Candy Girl
by Diablo Cody
Gotham Press

Everyone on the sensible side of the digital divide should by now understand the importance of blogging.

In politics, for example, amateur online journalists have had an inarguable effect on political parties and the mainstream media, keeping watch on elected officials and inaccurate information, and even drawing condemnation from national leaders.

Blogs have also affected professional writing. "Push button publishing" has been a remarkably effective tool for undiscovered talent to get their work out into the open and connect with broader audiences, in some cases even leading to recruitment by traditional media.

Minneapolis-based writer Diablo Cody is one such success story of blogger-turned-acknowledged author. A typical citizen of the white collar world by day, Cody developed an after-hours stripper alter-ego and documented her experiences on her blog, Pussy Ranch. With its slightly scandalous sex talk, Pussy Ranch attracted a wide following and was picked up by the Minneapolis alt-weekly City Pages. Shortly afterward, Cody sold a screenplay to Warner Brothers and now, to top off her string of successes, has released a much hyped memoir of her stripping days, "Candy Girl."

Right away, Cody should be congratulated for cashing in on her efforts. She found a way to make money with her writing, which is not an easy thing to do. And if Cody can make it from blogging to the big time, then there's hope that others can as well. But as the distance between "blogger" and "writer" closes a little more with each online post, it's important to remember the differences between the two, both in aim and operation.

"Candy Girl" illustrates the difference between good blog posts and good books. Cody's memoir features no new topics or a new take on an old topic, nor anything particularly insightful or interesting to say on stripping or the sex industry. The book is a simple rundown of gentlemen's clubs in Minneapolis's Downtown and Warehouse District, in which Cody guilelessly tells readers how skeezy the clubs and their regular patrons are and generically describes the girls who ride the poles and do the floor work.

In the blogsphere, such shortcomings can be overlooked, especially for real-time commentary or entertaining personal anecdotes. And in some ways, these quirks can be sort of quaint for personal blogs. (People are liked for their talents, but loved for their flaws, right?) But for the book world, it's at best laughable and at worst an insult to informed readers.

Ironically, in a little over a year, Diablo leaves stripping because,

"it was the girls-in-bulk thing that repulsed me. Hundreds of girls on the floor at some clubs, all reduced to begging dogs for an army of smug little emperors. It's like a girl buffet, and no one really savors the brown goop at a buffet. You pile your sanitized plate with discount food and shovel it in as quickly as you can."

Her assessment of girls-in-bulk not only aptly applies to her description of her former co-workers, it also applies to the memoir's narration. Cody's writing style rambles through bountiful collections of colloquialisms and semi-informed pop culture references that are initially annoying in the world online writing and don't gain appeal in print. Right away on page four: "Love is mysterious and rad, like Steve Perry (from Journey)." Steve Perry was in Journey? Really?

The next 208 pages contain an onslaught of similar similes ranging from absurd ("like a seed germinating in a Dixie cup") and predictable ("like a bottomless Jedi master"). Whereas an exciting, emotional, and engaging bit of writing paints a picture of new images for a willing reader, Cody's writing nods to everything the audience already knows: Mary Tyler Moore, Kentucky Fried Movie, MC Escher and Georgia O'Keeffe (on the same page), Dirty Dancing, Chuck Taylors, Kenny Rogers (the gambler, not the pitcher), Cheers, Prince's Raspberry Beret, and on and on and on and on. It gets so bad that Cody even runs her references together:

A girl in this place could be anything she wanted, from Mackie-era Cher to Cheetara from Thundercats. There were bikinis so itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny they occupied negative space.

To give Cody the benefit of the doubt, for some reason, contemporary culture speaks almost entirely through reference. If you doubt that, start counting how many times you hear someone follow a confused laugh with "what's that from?"

In so many ways, Cody plays to the audience. She lightly tantalizes readers with cheap and safe thrills. And that's fine in some situations. Like stripping. And blogging. But not in a memoir.

— Taylor Carik (cari0021@tc.umn.edu)