The all new 50 Books Challenge!
Title: Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York by Gail Parent
Details: Copyright 1972, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "You think Alexander Portnoy had problems, wait 'til you meet Sheila Levine. Sheila is thirty- and Sheila can't get married. Now everyone knows that nice Jewish boys are supposed to grow up to be doctors or layers, but how many people ever stop consider that nice Jewish girls are supposed to grow up to be brides? Which leads to just one of Sheila's many problems: How can a girl remain "nice" andland a husband, particularly if she is not the raving beauty her parents imagine her to be?
The answer to that one is easy: She doesn't remain "nice." Tired of spending every weekend in the dormitory of Syracuse, she loses her virginity on a blind date with a boy from Colgate. And what if that doesn't work? Why, she transfers to NYU. And if that doesn't work, she takes an apartment with a friend and tries to find, along with a husband, a job that will challenge her; she plans for her vacation; she tries to be a swinging single. In short, she becomes desperate.
And Sheila is desperate. Her earliest memory is of lying in her crib and hearing her mother say that one day that little baby will be a lovely bride. The refrain of her childhood is her mother crooning, "When you're married..."
But nothing works, and now the time has come for Sheila to face the truth: She failed her parents, nobody wants to marry her.
Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York is the riotous tale of a girl in search of a husband. Don't be surprised, though, if once or twice in the course of the book those tears of laughter rolling down your face turn out to be tears of something else."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This is another rec from a blog you've seen mentioned here before many times, most recently with my review of Haywire, the delightful and vast Lost Classics of Teen Lit with mondomolly.
How I Liked It:
Quick, think of a year, any year, at least twenty years into the past! You've probably got a pretty good idea of what that year looks like, especially based on your age. Particularly the further back, particularly if you did not personally live through that year, you've probably got a set image of it, even if you're a history geek like me.
Because something that actually becomes cemented with period piece bits of media, be they books, movies, TV shows or what have you, is the fact no matter how well-researched they are, they are not actually being made in that period, and are designed for a modern audience, whatever that may mean. So it's incredibly easy to develop a faulty image of an era, isn't it? As to what that means for a book that is currently half a century old (as of this writing), we will see.
First, let's meet Sheila Levine. She's planning to die by suicide because she's single at the ripe, ancient age of thirty. Sheila goes back through her life starting from being an overprotected child hyped towards marriage, to losing her virginity in college via what's basically date rape, but she describes it far more light-heartedly ("Then Will got my girdle off. I know what you're thinking. How in the hell did Will get my girdle off if I didn't want him to take it off in the first place? Persistence, that's how." pgs 15 and 16). From there, she develops a "reputation" in college then switches colleges. She ends up sleeping and having serious relationships with two different men, one of them a professor, before realizing both men are cheating on her with each other (more on that and the book's trouble with Queer characters later).
Living with a fellow single-girl roommate doesn't yield what Sheila wants, and a long-standing, unhappy relationship that she settled for is somehow even worse, but at least it's something and eases her mother's nagging about marriage, at least temporarily. A string of aborted attempts to find a husband and Sheila's younger sister Melissa getting married before she does plunges Sheila into desperation. She's through. She will end her life.
But as she does, she starts having fun, and finally has an orgasm with a truly quirky lover, who is only too thrilled (and creepily thrilled) to discover she's planning to die by suicide. Meanwhile she plans everything for her funeral and her affairs, but didn't plan on (MAJOR SPOILER!) her plan not working. The pills she chose fail and an emergency squad arrives at her apartment to "save" her only based on the fact her mother tried calling but didn't get an answer and knew something must be wrong. When Sheila comes to, she's in the hospital, her stomach pumped, and her parents are there and concerned. Both the rabbi she arranged and the funeral director from whom she bought a plot are irritated with her wasting their time with a "fake suicide" and despite everyone telling her to "cheer up", Sheila actually does, because her extremely good looking doctor and five of his equally good-looking interns flitting around with concern improves her marriage prospects in her mind ("All I need is one out of the six."). Sheila ends with making some plans for her life in getting a new job, but especially getting ready for one of the good looking "medical men" to come back. She declares "I don't want to die! I want to date!" (pg 223)
Before we get into talking about this story (and what I thought of it), I want you to imagine 1972. What comes to mind? I'm going to assume if you have even a passing image of that era, even if you know little about history, it's well into "hippie times", all funky and Doing Your Own Thing and not yet into the hedonism of disco and not quite yet out of the idealism of the 1960s. Free to Be You and Me, right? Women's Lib and Gay Liberation and Black Power and Peace, and suddenly television is truly in color and talking about real issues because it has to catch up with the movies, where in the new Hollywood, a rated X picture can win best picture.
