Yes... the title of another book I read during my messed-up teen years.
I needed to find concrete answers about what was happening to me.
But I couldn't.
As I mentioned yesterday concerning reader comments and questions about The Marbury Lens, I get a lot of people telling me they believe that Marbury is just as real as any other place, and then, maybe about half the readers think that Marbury is a delusional symptom of Jack's PTSD... and will he ever get better?
You know what's really interesting to me? It's that Team Real tends to be mostly male readers, while Team Hallucination tends to be mostly female.
It's just anecdotal, but it is heavily distributed along gender lines. My theory is that guys are more likely have the "suck it up and deal with it" attitude, while more nurturing girls recognize that Jack is damaged and hope he can eventually mend.
What's the correct interpretation? It doesn't really matter. In either explanation, the most important and jarring questions still originate from the horrible things Jack has experienced.
Will he ever get better?
Brace yourselves.
Either way, real or not, Jack isn't going to heal.
I think a big part of the explanation behind the nastiness and outrage some people have expressed to me about The Marbury Lens comes from the understandable discomfort many of us have when confronted with sexual abuse against boys -- much more so than dealing with the topic of abuse against girls. Boys are far less-likely to seek any kind of help, because boys are socialized into "sucking it up" and "being a man."
We like to play for Team Real.
This is the kind of pressure that percolates up in the form of Jack's guilt, self-contempt, and even suicidal thoughts. He's supposed to deal with it himself, or, at least, that's what he believes.
A few weeks back, I talked to a boy who'd been victimized as a child. He started off wanting to talk about The Marbury Lens, but then mentioned to me how real all the post-abduction things Jack goes through seemed to him. Then he told me his story, and why he felt such a connection to the book and to Jack's character. Well, we talked for a good long time about those issues.
I told him about a screenwriter who'd read the book and was, I suppose, interested in writing an adaptation. The screenwriter [have I ever said how I feel about screenwriters? I don't think so.] said that he stopped "liking" Jack because Jack didn't go to the police.
What a dick.
Seriously.
This is entirely what's wrong with these people.
Not only is he a dick, but he's a dick who doesn't understand the first goddamned thing about kids -- boys in particular.
It still makes me mad, just thinking about it.
Anyway, so when I told this boy my little "Why the Screenwriter Stopped Liking Jack" story, I could see how angry my friend got, too. Really.
So the truth is, that real or not, the most important thing going on in The Marbury Lens is the journey through all the dark places kids like Jack have to endure.
Alone.
Looking for something that they can fix, and trying to hold it together for the other "real" people who care about them.
So that's my take on the real vs. hallucination perspective: It doesn't matter.
But I do want to give you a blueprint to the physical architecture of Jack's universe.
Assuming it is, in fact, all real.
Next time.
10 comments:
Very interesting.
Another aspect of sexual abuse against boys that I think is important is the whole 'am I gay' issue that comes up. My book Dirty Liar is about an abused boy and I think you're right, the male reaction to that situation disturbs people.
And that, Brian, has been part of the this-book-must-be-homophobic complaint from some people who just don't get it.
At all.
I'd also like to respond to a comment from Helene, who posted on a different blog entry (the one titled 2011)... because I got the impression she originally wanted to post here:
Helene,
We can say NO. Believe it or not. It's a simple word. Easy to articulate. [speaks from past experience]
I think it depends on how one defines "heal." At least, I hope it does.
I also think there are many, many reasons children don't disclose sexual abuse immediately and seek help. Sure, gender socialization may be a part of it. But there are other factors, including how the perpetrator screws with the kid's head. Or how the child perceives his/her responsibility to and control over others.
For those who have had the good fortune of never having their sense of control and safety stripped from them like this, it is often impossible to understand why anyone, child or adult, would not put a stop to abuse or report it. Elizabeth Scott does a beautiful, brutal job of making this case in Living Dead Girl.
I do wonder if that burden falls heavier on boys/men, who perhaps are expected to be more assertive. But I also know how some think about girls who don't disclose or prosecute or whatever, and it's not always very sympathetic, either.
Really? You wonder if the burden falls more heavily on boys?
It does.
But then again, there is an understated bias, I think in even suggesting that the psychological and social consequences may not be quantifiably more severe for one gender vs. another -- that the playing field may be equal.
