'Chick Lit' works, despite condescending title

Mary J. Elkins, Special to the News

Friday, August 25, 2006

If there's one objection to This is Not Chick Lit, an otherwise superb collection of stories, it would be the title and the editor's introduction which expounds on the title.

Elizabeth Merrick, a gifted writer of fiction, has an ax to grind with "chick lit." By this, of course, she means stories written by women and largely dealing with manhunting while wearing great clothes.

Although she concedes the value of such writing as a guilty pleasure, she says the popularity of the genre comes at the expense of more "serious" fiction by women.

A serious reader, she assumes, would pick up a collection of short stories written exclusively by women and dismiss it out of hand. In case we don't get the point, the introduction goes on to lecture us in a schoolmarmy way about the differences between the two: Where chick lit reduces the complexity of the human experience, literature increases our awareness of other perspectives and paths.

This seems a bit like beating on a straw man (or woman) and sells the prospective reader short. The stories in this collection don't need this hectoring introduction or the too-cute title. They stand firmly on their own. There isn't a weak piece in the lot - each revealing and reveling in the "complexity of human experience."

One of the things Merrick objects to in "chick lit" is its numbing sameness. For example, she points out the homogeneity of its heroines: white and reasonably affluent. This is clearly not the case in this collection. Some narrators are not white, some aren't Americans. Some are men, others are gay.

All are struggling with larger problems than finding Mr. Right. A majority of the stories address the characters' attempts to shore up lives teetering on the edge of emptiness, lives in which promises have proven hollow and other paths must be found. Even when an apparent Mr. Right does show up, as in Embrace, by Roxana Robinson, it's complicated, messy, and finally placed in a much larger human context.

Some of the best stories in the collection feature narrators who gradually reveal themselves as somewhat self-deluded and, ironically, therefore much more sympathetic than they seemed at the beginning of the stories. These include "The Red Coat" by Caitlin Macy, "The Matthew Effect" by Binnie Kirshenbaum and "Volunteers are Shining Stars" by Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of the best-selling Prep.

Although these stories differ from each other, each introduces us to an apparently self-satisfied, reasonably successful young woman who learns a deeply discomfiting truth about herself.

Some of the writers included in this collection are fairly well-known, such as Sittenfeld, Francine Prose and Jennifer Egan. Others may be less familiar to readers, but they are every bit as accomplished.

Indeed, Merrick has done her work well. Far from breezy chick lit, these stories are for anyone who enjoys fine fiction.

Mary J. Elkins is a faculty member in the Honors College at Colorado State University. She lives in Fort Collins.