Too Good to be True (but so what?!)

Along with Rainbow Road my latest book purchase included James Howe's novel Totally Joe.

In Totally Joe, we are presented with the main character Joe (sometimes JoDan) Bunch's alphabiography--the story of his life from A to Z, complete with chapters that end with a Life Lesson to share with others. I must say, I like the idea of this writing assignment--it's simple enough, and structured and methodical in ways that satisfyingly feed my anal retentiveness. In many ways it reminds me of an English writing assignment I was given in high school to do a moon journal (an assignment I still think of fondly now).

At the heart of both assignments is the task to be self-reflexive. (Now what self-respecting feminist isn't into being self-reflexive?) However, despite Totally Joe being presented as a confidential, journal-type text strictly between Joe and his teacher, Mr. Daly, we know as readers that we are to match Joe's self-reflexivity with our own. (Isn't all reading about this?)

In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and have been quite disappointed to see reviews from School Library Journal and Booklist that critique it for its idealism and treats its optimism as a liability instead of an asset.

What ever happened to hope? to dreams? (Or, for to letting fiction be fiction?)

I believe in the power of imagination to bring about change. Utopia should not be a dirty six letter word.

If I seem like I'm ranting it probably is because I am, a bit. I'm reminded here of my master's thesis project, where I critiqued the ways in which lesbian erotica failed to adequately depict lesbian sex. I mean, if I can't get graphic representations of lesbian sex in my erotica--a genre seemingly devoted to such representations--then what does that say about the unintelligibility/impossibility of lesbian sex? Reading gay male erotica alongside lesbian erotica made the differences even more staggering, and convinced me even more that it wasn't that such graphic sexual representations couldn't be written, but rather that they weren't, and more so, weren't even seen as needing to be written.

Is everything in Totally Joe completely believable? Hardly. But if it were, wouldn't that be something?

Okay, more on Totally Joe later. For now I'm off to make a buck.