Monday, 2nd December 2002, 9:08pm
An opinion by: Rascal

 

Live Girls by Beth Nugent

I bought both these books primarily for their production values, it must be admitted. The Fuck-Up is a nice squarish shape with an interesting type treatment on the covers. Live Girls has a bright yellow binding contrasting with a stark black and white photo on the cover, plus someone bothered with some funky type treatment on the inside pages. Both books have been varnished with care. This kind of stuff, it turns out, actually matters to me.

As it happens, the contents of both books share some similarities too. Action takes place against grubby U.S. urban backdrops: New York City in The Fuck-Up, and some eastern port city in Live Girls. In both, the protagonists are alienated, disenfranchised, adrift, etcetera. Both work in a porn theatre - oh ho, maybe we've found a symbol of something here. Live Girls is described on the back cover as "not so much laughter in the dark as laughter in hell." The Fuck-Up is called a "darkly hilarious oddyssey". So you get the picture.

But the authors do incredibly different things with their components. Live Girls is actually not so funny, rather its wry observation brings a light humorous touch to everything. This makes Nugent's sad and claustrophobic storyline palatable. Her heroine, Catherine, has quit a small-time college and wandered down the hill into town. She lives in a flop-house hotel and works the ticket booth of a run-down porn theatre. She writes letters full of lies to her unbelievably cold and disconnected parents. In her head she carries on a posthumous relationship with her bitch of a sister, who was horribly disfigured in early childhood. For most of the book, Catherine is like this passive witness to her own life in which nothing ever happens. But her thoughts are entertaining enough to make up for it:

"I write it down: Cat. Here I run out of ideas; there are things I want, but it is not yet clear to me what they are. Hot plate, I write; radio. The television shows my parents watched were full of people who wanted things; that's all there was, was wanting. I try to remember some of the things they wanted. Television, I add to my list."

On the other hand The Fuck-Up is funny ha-ha. Its energy is the opposite of Nugents' imploding Live Girls. Nersesian's unnamed hero leads a boy's life of action and misadventure. Poor old Fuck-Up is buffeted about by circumstance and other merciless elements. Everything from page one onwards is part of an intricate and hilarious sequence of events; kind of like a three stooges skit, but with less emphasis on the slapstick and a lot more wit:

"We went back up a staircase to the front of the theatre. 'Now look here.' He pointed to a burnt-out bulb. 'Ow, see that? Ow ow, you should smart when you see that. A bulb is burnt-out and now the theatre is in pain. Say ow.'
'Ow. Why?'
'You should be in pain until you replace the bulb. You're both the nerve system and the lymph node of the theatre.'
'You mean the white blood cells,' I corrected his little metaphor.
'Why not the lymph node?'
'Well, isn't the lymph node just sweat and pimple pus?'
'So?'
'Well, the white blood cells destroy foreign objects that enter the body. Didn't you see the movie Fantastic Voyage?'
'I thought the spleen does that.'"

And so forth. Basically, The Fuck-Up is light-hearted and way more fun, but Live Girls is deeper, more complex. Couldn't say which I preferred but they are both good. And what's more, they live up to their production values.

Buy Live Girls from amazon.com or amazon.ca.
Buy The Fuck-Up from amazon.com or amazon.ca.

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