Book Review: Notes on a Scandal

I received Notes on a Scandal as a white elephant gift for Christmas. Turns out, it was the opposite of a useless white elephant (a black mouse?)--it's a beautifully written psychological case study. I loved it because it's not really about what it is ostensibly about--a forty-ish woman having an illicit affair with an under-age student; rather, it narrates the sometimes subtle, always disturbing socio-pathology of a controlling, narcissistic, messiah-complected personality.

It's brilliant.

What's amazing to me is that someone read this book and saw movie potential in it. I haven't seen the movie, but the story is so acutely internal--there are literally NO explosions!--that I cannot even fathom how a movie translation would do it justice. (I hear it does, though.)

Barbara Covett (her name, and the names of other major characters, represent intentional literary allusions) is the intensely observant, randomly opinionated, pedantic first-person narrator who nurtures a scary, subversive friendship with a younger woman. Whether or not Barbara is a repressed lesbian is totally beside the point. She becomes obsessed with her younger colleague, the alluring Bathsheba Hart, who joins the faculty at a small private English school as a pottery instructor.

With cool certainty, Barbara describes their inevitable friendship as "spiritual recognition," and she waits patiently for what she anticipates will be an "uncommon intimacy." She observes precise and intimate details of Sheba's body, mannerisms, and relationships; she becomes jealous when Sheba develops a close friendship with another woman.

Zoe Heller develops her protagonist with a subtlety that makes you know, without realizing why you know it, that Barbara is creepily malevolent to Shakespearean proportions. For example, Barbara describes Sheba's friend Sue Hodge as

the sort of woman who wears Lady-Lite panty liners every day of the month, as if there is nothing her body secretes that she doesn't think vile enough to be captured in cotton wool, wrapped in paper bags, and thrust far, far down at the bottom of the wastepaper bin. (I've been in the staff toilet after her and I know.)

Self-deception and self-righteousness cloud Barbara's narrative about her friend's illicit entanglement as she manipulates every fact and every rumor to strengthen the ties of her predatory friendship with Sheba. But Heller develops Barbara's character through her relationships with other characters as well, and through Barbara's own subtle self-revelations. "According to my notes," Barbara writes, "Sheba had no further contact with Connolly after the disastrous H.C. encounter until a couple of weeks into spring term."

According to her notes? Creepy!

Barbara never misses an opportunity for a caustic observation, and her sociopathology ultimately costs her any chance for true intimacy. Early in the book, in two abstruse and easily overlooked paragraphs, Barbara describes a close friendship that had ended abruptly and mysteriously. It's such a subtle hint at a history of social and personal dysfunction that every time the friend's name comes up later in Barbara's Notes about her new friend's troubles, many readers won't connect the dots of pathology unless they re-read the forgotten episode on page 36.

This book is the fictional version of The Sociopath Next Door: it's both brilliant and disturbing. One review quoted on the back cover suggested that the perfection of Heller's voicing of Barbara's subtly malevolent sociopathology was literary ventriloquism. It makes me wonder how Heller acquired such penetrating insight into Machiavellian psychology. Hmmmmm?

Creepy, or Just Me?

A boyfriend from eons ago--let's call him David McCall--contacted me through LinkedIn. He used his American name and had shortened his long Middle Eastern last name to a less ethnic-sounding name. He was ostensibly looking for an editor for an engineering report and his resume. I wondered who the guy was, and why was he asking for rates from a writer in Chicago when writers in LA are a dime a dozen.

Then I put two and two together: the first name, the still-recognizable last name, the engineering specialty, the LA location, and most importantly, the LinkedIn connection through the university we both attended--and I figured out who he was. But why the sneakiness? Why contact me as a potential client instead of coming right out and saying, hey, it's me, how the heck are you?

It felt sneaky and manipulative to me, so I did not respond.

The next day, I had another email from David McCall--this time using his full name instead of the Americanized version. This time he was straight up, re-introducing himself, asking about my parents and siblings, and hoping to get re-connected. He also mentioned the engineering report--but I still think it's a smokescreen, a way for him to say how he found me without saying he was looking specifically for me.

