Previous installments of the series can be found here. Most recently: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Tomorrow is Jaya’s birthday; make her feel appreciated.
For most of my life, when I heard someone talk about Weetzie Bat, I assumed it was a book about an actual bat. I imagined something like an anthropomorphic fruit bat: small, cute, not something that’s going to want to suck your blood. Maybe this cute bat goes to high school? I think I spent a lot of time inventing plots for books that I could have just read.
Anyway, when I told one friend of mine that I’d be starting this project, she immediately began giving me the hard sell on Weetzie Bat. “You’re going to LOVE IT. I read it 20 times and I wanted to be her and I tried to make ‘duck hunting’ happen,” she said. I had no idea what she was talking about, but currently I am not in a position to turn anything down. So I borrowed her copy.
The next day I read two pages and told her this book embodied everything I hate about Tumblr and there was no way I could read it. The day after that, I finished it and fell in love.
The thing about Weetzie Bat, all 70 pages of it, is that reading it is like a dream, and the second you attempt to compare anything about it to “real life” you turn into a cynical asshole. It’s like listening to people talk about Burning Man, if you know people who go to Burning Man. It’s all colors and art and community and you’re surrounded by your friends and there’s no money and it sounds like paradise, until you realize that to actually live that life you need to spend thousands of dollars to schlep all your shit out into a desert during your only vacation time and it’s entirely impractical and you’d probably just spend the whole time wanting to punch some naked dude on a unicycle in the face. So, when reading Weetzie Bat, it’s best to just accept the dream. Enter the book. Don’t think too hard.
Weetzie Bat does start off in the worst way possible: “The reason Weetzie Bat hated high school was because no one understood.” I mean, good God. Apparently the things Weetzie loves that people don’t understand are burritos and rollerblades and old Hollywood, which, I don’t know if you’ve been to Los Angeles but that is what EVERYONE understands, so Weetzie maybe just needs to talk to someone? No, scratch that, because the second she opens her mouth she’s explaining to this guy Dirk that she (a white girl with blonde hair) is wearing an Indian headdress because she is “into Indians. They were here first and we treated them like shit.” There is almost certainly a direct line between the 12-year-olds who first read this book and all the blonde girls at Coachella in neon shorts and problematic headwear.
Weetzie is every girl I wanted to be in high school and every girl I could not stand in one. She is every girl at my liberal New York City private school who put glitter paint on her Marc Jacobs t-shirts and ate cheeseburgers and weighed 100 pounds forever and liked pink in an unconventional way, somehow. I hated her. But then I’d go to her house and she’d have fantastic taste in music and an actual record player, and somehow have decorated her room to be kitschy and edgy at the same time, and who in general was just really nice and wanted to do cool things with her life. And it just baffled me because why wasn’t she concerned with covering up her body and hiding in the stairwell during her free periods so no one noticed her?
According to Block, “under the pink Harlequin sunglasses strawberry dangling charms, and sugar-frosted eyeshadow [Weetzie] was really almost beautiful.” But you know, not actually beautiful.
Weetzie owns her weirdness, which attracts the attention of Dirk, a hot guy (no one in this book is not hot. One cannot be schlubby and quirky at the same time) with a mohawk who becomes her Gay Best Friend. They go out to clubs and eat burritos on the beach and go “duck hunting” (Duck is their slang for “guy”), and hang out with Dirk’s grandma Fifi, who sounds pretty baller. One day, Fifi gives Weetzie a golden lamp, and Weetzie rubs it and a stereotypical genie, complete with turban and baggy pants, shows up and grants her three wishes.
The summary of the book says that Weetzie’s wishes “do not turn out like she planned,” which had me expecting a much more Twilight Zone-style twist. She wishes for a “Duck” for Dirk, a “Secret Agent Lover Man” (ugh) for herself, and a house for them all to live in. That last one does get a little Rod Sterling-ed because immediately after she makes her wishes Dirk calls her to say Fifi died and left them her house, which is filled with knick-knacks and vintage dresses and flowers, because of course it is.
Weetzie is weirded out for a half-second and then settles into a pretty bitchin’ life. Dirk meets a blonde surfer boy named Duck and he moves in with them, and after some time Weetzie meets a man in a trenchcoat named My Secret Agent Lover Man, and the four of them live in Fifi’s house and make films together. There’s a lot of food porn about the sandwiches and the seafood pasta they make. This book made me very hungry.
And now, a conflict. Weetzie wants to have a baby, and MSALM does not. So Weetzie and Duck and Dirk decide to have a threesome so she can get knocked up and no one has to know whose baby it is. MSALM is, understandably, pissed off at this and leaves Weetzie, who eventually gives birth to a baby girl and names her fucking CHEROKEE. I can’t even handle it. I almost throw the book away again, and then I remembered that earlier she goes to visit her dad in New York and they mention Cel-Ray soda, and I am the only person I know who likes Cel-Ray, so I keep reading.
