{"id":92219,"date":"2015-11-23T15:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T20:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=92219"},"modified":"2015-11-23T14:42:09","modified_gmt":"2015-11-23T19:42:09","slug":"sorry-judy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/23\/sorry-judy\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorry, Judy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Judy doesn\u2019t even deserve this picnic.<\/p><\/div>\n

I recently had a thought while reading Marjory Hall\u2019s A Picnic for Judy<\/em>,<\/em> a YA book from 1955. The premise was promising: a young woman is forced to move with her family to a rambling old inn on a Maine island. Score! I thought. It seemed like it would combine my favorite fifties YA themes: coming of age, pine trees, and redecorating, with setting to rights into the bargain. Yes, surely this would be the sort of book that Betty Cavanna could whip up with her eyes closed\u2014that I find so comforting and fun.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true, I\u2019d had mixed results with Howell before. Her books have been known to involve inexplicable decision-making, mysterious romantic motivations, and leaden dialogue. But with this setup, how could she go wrong? At the very least, there\u2019d be a picnic scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the rub: the titular Judy is the single most unappealing protagonist I\u2019ve ever encountered. She\u2019s sullen, self-absorbed, incurious, uninteresting\u2014and as if that weren\u2019t enough, she spends the bulk of the book scheming to steal the boyfriend of her poor and hardworking colleague, until (spoiler alert) the local rich guy inexplicably falls in love with Judy. (People are always falling in love with her.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

I threw it down in disgust. After I had devoured it, I mean. Besides the usual burning questions motivating me\u2014Would there be a picnic? Would Judy become less detestable?<\/em>\u2014<\/em>I was sort of fascinated by the author\u2019s situation. How had she spent so much time with such a horrible character? It was a\u00a0Power Broker<\/em>\u2013esque feat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I should amend my statement: Judy is the most unappealing protagonist I\u2019ve ever encountered in a \u201cfun\u201d read.\u00a0The distinction is important, because it goes without saying that capital-L<\/em> Literature is filled with fascinating antiheroes, many of them sensationally disagreeable: Proust\u2019s neurotics, Fitzgerald\u2019s amoral voluptuaries, Bront\u00eb\u2019s prickly heroines. I mean, Emma Bovary, for God\u2019s sakes.\u00a0Raskolnikov<\/em>! In such company, reader identification is not the point; at least, it\u2019s not a necessity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But without complexity, we require identification. If the bore is also a jerk, it becomes hard to justify his presence in our lives as readers. The characters we live with must nourish or challenge as much as the people we know, no? After all, there are some days when we probably spend more time with the former than the latter.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m pleased to say I\u2019ll spend no further time with Judy. Oh, and if you must know: yes, there is a picnic in the book\u2014several, in fact\u2014but it\u2019s hard to enjoy when you\u2019re in such bad company.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently had a thought while reading Marjory Hall\u2019s A Picnic for Judy, a YA book from 1955. The premise was promising: a young woman is forced to move with her family to a rambling old inn on a Maine island. Score! I thought. It seemed like it would combine my favorite fifties YA themes: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[20308,11479,13771,20307,20309,53,17640,20310],"class_list":["post-92219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-a-picnic-for-judy","tag-characters","tag-fifties","tag-marjory-hall","tag-protagonists","tag-reading","tag-ya-lit","tag-young-adult-novels"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Most Unappealing Protagonist I\u2019ve Ever Encountered<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on the repellent heroine of \u201cA Picnic for Judy.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/23\/sorry-judy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sorry, Judy by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 23, 2015 \u2013 I recently had a thought while reading Marjory Hall\u2019s A Picnic for Judy, a YA book from 1955. 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