I don't know--maybe I'm a little too optimistic about my own attractiveness. But hey, who wouldn't want to hook up with me? I might be a middle-aged, overweight, mildly depressed, unemployed, happily married mother of three above-average-but-incredibly-loud children, but I do have great hair and a killer sense of humor.

But since he was honest, and since I was impressed that he remembered my parents names and the names of all my siblings 20 years later, I responded to his email with an email of my own. I was friendly, but not too friendly, and included details about my perfect family and my deliriously happy marriage, so that there would be no misunderstanding about my intentions.

(Listen to me. I really do have an inflated sense of self-worth, don't I? Like if I'm not careful, every man on the planet who once vaguely knew me would be knocking on my door if I wasn't clear enough about my lack of availability. I crack my own self up.)

When David M. wrote back, I was immensely relieved to find out that he was married, with two very young children. I thought, finally, he's reached a happy, healthy place. (Early on in my marriage, this guy would call me once every four or five years, and tell me yukky stories about his pathetic lonely life and tell me I was still his best friend; and I could not wait to get off the phone. I was happy when he finally stopped calling after about ten years.)

Anyway, I started regretting accepting his friend invitation on LinkedIn when he called me on my cell phone one afternoon shortly thereafter. On my cell phone--after no contact for almost 20 years! My own parents don't call me on my cell phone! Where the hell did he get the number? I wondered-- and then I realized: it's on my email signature line. I gave it to him myself.

And here's the weird part: I picked up the call because the number had a 773 area code--the area code of my part of Chicago. I thought it was going to be a neighbor or a friend, and when I heard this voice from my past, I was flustered, creeped out, and probably rude. I told him I couldn't talk and to call back later. My stomach was still churning hours later--but that might just have been the tuna I had for lunch.

How and why was he calling from a 773 area code? Does he have some kind of magical re-routing software to hide the origins of his calls? It's very 24--and again, this felt slightly manipulative to me.

Later I found that he had emailed me again, requesting my parents' phone number because, he said, "I miss them." My parents. He misses them. Oh, and he asked again for a quote on revising his resume. Doing his resume will require talking to him on the phone for about an hour, and frankly, I don't really want that kind of contact with an old boyfriend who got a little too clingy after our relationship was over. I didn't respond.

About a week later, I got another email from him alleging that that he had heard about the shooting at a church in Illinois and was worried about my family's safety. Again, a little disingenuous. David McCall knows I live in Chicago, and the shooting was nowhere near Chicago. He asked again for my parents phone number.

I wrote back, curtly told him yes, we were fine, and said that I'd need to check with my parents first before giving out their phone number. I never did get back to him with the phone number, or with a quote on his resume. I should have emailed him and just told him it made me uncomfortable--but I didn't.

This week, a month later, I got another kind of weird and freaky email from him, written all in the third person about a man who happened to be surfing the internet looking for a technical writer when he happened upon the profile of a writer who turned out to be his old friend. He even mentioned the earlier calls from 15 - 20 years ago, and specified that he had no ulterior motive, "particularly after knowing that his friend is also happily married."

Doesn't that clause imply that if his friend were not happily married, that there might have been an ulterior motive? I wonder what his wife thinks about that.

His email continued,

"The man kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a response from the writer, but for some odd reason, the writer never, ever bothered to get back to the old friend...Was it right for the friend just to put off the man and deny his friendship? Probably not. The good book says the following..."

--and then quotes three Bible verses, including this one from Job: "My relatives and my close friends have failed me." He asked me--in the third person still--to delete everything he sent me.

He visited my blog at least four times the first week that he contacted me--but I don't know if he still comes by The Green Room. He might be reading this right now and thinking, hey, what a bitch! Or perhaps it will give him a clue about normal social boundaries. Part of me is thinking, how does he have time for all this, with two very young kids and a wife and a big-ass engineering job? I can barely get a blog post written once a week even though I have no clients and my kids are in school all day!