That's an image, anyway, but the reality is obviously more complex. For example, you can't have "antiestablishment" youths without an establishment being, well, established. As in that youthful idealism and liberation was an exception, not necessarily a rule, no matter the great number of the Baby Boom generation and also the Silent generation (and to a lesser extent the Greatest Generation) that went with the ideals of the zeitgeist.
So while at first glance a book about a woman so depressed she's not married at thirty that she's trying to die by suicide would seem incredibly strange for 1972 (and this wasn't much of hit with the Youth Culture, although it spawned a film adaptation that was quite different from the book), it's maybe our viewing 1972 from a 2022 lens.
Something I had to remind myself continually about this book is that it is a work of fiction by the author, not a memoir. While the author shares a few similarities with her literary creation, in all the important ways, she is nothing like her (Gail Parent attended Syracuse University before New York University, but she also married right after graduation, had two kids, and a thriving career writing for hit television while still in her twenties). That means Sheila Levine's life story and experiences are all the creations of the author, which matters for reasons we'll get into.
I somewhat puzzled over Sheila Levine. She's clearly supposed to be a funny, relatable anti-heroine. Look at how bad her life is! She's "overweight" (more on that later, too, ugh) and totally unattractive! She's comically unlucky in love! And she's also a deeply unlikeable to the point of irritating character, and I can't quite ascertain whether the author is using her to mock certain beliefs or to endorse them because the author herself thought they were relatable.
It may be 1972 and her character a lifelong New Yorker, but Sheila Levine is definitely not a part of the Zeitgeist. She dismisses Women's Liberation early on as ridiculous ("FACT: There are more boys who think marriage is outmoded, passé, than there are girls with the same thoughts. Women's Lib, I hate to disappoint you, but there are few members who wouldn't give up a meeting with you for a wedding night." pg 9) and hilariously out of touch. "The problem with no name" from The Feminine Mystique doesn't exist in Sheila's world, and supposedly all married women have no complaints whatsoever. Obviously, to someone so marriage-obsessed she'll end her life over it like Sheila, this is how it would seem to them, but some nod by the author to the fact that's not reality (maybe a married woman character earnestly expresses displeasure, or yearning for the fact she wishes she'd pushed her career before she was forced to settle down and have Sheila poo-poo it as just a smug married woman trying to make a single girl feel better) would go a long way.
Sheila's rather unprogressive attitudes towards women's liberation extend also to racial justice and progress movements as a whole:
New York has a million girls who have charge accounts at Bloomingdale's and Saks, who buy their own jewelery. Girls who go to Tiffany's and buy themselves bracelets and rings. Yeah, and in case you think you're real special, you should know that these girls also went to college, have read Faustus and know Zola. And they're all gourmet cooks. Every one of them can make quiche and paella. They all use the same goddamned recipe.
And oh, how political they are. They're liberal, these girls. They march in the cold and join parties and wear buttons. They go to meetings because they believe in good causes? No, they go because they might meet a man who believes in good causes. (pg 37)
One can only wonder if the whole "Girls are only interested in social progress movements to meet boys!" shtick is where Gloria Steinem was coming from with her unfortunate remarks in 2016.
As a swinging single, Sheila encounters a Black man hitting on her in a particularly crass way, and with the exchange, I'm not sure for what the author was aiming.
