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I was
introduced to the work of Francesca Lia Block by the intervention
of the Fates and a talented graphic artist. I was a naïve
fourteen year old when my grandma took me to my first Barnes
& Noble and told me I could pick out a book. I thumbed through
the YA section and found myself drawn to a small black paperback
with pastel contrasts. From the cover's center emerged the
shadowy figure of a girl, her fingers arranged in an abstract
heart. It was a collection of short stories called Girl
Goddess #9.
 The
contents of the stories were even better than the cover.
Block's
stories were about a world not unlike my own: the middlest
of middle class families living life day-to-day, friends dealing
with seemingly petty problems that somehow dictated the fate
of life itself…. But this was only the surface of Block's
world. Beneath that surface, magic lingered: imaginary friends
lived in closets ("Blue"), fairies hid on the edges of everyday
life ("Tweetie Sweet Pea"), and Los Angeles emerged as an
urban fairy world where anything could happen.
As much
as I loved Girl Goddess #9 and as many times as I reread
it over the years, I never particularly wanted to seek out
more. I saw this collection as something singular and unique;
something that inspired in me a feeling that could not be
recaptured in another book. But I was wrong.
I came
across the Weetzie Bat books next when a college roommate
insisted that I read them. I picked up Dangerous Angels—the
collected Weetzie Bat novels—and re-discovered
the magical and rich world of Block's Los Angeles:
They
didn't even realize where they were living. They didn't
care that Marilyn's prints were practically in their backyard
at Graumann's; that you could buy tomahawks and plastic
palm tree wallets at Farmer's Market, and the wildest,
cheapest cheese and bean and hot dog and pastrami burritos
at Oki Dogs; that the waitresses wore skates at the Jetson-style
Tiny Naylor's; that there was a fountain that turned tropical
soda-pop colors, and a canyon where Jim Morrison and Houdini
used to live, and all-night potato knishes at Canter's,
and not too far away was Venice, with columns, and canals,
even, like the real Venice but maybe cooler because of
the surfers. There was no one who cared…
 The
Weetzie Bat books relay the story of LA-born Weetzie
Bat and her mixed and modern extended family made up of gay
friends, Secret Agent Lovers, and magical children named Cherokee
and Witch Baby. Weetzie's world—and Block's—is one
where the mundane becomes magic and vice-versa, where Hollywood
artifice still glitters and inspires.
This
vision of LA deeply appealed to the Southern Californian in
me. Media depictions abound of Los Angeles and Southern California,
all propagating the same, oxymoronic scene: beautiful Hollywood
starlets and their plastic surgeons, palm trees and smog,
the Pacific Ocean and the filthy freeway system. In Block's
hands, these elements are still present, but they're not didactic
pairs; rather, they are incorporated into the background and
overshadowed by jacaranda and orange blossoms. Like Weetzie's
habit of recycling vintage clothing into couture that is uniquely
her, Block weaves the elements of urban LA reality with her
own magic touch to create a City of Angels that feels more
real to this California native than most attempts to capture
the real.
 After
Weetzie, I knew I had to read more Block. I read her
modern re-imaginings of classic fairy tales in The Rose and
the Beast, her myth-inspired world of Ecstasia, her
gritty urban fairy vision of LA in Wasteland and The
Hanged Man, and even re-visited Weetzie Bat in her forties
in Necklace of Kisses. What runs through all of Block's
books is a vision of the usually sterile urban cityscape as
a fertile space where magic grows. Sometimes this mystical
city space is grotesque and foreboding, like the New York
that Witch Baby confronts in Missing Angel Juan, but—more
often than not—these cities mirror the world in which
we live: Good and evil exist side-by-side and the individual
has to make his or her own way through these influences. The
real difference between Block's creations and reality is that
her characters' imaginings and dreams take on lives of their
own and become characters themselves.
Block's
most recent books are geared to an older audience that may
have grown up with her earlier work: the aforementioned Necklace
of Kisses, which revisits Weetzie when she is in her forties;
her 2003 memoir on motherhood, Guarding the Moon; and
her collection of erotica, 2000's Nymph. But these
books aren't esoteric stand-ins to spark the nostalgia of
longtime fans; adult readers who've never read Block before
can easily appreciate these books. Moreover, her YA books
transcend their labels and make for entertaining reading at
any age. Her milieu pre-figures the "kitchen sink magic realism"
of Kelly Link and Judy Budnitz as well as the mystic sci-fi
creations of George Saunders, but it comes from the same,
heart-shaped place.
(July,
2007)
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