only woman allowed to write about teen erections is Caitlin Flanagan.
Then Again, Maybe I Won't [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]
Earlier: Were You A Judy Blume Enthusiast Or A Babysitters Club Nerd?
•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today
•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn
•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care
•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon
•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die
•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan
Comments
Haven't read the entire article yet but I LOVE THIS BOOK!!! Will be back to comment more once I'm done!!!
LOVE you Judy Blume. Not my favorite Blume book, but damn good.
Ok, this is like the ONLY Judy Blume book I didn't read. I can't believe it. I'm going to have to start re-reading all of my YA fiction.
Yay! Vive la Blume! This is the book that taught me how dirty dirty boys were (I only have sisters, so boys were foreign to me). Awesome. I never understood the thing about the olives, though.
I have to reread this now. I also remember being thoroughly befuddled by all this "wet dream" business.
I had NO idea that boys had erections or went through ANYTHING during adolescence, I thought they just got taller and voice changed. THANK you, Judy (I met her in Cape Cod at age 15), no one else was planning on sharing this with me...except you, Judy. Except you.
OH MY GOD. I didn't even read the whole post because you have me so excited. I have been trying to remember which Judy Blume book involved wet dreams and this is it!!! Must. Reread. Immediately.
I've mentioned this book to my friends so many times, but I could never remember what it was called. Just looking at the the cover is giving me such a flashback! I remember being so confused, because I had no idea what was happening with the whole raincoat/holding your books in front sub-plot. I guess I was a sheltered child. I have got to re-read this.
@blackbirdfly: Me too! I feel so left out.
I wanted him to be my boyfriend.
Ok so, I have read this book about 900 times. I picked it up at a yard sale when I was about 12 and it convinced me all boys were creepy erection having, window peeping, shop lifting perverts who had weird ideas about what was attractive. (Kippy, or whatevs her name was? How she was in love with him and he didn't even care, until he had a wet dream about her?) I re-read this book not too long ago and it struck me as REALLY FUCKING DEPRESSING, how his parents didn't even care that the maid was pretty much KILLING his grandparents, and he didn't feel close enough to tell anyone about the shoplifting and shit..UGH. Good choice!!!
Also, last week the boy & I were discussing his friend Little Joe (who is, in fact, little, but also fucking his best friends mom which is HILARIOUS since said best friend has no clue) and I asked about Big Joe and everyone was all "Big Joe???" and I am just now realizing I got Big Joe from this book.
Yeah; it was this and "I Am The Cheese" ...
aaaah. i remember judy blume as the first author that spoke to me in the true "young adult" sense. good times. glad it was so widespread.
I don't think I ever read this Judy Bloom book either. I think I am going to run off to the library to get it though!
ALSO, I definitely bought a lot of FIFTY YA books on ebay a couple days ago for FIVE DOLLARS.
CANNOT. WAIT.
I thought Grandma just quit talking one day after Vince was killed? He made up yhe story of throat cancer to scare Hot Girl when she was smoking, I thought. (Been 20 years- but I read it about a billion times)
I loved this book more than all of them. It made me feel better knowing boys were going through angst as well, and not just playing Atari games while I suffered through cramps and Midol.
Ahhhhhhhhh! I remember reading Deenie and being so paranoid about having scoliosis. Her description of an S curved spine just freaked my 11yr old brain out.
This book freaked me the fuck aout with the wet dream revelations. To this day, I think of that book (and that very cover you posted) when the subject of wet dreams comes (cums?) up. You'd be surprised by how often it does.
All I can remember of this story is not understanding it. This roundup makes me feel less bad about that.
Blubber however was, other than The Cat Ate my Gymsuit, the most moving book of my young-adulthood.
The grandma isn't the only one to secrete in a bedroom. heh.
I'm pretty sure my mom handed me Judy Blume books instead of giving me those talks. She also gave me a cartoon book outlining how babies were made. I'm still warped by dude's weird cartoon penis. I digress
I can remember reading this book and being so freaked out. I thought...YAY I don't have one of those uncontrollable things!
@LizClara: I had NO IDEA that what I had been doing at night was maturbating until I read Deenie.
Ok, after a Judy Blume post you have to have a Norma Klein in there somewhere. Anyone? Anyone?
You mentioned Sally J Freedman! I freaking loved that book and I didn't know anyone else had read it!
My dream: a compilation of my favorites in one massive ready-to-inhale tome? Because really, that'd be tote awesome.
@AlisonAshleigh: Been there. Before the holidays I bought several batches of Babysitter's Club and Sweet Valleys and have been re-reading all of them. Like, about 100 of them.
It feels good to admit that.
If only they'd held onto their Jersey City property. They could have sold it for millions.
Hahaha. mom hid Deenie from me (I'm pretty sure I became a librarian because books are where the best dirty stuff is). Loved "Forever," though. Still do. Yay, Blume, who undoes all of the abstinence training kids get. AND gets them to read.
