{"id":291,"date":"2003-05-13T10:07:45","date_gmt":"2003-05-13T17:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=291"},"modified":"2012-05-03T11:56:26","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T18:56:26","slug":"how-i-learned-to-drive-by-paula-vogel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2003\/05\/how-i-learned-to-drive-by-paula-vogel\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;How I learned to drive&#8221; by Paula Vogel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What is it about sexual abuse stories? They are such a strange combination of feelings. One part is the seduction, the sexiness of talking about sex. But at the same time there is the alarm bells, ringing &#8220;Danger! This is wrong!&#8221; There is the pushing-away feeling of disgust at the molester, that is part of the alarm-bell feeling.<\/p>\n<p>There is also the hypnotic sensation of watching a car accident happen in slow motion. This horrible thing is happening; is the bad man going to get caught? Is the poor child going to be okay? and you are not sure of either.<\/p>\n<p>And while I am wondering if the kid in the story is going to be okay, I also wonder if I am a sick person to be seduced into the sexy side of the story.<\/p>\n<p>It makes me feel sick to my stomach, while being slightly turned on, which makes me feel even sicker.<\/p>\n<p>That is what this story did. I guess that means Vogel did a good job of making me feel the same sort of thing that Li&#8217;l Bit felt. Surely she must have felt those feelings and more.<\/p>\n<p>This play was better than just a &#8220;How I recovered from my Molesting Uncle&#8221; article in a woman&#8217;s magazine. There was a stronger pull of power between the girl and her Uncle Peck.<\/p>\n<p>It reminded me a whole lot of Lolita, the way Li&#8217;l Bit turned the situation to have more power.  Lolita had a pull of power over Humbert too.<\/p>\n<p>The influence of Li&#8217;l Bit&#8217;s family on how she dealt with issues of femininity were quite funny-a horrifying combination of frankness and misinformation, high expectations and hypocrisy.<\/p>\n<p>The characters are all sympathetic, Vogel made everyone come alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is it about sexual abuse stories? They are such a strange combination of feelings. One part is the seduction, the sexiness of talking about sex. But at the same time there is the alarm bells, ringing &#8220;Danger! This is &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2003\/05\/how-i-learned-to-drive-by-paula-vogel\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookworthy","category-theater-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}