Boys and girls don't have to be equal, nor treated the same, across the spectrum of experience. I think we can agree, for example, that suicide rates among boys are significantly higher than among girls.
It's not a contest. Nobody's a winner.
But there is a general anti-male bias in YA literature, as well, and this comes through fairly evidently in the attitudes expressed by readers of YA.
Maybe I'm reading too much between your lines. This was a post about boys and the traumatic effect of these events on boys (both internally as well as externally -- those "reactions" by observers), and your comment seems to steer the topic toward lets-not-forget-about-girls land.
Okay, let's not forget about them. There are plenty of writers -- as you point out -- who will discuss this matter.
Don't take it personally. I'm just saying hmmmmm.... about some things.
Real or hallucination? As I first read, I never considered the choice. It was real, to Jack, to Conner, to Henry, to the Marbury boys. I also never considered a gender difference between how boys/girls psychologically/physically react to abuse.
Because I was in the fortunate position to first read TML a year and a half ago--in the dark ages before anyone had ARCs and no one had blogged reviews and comments and poor Andrew hadn't even known I'd read it--I was able to roll the story over in my mind and my subconscious (kinda like "roll, tap, tap"). Now that I've had the influence of others' examination (including the most bewildering comment I've ever read about anything anywhere--a woman said she never thought about sex in high school), I can understand the idea that Jack is hallucinating. That what happens post-kidnapping is his psyche's attempt to dissociate to survive.
My belief is TML brings every reader face to face with personal history. It's the overlapping of events (love those Venn diagrams) from the book and the reader's background that influences responses.
I'm seeing a CSW's PhD dissertation in the making.
(Andrew, I have to quibble with the suicide comment--boys die more often from attempts because they tend to use more violent means. More girls make attempts, but as we all know, girls go wimpy with pills and cutting.)
(Also, for you, I withheld my great desire to put an exclamation point after the above phrase about the woman who didn't think about sex in high school. I'm still agog to guess what she thought about instead.)
(And, yeah, Castaneda didn't provide much fruitful guidance in the long run.)
Good old Huxley. Wasn't it Mescaline he was on?
Anyway, I think you make an excellent point about the stereotypical male reaction. I don't know if it's more genetic or more a reaction to socialization, but we learn to try to fix things, or at the very least to survive. Depending on what kind of abuse one might have suffered that may manifest itself as becoming an abuser, shutting off emotionally to the world, hurting yourself, taking drugs ... any number of things, but very rarely, for men and boys, seeking out help, whether from a professional or other adult/authority figure.
I'm not going to go into detail about my own experiences in a blog comment, but I will say that as a teen, and even for several years as a twentysomething, I was running. Running away from everything. From relationships, from responsibility, from giving a shit about a single damn thing.
And the thing is, at least for me, you don't ever really heal, you just learn to deal.
Hope you kindly told that "screenwriter" to fuck off. I'm sure you will meet a less ignorant human being to work with you on the film adaptation.
Tyler,
Yes. Yes I did.
Anne (hellskitchen),
I'm going to shut up on this one.
Matthew,
Thank you. Your comments mean a lot to me. God knows there are so few male voices out there talking/writing (especially in YA where they apparently want us to shut the fuck up) about boys' experiences... because they don't believe that boys read books, and they don't want them to, anyway.
Andrew,
God do I feel you there. I know I promised to email you, and I will soon, because I feel a connection with you, in spite of the impersonal nature of our acquaintance.
I happen to be an aspiring YA author, and my story has some dirt in it, but at first I tried to tell it how I thought the industry would want to hear it. I was WAY out of touch with that, so I changed it to a 1st person POV, and it's gotten way better, but it still needs to grow, and dig its roots in much deeper.
Anyway ...
"Meeting" an author like you, who has the courage to tell the truth, come what may, is really inspiring, and I intend to have you on my blog to promote the hell out of you and your books, as soon as time and life allow.
It may sound like I'm just blowing smoke at you, but fuck that. You're writing has touched me heavily already. And I've only read one of your books.
Matt just wait until you've read Andrew's other books. Read In the Path of Falling Objects next them Ghost Medicine (my fav). Sorry for going a bit crazy with yesterday's comment to you.
Connie
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