The Perfect Little Girl by Joyce Carol Oates

When her brother asks for the name of the doll, Bliss replies that it is a secret. Skylar insists, until Bliss gives in: «Edna Louisehe says. She’s an old doll the size of the owner, the special baby, the prodigy, and the perfect daughter of Bex and Betsy Rampike: Bliss Rumpike, the queen of figure skating. But Bliss isn’t her first name, Bliss (Blessing) is the name her mother gave her after an appearance bearing a message from God: Call her Bliss, she will be your blessings.Edna Louise is no longer like her paternal grandmother as a normal child.

So the old doll, which bears the maiden name of the girl, keeps the soul of the owner, and more: what was taken from her. Why A lot has been taken from her, like all of the Oates girls/girls. Not just childhood. The prodigal is great, and precedes the sin.

even in blondLittle girl Marilyn Monroe did not part with a doll with which she escaped from the fire. But while Norma Jeane is unharmed, the doll is, and these marks mean Norma Jeane’s inner marks, hidden wounds (again the concept of a true soul hidden in the doll). Puppets as subjective projections, preconceptions of the future. Dolls and even children as other descendants of the protagonist. This is Skylar – the failed version of Bliss. Narrator, witness – a failed hero. I live.

There was a time when only he was in the Rampike family, when Bliss was not yet born, and Skylar was the promise of redemption. A time when the mother’s attention was Rumbek, Jr.’s. In that time, counting those days before Bliss, three years, Skylar shines, soars (literally: on gym rings), falters, and falls.

Through it Oates shows the misguided outcome of the Mothers’ project, and the failure that crystallizes in Skylar, who – due to a fall – will forever be lame (bruised like a doll).
Skylar is a misrepresentation of Bliss, the previous result was bad. And yet: what remains of bliss is the remains of a distinguished child.
To this extent, Skyler is Bliss, and therefore always the protagonist, although he himself puts himself in the background, in the footnotes: his parents didn’t just drive him into a corner (in the Christmas photo, in the videos, it’s cut straight In pictures it came badly to leave except bliss).

The immediate measure turned second nature: the child and then the boy put himself into a corner. in My sister is my only love Crush all the kids: Each child who appears in the novel, a friend, a classmate, is subject to the adult system, which erases it in different ways, often diagnosed with a disease – primary dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, personality disorder, early severe depression. Dozens of diseases, as if childhood is the real mistake that must be fixed.

Released in America in 2008, My sister is my only love era An accurate radiographic image of American society, not yet from Italy (where it was released in 2009). Fifteen years later, they also influence us closely: in cataloging childhood disorders, in early diagnosis, in cognitive tests, in psychiatric medications prescribed to children.

Oates isn’t just talking about America. It’s not just the unmasking of the American dream as a sham. In his books, the unattainable utopia coincides with the impossibility of a long-term youthful existence. Oates’ entire business is populated by children who are crushed by adults. Children motivated by the desire to grow up against the “looming adults”.

Sometimes these adults are Kennedy (Ted Kennedy in Black waterJohn Kennedy in blond). The family that contributed most to the American Illusion.
And what about children? who are the children?
Born of flesh, made into dolls – The opposite of Pinocchio. And if Pinocchio turned into a child during his lifetime, then Bliss, Skyler and the others turn into dolls by the will of adults. If Pinocchio runs away, disobeys, he seems to have learned his lesson, but instead he has not: here he repeats his mistake – Bliss obeys. As Pinocchio stacks himself up, rips his clothes, and destroys the original build, Bliss is built: light hair, electroepilation to raise forehead, false nails, and false teeth. Pinocchio becomes flesh the moment he breaks away from his father’s aspirations, and vice versa, Bliss dies, drawing closer to his mother.

However, there is a difference between Geppetto’s intention and Betsey Rampike’s.
Geppetto creates the doll based on an abstract concept, and Betsey projects her daughter the ideal.
In searching for his identity, Pinocchio departs from Geppetto’s ideal. Growing up means looking for a form by trial and error, and it turns out that a good form is far from the father’s project and above all far from the spontaneous, rebellious form that is the puppet at the beginning of the story. The child finds himself in the moment when he discovers something else even for himself: when Geppetto has to get out of the whale’s belly, Geppetto admits that he cannot swim. At this exact moment, in the exchange of roles and weights, the doll is already a human being.