The more I think about it, the more irritated I am that this person has any expectations of me at all, let alone has the nerve to send me an angry, manipulative email quoting the Bible at me! It's exactly this kind of response that confirms for me that my instincts were correct.

I'm probably I'm not being very Jesusy here, but at this point, I don't even know what Jesus wants me to do about this.

Is it creepy, or is it just me?

Believe In Something Much, Much Better Than This Crappy Ad

Does anyone else find the U.S. Cellular billboards to be creepy?

I'm referring to the ubiquitous (in Chicago, at least) billboards featuring a little girl peeping out of a carboard box, with the slogan, "Believe in something better."I do have a degree in advertising, but that's a lifetime of not being in the advertising industry ago, and I'm not writing this from the perspective of an advertising expert. I'm writing this from the perspective of a prospective customer who, instead of being attracted by the ads, is creeped out, confused, and irritated.

I can't really put my finger on why this image disturbs me. The little girl has messy hair, and she's hiding in a box. She might be there because she's having fun...but the expression on her face is more like, "I wonder if the scary man saw me crawl in here?"

And what's with the shanty-town box? Is she believing that someday she won't have to live in a box under the overpass with her drug-addict mom? I'm just sayin'.

I'm also confused by the emphasis on the word something. Why is that word emphasized, as opposed to the more logical choice, better? Even believe would make more sense. But when the design emphasizes the word "something," it sounds like a desperate plea for something, anything, to be better in this miserable world of pain. "Believe in something better," even if it's only a bigger cardboard box, or a better location under the el tracks, where the wind doesn't bite so much in the winter, and there's a little protection from the elements.

It just sounds kind of desperate, you know?

This ad irritates me, probably mostly because I'm peri-menopausal, and pretty much everything irritates me. But also because it doesn't say anything, and it does not even make any sense; and I do not want advertisers cluttering up my skyline with useless, meaningless slogans. "Believe in something better" begs the question: what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks am I supposed to believe in?

It sounds almost spiritual--but for crying out loud. We're talking about wireless service, people. Let's lose the pretentious, and get real, 'kay?

Maybe it's just me, but these ads suck.

What do you think?

The Mirror is...Empty

The recently released Kiefer Sutherland vehicle, Mirrors, is not worth your time and money. Don't even bother renting it on DVD.

The good parts can be summarized in terms of Kieferlishousness: Kiefer; Kiefer's whisper; Kiefer in wet jeans; and Kiefer saying, "Dammit!" I suppose some might also like it for the on-display cleavage of the unknown co-star, Paula Patton, in a low-cut and/or wet t-shirt.

Her cleavage has promise. Her acting? Jury's still out. She might have sucked because the lines she had to say were so bad.

Oh, and I'll also give the movie credit for a creeptastic setting, in the fire-damaged department store with mannequins that add atmospheric trepidation.

The bad parts: everything else.

Mirrors starts with suspense, horror, and enough gore to make me cover my eyes. Then we meet Kiefer, a suspended cop sleeping on his sister's couch. He's taking medication, he's got stubble, and he's sad. I immediately wanted to cuddle with him.

Director Alexandre Aja establishes that Amy Smart is Kief's sister by having him call her "sis." Who does that? And then he re-establishes it 20 minutes later by having Amy remind Kiefer, with her hands pressed to the side of his face like a lover, that she's his little sister. "You can talk to me," she pleads with him, "I'm your little sister." Um, yeah. We got it the first time.

Much of the dialogue follows this format--awkward, unlikely interchanges that are supposed to help us know the characters better but in fact only serve to remind us that the characters have not been developed sufficiently to be knowable. Especially the dialogue between Kiefer and his estranged wife, the pulchritudinous Paula Patton, was apparently lifted straight from a romance novel book jacket.

Even the music was cliche: A high piano note plinked deliberately--plink, plink, plink--then gradually faster--plink-plink-plink-plink--when Director Aja wanted us to feel increasing tension.