Let's get everything straight. I am a liberal. I have frozen my tushy off in marches for my fellow black man. (Yes, I was looking [for men to date] while I was marching, but I was marching.) I have argued with my mother for hours and hours when she told me to be quiet in front of the maid. When I was asked to fill out a report at the school I taught on the color of my students, I couldn't think of what color the kids were. When I was in the "record business," I met, had coffee with many black kids. I sat and kibbitzed with black teachers at work and thought nothing of it. Okay, I'm great. Right? (pg 148)
Oof, these days we'd call at least part of that colorblind racism (more on this here and here). All of this exposition to prove she's not racist (hmmm), she just doesn't like this particular guy, who was being an asshole.
So Thomas Brown (I always think it's embarrassing when a brown person is named Brown) sat next to me. (pg 149)
Ouch.
"What're you here for? Looking for a good lay?"
Now, if Thomas Brown were white, I would have sneered. Not done anything dramatic like slapped, but I would have sneered. Since he was black and I was very afraid of hurting his feelings lest he would feel I wasn't a friend of the black people, I smiled. Did you ever do that? Accept from a black person what you wouldn't accept from a white because you're so afraid of hurting them. Oh boy, are we prejudiced and we don't know it. (pg 149)
So is Sheila really a racist and that's what the author is pointing out? Is the author saying that Sheila is a hypocrite? Or is the author criticizing the civil rights movement as a whole? Or is it just an incredibly awkwardly written scene that missed whatever mark for which the author was aiming?
"You one of them chicks who's always looking for a good lay?"
"No."
"How'd you like to have one?"
"No, thank you. I mean, not now."
"What's the matter, baby? Is it because I'm black?"
"No, of course not. I'm not that type of person. I don't care whether a person is black or white or green or red or blue or purple or orange. It doesn't matter to me at all. We are all people, equal people, and that's what counts. I really don't care what the color of a man's skin is."
"And what about a good lay? Don't you like a good lay?" (pg 150)
The fact the pushy, rude guy immediately played on her supposed racial sympathies for his own prurient interests is... a choice. A choice made by the author.
"Come here, baby."
And I went there and, okay, we did it. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. Don't ask me if black men are bigger. I didn't look. Thomas Brown took advantage of me. He knew that Jewish girl Sheila Levine didn't want to look prejudiced. He knew that if he played his cards right, I would sleep with him in the name of civil rights. That wasn't fair, Thomas Brown. How many good Thursday nights did you have with girls who went out on Fridays? If you were white, I would have thrown you out.(pg 151)
That was just terrible all around. Yeesh. Whatever the author was going for, she failed and it's just a racist mess.
But even more recurring is Sheila Levine's extreme and plentiful homophobia. I'm not just talking about outdated phrases and terms (although there's plenty of that), I'm talking about full-on homophobia.
FACT: This is the age of the Jewish homosexual. More Jewish boys become fags than Jewish girls became dykes. THIS COUNTRY LOST MORE JEWISH BOYS TO HOMOSEXUALITY THAN IT DID IN ANY MAJOR WAR. (pg 9)
That's right, "lost" to homosexuality.
When two guys she's cheating on with each the other (one of whom Sheila feels weird about noting has sexy feet) start cheating on her with each other, that's actually a hilarious comeuppance, or at least it would be with a different author.
In the middle of my senior year, just when I was deciding which of these two great men to love, they fell in love with each other. Surprised? So was I, you betcha.
I realize now why it took me so long to realize then. It's hard to tell when a man is making it with another man. There are no lipstick stains on shirts or cigarettes. There is no lingerie accidentally left. There is no engagement ring.
So how do you tell? There are ways. Single girls, listen, so it shouldn't happen to you what happened to me. The first thing to look at is clothing. Men who are sleeping together very often borrow each other's clothing. I would see a shirt of Hinley's on Joshua, Joshua's belt on Hinley. The suede jacket was passed back and forth freely. This, better than anything else, is a sure way of knowing.