“Do you think it possible that a doll, barely a meter tall, like you, would have enough strength to carry me swimming on his shoulders?” Geppetto doubts.
And Pinocchio, the new PinocchioThey lay on my shoulder and hugged me tightly. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Inspired by a news story (John Bennett Ramsey Killed, Beauty Queen), My sister is my only love Do not tell the crime itself. Oates does not reconstruct the murder, however ambitious Middle class American excel – Directly or through a third party through children.
So Oates reconstructs a social class with a hierarchical apparatus of power and success that generates frustration/happiness. Either way, brief: brief frustration, brief happiness.

Before reaching the tragedy, the writer talks about the family. And in this imbalance, in this wonderful imbalance is literature. Like Truman Capote in cold blood
although it goes in the opposite direction, it devotes a little space to the crime itself to go deeper in the opposite investigation that tells the system of ambitions and defects that led to the crime. The imbalance of the narrative body of the two novels (My sister is my only love by Oates e in cold blood By Capote), it makes all the difference. From the news, from the newspapers, from the TV, from the pure a crime. The literary gesture is the reinvention of time, that unenclosed time The Promise
by Friedrich Dürrenmatt There is the investigation never resolved, here all the time out – which precedes or follows. In this ample time, guilt extends.

in My sister is my only love Guilty is Father Bex Rambek, traitor, womanizer. Guilty Skyler is sometimes jealous of the perfect sister, who can’t come to the rescue (can he?). Guilty, paedophile Gunther Roche, who accuses himself of murder. Country Club Women Guilty, Millionaire Betsy Wants Access to Social Climb Guilty. Guilty her mother. Guilty long before the real guilt, that is, as soon as he begins to build the perfect little girl, where, in the Extraordinary Dimension, the greatest danger is growth. To refer to real cases: Giovanna ***, Italian children’s model of the 90s, as well as the only testimony of Barbie In the world, in an interview, when asked why she is acting Barbie“Maybe you looked a little like us,” he replies, while the mother corrects: “Barbie It was she.” A mother complaining about the competition not so much between girls, but between mothers: “One of them spread a rumor that I gave Giovanna an injection to enlarge her lips, and in order not to make her feel ill, I gave her anesthesia, total anesthesia … Yes, you realize? According to her, I did By anesthetizing a six-year-old girl… Giovanna was born this way, her mouth is normal.” Time passes, Giovanna grows and exceeds one meter thirty, and can no longer cover a role Barbie Nor a child model. The limit in children’s costumes is one meter thirty. Giovanna has thirty feet and twenty kilograms of bliss.

Aren’t these numbers hacked fate? Preformation of the future – in the words of Oates: condemnation and warning. Here is the shocking and fierce portrait of America and for all of our time. Here is the meaning of the word “Mama”, which is repeated hundreds of times in the book: supplication, supplication. In a real/fictional crescendo, from the villa in Fair Hills, New Jersey, to Skyler’s head, into cyberspace—the virtual dimension Skyler refers to, the place where her sister still exists: an eternal six-year-old girl. On the ice rink wins.
Because from a certain point in reality no one calls my mom. The echo, the rumble that falls through the air is the final answer: something irreparable has happened forever, Skylar.

The series is hosted by Sandro Veronesi

With the third issue on newsstands this Wednesday, July 19, “Sister, my one and only love” by Joyce Carol Oates, with an afterword by Teresa Ciabatti, here we expect an extensive summary, the Americana series continues from «Corriere» edited by Sandro Veronesi (each volume and 8.90 plus to the cost of the newspaper); The first two volumes dedicated to Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo are still on newsstands. A library of 27 great American novels, with introductions or afterwords by famous Italian authors. Graphic design is by XxY Studio and cover images come from The Anonymous Project archives curated by Lee Shulman. Among the upcoming releases are the July 26 “La strada di casa” by Kent Harrow with a foreword by Alessandro Pepperino, the August 2 “Canada” by Richard Ford (Sandro Veronesi), the August 9 “The Broom of the System” by David Foster Wallace (Edoardo Nesi), 16 “The Interpreter of Diseases” by Jhumpa Lahiri (Marco Misseroli).