Friday, December 21, 2007

Mac's Reaction to The Abstinence Teacher

The Abstinence Teacher tells the tale of a divorced female very liberal sex-ed teacher named Ruth who gets into trouble because she tells her students that some people like oral sex (imagine that). This sets the local evangelical church into a tizzy and they force the school board to adopt an abstinence-only sex-ed curriculum. Meanwhile, a divorced born-again reformed drug-addict named Tim somehow comes to coach Ruth’s daughter’s soccer team. His own daughter is also on the team, and after a severe collision and a come-from-behind win, he is so caught up in the moment that he spontaneously leads his team in prayer. Ruth has a conniption fit, storming onto the field and embarrassing her daughter and the coach. However, try as she might to stay mad about the prayer, she can’t because she’s all hot-and-bothered by the hunky soccer coach. It's a bit more complex that what I've just described, but that's a good summation.

I'm conflicted about this book. Let me explain.

My personal opinion about sex is abstinence until marriage, but, you have to teach kids some of the basics about sex. I think abstinence only is well intentioned, but ultimately doomed to failure for the majority of kids. If Coach Norbert Terza hadn’t shown me the Miracle of Life movie and some basic diagrams, I wouldn’t have known certain things about my own body. Like, for example, when I had my first nocturnal emission, I was actually startled by it, but when I sat down and thought about it, I remembered learning what that was in health class. I would’ve NEVER gone to my own parents about what had happened. EVER.

Sex-ed is important. But, there’s a fine line between allowing someone else to teach your kids, and what your kids need to know that you can’t teach them. I guess the main worry I’d have is that the instruction might lead to curiosity and experimentation. And as much as my loins burned and throbbed in high school, I feel it has been better for me that I didn’t penetrate any flesh, until marriage.

But my problem with the novel isn’t the subject per se; it’s more to do with the presentation. Here are some pros and cons of the work.

Pros:

The author has a gift with words; he captures all the little descriptive details of any situation which serves to enrich the narrative. He encapsulates moments. In the chapter I cite, the main character is forced to go to an abstinence training seminar because she keeps deviating from the curriculum. The teacher, a marmish do-gooder born-again woman named JoAnn asks them to all write down one sexual escapade that they each regret. One of the alumni, a stereotypical man gym teacher baby boomer named Roger reads his, and this is how the author illuminates the moment:

Roger looked around the table, smiling at each member of his audience, making a preliminary claim on their goodwill. After clearing his throat and cracking his knuckles, he picked up the composition book and began to read.

"Anyone who has given any thought to the matter will understand that the difference between fifteen and sixteen is hard to pinpoint with the naked eye. I have known fourteen-year-olds who look like they're twenty, and seventeen-year-olds who could pass for twelve. Yet for the legal system, the distinction between fifteen and sixteen is crucial and enormous, and woe to the man who finds himself on the wrong side of that line. I accept this--many laws, such as speed limits, rely on arbitrary numbers, and we all do our best to obey them. But who's really to blame when a teenager claims to be an age she isn't? The deceiver of the deceived? Roberta was a camp coun---"

"You know what?" Jo Ann said, raising her voice above Roger's." "Why don't you just stop right there?"

Roger looked up from the page, puzzled and clearly annoyed. "But I just started," he said.

"That's all right, " JoAnn told him, "I think we've all had enough of you for today."
(161-62)

The chapters alternate back and forth between Ruth and Tim. The chapters about Ruth are full of liberal sexual freedom rationale. The narrator takes her side when the chapter is about her. In the chapters on Tim, we see that his struggles to be a good Christian man are sincere, that what the rest of the world sees as phony are the well-intentioned efforts of his heart to bring others the peace that he found through Jesus Christ. Perrotta has a gift for narration. But…..


Cons:

I will go against critical opinion here and say that I disliked the movie Election (also a Perrotta work). I like reading Perrotta’s works, but damnit if he can’t finish a plotline. The book’s ending sucks. It’s a lay-up. There’s no denouement. The book wants to be Magnolia, but comes off like Crash’s little brother. And I HATED Crash more than I hated Cabin Boy. Only thing is, those movies had endings. Imagine if Magnolia had ended before the rain of frogs, or if Crash had ended about halfway through (actually that might have been better); that’s where The Abstinence Teacher leaves you. (The character) Tim reaches some big decision and then nothing: no closure, no outcome, no nothing. I swear he finished this book the morning after watching The Sopranos finale.

Ruth’s two best friends are a gay couple dealing with commitment issues. Other than being window-dressings, they serve no function in the novel and could be removed without damaging the book. I mean they aren’t even there to make a political point; they are a side plot that distracts from the rest of the novel.

Therefore, I cannot recommend this book because it doesn’t finish what it started. The writing is masterful, but you’ll come away wishing there were something more to it. It was about 40 pages too short.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Book 3: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Apparently Tim isn't going to read my last selection. So, it was an interesting book. I liked it. It examined what happened to all the deities that were brought to the Americas by believers after the people lost their belief in them. Good book. Tim'll never know.

By the way Tim, I'm almost done reading The Abstinence Teacher.