They also start talking like each other. There were a lot of "Hi ya's" and "Right's!" Instead of saying good-bye, they said "Later," but only the trained ear would be able to pick this up.
The third way of telling-- and this is surefire-- is albums. If two guys are friends, they usually buy the same record albums. If two guys are sleeping together, they only buy one copy of the album. Take it from Sheila. I know. The day I saw Carnival at Professor Hinley's and they both called it their album, I knew. What a waste of a pair of sexy feet. (pg 24)
This creepy "tips to watch out for" isn't exactly the knee-slapper the author thought it would be, even at the time. Men aren't allowed to share clothes with other male friends, nor are they allowed to talk like each other (you know, that thing human beings do?) or share an album, because that would make them secret lovers, and that is horrible. It was around here where I started wondering what the book might have been like if written in 2022. Would it turn, however briefly, into a throuple situation and the hilarious hijinks would be the three of them figuring it out? That would be a lot better than what happened.
And if you hoped that'd be the last of it, unfortunately there's plenty more where that came from.
When renting an apartment with a fellow single girl, they spy a cute guy moving in and introduce themselves, only to learn he's gay.
At first Linda and I both were excited about this tall, rather good-looking guy right here in our very own hallway. My excitement waned when I noticed he was throwing his garbage out in boxes. Professor Hinley had neat garbage, too. Oh, hell.
"Hi."
"Hi."
"Hi."
"My name is Linda Minsk, and this is my friend and roommate, Sheila Levine."
"I'm Charles Miller. I live in Fourteen G." He smiled so that we could see all his caps. I was right. Gay. (pg 53)
Neat garbage means men are gay, too. Sort of wish the slobby gay men I have known and cleaned up after knew of this! What's more, Charles Miller turns out to be a drag queen as well, because of course he is.
I feel like if Sheila Levine had been written twenty-five years later, Charles Miller would've been one of her sympathetic friends, yassing her outfit choices and existing only to further her romantic plotline and fulfill a quota by a smug heterosexual author about writing Queer characters, something that would still unfortunately run the risk of being a problem today. But I digress!
Attending a party, Sheila is approached by a man who asks her if she's "interested in a scene" which given the common slang at the time (meaning interested in a sexual situation) and Sheila's unawareness of it (she thinks the man is offering her a job as an actress) is clearly meant to be funny and poking fun at Sheila:
"A scene-- you interested?"
"I guess so." (So what do I change my name to-- Sheila Lee?)
"Great! My wife digs scenes." (I am confused.)
"Your wife digs scenes?" (I am embarrassed because I feel I am asking dumb questions.)
"Yeah, but she doesn't like lesbos. You a lesbo?"
...End of conversation number three. End of party. (pg 98)
Poor confused fictional straight man written by a straight author! If she was a "lesbo", why would she be interested in a sexual scene with you in the first place, but then, given the awareness of bisexuality, I presume that would mean if Sheila had tried anything sexual with his wife, that would've made her a "lesbo". Homophobia is so complicated and confusing.
When looking for a new apartment with her roommate:
It was Linda who decided that we should look on the Upper East Side because the Village was full of fags and kids. (pg 102)
When going job-hunting, Sheila wears a coat with a missing button, which only adds to her feelings of shabbiness, especially when she encounters a male secretary:
"Miss Levine?" the short, slim male secretary (tee-hee) said.
"Yes, I'm Miss Levine," Miss Levine with pocketbook in front of missing button said.
"Please sit down," he said. "Mr Swernson will be with you in a moment."
So do I take off the coat? When somebody says to sit down, does that mean you should take off your coat? I made several false moves and then decided to take it off. Whereupon male secretary sneaked back into the room to help me off with it. He, I am sure, saw a button was missing.