@badenbaden: Am doing the same thing with Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine's older YA stuff. Mmmmm.
Growing up in the most sheltered Southern town in the world, Starring Sally J. Friedman As Herself was seriously the first thing I ever learned about the Holocaust, or Jews in general. Or Esther Williams for that matters.
@tellmeagain: Me too. I remember asking my folks about gas chambers and Nazis and my folks were like "Ohboy.."
My friend and I were just joking about "Latin Lovers" the other day, too!
@La_Panique: Oh, WORD. Norma Klein ROCKED. Didn't she write the book where the girl got it on with her science teacher and then married him after she graduated?
Judy Blume should be some kind of Jezebel mascot.
@tellmeagain: @theuptightmidwesterner: I learned about jellyfish from this book. I STILL worry about jellyfish at the beach.
I can't believe this, I knew Judy was a beloved YA author, but I had no idea her stuff bordered on self-revelatory child therapy (for girls).
The stuff I picked up on was mostly about Peter Hatcher and company, with a detour into "Blubber."
I never recognize these books until I read the post and realize I once read and reread them.
Suppressed memories?
@mocena: I loved that book as well. All of these books. I had a gypsy childhood, changed schools literally every year and sometimes more than once in a year (military + sibling illness requiring cross-country treatments). The fact I could find these books in the school library was comforting. They were friends.
I do remember a school librarian asking if I were "old enough" to read Judy Blume. Makes me laugh now compared to what kids today know!
Two nights ago I sat down and started reading Just As Long As We're Together for the gabillionth time. At 28. Oh man. And THIS book! Ha! When my mom first gave me Judy Blume as a child I remember thinking 'Wtf??? My mother must not know what's in here'. It was a treasure trove of down-there-tinglies introspection. And then I read THIS book which was essentially pornography. And I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
I was a huge Blume fan and had forgotten about this. But what a great reminder this was - thanks!
God, I love this book. I first read it when I was about the right age to have a total Tony crush, even though this "wet dream" business baffled me (and rightly; it's so sublimated that unless you read it as an adult, the substance of that dream goes right over your tweenage little head). It was also one of the only books I read then that handled social class in any way that rang true to me. And one of the few of her books with a Catholic family in it. At one point, all I'd known about being Jewish, I'd learned from Judy Blume.
@theuptightmidwesterner: No, she really had her larynx removed because of cancer. But she never smoked. That was the part that was made up for Lisa's benefit.
Lisa seemed so old and sophisticated to me then, and for some unknown reason, she still does now, even though I'm twice the age she was in the book. If she were sixteen today, she'd probably be straight out of Gossip Girl.
@mocena: SJF is my FAVORITE Judy Blume book. I read it, like 900 times when I was a kid!! I just read it again with my daughter!!!
I think I liked it so much because my mom was older and we would watch golden-age Hollywood musicals together all the time. I REALLY immersed myself in that book, lol. I WAS Sally J!!
I liked Then Again Maybe I Won't, too. I loved all of JB's books. I haven't read her nonfiction or the newest "Fudge" installments, and I missed Wifey & Smart Women(will get around to it), but I think I've read everything else she's done. LOVE. HER.
I rediscovered her after coming across a copy of Summer Sisters (if you haven't read it, DO SO IMMEDIATELY...its that good), and I've been picking up my old favorites for my daughter ever since.
@La_Panique:Most def. Norma Klein characters fascinated me because they always seemed so worldly and mature. I could never really relate (I had a sheltered childhood) but man, did I aspire to some of their problems. I think I've read Just Friends a hundred times.
How about some Cynthia Voigt? Izzy Willy Nilly?
@TruculentandUnreliable: Me neither. It's still a great one, but my fav bay far is "Are You There God? It's me Margaret."
@MickFNS: Oh man, Robert Cormier! The Chocolate War and omg remember how intense Tenderness was?
This one was always my favorite, but I always loved SJF, because it took place in Bradley Beach, NJ -- about 15 minutes south of where I grew up.
The word that gave me trouble in Forever? Why, that would be "come." I can still remember the dawning realization that this word did not (just) mean what I thought it meant.
I didn't realize that all Judy Blume books were quite so dirty (besides Forever and the adult ones, which are so wonderfully filthy, for reals. I will never forget the young lesbianic antics regarding "the power" in Summer Sisters). I also may have to re-visit the YA section, ignoring the strange looks.
I was at B&N the other day and kinda started drifting that way anyway, until I realized I was actually there for grown up fiction. yuck.
Also I loved this review.
@rose0red: LOVE Summer Sisters. Reread it every year.
@warmaiden: NICE. I would love to get my hands on some Whisper of Death or Remember Me!!! Ok, I'm off to ebay...
I just liked the "sexy" parts. More priapic teenage boys for lil' Trillian, plz!
@curlysue: I totally agree in re Norma Klein. Those girls -- with their hippie therapist parents who gave them diaphragms and let any old boy sleep over -- were utterly foreign and utterly riveting to my 12-year-old self.