MSALM comes back and forgives Weetzie for having a threesome without telling him (We can argue about monogamy and trust and all that, but if you’ve established you don’t want kids and your girlfriend goes ahead and gets pregnant with your roommates you have every right to never come back). They go back to life together pretty quickly, until a Dark Woman appears at their door and demands to see MSALM. He confesses to having had an affair with her while he was gone, and talks to her, and then a few months later a Dark Baby is left on their doorstep, which they raise as their own and call Witch Baby. After reading summaries, I realized that Dark Woman originally appears because she is asking MSALM for money to get an abortion, though that is hinted at so vaguely that I don’t even notice it, probably because I’m too angry at Weetzie assuming she’s scary because she has dark hair and olive skin.
Things continue to go “not as planned.” Weetzie and Cherokee visit Weetzie’s dad in New York, and soon after he dies of an overdose. Weetzie’s mom is a lush. Duck gets freaked out after he visits a friend in the hospital and realizes that “love can become death,” and runs away to San Francisco. Eventually Dirk finds him and brings him home, although it’s left ambiguous as to whether or not Duck is HIV-positive. (While in San Francisco, Duck says “You are in my blood. I can’t help it.” Thoughts?). The sun sets on them all together again, presumably happily ever after, which means that the genie wasn’t that tricky and everything turned out as planned. With extra babies around.
Now is the moment when I’m coming out of it. When I realize how casually appropriative Weetzie’s fashion choices are, or how much I would vomit if a man ever said to me “You are my Marilyn. You are my lake full of fishes. You are my sky set, my ‘Hollywood in Miniature,’ my pink Cadillac, my highway, my martini, the stage for my heart to rock and roll on, the screen where my movies light up.” Where I start to wonder how, aside from MSALM’s films, how any of them made money to afford the estate taxes on that inherited house. Where I start getting boring and realistic, while in Weetzie-land I would probably just take a bath with pink bubbles and then eat chili on the porch with my best friends.
The book I was lent had the rest of the Weetzie Bat series in it, which I was encouraged not to read. I’m down from the high of reading enough to know it would be dangerous to get back in. I don’t even want to read Weetzie Bat again, figuring that with each reading, the charm will wear off, the cynical thoughts will creep in earlier, the name Cherokee will get even more ridiculous. I’d rather just live the dream for now.
[Image via Wikipedia]
Tags: books that are not in fact about bats, burning man, coachella, francesca lia block, jaya catches up, people you hate and people you love, Tumblr, weetzie bat, ya
Jaya, how old are you going to be?
Hahaha 27, so beginning to be old enough to fear birthdays. If you’re in the NYC vicinity, join me at Grassroots Tavern on St. Mark’s Place around happy hour!
Never mind! iCal told me! It’s a lovely age.
” And it just baffled me because why wasn’t she concerned with covering up her body and hiding in the stairwell during her free periods so no one noticed her?” I still cannot believe that there are people for whom this was not their entire public school experience. Who are they? What are they like at parties now?
Often, really really drunk.
Happy birthday for tomorrow!
I heard all sorts of things about Weetzie Bat and was really wanting to love it – but it did nothing for me at all. I felt like your last paragraph but on the first reading – it never swept me away and I was really sad that it didn’t.
Did I spend my entire teenage years in a blackout? because I had completely forgotten about all of this until now. Thanks, Jaya!
Woulda been better if it had been about a bat
I TOO THOUGHT IT WAS ABOUT A BAT
I just figured out that I probably confused “weetzie bat” and “tsetse fly” in my head.
well that sentence certainly allows for some multiple interpretations o_o
So did I!
And now that I have read the actual summary I am even MORE CONFUSED because the person I know who is the biggest adult fan of this book is also the person on Tumblr who talks about how terrible wearing native headdresses are. The heart wants what it wants, I suppose. 😛
You have to read it when you’re an awkward 12 year old girl who just wants to be Weetzie but cannot due to her rather large Nordic bone structure and distinct lack of Dirks in her rural high school. I see the problematic stuff when I read it as an adult BUT I also remember how much it meant to me as a kid.
I think when I was that age the ideal book for me would be “girl retires to island made entirely out of books where a robot will make sandwiches for her.” I was a very misanthropic 12-year-old.
I need to go write that book now. You don’t mind, do you? Cause that book needs to exist.
I will buy it and then have a photoshoot of me reading it on a beach with a robot butler!
Whaaaat. D: This does indeed sound like Tumblr: The Novel
weetzie bat: the proto-tumblr
This is giving me unhappy “A Home At The End of the World” flashbacks (Michael Cunningham, I forgive you. But just barely).