"Tsk-tsk," the male secretary must have thought. "What a slob! My love, who is a male nurse (tee-hee), would die laughing if he saw this coat." (pgs 105 and 106)
Yeah, that's getting so incredibly tiring. Both the homophobia and the rigid, outdated mode of "masculinity". And don't just hand me "product of the times" since this was 1972 and efforts were well underway to try to shake up both of those old concepts, this author just landed firmly (and painfully) on the wrong side of history.
Sheila rents a house with some people on Fire Island (I'm assuming it had at least slightly a different reputation then? Then again, maybe not.) and is surprised when her group passes muster:
[T]he rental agent told us another group was very interested and she already had their check, but that we seemed much more respectable. Two girls panting for men, two fags, a fighting husband and wife, a girl in a loud poncho who never talked and a guy who ground out cigarettes on the floor in every house we were in. We looked more respectable than what? (pg 112)
But the greatest homophobia comes from that plotline so beloved by straight writers we see it over and over and over again: the Queer character falls for a straight character and puts on the pressure.
That was Fire Island. Days on the beach, houses at night. A lot of strange faces popping up all over the place, sometimes by your bed.
By the fifth weekend I spent out there, someone fell in love with me. Thought I was beautiful, wanted a permanent relationship. You may even know the person...Agatha Horowitz.
"Mom, this is Agatha Horowitz. We're in love."
"Manny, how could that be? I've heard of two boys doing things. I hear it's quite common. But two girls?"
Just for the record, the idea of a lesbian relationship repulsed me. No tendencies, no desire. The last time I held hands with a girl was in fifth grade. I used to walk hand in hand with Ruthie, but all little girls do that, and Sheila Levine had outgrown it completely. So what do I do with Agatha was the question. You see, the problem was that she started slowly before I knew what she was doing and what she was, and I was friendly. I must have said a thousand things to lead her on.
"Sheila?"
"Yes, Agatha?"
"What do you think of me?" (I thought she had an inferiority complex or something and needed some building up.)
"I think you're very nice." (Right thing to say, right? Right thing to say to anyone but a dyke.) Pop, tell Mom what a dyke is.
"Just nice?"
"Very nice. A nice girl, Agatha. I mean nice, friendly, sweet, clean." (I didn't know at this point what Agatha, the Sheila-lover, was getting at.)
"I think you're very nice, too."(pgs 116 and 117)
Ugh.
"Sheila, you don't understand. It's you I love. You're the person I want to be with. Do you feel anything for me?"
(Oh, boy!)
Pretty good. Only my fifth weekend and I had already gotten a proposal. Yeckh! How do girls do it with other girls? I mean I know how they do it. I don't know how they do it. (pg 119)
I realize mocking homophobic heterosexuals with the idea they might be closeted is a troublesome notion, but, uh, Sheila Levine has put a lot of thought into this.
And I learned something-- pay attention and write this down-- Mother, you listen too, you never know when the lady in the bakery who throws an extra cookie in your bag is going to make a pass. My observation is:
FACT: IT IS NOT EASY TO SHAKE A LESBO. (pgs 119 and 120)
More "watching for tips". This was written in a different era, when there were next to no protections whatsoever, and making a wrong move could cost you your job at best, your life at worst. We're supposed to believe that Queer people regularly and openly risked themselves on the regular, throwing their efforts at (usually the most unattractive) straights? Seriously? Without a care in the world about their own safety and the fact the reason there were so many incredibly complicated codes was to keep Queer people safe and hidden? So damn many straight authors seem to think so.
"Sheila?"
"Yes, Agatha?"
"Why don't you like me?"
"Agatha, I do like you. Really, you're a very nice person. I just don't want to...you know... have that kind of a relationship."
"How do you know?"
"I don't know. I mean, I'm not putting it down. I'm sure it's great for some people. It must be really fantastic when you dig that sort of thing. But honest to God, Agatha, I never have and I never will dig that sort of thing."
"How do you know if you've never tried it? I thought the same way you did a couple of years ago. I even used to date boys. Then I met this girl, Maxine, and she was very gentle and we were friends at first and then the relationship grew and pretty soon, Sheila, I wanted to make love to her and we did it and it was fantastic." (pg 121)
The old "conversion". Ew. No explanation of why she's no longer with Maxine, either.