The mirrors in Mirrors reflect enough gore and horror to more than earn the R-rating. Amy Smart's gruesome self-dismemberment clinched it: what Aja lacked in actual story, he'd make up in shock and cheap "boo!"s. (I doubt if I punctuated that right. Please don't report me to the punctuation police.)

There's a twist at the end that makes me think that the movie contains the germ of a good idea--but I was left going, "Huh?" I'm pretty sure that's not what the story-teller was going for.

Even when a movie is bad, something good can come out of it. Sometimes that good is a clever review. I did not read any reviews before seeing Mirrors (I should have; I learned my lesson), but I read a bunch on Rotten Tomatoes afterward. My favorite line is this one, from Peter Sobczynski of EFilmCritic.com:

"...while watching it won't necessarily lead to seven years of bad luck, it does make for a fairly aggravating 110 minutes."

Consider yourself warned.

Home Invasion, Part I

A crazy long time ago, Mr. Peevie and I lived sweetly together in brick Georgian on a tree-lined street in the Windy City. Our time and our money were our own; we didn't have any children yet, and we were enjoying our lives and each other.

And then, one day, a stranger entered our home, and our peaceful lives were interrupted, changed forever.

I know what you're thinking. A baby. But you would be wrong. Can I finish telling my story, now?

We had gone away for the weekend--which used to be uncomplicated, relaxing, enjoyable, and affordable. We came home late on a Sunday evening. As we carried our weekend bags into the living room, and walked through to the dining room, Mr. Peevie and I both started getting a creepy feeling. Things were a little off.

There were smears of dirt on the window sills, for example, that weren't there before. And the lid had been removed from the box of chocolates in the middle of the dining room table, a couple of chocolates were partially eaten, and the remains scattered around the table.

"Somebody's been here," Mr. Peevie said nervously.

"Somebody might still be here," I replied. We both froze, looked around, and listened for the footsteps of an axe-murderer. Either he was very, very quiet, or he'd already left the premises.

We called the police, and five minutes later about six huge cops were stomping through the house, checking the doors and windows, shining flashlights into closets, and examining the smears on the window sill.

"Do you have a dog?" one officer asked.

"Nope."

"Do you have a friend with a dog, who might have come over while you were gone?" he pursued. "It looks to me like someone came over with an animal." We were pretty sure this was not the case.

"Well, then," the cops agreed, "it looks like an animal got in somehow." They suggested that we check the chimney in the morning, because sometimes animals got in that way.

We climbed upstairs to our bedroom, feeling tired but safe, happily reassured that we wouldn't be bludgeoned in our sleep by a stealthy serial killer.

I threw my PJs on and stretched out on the bed, while Mr. Peevie started to unpack his bag. I got into my comfort zone, lying supine and curling my arms under my pillow for head support--my favorite, non-approved sleep position. My hands encountered something unexpected, and I lifted my pillow to check it out.

"Eww! Mr. Peevie, look!" I yawped. "I think a squirrel made a nest under my pillow, for crap's sake!" A nesty-looking circle of dustbunnie-gray fur circumstantially testified against the formerly white sheet. "That's so disgusting!"

Mr. Peevie agreed, and suggested that I change the sheets so that we wouldn't have to sleep in squirrel grit. Meanwhile, he slid open the mirror-covered sliding door on the wall-to-wall closet--the glory of our bedroom!--and reached up to put a sweater on the shelf.

Suddenly, a ball of gray fur shot off the shelf, right toward Mr. Peevie, who screamed like a pack of little girls and leaped like an Olympic gymnast up and back away from the closet. The furball flew over his right shoulder, landed on the floor, and rocketed right out the open door, with Mr. Peevie yelling for his momma the whole time.

I hadn't moved from the bed; I sat, stunned, not so much by the appearance of a squirrel in my boudoir, but by the dramatic display of athleticism and phobic mania from Mr. Peevie. I had never seen that man move so quickly or leap so powerfully. Nor had I any idea, after 10 years of marriage, that he was deathly afraid of tiny rodents with fluffy tails.

This story is not over. You'll have to tune in tomorrow for the big finish.

