You might be wondering what on earth bologna gum has to do with today's entry, so I'll end your suspense and tell you, it has nothing to do with it. I'm just trying to remind you of one of the wholesome blog entries I've written before I proceed to write a tasteless, tacky, and totally immature entry.
Today's book, "Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for the once-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--the adulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-class married woman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned by her wheelchair-bound husband."
I don't feel like the description of today's book really conveys the true soap opera drama of what goes on in the book, so I'm going to give you my own little description (which is, naturally, going to include a story about me.) I originally attempted to read today's book when I was about 12. I read the beginning fifty pages or so - in which Lady Chatterley (before she officially became Lady Chatterley) acted like a total slut for a couple of years, then married Lord Chatterley, at which point he went off to fight in the war and was injured so severely that he was left impotent (and really boring as well), and then Lord Chatterley comes up with the plan that his wife should have an affair just long enough until she gets pregnant and then they're all going to pretend like the baby is really his and not the child of whoever she has the affair with. Are you dying to know what happens next dear readers? I certainly was - but, unfortunately that's the point when my Mother discovered what I was reading and confiscated the book.
I got to about page seven when it became startlingly clear why my Mother took that book away from me. At the time, I tried to convince her that I was only reading the wholesome parts and skipping the rest. But after reading the book today, and realizing that there are no wholesome parts, I'm starting to see why that comment made her laugh uncontrollably. Even when the characters are just sitting around having conversations, they're saying things like this, "If you have the proper sort of emotion or sympathy with a woman, you ought to sleep with her. It's the only decent thing to do, to go to bed with her." - So now I can kind of see how the woman who made me hold a pillow up in front of my eyes during the piano scene in Pretty Woman would have a problem with me reading a book that was filled with sentences like that (although the question still remains of why she ever let me watch Pretty Woman in the first place.)
And then there was the scene in which Lord Chatterley is trying to convince his wife to cheat on him, and he compares having an affair with going to the dentist (what the hell kind of dentist does that man go to?), or the scene where Lady Chatterley is discussing with her sister that it's necessary to have sex with every man they have a pleasant conversation with just so long as they maintain all the power in the relationship by treating men as if they are nothing more than tools to achieve an orgasm and by refusing to share their emotional lives with them (they should just rename this book and call it The Book of Sluts), or the scene where Lady Chatterley's father begins to channel Joe Simpson and attempts to discuss with both his daughter and her husband whether or not his daughter is having enough sex (and I thought watching Joe discuss his daughter's bra size was going to be the most awkward father-daughter moment I would ever have to witness - oops, I guess I was wrong.) But I think the tackiest aspect of the book was the constant use of euphemisms (which, contrary to popular believe, do not make for a classier discussion.) Not since the fantasy suite episode on the latest season of The Bachelorette have I encountered so many trashy, tasteless attempts at talking around a subject.
Overall, I would have to say that the book was tacky, tasteless, and trashy. In other words, it was sheer perfection from to start to finish.
