Clubbed to Death
Facebook, Chick-Lit, Tapirs and the Unibomber. Need we say more?
Human beings are, for the most part, social animals. With the notable exceptions of individuals such as Ted “Unibomber” Kaczynski, most of us enjoy the sense of personal affirmation that comes from the company of persons with similar backgrounds and interests. Even old Ted might have made a few friends if he’d put down the wires and detonators and got out of the basement more often. One can just imagine his profile on a social networking site such as MeetUp or Match.com: Brilliant but sociopathic recluse seeking like-minded individuals to share a violent hatred of industrial development, higher education institutions and the persons who represent them. Schizophrenics OK, but please no smokers or fatties.
Even those of us who don’t consider ourselves to be compulsive “joiners” are finding that we’ve somehow become card-carrying members of an alarming number of groups or causes. Facebook is a big culprit because of the ease with which it enables us to recruit one another into whatever pet peeve/crusade is currently chafing our privates. It’s become remarkably easy to show people just how socially conscious you are by clicking a “join” or “become a fan” button. But there is a downside. Unless you’re careful, five minutes on Facebook can result in your induction into groups with murky agendas like VPALP (Vegetarian Parapsychologists Against Latex Products) or SPIT (Society for the Protection of Incontinent Tapirs), of which I have somehow been elected secretary and treasurer.
And don’t even get me started on the Freemasons.
Our natural interest in banding together for the most obscure reasons manifests itself everywhere in pop culture these days. For example, as a former professional bookseller, I’ve always been fascinated with the growing number of novels that are themed around clubs or societies with quirky, amusing names. Most of these – well over 90%, is my guess – fall within the chick-lit category and feature titles that are no doubt intended to be either charming and folksy, or hip and trendy. Here’s a partial list of various series and one-off novels to hit the shelves in recent years:
- The Joy Luck Club (probably the most respectable of the bunch, but who am I to say?)
- The Friday Night Knitting Club
- The Hindi-Bindi Club (huh?)
- The Women’s Murder Club
- The Mother-Daughter Book Club
- The Potluck Catering Club
- The Sunday Philosophy Club (the one book on this list I’ve actually read)
- The Wildwater Walking Club
- The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club (deserves an merit award for shoehorning both “society” and “club” into the title)
- The Persian Pickle Club (never heard it called that before! ga-ziiing!)
- The Jane Austen Book Club
- The Penny Pinchers Club
- The Hot Flash Club
- The Dirty Girls Social Club (sounds GREAT – recently added this to my wishlist on Amazon)
- The Supper Club (boooooring!)
- The Blue Bottle Club
- The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club
- The Widows Club
- The Professors’ Wives Club (Helen: So, Agnes, I understand the editors of Philology Today never deigned to review your husband’s latest book. You and Philip must be so disappointed! / Agnes: (slaps Helen viciously across the face) “You bitch!!!”
- The First Wives Club
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2009 winner of the Self-Consciously Quirky Title Award)
- Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (now a major motion picture featuring America “Vespucci” Ferrara)
- The Sisterhood of Blackberry Corner
- How Dolly Parton Saved My Life: A Novel of the Jelly Jar Sisterhood
- The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society (the only novel ever to unite the epic themes of crochet, women’s book groups and Big League Chew under one cover)
- The Red Hat Society (not, surprisingly, about the Sacred College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church)
- The Red Hat Club (not this one, either)
And the list goes on.
I’m no psychologist – I don’t even play one on TV – but I suspect that the glut of club/society/sisterhood novels currently on the market speaks to a deep-seated human need to feel validated by belonging to something greater than oneself. Either that, or it’s a cheap and easy way of jumping on a fairly lucrative bandwagon. Why this should manifest itself so prevalently in media that specifically targets a female audience is beyond my competence to say, but it might have something to do with the reason women go to the bathroom in a group when dining out together at restaurants.
This is not to say that guy-focused literature couldn’t benefit from a similar marketing approach. As yet, that’s still an untapped opportunity – but it’s probably only a matter of time before we start seeing titles like The Homebrew Lager and Enchanted Urinal Society or The Brotherhood of the Universal Remote.
That said, I’m not above a little literary opportunism myself. I’m hoping to release my new children’s book The Baby Seals Club next year if I can get my editor to stop fighting me on the title.
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