Mother, Please Purchase This Book: An Emotional Appeal

My mother is awesome. Any emotional appeal should always start off with a kindly worded sentence of praise for the person you're appealing to. With the formalities out of the way, let me introduce you to my current situation: 


I like gothic art forms and I'm constantly drawn towards darker and psychologically stimulating literature and films. According to my experiences, one can find some of the slyest themes of social commentary. And we all know that along with critical thinking, I love me some of that. This is coming from the girl who considers The Bell Jar the most marvelously trippy book she's ever read. I mean, my favorite movie is Heathers.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. 


I'm not sure why I'm attracted to these themes.  I can't compare my life to the plot lines of the novels. I guess it's some part of human nature to be attracted to the stylistic and to shock. In fiction, we search for the obscene, emotions run on high. 


I'm writing a novel that explores suicide and obsession, so when I got wind of a novel called The Virgin Suicides, I knew it was kind of written for someone like me. Here's the summary:

"First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters--beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys--commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family's fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale."

Dark humor?  Fatal melancholy? I'm having a wonderful facial expression (or facial contortion) right now to express my excitement, but since you can't see it maybe you should just imagine a cross between Amy Poehler's face on Parks and Rec and a dolphin or some other very enthusiastic animal.


This post is my compilation of reasons to convince my mother, who is fantastic, as previously mentioned, to buy The Virgin Suicides for me. 

• If we order it within the next 15 hours and 45 minutes and choose the speed shipping option, according to Amazon.com, it will arrive tomorrow afternoon. So then we can check the mail tomorrow afternoon and witness the amazement of finding it in the mailbox on time. We can all go 'Ohhhhhh and Ahhhhh'. I've been told that Ohhhing  and Ahhhhing is proven to be fun for the whole family. 

• I babysit your son for you for various hours out of the week, without demanding payment of any kind. 

• The author, Jeffery Eugenides, has won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. He's donated the proceeds from a short story book he edited to the writing center 826 Chicago, established to encourage young people's writing. So he's certifiably cool. And a professer of creative writing at Princeton University. With the two of those titles combined, you can't get any cooler, with the slight exception of being a zombie slayer or Bill Murray.

• I babysit your son for you for various hours out of the week, without demanding payment of any kind. 

• The novel was adapted into a film by Sofia Coppola, whom we can all agree is a creative force to contend with. The film also stars Kirsten Dunst, whom I've loved since I saw her as Claudia in Interview With the Vampire. Speaking of Kirsten Dunst, maybe I should try convincing you to let me watch Melancholia. Alas, that's a blog post for another day. 

A History of Literary Suicides

Here's a excerpt from the short story I've been slaving away at from my Creative Writing class. Okay, yes, I am being slightly dramatic. I do enjoy the slaving away. I'm looking for constructive criticism on the piece, so I would love it if anyone could help by emailing me with comments. I will  continue to post my progress! 

A History of Literary Suicides

A BRIEF PROLOGUE

This is a story of love among the suicides. It is a love of misshapen words, the way death falls
cleanly over the mind (years before it slows the pulse), memories of lying under a middle 
aged house one stark and crudely drawn evening and life (in the multicolored sense of the 
word). Today Sloane will wake up and be many places and many sides of herself at once. She 
will transcend herself violently. She will go quietly. She will write an essay that results in 
being more autobiographical than academic. She will walk away from the outlines of her life, 
down her street, holding the manuscript clutched between her hands like a secret. By the end 
of today, Sloane will have slashed her wrists, leaving behind only discreet tattoos of memory 
on the skin.

On Conformity

Here's a poem I wrote in my Creative Writing class:

Blessing the table:
they begin with the sign of the cross and then comes
 the preheated blush of words.
 I struggle along with the sentences.
 I watch their mouths and my own voice falls rapidly downward as
I spit out the keyholed shapes and sounds of prayers.

This is what. Conformity (in the sense of religion) is easy to chew.