Too bad no one asked me to contribute

Normally, when perusing Publisher’s Marketplace for the latest deals (and there are so many good ones posted lately that there’ll be more on that tomorrow), my thoughts range from “cool” to “that’s stupid” to “interesting” and back again. They don’t normally make me sit up, take notice, and get rather upset:

Freelance journalist Ruth Andrew Ellenson’s THE MODERN JEWISH GIRL’S GUIDE TO GUILT, a humorous and provocative collection of original essays by young Jewish women writers (including Aimee Bender, Daphne Merkin, Dara Horn, Molly Jong-Fast, Rebecca Walker, Rebecca Goldstein, Tova Mirvis, Katie Roiphe, and many others) exploring all the things that their rabbis warned them never to discuss in public, to Julie Doughty at Dutton, by Betsy Amster at Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises (world).

Now, obviously, the deal’s only been struck and I assume the essays have not been written yet. But why do I get the feeling that this is going to end up being a superificial bit of dross? Trust me, you want deep, unseated rage that leads to “humorous and provocative essays,” grow up Orthodox and struggle with the fact that you’ll never live up to familial, cultural and religious expectations of what you’re supposed to be. Try getting used to continual glares at synagogue because you’re singing too loudly. Or that your shirt sleeves are too short and your necklines too low. Try being a smart, educated woman in a community where people take a wildly schizophrenic view of such things (yes! It’s good! But the ultimate goal is still marriage and babies) Then go live for a while in the zoo culture that is the Upper West Side and witness firsthand the byzantine rules and regulations of dating–some involving chaperones, some not. And then try to figure out what the hell to do with all this stuff you’re seeing.

Not that any of those things apply to me, of course. Although there must be a ton of material to mine…