stylish and meretricious

I'm supposed to be sleeping, but I can't stop thinking. I started early tonight, in hopes of getting some sleep now rather than during Easter Sunday church service. But, I tend to write in my head while I wait to sleep, and sometimes I have to get it down before I forget it. Like last night, for some reason I related to "Valley" the scene in "Groundhog Day" where Bill Murray molds the chick's face out of snow because he knows it so well. Don't ask me how that relates -- I can't think of it at the moment. All I can think of is writing this blog. How I want it to be a far cry from summaries, because it's tempting to start a new post by summarizing the night's read. Rather, I want it to be a place for jotting down all those marginal English-class notes -- the ones with underlines and highlighting and big blue asterisks. In lieu of writing in my books, though, I've been keeping notes on a little sticky pad. Pooh Post-Its to be exact.

A lot of things changed, and a few secrets were revealed, in tonight's pages. Anne and Lyon managed to make it a year, and their relationship seems stable. I'll find out tomorrow, when I read the next Anne section. Tonight, I had two Jennifers and a Neely. I like how even though the entire book is written in third person, the tone changes from doll to doll. The narrator asserts for Jennifer that the purpose of a hot body is getting things you want, and for Neely crowds a page or two with the ubiquitous "Geez!"

I love a book that incites physical reaction. Laughter, tears, jaw-droppery and wide eyes. That's how these pages were for me (minus the tears). Neely and Jennifer have their men wrapped around their little fingers, and you wonder what in hell they're thinking. Jennifer acts out textbook game-playing techniques with Tony Polar, who literally lacks the capacity to resist. The second Jennifer chapter, the last few pages I read tonight, shed to light why the reader is kept distanced from the singer -- his sister, Miriam, has been hiding his mental illness from the world. I know I'm sounding summary-ish, but I haven't gotten over it yet. Jennifer has no clue the man with whom she has eloped has the mental faculties of a 10-year-old. Hard to believe for us normal folk, but after the homoerotic life she allowed herself to live in Europe, this blonde has a few short wires herself. (I don't know if that's a sentence, but my excuse is that I just exited near-sleep mode.)

Before I get to housekeeping notes, I want to mention that I'm holding off on a "trashy" verdict until the end of the novel, because I'm not convinced. I'm halfway through, and Seconals have only just been introduced for one character, and while the dolls have been sexing it up, it hasn't been in a creepy, romance-novel type of way -- it's been in a realistic way. And I'm entering into evidence a couple definitions of the word: "rubbishy," "in very poor taste," "tastelessly showy" ... wait, what's this? "A meretricious yet stylish book" follows that last one as an example. I might be onto something, Watson. Stylish? Yes. Meretricious? "Alluring by a show of flashy or vulgar attractions. Tawdry." Tawdry implies cheap and gaudy, vulgar a lack of good breeding. It's officially still a mystery (wink, wink).

• Polyglot = I probably would've had to look this word up, except that I learned it on a TV commercial. How ironic is that.
• Hauteur = haughty manner, arrogance. This one was easy from context, but I'd still never seen the word, so I wanted to mark it.
• Page 201 typo = especialy. Oops.
• Page 191 possible typo/grammatical error = "three hours sleep." It's like Lynne Truss points out in "Eats Shoots & Leaves," you can't say "two weeks notice," you have to throw in a possessive apostrophe. Say "three hours of sleep" or "three hours' sleep."
• How random was the ease with which Jennifer asked Anne, "I take it you didn't love your mother." And Anne replied, "No, I didn't love her. But I didn't dislike her." Granted, I guess Anne had a good excuse ... what am I saying? I know she felt smothered by small-town life, but give the poor woman some credit. There's an essay topic for you.