The Sociopath Next Door

My peeps and I were sitting around talking about life's latest challenges, and one of us, ZZ., was distressed about a family problem. Her brother-in-law, Oscar, she said, had cheated most of her siblings and/or their spouses out of large sums of money. Whenever he was around, things of value disappeared.

One time, ZZ, her husband, Oscar and her sister were walking around downtown, shopping and hanging out. At some point, Mr. ZZ noticed that Oscar was wearing a completely different shirt than when they started out.

"Hey Oscar," Mr. ZZ said, "Where'd you get that shirt?" There was disingenuous hemming and some vague hawing, but no real answer. Apparently, Oscar had gone into a store, tried on a shirt, and walked out without paying for it.

Another time, Oscar's six-year-old child was discovered to have stolen the valuable jewelry of several people at a family gathering. Six years old. Six-year-olds do not steal wedding rings and watches and valuable jewelry unless someone is teaching them to do so. When the missing items were discovered in her possession, ZZ was disturbed when there were no consequences, no conversations, no apologies forthcoming. Her suspicion was that her sibling was headed in that direction with their child, but was shut down by her husband.

This guy has no conscience, and he even has no qualms about using his own child to get what he wants. It's creepy; it gives me the chills; and Martha Stout claims in The Sociopath Next Door that one out of every 25 people you meet is a sociopath like Oscar. The defining characteristic of a sociopath is that he has no conscience: he can do whatever he wants without feeling remorse.

The Sociopath Next Door is an interesting, well-documented look at sociopathology and the history of the human conscience. It's somewhat repetitious, which got annoying to me--Stout frequently references the 1/25 ratio, or the 4 percent rate of occurrence of sociopathology.

But other than that minor tic, the book held my interest, and I appreciated the balance the author struck between academic scholarship and popular or layman's language. I was intrigued by the discussion of the origin of conscience and the science of sociopathology: where does conscience come from? Why is it more influential in some people, and less so in others? Why does it even fluctuate in influence even within ourselves?

And of course, the ubiquitious sociological question, is sociopathology more influenced by nature (i.e., genetics), or by nurture? The research seems to indicate that heredity and environment share responsibility almost equally. The absence of conscience has not so far been linked to early abuse; and in fact, Stout suggests, "there is some evidence that sociopaths are influenced less by their early experience than are nonsociopaths."

The brain science shows that normal brains respond differently to emotional words (like love, hate, cozy, pain) differently than they respond to neutral words (like table, chair, fifteen)--but not so with sociopathic brains. Apparently, the sociopath's brain demonstrates an altered processing of emotional stimuli, except for primitive affective responses to immediate pain or pleasure.

The subject of desensitizing the conscience of soldiers in order to make them more effective killers was particularly chilling; and I renewed my vow to do everything within my power to direct my children away from military or law enforcement careers. (Not that I don't respect the people willing to make those sacrifices; I totally do. But I do not want that life, and especially that internal life, for my children.)

Stout could have done a better job at delineating the different types or specialities of sociopaths. She describes the covetous sociopath, who takes what he wants, and when he can't take what he wants from another person (intelligence, success, reputation), he hurts, damages or lessens them in some way. Apparently sociopaths can also be motivated by the desire to dominate or control, or even by inertia or laziness.

The author suggests that "the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is...an appeal to our sympathy." We are defenseless when we pity, she says, and "our emotional vulnerability when we pity is used against us by those who have no conscience." Other common characteristics of sociopaths include superficial charm; lying; risk-taking behaviors; shallow emotional affect; the need to control, win or dominate; and the refusal to take responsibility for behaviors or choices.

Most criminals are not sociopaths, and most sociopaths do not get caught or punished for their anti-social behaviors. So how do we protect ourselves from these ice people? Stout suggests some rules, including the following:

• trust your instincts
• question authority
• don't trust flattery
• reserve pity for the innocent
• don't lie for them or protect them
• stay away from them.

The Sociopath Next Door is creepy, but worth reading, because you will encounter these people, and it will help you, if you're tempted to question your own goodness or sanity, to protect your psyche, and to protect your friends and family also.