Incidentally, you haven't seen the last of the guys that cheated on her with each other. One becomes a freeloading roommate.
In April, just six months before the wedding, Linda moved out to live with a fifty-year-old French furrier (just like in the movies) and Joshua moved in. I hadn't seen Joshua in almost a year since he had "married" this guy. (pg 130)
Yup, I realize same-gender marriage wasn't a debate subject yet and was a source of humor for bigots. But this seems a bit mean-spirited even by this book's standards. "Joshua had married a guy, and by married I don't mean he was a priest or a rabbi. No, I mean he was living with this guy like they were husbands, so even Joshua got a husband before I did." would be perfectly in line with this book and less nasty.
When Sheila's little sister is getting married, Sheila's mother ups the pressure and Sheila snaps.
"LEAVE ME ALONE! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE. HE ASKED ME A MILLION TIMES TO GET MARRIED. I DON'T WANT TO GET MARRIED AND GET TIED DOWN LIKE MELISSA, WHO'S A DYKE ANYWAY. JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!"
"Stop yelling and what's a dyke?" (pgs 137 and 138)
To add final insult to injury, the young woman apparently so enamored with Sheila reaches out to her one last time with some special news and one last offer (of course).
"How are you, Agatha?"
"Fine, Sheila, I think about you all the time."
"That's nice." (What else can one say?)
"I was wondering if you changed your mind about me and everything."
"Well, to tell you the truth, Agatha, I haven't changed my mind. You've a very nice girl, Agatha, but I really don't feel that way.. you know."
"Then you probably won't be hearing from me again. I won't bother you anymore."
"It's not that you're a bother, Agatha."
"Sheila, since you will have nothing to do with me, I'm getting married to this guy, Gary." (She's getting married? She's getting married?)
"That's very nice, Agatha. Congratulations." (I'm dying. Look, why don't you give this guy, Gary, to me and you find some girl who will appreciate you for what you really are, Agatha?)
"If you change your mind, Sheila..."
She's getting married. Agatha Horowitz is registered at Tiffany's.
About a month after the phone call, I received a package --a beautiful gold bracelet from Cartier. The card-- "I guess I'll always love you... Agatha" --engraved yet, "from A.H. to S.L. Always." So what could I do? "Thank you, Agatha, for the lovely bracelet, but I still haven't changed my mind. I have no desire to touch you in places that I already own. Sincerely, Sheila Levine." I sent the bracelet back once. It came back again. I wore it, but it always itched me. (pgs 141 and 142)
On one hand, you could make an argument that rather than hoping Agatha "turns back to straight" with what's bound to be an unsatisfying marriage, she's at least trying to take Agatha's potential husband and Agatha can be happier being herself with a woman (although it's put in the ugliest way possible). But framed by the rest of it ("I have no desire to touch you in places that I already own.") it's just gross.
What's more, given that we the reader are beaten over the head with how unattractive and undesirable Sheila is, what does it mean when one of her only admirers, far more worthwhile and thoughtful than any man with whom we see in her in the book, is a woman who she derides as she derides anything to do with homosexuality?
So I think it's fairly safe to say Sheila was not riding the right waves of 1972. When she finally finds a guy with whom she actually has orgasms (and several of them) as she's planning to die, she ponders a life with him in the new culture:
"I'm so happy I found you, Sheila. You are truly a liberated woman." (You hear that, Mom? A liberated woman!)
"Yeah."
So I thought, what's so bad? Could be worse. I'd have three dirty, hippie children, radical chic, and three hundred and sixty-five orgasms a year.(pg 180)
So is there anything redeeming about this book? Other than a sort of slice of life of 1972, Sheila accidentally makes some progressive points.
Some call New York a jungle. It's not. It's a big jockstrap. It supports the men. Just look at the figures. (pg 36)
She also talks frankly about abortion and getting abortions.
