Ella! Ella!

I started writing this 2 days ago, but somewhere along the way hit some combination of keys that erased everything I'd written up to that point. So it gives me a chance to rewrite and improve. Right?

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine: Isn't An Hathaway too old to play Ella? I just read a review of the movie, and it sounds like it's nothing like the book, and I really liked the book so now I don't want to see the movie. Is that fair? Maybe not (the review was a good one).

Ella is enslaved by obedience -- literally, not allegorically as in most feminist stories. By the way, isn't it too bad, after all this time, that it's still necessary for there to be "feminists"? Isn't it abut time the need for reform end, because reform is just done? We almost had a female president this year; we will surely have one on my lifetime (and I'm almost 60). Who's still dumb enough to be prejudiced against women? Lots of guys, of course, so feminism is necessary. But I'm just saying -- someday, someday soon.

Where was I? Ella is enslaved, but a delightful character, good natured, clever, witty. She frees herself in the end - that is to say, she is not freed by forces outside her own life.

One little question I had while reading it: was there an erotic masochistic interlude? It was necessary that Ella be chained to obedience, sure, but there was that sequence where, for a while, being obedient thrills her, and then she starts fantasizing (under a secondary spell) about a repulsive old man. Both diversions - the liking it and the old man - are dispensed with and not really necessary, as far as I could see.

Two books earlier I had read You Must Remember This, by Joyce Carol Oates. It was written some 40 years earlier, and is the exact opposite book. It has a teen heroine who is enslaved. But she's enslaved by her own volition, she's ravaged by the older man, violence surrounds their lives (he is a boxer, her father expects nuclear annihilation, she tries to kill herself). At one point the teen's brother's girl friend offers to be his slave, and it's kind of a joke to them; but everyone's oblivious to the fact that the little girl really is her uncle's slave.

It was very well written but, you know, it's about an incestuous pedophile. I hope it's dated, I hope the attitudes that provided the environment for the characters is gone or going.

When I was on the radio with Otis, every Christmas I looked for an opportunity to say "Let's sing . . . a Joyous Carol, Otis." Isn't that the most urbane, literate pun EVER??? Never used it. Don't know why.