I Love the Smell of Fortune Cookies in the Morning
Your pal here had almost forgotten about this "quirk" piece courtesy Michael Hirschorn. But now Ed "Brother, can you spare a dime?" Champion has reminded me about it. Lovely.
Let's dispatch this one quickly, in two parts.
First, we have the easily debunked, tongue-in-cheek assertion:
David Byrne probably birthed contemporary quirk around 1985— halfway between his “Psycho Killer” beginnings with the Talking Heads and his move to global pop—when he sang the song “Stay Up Late”: “Cute, cute, little baby / Little pee-pee, little toes.” [...] Jon Cryer’s “Duckie” Dale in Pretty in Pink came a year later, and quirk was on its way.
And so we see that Mr. Hirschorn is not unfamiliar with the Fortune Cookie Manifesto.
This is a canny move, because though statements such as David Byrne probably birthed contemporary quirk around 1985 can't possibly be serious, our good fellow here is still using it as cornerstone of his argument. This is meant to stun you and leave you defenseless long enough to stumble through his next 1,500 words or so without much protest.
But since we're in possession of a pocketful of counterexamples, I think we can dispense of this one in Q&A format:
Q: David Byrne probably birthed contemporary quirk around 1985— halfway between his “Psycho Killer” beginnings with the Talking Heads and his move to global pop—when he sang the song “Stay Up Late”: “Cute, cute, little baby / Little pee-pee, little toes.” (As it happens, Byrne appeared on July’s recent book tour.) Jon Cryer’s “Duckie” Dale in Pretty in Pink came a year later, and quirk was on its way.
A: Tiny Tim
(We would have also accepted Andy Kaufman. But there are some lovely parting gifts for you...)
Of course, it wouldn't be trend piece heaven if there weren't Bonus Fortune Cookie Goodness:
Correctly deployed, quirk yields unexpected treasures, perhaps even finds new ways to unlock that hoary emotion called sentiment, banished from the mainstream American novel (at least the fashionable, well-regarded novel) since sometime before John Barth.
No well-regarded novels have contained sentiment since sometime in the 1960s. That sounds about right to me. Hey, someone call Oprah and ask what the hell she's been up to all this time.
Now, part two:
Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2002 novel, Everything Is Illuminated, uses quirk—it’s narrated in part by a Ukrainian with a uniquely malaprop take on English—to set us up for a powerful, and not at all quirky, modern-day confrontation with the Holocaust’s legacy. In Mark Haddon’s 2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the narrator is an autistic boy, necessitating a quirkily reductive lens through which the action must be described. Once understanding dawns, the book is that much more affecting and profound. Likewise, Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem’s stylized 1999 genre novel about a detective with Tourette’s—quirky modern hero situated in classic gangland milieu—works because of the author’s masterful narrative control. (Not-totally- depressing afflictions that generate amusing dramatic configurations are a sign that quirk is afoot: Tony Shalhoub’s quirky Adrian Monk in the TV series Monk has OCD; Natalie Portman’s Garden State character has epilepsy.)
Which leads to the problem with contemporary quirk: It can quickly go from an effective narrative tool to an end in itself.
I completely agree with this worthless italicized statement. [BGB's italics]
Why worthless?
Because the very same could be said for any narrative tool. See also: Correctly deployed, quirk yields unexpected treasures. You may feel free to insert your own word or phrase for "quirk": footnotes, internal monologue, dream sequences, flashbacks, slang, third-person narration, etc.
Honestly, the question isn't why this piece was written; the question is why is it so long?
Stand back, Hirschorn:
Quirk is a narrative tool. It is good when quirk is used correctly, meaning as an interesting way to get through to emotional resonance and not as an end in itself. Quirk used incorrectly is not good. There are some authors & personalities who correctly use quirk, and this is good and we applaud them. Others take quirk as an end in itself, which is incorrect usage, and that's unsatisfying on an emotional level.
Now, I don't necessarily agree with all that, but, hey, look at all the time we could've saved.
Great post. The things wrong with Hirschorn's essay could feed a blogger for weeks.
Posted by:R Ellis | October 18, 2007 at 07:21 AM