Yeah my hippie friend lent these books to me in high school and I was overwhelmingly left with the impression of “these people maybe aren’t mature enough to be caring for little babies!?!?!?!?” Can’t say as I picked up on the fuckery of MY BEST GAY FRIEND (WHO I HAVE THREESOMES WITH) or LET’S NAME OUR BABY CHEROKEE or LET’S RANDOMLY ADOPT OURSELVES A “DARK BABY” back in the day, though
I loooved the Weetzie Bat books as a teenager, though like Jaya, I was very folded in on myself and hated/envied everyone who wasn’t in real life. I think I read and enjoyed most of Block’s books, because I would read just about anything with gay characters. I wasn’t so much aware of the cultural appropriation at that age (or at least I don’t remember the Indian stuff), but I def noticed that all of her books have a thread of “beautiful = good”. I would never ever try to reread her books as an adult, but when I visited LA for the first time this summer, I did think about them a lot.
Jaya, do Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls next!
noooo not lost souls, do drawing blood!
Happy birthday, Jaya.
So sorry, guys. I hated Weetzie Bat. I thought it was insufferable because she was such a Special Snowflake.
I’m just glad it wasn’t just me!
EVERYTHING YOU ARE SAYING IS TRUE BUT I CAN’T HELP IT.
but for real, thank god I read it before tumblr existed.
2nded.
I was so so so so into ALL of Francesca Lia Block’s books as a tween and actually Weetzie Bat was my least favorite of hers at the time because even a 12-year-old can see how absurd a person named My Secret Agent Lover Man is. But oh, man, I sometimes wonder about the undoubtedly weird effects Violet & Claire, The Hanged Man, Echo, Ecstasia, Primavera etc etc etc had on my subconscious.
Besides my love for body glitter, which is decidedly not subconscious.
But I’ll never give up my high school halfie love for Witch Baby, yo. NEVER. Also am shameless old obsessee of FLB, and she did give me a lot of energy to get thru adolescence/is so sweet to her young fans/ but y’all she wrote a dating book and I tried to read it a few years ago and was like HOO boy no. Anyone know what I’m talking about? Mythical archetypes?
omg omg omg link to the dating book please
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6442616-wood-n…
YUP.
THIS IS INCREDIBLE
I want Mallory to write a dating guide via mythical creature. A million thumbs ups if one of the types is the eight legged horse child of Loki.
MALLORY ARE YOU LISTENING
I would also like to request actual harpy or perhaps ourobourous (is that a myth or just a metaphor??)
i am always listening my spider children
Oh please yes! 😀
If I can’t have Sleipnir in the Marvel Cinematic Universe- give me this, at least. GIVE ME THIS.
wow the 5-star reviews are all making me really uncomfortable
I missed (“missed”) this but am entirely satisfied with Jaya’s report. No need to go read/dream it my own self.
Happy birthday, Jaya!
My dad loves Cel-Ray! And happy almost-birthday!
(I have never read this book.)
Worth noting that “Cherokee” was the name of the street where the first huge punk rock club in Hollywood was, a place clearly referenced in the books. That’s one tiny slice of appropriation I don’t think she did, even though plenty else really was that bad.
Her fairy tales, though
Oh man. I read the first few books in this series when I was 10 or 11, maybe? I think my sister was the one who checked them out from the library but I liked them a lot and I was too young/ignorant to be bothered by the problematic aspects. Every time I hear “I Want to Hold Your Hand” I think of that scene with Weetzie and Duck and Dirk, almost word for word. It’s weird what stays with you.
Edit: Also, happy almost-birthday, Jaya!
I have never read this book and had no idea what it was about, although I know people who are FLB fans, and now that I know thanks to Jaya….whaaaaaaat theeeee fuuuuuuuckkkkk.
Happy birthday, Jaya!
I read Weetzie Bat in my early 20’s and spent a lot of time throwing it across the room. And then picking it up again, because how is it so stupid and ALSO so enchanting?! I made it all the way to Missing Angel Juan (’cause Witch Baby <3) before I just couldn’t do it anymore.
So I read this piece and the comments and then went to get ready for work and realized that DUH I just got a library-ish tattoo last month with books on it and the only non-call-numbered book is Weetzie Bat. So yes, it can be problematic, it isn’t perfect, and it’s pretty effing twee, but my junior high librarian handed me Weetzie Bat and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsong the first week of seventh grade, and that’s how I ended up being me.
I have not read this book. But this sounds like the kind of book that, were I to listen to the audio version during my hour-long commute, would cause me to be pulled over for reckless driving because I would be screaming at the characters in frustration. Of course, I would be punching the play button as soon as I sped off on my merry way.
