Dear Luv Doc,
I am a well-read thirtysomething mother of two trying really hard not to slip into clinical depression at the troubling thought that the only thing that stands between humankind and the apocalypse is a couple of demented, delusional, doddering white dudes. Reading is the only distraction keeping me sane these days and I don’t have enough time to devote to it, or for that matter, anyone with whom I can discuss what I read. It’s a conundrum, so maybe you can help me solve it: Which is the better book: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird or Alicia Roth Weigel’s Inverse Cowgirl?
– Ex Comedian
To be truly impartial when comparing important works of literature, it’s always best to compare apples to apples, even if one of the apples suffered the unfortunate imposition of having its stem removed right as it fell from the tree. Now I know there are some who might argue that an apple without a stem is an incomplete apple. Those people are obviously nitpickers, not apple pickers, because any experienced apple picker knows that a stemless apple is still a whole apple and should be recognized as such, not counted as three-quarters of an apple or priced 30% less than the other apples. Nitpickers. They’re worse than nose-pickers.
Now, a well-read thirtysomething like yourself probably immediately recognized the preceding paragraph as a slipshod metaphor used to illustrate the fact that To Kill a Mockingbird, while largely autobiographical by all accounts, is a work of fiction, whereas Inverse Cowgirl is … somewhat disturbingly … autobiographical. It’s a bit of an apples-to-oranges situation as they would say in the fruit-picking world, though, to be completely honest, I haven’t been part of the fruit-picking world since I spent a windy day in the mid-Eighties standing on the back of a flatbed spraying peach trees with pesticides.
When comparing important works of literature, it’s always best to compare apples to apples.
Yeah, that was a thing in the Eighties. I could claim people didn’t know any better but I think they did. I certainly did. I vomited in the shower when I got home, and decided to try to make a living doing something less toxic. The jury is out on that, by the way, as this column has evolved over the years as I have evolved as a human being. In the beginning, there were much higher levels of toxicity. Thankfully, I have been blessed over the years with many brave people who have taken the time and energy to point out my stupidity and its effect on others. I know that sounds a bit snarky and insincere – especially in this column – but it’s the truth. I really am grateful for all the people who have called me on my toxic behaviors over the years. I have always been fucking ignorant. Now, at least, I am a little bit less fucking ignorant.
Back in the day, the world needed someone like Harper Lee to illustrate serious societal inequities: Rape … racism … the senseless murder of hydrophobic dogs … in way that was palatable and understandable to a large portion of the American book-reading and later film-going public. Let’s not fool ourselves: Lee was richly rewarded. She won a Pulitzer … back when people even knew what that was. G Dub gave her the Medal of Freedom. Nice.
Do such accolades lie in store for Alicia Roth Weigel? Who knows? However, like To Kill a Mockingbird, Inverse Cowgirl tackles issues not may people are willing to acknowledge, much less talk about. It challenges built-in biases about gender, body autonomy, reproductive rights, and intersex rights in a way that’s accessible and non-confrontational. I’m barely started on it and I’m learning all kinds of new things. Did you know there are more intersex people in the world than there are redheads? More than 150 million worldwide. Nobody recommends “corrective” surgery for redheads. I’ll be thinking about that as I finish Inverse Cowgirl, which might be better than To Kill a Mockingbird, but I haven’t finished it yet. I do think it’s a book America needs … and not just because it’s keeping me from worrying about the demented geezer apocalypse.