I had an abortion in the days when it wasn't legal in New York. In the good old days of flying down to Puerto Rico or driving to New Jersey. (pg 151)
This book was of course written pre Roe V Wade ensuring (for nearly fifty years anyway!) the national right to abortion, but after New York state had legalized it, which would be 1970.
Wanna know what I really felt badly about? New York is so abortion-minded, it's part of the culture, and yet they passed that abortion bill too late for the hundreds of girls who needed abortions when I did. Couldn't they have made it retroactive and written us all an apology? (pg 154)
Sheila has some brushes with progressive thinking, when she's considering by which method she should die by suicide:
Or I could go to one of the campus riots and piss off the National Guard. That would do it.
Or I could march for peace and get beaten to death. (pg 209)
But most of all, when she's planning her eulogy, she makes a point about feminism, kind of.
I spoke to Rabbi Stine. Does he have a eulogy for me! He talks about vaginal spray and everything. He's gonna say how it's such a shame that a girl feels she has to be married and how we should teach our daughters to be human beings as well as wives. And how every person there is responsible for my death. Very dramatic. (pg 215)
And sometimes the book does fulfill its promise of some relatable humor:
Did you ever buy good underwear? I mean really good underwear? Up until now, good underwear meant stuff without holes, still had the elastic in, wasn't stained from my period. I can't tell you how many perfectly good underpants I have ruined at "that time of the month" --Super Tampax or not. (pg 207)
So all in all, this book is, to put it mildly, a mixed bag, full of caveats.
However, it's a valuable piece of history simply because it exists and refutes many notions we might have had of this era and what life was like then. Do I think it should be, as conservative critics allege whenever these types of conversations arise, banned for its uglier parts that have aged terribly? No. I'm firmly against banned books and you should be, too.
What I do think we need is to talk about books like this (as well as movies like this, and TV like this, and all media like this) and have a conversation about it. In doing so, we can not only move forward better, but teach a more complete view of history, and make the past truly come alive beyond the stereotypes of the era. Sheila Levine may not be a good read, but it's a worthwhile and interesting historical one.
Notable:
I lived when I lived, at 211 Twenty-fourth Street, formerly of East Sixty-fifth Street, formerly of West Thirteenth Street, formerly of Franklin Square, Long Island, formerly of Washington Heights. Which means there are only about a hundred thousand other Jewish girls like me. Exactly like me, all with hair that has to be straightened, and all looking for husbands. (pg 8)
Sheila marvels at Barbra Streisand for keeping her nose and one can only wonder what Sheila would've made of her A Star is Born look. Interestingly, a few years after this book was published, the author wrote the script to the 1979 Barbra Streisand film The Main Event.
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Did you really expect your darling Sheila, five four, weighing in at a hundred and fifty-seven pounds, to be Queen of the Prom? (pg 13)
Ooof. You realize that unless it's an extreme case (and I mean extreme) your height and weight together don't actually tell you much? You could easily be a hundred and fifty-seven pounds and five four and be underweight. You could be overweight and weigh less than that and be taller. Your weight isn't just determined by your body fat, it's also muscle mass, bone structure, and other factors that a good doctor can spot. These types of definitions were certainly of the era, and unfortunately that type of misconception still lingers, that there's a one-size-fits-all body height/body weight proportionality.
I realize this was long before realizing how these sorts of hideous innocuous-seeming comments were spawning eating disorders or even what eating disorders were, but having Sheila be unattractive largely by virtue of her weight instead of what sounds like her personality and inability to connect with other people is unfortunate.
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Here I could have a fresh start. I could be the virgin again. I played virgin several times... up until I was about twenty-four, when it's really sick to be pure. (pg 19)
The sexual politics in this book are... pretty horrifying in places, as we've seen and we'll see. The idea of virginity (and it being "purity") at twenty-four being "sick" is troubling. This is still a battle we're having and our warped ideas about sex as a whole and using "virgin" as a insult, so I can't fault the author too much for this a half century in the past. But having sex with other people and when you do it or do not do it is a personal choice and provided you're not hurting anyone, including yourself, it's no one else's business.
