Buried Letter Press December 2011

Twee Didn’t Start the Fire

by Angie Mazakis The first time I heard the idea of a fiction writer trying to evade the label precious was after I‟d read Adrienne Miller‟s, The Coast of Akron. In an interview Miller renounced the label without provocation, “This book is not my adorable little memoir about my adorable time in New York…” I first wondered why Miller would make it a point to deflect this designation before it was assigned to her. Was it because she was a female writer and she was beating critics to the punch with those labels? (Incidentally, I did see a review of the novel that claimed its first reaction was that it was “too precious” though it was ultimately a positive review.) Then I thought, Oh great. Something else to make sure my writing isn’t doing, and I added that to the list after don’t try too hard and try harder. There are still things that may be considered “precious” that I love, like singer Rosie Thomas, for example, or Sufjan Stevens or The Innocence Mission (whose name is the essence of “twee”). Probably the movie Amelie. The word “twee” has been thrown around a lot lately in relation to indie art/music/literature, and most sources define twee as art that is too sweet, or too quaint.

People/things that have incurred the twee moniker lately: Zooey Deschanel (it is rare that I‟ve seen the word apart from her name), any number of sleepy or whimsical indie bands, including Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura, Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

At first, I thought this is exclusively a criticism of a feminine quality to art, because all of the things that seem to embody the idea of “precious” or “twee” seem to at least be perceived as feminine―frilly sweaters from vintage-inspired retail stores, DIY, insecurity, apologizing, saying “awww”―pretty much anything intended to be appealingly fragile, attractively delicate. But then, in terms of writing, Tao Lin came to mind. Lin has to be the archetype of twee literature if there is one.

And about Tao Lin I feel the same as I do about many things considered “twee”—ambivalent. I really like a lot of his poetry, but I was frustrated by his novel, “Richard Yates,” which, to me, read like he wrote it in two days. When Lin sold an arbitrary lot of his random belongings on Ebay and included drafts of “Richard Yates,” I thought, “This can‟t be real… there were drafts?” But what could be more “twee” than naming your main characters Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment?

That and his cavalier references to hipster culture and instant messaging and his stream of consciousness confessional style make him sort of the president of twee.

However, the sense of that which is labeled “precious” seems to be feminine. One might even say that feminist critic, Jane Tompkins, is arguing for the “precious” rather than the “mother tongue” over the “father tongue,” her more objective, academic voice, in her essay, “Me and My Shadow,” when she characterizes her “mother tongue” as the voice whose “works exist chiefly in notebooks and manila folders labeled „Journal‟ and „Private.‟ The person who writes in the “mother tongue”… “has seen psychiatrists, likes cappuccino, worries about the state of her soul.” Tompkins reveals that she is embarrassed to expose this voice in a professional setting because she has been