Read Online The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Maggie Nelson
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Mystery. I learn that 48 Hours used to focus on “human interest” stories of varying degrees of social importance—the international sex trade, the pros and cons of the “Subway Diet,” the risks of gastric bypass surgery. But as ratings for investigative journalism plummeted and ratings for true-crime shows began to soar, “48 Hours” became “48 Hours Mystery.” At times they attempt to take on deeper topics within the “murder mystery” rubric—a recent show, for example, investigates the topic Who Killed Jesus? and stars Elaine Pagels.
As I scroll down the long list of show titles I feel my spirits start to sink. There are a host of stories about missing or murdered girls and women, with panic-inducing titles like Where’s Baby Sabrina? Where’s Molly? Where Is Mrs. March? Others feature high-profile cases— JonBenét: DNA Rules Out Parents; Is Amber Still in Love with Scott?: Her Father Says She Has Never Gotten Over Him , while others strive for a more poetic effect: Dark Side of the Mesa: Did Michael Blagg Murder His Wife and Daughter? I try to imagine the title they’ll choose for Jane’s show but come up dry.
I FIND the producer on a street corner on Broadway, talking outside the restaurant with some of his college friends, all of whom graduated just a couple of years ago. I’m surprised—I had imagined dinner with a slick patrician, a hard-boiled veteran of the TV business. The surprise is apparently mutual: when we sit down, he tells me that I look way too young to be a professor, and he’s taken aback that I’m not married. I have no idea why he thought I was.
We are meeting early in the evening because he has to fly to Los Angeles first thing in the morning to cover the Michael Jackson child molestation trial. I am not very interested in the Jackson trial, but I try to make small talk about other famous trials. I bring up Gary Gilmore and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song ; he says he hasn’t heard of Norman Mailer, but will definitely look him up. He orders us a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and appears perplexed when it arrives. I thought I ordered us a red , he says, decanting with a shrug.
Over the wine he asks me if, while writing Jane , I felt as though I were channeling my aunt. I say no. He looks disappointed. I try to explain that Jane is about identification, not fusion. That I never even knew her. That in the book I don’t try to speak for her, but rather to let her speak for herself, through her journal entries. And that although I have tried to imagine her death, there’s really no way of knowing what she went through—not only because I don’t know what happened to her on the night of her murder, but because no one ever really knows what it’s like to be in anyone else’s skin. That no living person can tell another what it’s like to die. That we do that part alone.
Our entrees arrive—stylish piles of monkfish—and he shifts gears, says it’s time for the “hard sell.” He says that although 48 Hours Mystery strives to entertain, it always keeps a serious social issue at stake. When I ask him what the issue might be in this case, he says this episode will be about grief. About helping other people to mourn. He says that my family’s involvement could really help other people in similar situations.
All those viewers who thought they lost a family member to a famous serial killer, then are told 36 years later that DNA from the crime scene matches both that of a retired nurse and a man who was four years old at the time and grew up to murder his mother , I think.
With less graciousness than I’d hoped to display, I ask if there’s a reason why stories about the bizarre, violent deaths of young, good-looking, middle- to upper-class white girls help people to mourn better than other stories.
I thought it might come to this , he says good-naturedly but warily, refolding the napkin in his lap.
After dinner we walk a few blocks up Broadway together and
As I scroll down the long list of show titles I feel my spirits start to sink. There are a host of stories about missing or murdered girls and women, with panic-inducing titles like Where’s Baby Sabrina? Where’s Molly? Where Is Mrs. March? Others feature high-profile cases— JonBenét: DNA Rules Out Parents; Is Amber Still in Love with Scott?: Her Father Says She Has Never Gotten Over Him , while others strive for a more poetic effect: Dark Side of the Mesa: Did Michael Blagg Murder His Wife and Daughter? I try to imagine the title they’ll choose for Jane’s show but come up dry.
I FIND the producer on a street corner on Broadway, talking outside the restaurant with some of his college friends, all of whom graduated just a couple of years ago. I’m surprised—I had imagined dinner with a slick patrician, a hard-boiled veteran of the TV business. The surprise is apparently mutual: when we sit down, he tells me that I look way too young to be a professor, and he’s taken aback that I’m not married. I have no idea why he thought I was.
We are meeting early in the evening because he has to fly to Los Angeles first thing in the morning to cover the Michael Jackson child molestation trial. I am not very interested in the Jackson trial, but I try to make small talk about other famous trials. I bring up Gary Gilmore and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song ; he says he hasn’t heard of Norman Mailer, but will definitely look him up. He orders us a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and appears perplexed when it arrives. I thought I ordered us a red , he says, decanting with a shrug.
Over the wine he asks me if, while writing Jane , I felt as though I were channeling my aunt. I say no. He looks disappointed. I try to explain that Jane is about identification, not fusion. That I never even knew her. That in the book I don’t try to speak for her, but rather to let her speak for herself, through her journal entries. And that although I have tried to imagine her death, there’s really no way of knowing what she went through—not only because I don’t know what happened to her on the night of her murder, but because no one ever really knows what it’s like to be in anyone else’s skin. That no living person can tell another what it’s like to die. That we do that part alone.
Our entrees arrive—stylish piles of monkfish—and he shifts gears, says it’s time for the “hard sell.” He says that although 48 Hours Mystery strives to entertain, it always keeps a serious social issue at stake. When I ask him what the issue might be in this case, he says this episode will be about grief. About helping other people to mourn. He says that my family’s involvement could really help other people in similar situations.
All those viewers who thought they lost a family member to a famous serial killer, then are told 36 years later that DNA from the crime scene matches both that of a retired nurse and a man who was four years old at the time and grew up to murder his mother , I think.
With less graciousness than I’d hoped to display, I ask if there’s a reason why stories about the bizarre, violent deaths of young, good-looking, middle- to upper-class white girls help people to mourn better than other stories.
I thought it might come to this , he says good-naturedly but warily, refolding the napkin in his lap.
After dinner we walk a few blocks up Broadway together and
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