The Virgin Suicides Are Not Funny

I'd like to rescind my earlier blog post wherein I supported the boys' round-about method of narration. After reading everyone else's blog posts and Shostak's "A Story We Could Live With," I've realized I wasn't a careful enough reader, and fell far too easily into the trap of "uncomplicated, objectifying distance" that Shoshtak mentions. I took what the narrators related at face value-which says much to their sympathetic and persuasive element-and failed to note underlying messages of the novel.

One thing I did not see until it dawned onto me to look is the selfishness of the boys, an egocentrism I believe is inherent to the concept of the male gaze. So preoccupied were they in achieving their desire of being close to the Lisbon girls in any way possible that they overlooked the desire the girls communicated back: an overwhelming, claustrophobic need to escape. Not only did the boys overlook the girls' opposing desire, they violated it. The girls realize this and punish them by inviting the boys over to help them run away and then hoodwinking them into being witness to a mass-suicide. Thus they prevent the boys' desire from ever being realized by forever removing themselves from their grasp.

I think the boys themselves realize their blinding selfishness, though they won't admit it because this story they're telling is the one "they choose to believe" (Shoshtak). So instead they accuse the girls of being selfish, for "the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself" (248). The ironic thing is usually that's a strategy for survival.

So the boys didn't understand the Lisbon daughters, and I didn't even understand the boys...I think this says a lot about my role as a reader. In a sense I am just as guilty as either of them of egocentrism-not to make this whole blog about me, sorry about that.

Side note: watched the movie, kept pretty darn true to the book. Also was alarming how similar some of the shooting was to how I imagined things playing out. And there was some pretty solid rock in the soundtrack. I dug it.

Becca Weber