I think it started with “Angela’s Ashes”. I remember reading the book (years ago) and thinking, “this is the most depressing book I have ever read”. The book definitely did not make me want to see the film that was based on the book. Then along came Dave Pelzer and his autobiography “A Child Called It”. I read it, but I had to skip some parts and was on the verge of throwing up in others. I finished the book, but just barely. However, like so many other people, I had to read his other books just because i wanted a happy ending or sense of closure to come out of them—not because I was left feeling fulfilled or satisfied after reading them. It was an odd, unsettling feeling and probably other people who have read these books have felt something similar.
It seems these books have spawned an entire publishing genre I call “car-crash literature”, because you can’t help but feel like you’ve just rubbernecked a horrific accident scene on a highway; you don’t want to gawp but you are compelled to. If you go into any big-box bookstore, or even a Wal-Mart or large supermarket, there are loads of these sorts of books. They don’t have their own shelf (should they?) but they all seem to scream out “my childhood was tougher than yours, wanna look?” Most of them deal with some sort of horrific child abuse. Ironically, these sorts of books all seem to be aimed at women and seem to be considered “beach reading”—yeah, if you want to spend your precious spare time or your holiday feeling worse than when you started the book. I don’t really know why these books are so popular but they are and spend weeks on the bestseller lists and make their authors a tidy sum in the process. I think there has to be a balanced, critical view of these books which I think is lacking in literary circles.
One one hand, people naturally like others who have overcome deep tragedies. I personally love reading about how people, especially strong women, overcame their past to contribute to the greater human good. This been the case in literature for ages and ages, back to Oliver Twist and Moll Flanders and even before that. It’s in our nature to want to see the nice guys win. And we shouldn’t begrudge people like Dave Pelzer who genuinely seem to want to help others conquer their personal demons through his example.
However, these books also need a bit of caution as a sort of shaduenfruede. The unease I feel is the whole issue of capitalising on a horrible childhood in order to cash in on publishing deals and book tours. Many thousands of people have had difficult childhoods but they tend to work it out in therapy and move on with their lives and indeed many people who have dealt with tough issues don’t feel the need to re-hash their difficult lives over and over again…so what makes these particular writers so darn special? I think that it’s a mark of emotional maturity to not keep wallowing in the past. Thus it’s my unease about these sorts of books. It makes me wonder what the hidden agenda of many of these sorts of authors really is.
The second issue I have with this genre is the whole aspirational “Oprah syndrome”. Dave Pelzer’s later self-help books are a case in point. They are written in an “aw, shucks” kind of style that I find really grating after a while. But I also feel almost insulted and angry that his point seems to be that just be trying that little bit harder and thinking you can do great things you really can be super-human where nothing bad will touch you ever again Of course, this could be my misguided interpretation of his books and I could be completely wrong. I certainly don’t want to diminish or make light of the people who have been helped by books such as his.
There may be perhaps a bit of a backlash happening. Google “Dave Pelzer” for instance. There is as much discussion and rebuttal, even from his own family, whether or not his horrific childhood was really that bad or heavily embellished. Another book that I just read, which I found actually not that bad, was “Don’t Ever Tell” by Kathy O’Beirne which told of her childhood abuse and eventual instiutionalisation in a Magdalen Laundry in Ireland. However, if you Google her name, there is a wellspring of controversy as to whether the author is making up the entire story. Such as this article:
The unfortunate effect that these books and their resultant controversies have on the reading public is that the reader is taken in to be a sucker. We take it as read (pun intended) that these autobiographies are true. Any evidence to the contrary ends up making us feel like we’ve been “had”. The other casualty in this is the fact that real people who have suffered child abuse, but not to the horrific extent that these writers have suffered, may not be taken seriously enough because their case “isn’t that bad” and these victims may even be hesitant to go to the authorities in the first place because they feel they can’t be believed. And what happens if people can’t quite spectacularly turn their lives around and always struggle, even after years of therapy, unlike these writers?
I wish that this sort of literary trend will be short-lived, but I feel that this age of celebrity obsession can only affect literature as well. Society is hungry for confessional details and down the line these “confessionals” become like a drug where you keep wanting more shock value, more gory details, more intrusion on people’s private lives. I don’t see any real benefit from that—except if you’re in the publishing industry.
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