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Linda did try-- a welfare worker with a heart. During her first three months with the department, she gave twenty-two families linoleum, arranged for end tables for to another six and sent a young mother and her nine illegitimate children on a vacation in Florida. They never came back, which delighted Linda's supervisor so much that he took her for coffee at Chock Full o'Nuts and tried to grab her knees under the table. (pgs 35 and 36)
I realize how far we've come on some words since "illegitimate" has thankfully fallen out of favor.
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I'd mentioned that when Sheila described her first sexual encounter, it didn't sound consensual. Likewise, her other encounters have a troubling tinge to them.
What can one say about sex with Norman that hasn't been said already? We did a lot of kissing and feeling, but Norman continued to protect my virginity. (I know. I know.) We necked and petted and did everything but you know what. Why did I let the shmuck touch me? I just can't say, "I'd rather not! Please don't!" Nobody believes me when I say those things. Grace Kelly says, "Please don't," and you don't go near her. Sheila Levine says, "Please don't," and you forge ahead. I have never-- Doris Day will forgive me-- slapped a face. There's Sheila Levine, she'll take what she can get. (pg 70)
When I moved into New York, I went to bed with guys because I thought in my marriage-centered brain that if I went to bed with them, they might like me. If one of them really liked me, he might, oh, please, dear God, marry me. I went to be with all of them thinking that maybe my mama would dance at my wedding. I went to be with Harold because I was used to going to bed with men when they asked me to. (pg 179)
Sheila Levine badly needs the Women's Lib that she's disparaged. I don't know it that's the intended joke by the author or (more likely) it's just the times.
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Sheila's friend and roommate Linda dumps guys on what seems like a whim, including for not liking her favorite books and music, and something else.
"Linda, I don't understand. You just don't break up with someone because he voted differently than you did."
"You don't understand, Sheil. He voted for Nixon. I could never sleep with a man who voted for Nixon. I just couldn't." (pg 73)
You can absolutely break up with someone who voted differently than you did, because for whom you vote reflects your values. This exchange is referring to the 1960 election, not when Nixon later successfully ran.
Incidentally, this book was published a few months before Watergate.
"I've slept with thirteen guys-- a baker's dozen. I can't believe it. You know, when we first moved to New York, I was a virgin."
"Me too." Almost.
"Thirteen guys and I've never had an orgasm...Have you?"
"Yes, I think so."
"How do you know?"
"I don't know for sure. I said 'I think so.'"
"What's it like?"
"It's like... I don't know. I said I wasn't sure... a cold hot flash."
"I'm entitled to have an orgasm. It's my right. The first guy who gives me one, I'm going to marry."
"Even if he voted for Nixon."
"If he voted for Nixon, he can't give orgasms. The first one who gives me an orgasm, I'm going to marry."
"Me, too."
"I thought you had one."
"I said I wasn't sure."
Oh, Linda, what ever made us think it would all have a happy ending. (pg 145)
Telling exchange for a number of reasons, one the knock on a Nixon voter (which made me laugh) and two, it's interesting the frankness with which they discuss orgasms and having them, which does sound like the 1972 one might imagine.
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"Sheila?"
"Yes, Mom?"
"Is everything all right? I got this funny feeling that I should have driven you into the city. I had this feeling like something is wrong." The woman, I decided, was a witch. Three hundred years ago she would have been burned. Today she's psychic. (pg 86)
Unless Sheila's mother was living in some place other than the colonies that would be the United States or in England, since, reminder that no one was ever "burned" as a witch here.
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All I know is that the woman is in bed at ten o'clock at night. She is the only person in America who doesn't know who Johnny Carson is. (pg 169)
Just a nice reminder that it's 1972. Although who knew Carson would retain his hold on late night for twenty more years.
Final Grade: FOR CONTENT OUTSIDE OF THE HOMOPHOBIA AND RACISM, C-
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