I absolutely loved this book as a teenager, and in retrospect that explains a lot about me. If I read it for the first time today, though, I would never stop rolling my eyes. The cultural appropriation is just clueless, but beyond that I think you have to come at it with California earnestness. The only part I really remember disliking in the book was her description of New York. East Coaster through and through.
I read this book when I was 12 and it changed my life, kind of. I don’t know, I was a lonely depressive kid in a colorless suburb and the idea that anyone had written this thing, and then a publisher thought other people would buy it, made me feel more hopeful about humanity than a lot of the people around me (clearly that says more about my fatalistic worldview than anything else). Jaya is 100% right about the threesome but as a kiddo I was like, cool, nontraditional family units! The cultural appropriation stuff went right over my head because my hometown is frighteningly homogenous and also possibly because it was 1992 and I think people in general were dumber about that stuff back then. (see also: 12, suburbs)
Missing Angel Juan was always my favorite, probably because it was set in New York, and the food porn in all of these books was so fantastic.
So Necklace of Kisses: technically of the Weetzie series but very separate from the original 5. I almost feel like Jaya might like it because it sort of merges the Weetzie world and the real world a bit (I mean she stays in an enchanted hotel with magical creatures but the book actually talks about money and real-world events).
I loved the hell out of this book when I first read it and I’ll always think of it fondly, even as time has passed and I have realized how problematic it actually is. I assumed Jaya’s review would be scathing because, well, it’s Weetzie Bat but I am pleased that she liked it too!
I loved FLB books in middle school but Witch Baby was my favorite character. YA as a genre owes a great deal to FLB and while her writing suffered for a while (she put out a bunch of hot mess books all in a row) her 2 most recent books are quite excellent.
I didn’t encounter Weetzie et al until my late teens, thanks to Sassy magazine’s feature on the Weetzie zine, (I’m old), but like @martinipie I don’t think Weetzie is the best of FLB…You kind of have to approach her writing with all disbelief suspended, to make it work. (Not that all the problems pointed out aren’t valid) I ended up writing my MA thesis on the oeuvre of FLB! One of the (many) things I find interesting about her work is how the books influenced her fandom. FLB livejournals anyone? I saw the header (so excited) and really thought I’d find old witchbaby yahoo group users here (guys, where are you now?) Thank you Jaya, for putting Weetzie on the Toast.
Ha, I was in that group!
old witchbaby yahoo group member reporting for duty! (I think I went by LAMB back then?) ah, the old fandom.
OH MAN I loved this book and all the series and it has always lived in a candy-frosted wonderland in my mind laced with semi-erotic overtones because I ALSO found Francesca Lia Block’s erotica collection, which was mis-shelved in the children’s section of the library, and it is every bit as trippy as Weetzie Bat, and now I am remembering it and yeahh it is just a little bit too self-consciously Edgy and maybe if I read it again I would hate it forever but I loved it so much when I was 13.
That’s the only Block I’ve read, the erotica. I liked it a lot. What I remember of it, anyway.
I always HATED Francesca Lia Block books in high school while my friends doted on them, probably because I subconsciously knew my butt was too chunky and hair was too frizzy to ever be a “incandescent sugar-coated silver-screen broken-winged purple-lipstick karaoke ecstatic pixie dream” or whatever it was she wrote about.
I’ve mellowed since then.
I was way more into the Witch Baby and Angel Juan stuff, which I still remember fondly. Weetzie Bat kind of got on my nerves even when I was at the appropriate/clueless age to be sucked in by things like that…the whole Hell-A/Shangri-LA business, ugh. I can’t imagine that any of it holds up particularly well once you’re in your 20s or 30s though.
Oh man, thinking back on it now I bet all the Angel Juan Mexican-American stuff is way effed up in retrospect.
Don’t read the sequel that’s all about Cherokee!! The cultural insensitivity is off the charts. There’s a wise Native American shaman who teaches them how to do rituals (to make their band successful) and a Jamaican guy named Jah Love. AND I recall a lot of annoying passages about the skinny white girl protagonist feeling powerful and primitive when she wears some fur robes the shaman gave her.
Man, I loved Weetzie Bat. But I WAS A TEENAGE FAIRY! Oh, my heart. An child model with a secret sassy fairy best friend, but everything Block touched on with alienation, and abuse, and the protagonist searching for the real family and love that was taken …it was so emotional. I think if you do decide to follow up with FLB it should be that one, Jaya.
Man, I loved Weetzie Bat. But I WAS A TEENAGE FAIRY! Oh, my heart. An child model with a secret sassy fairy best friend, but everything Block touched on with alienation, and abuse, and the protagonist searching for the real family and love that was taken …it was so emotional. I think if you do decide to follow up with FLB it should be that one, Jaya.