Writing Style

Writing style is a funny thing. It's about as diverse as ice cream flavors. Everybody writes differently, and the world likes that. Jane Austen writes romantically with very dry humour. Lucy Maud Montgomery writes, what I like to call, rosy, wholesome, feel-good stories. She writes with the emotions of her reader in mind. Then you have more modern day writers like Jenny McCarthy, who write about the crass realities of pregnancy and child-birth, in a humorous, non-threatening way. Then, [almost done] you have writers like Shauna Niequist who writes on the celebrations of life, real life. Not just the fuzzy feel-goods, but the tragedies as well, somehow turning all things to appear as beneficial to her growth as a women, a mother, a wife, and a human being. 

THEN you have Tina Fey. 

I recently bought her book, Bossy Pants, and so far I am intrigued. It's the #1 selling book in the country right now and I think that when a book sells that fast and ranks that high, it might say something about the nature of the reading material in our culture. I am only 100 pages in, but Tina seems to be writing her life in the style of an SNL skit [crass jokes and all].  Which I'm sure, isn't coincidental since she hold the titles of Writer, Actress, and Executive Producer to the show. 

This post is not a review on the book, but rather a review on our culture. 

Good content and good stories presented in a less-than-classy style. There seems to be a falling off the cart in the world of literature. Though some would hardly call this book literature. An amazing woman who is the role-model for girls and women all over the US to become noticed because of talent, not figure and sex-appeal, has written of her precious [yes, tough, yes, bizarre] life for, what seems to be, a laugh. Some will argue that that's what she does, she makes people laugh and I would 100% agree. [Have you SEEN Baby Mama???] But my question is how far will she go to get a laugh? How far have we made her feel she needs to go to get a laugh? 

People react to people. If we tell a joke and someone laughs, we tell it again. If we tell a joke and someone doesn't laugh, we search for a new one that will make them laugh based on past laughings. [Sorry I'm confusing myself too.] Our culture of humor has gone from:

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment." {Pride & Prejudice}

to: 

“If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.” {Tina Fey}

Where do we draw a line? [Way before that joke eh?] This isn't a conviction, it's an observation that is slowing brewing into conviction. I am having a tougher and tougher time laughing at the shows on TV these days. Funny? Yes. But at what cost? At whose cost?

Just something I'm thinking about.

For those of you who've read the book, I'm curious about what your take is. :) This could be fun!

Love,