CLEAVING

In general, I’m Team Julie Powell. I loved The Julie/Julia Project (the first food blog I ever read!) and its subsequent book and film adaptations (Meryl Streep was TOTALLY ROBBED of her deserved Oscar, by the way). When I started seeing scathing reviews of her second book, I chalked it up to (a) the Powell-hating backlash that seemed to sweep the Internet in the wake of her fame; and (b) the fact that those who knew Powell only from her portrayal by miscast sweetheart Amy Adams were having trouble reconciling their cute Hollywood image of her with the gritty reality of the book’s subject matter—Powell’s extramarital affair and her apprenticeship in butchery (when informed of Powell’s real-life infidelity in an interview, Adams famously rejoined, “Well, my Julie would never do that”). I was fully prepared not to like Cleaving: A Story of Meat, Marriage, and Obsession as much as its predecessor, but I still wanted to read it—and, frankly, all the accusations of juicy oversharing lobbed its way only made me more curious, so I was pleased when my friend M gave me a copy for Christmas.

Unfortunately, while the book wasn’t quite the train wreck many reviewers made it out to be, I thoroughly disliked it. Some reviewers wrote as though the situation (Powell has passionate on-again-off-again affair with emotionally unavailable but sexually exciting man, yet wants to remain married; her husband knows, sees other women, but ultimately stays) were inherently revolting, but I thought it might have made an interesting and worthwhile memoir—if tackled, say, twenty years after the fact. As written, however, it completely lacks perspective, resulting in a tone-deaf narrative voice that vacillates between naked pleas for the reader’s sympathy (which I had a hard time mustering, not least because the lover Powell is so obsessed with seems like a pretentious asshole) and brutal self-flagellation. I kept feeling that Powell wants to simultaneously defend and punish herself—she offers the reader a stark portrait of her misery as though it’s supposed to stand in for the regret and repentance she claims to feel, but at the same time she’s obviously wallowing in her own sense of degradation (not coincidentally, she’s a self-described masochist). She confuses frankness and bravado with honesty. It’s not that her confessions are so raw or embarrassing, although at times they are; it’s that they seem painfully disingenuous, making the whole book feel both tedious and pointless. I could go on, but NPR’s Linda Holmes nails my feelings in her much more articulate review. Let me just say that we both agree on our least favorite moment of the book.

I had figured that at least I’d enjoy the food themes, but the butchery topic felt wedged in, mainly serving as an extended (and ultimately tiresome) metaphor for Powell’s own emotional state (bloody, earthy, sensuous, violent, etc.). And unfortunately, although Powell does her best to sexy them up with purple prose, it turns out that play-by-play descriptions of creating various cuts of meat are…rather tedious, in an “insert tab A into slot B” way.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend Cleaving, but it hasn’t necessarily put me off Powell for good. I was sad to see how quickly critics dogpiled on it, gleefully labeling it a disgusting, humiliating fiasco (Booklist went with “graphic, even gross,” which I think is unfairly over the top)—and by the way, I didn’t find the book as shockingly explicit as some salacious accounts suggested; awkward, yes, but hardly X-rated. For me, the off-puttingness was emotional, not physical, and my overwhelming reaction was frustration, not hatred or anger. I do hope that Powell is able to come back from this and find a topic she can write about more successfully. And I still think that Cleaving, with its double, opposed meanings, is a brilliant book title.