By Michelle Rafferty
Summer heralds many important things: 3D movies, involuntary camping trips, and sidewalk distribution of ice cream samples in tiny disposable cups. But the greatest tradition of all is, of course, book club (or your local library’s summer reading program). If, like me, you’re the weakest link in your coterie, you’re probably looking to contribute more than, “The ending was awesome,” or “Favorite character. Ok…go!”
This summer will be different. We’re going to trick our bookclubs into thinking we’re a literary geniuses. Let’s begin with a few key concepts from John Sutherland’s How Literature Works, applied to the book that seems to be on everyone’s reading list.
How to Read Tina Fey’s Bossypants (like a literary critic)
1.) Irony
Saying one thing and meaning another. Typically accompanied by the four ‘s’s: sarcasm, satire, subversion and skepticism.
Fey makes excellent use of irony in the chapter “Dear Internet,” in which she responds to message board bullies:
From tmz.com
Posted by Kevin 214 on 11/9/08, 11:38 a.m.
“Tina Fey CHEATED!!!!!! Anyone who has ever seen an old picture of her can see she has had 100% plastic surgery. Her whole face is different. She was ugly then and she is ugly now. She only wished she could ever be as beaufiul as Sarah Palin.”Dear Kevin 214,
What can I say? You have an amazing eye. I guess I got caught up in the whole Hollywood thing. I thought I could change a hundred percent of my facial features and as long as I stayed ugly, no one would notice. How foolish I was.
Keep on helpin’ me “keep it real,”
TA
And on page 161:
I have thus far refused to get any Botox or plastic surgery. (Although I do wear a clear elastic chin strap that I hook around my ears and pin under my day wig.)
2.) Imagery
What one sees while reading or what Wordsworth called “the mind’s eye.” Or simply put: the pictures in your head.
From the chapter “Secrets of Mommy’s Beauty”:
By nineteen, I had found my look. Oversize T-shirts, bike shorts, and wrestling shoes. To prevent the silhouette from being too baggy, I would cinch it at the waist with my fanny pack. I was pretty sure I would wear this look forever.
In literature imagery is not always visual; one can “taste” or “smell” with the mind. See page 247:
If there’s on thing my husband’s hometown has that St. Barts does not, it’s the water. “Legally potable” doesn’t quite capture it. Straight from the tap it smells like…How can I describe it? – if you boiled ten thousand eggs in a prostitute’s bathwater.