A BAD BOSTON IN `SEX CRIMES'.Byline: Michael Kenney Michael Kenney is the live keyboard player for British band Iron Maiden as well as Steve Harris's bass technician. Although during recordings (since Brave New World, prior to this the role was shared with Kenney), Steve Harris plays keyboards, since then Kenney performs these parts Boston Globe Jenefer Shute is very firm about it: Her new novel, ``Sex Crimes'' (Doubleday; $18.95), is ``not autobiographical. Definitely not autobiographical.'' There is a strong physical resemblance between Shute and the ``sex crime'' perpetrator A term commonly used by law enforcement officers to designate a person who actually commits a crime. , and during her years teaching in Boston, Shute lived on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay, where she locates the perpetrator's apartment, the scene of the crime. And the action, sexual and criminal, takes place around the landmarks of the Newbury-Boylston street scene, from the restaurant 29 Newbury down past Davio's to the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Boston Racket and Tennis Club. But no, she says, the victim is ``not modeled on any former beau,'' nor did Shute ever commit the action she describes. ``I'd be in jail if I had,'' she laughs, ``wouldn't I?'' Shute is 40, waifish at 5 foot 2, and for lunch she is dressed all in black - coat, shirt, suit, shoes. ``I always dress in black,'' she says. Always? ``Yes, always. It's my noir personality.'' She has scrunched into the back corner of a corner booth at the rear of the restaurant and orders the tomato and bread soup, an arugula arugula or rocket Yellowish-flowered European herbaceous plant (Eruca vesicaria sativa), of the mustard family, cultivated for its foliage, which is used especially in salads. salad and a glass of the day's red wine. ``I hung out here,'' she says, ``but I was never part of the Newbury Street scene. That's not my life.'' And besides, she adds, during her Boston years she was teaching writing at Tufts and Emerson - and writing. But no less an observer of the scene than 29 Newbury owner Debbie Lewis vouches for Shute's accuracy at capturing that scene when she comes over to have the author autograph two copies of ``Sex Crimes.'' ``The references are so perfect,'' Lewis says. ``You've got the scene just right: changing hair colors, leaving town.'' And the darker side of the scene, as well, Lewis says - the sex-anxious professional women and their drinking. ``I could see how this could happen,'' says Lewis of the violence of ``Sex Crimes.'' ``Why did I write it?'' Shute has asked, laughing as she rephrases an interviewer's ``why did a nice girl like you ...'' question. She explains that the subject of obsession - sexual in ``Sex Crimes'' and physical in her first novel, ``Life Size,'' which dealt with anorexia - fascinates her. And why so? ``You'd have to ask my shrink,'' she says, ``who doesn't exist.'' Shute says she sees the obsession of ``Sex Crimes'' and its shocking outcome ``as a more extreme version of what we all are capable of.'' She wanted to take the characters - Christine Chandler, the 30-something attorney, and Scott DeSalvo, Chandler's lover and victim with the deliberately chosen Boston Strangler Boston Strangler American serial killer who murdered at least 11 and as many as 13 women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. The killer's first victim, a 55-year-old woman, was sexually assaulted and strangled in her apartment on June 14, 1962. name - ``to the brink of the precipice that I've only looked at.'' She explains that she chose to have Chandler assault and maim maim v. to inflict a serious bodily injury, including mutilation or any harm which limits the victim's ability to function physically. Originally, in English Common Law it meant to cut off or permanently cripple a bodily member like an arm, leg, hand, or foot. DeSalvo with her bare hands because ``I wanted her to be unarmed, I wanted a situation where the options were limited to what's possible.'' She discusses the mechanics of the assault - which she asks be left for readers to discover - and then laughs. ``Thank heavens I didn't have an experience to parallel this, but everyone has an experience with a lover that makes you go out of control and act in ways you didn't think you could.'' Shute has been linked with other young women novelists whose work has taken them into the darker reaches of women's behavior - into ``femporn,'' as some critics have called it. Shute's publicist pub·li·cist n. One who publicizes, especially a press or publicity agent. publicist Noun a person, such as a press agent or journalist, who publicizes something publicist at Doubleday described ``Sex Crimes'' as ``more accessible'' than Susanna Moore's ``In the Cut'' and less graphic than A.M. Holmes' ``The End of Alice.'' Shute is a bit dismayed by the comparisons - ``I'm glad I didn't see that letter,'' she says. And she doesn't think ``there's a new genre, and I don't think we are influenced by each other.'' ``If there's a similarity,'' she says, ``it is that for women in their 30s and 40s, there's a lifting of the taboo, freeing us to talk about sexual experiences in ways that are not necessarily nice or tender or nurturing.'' The ways, she adds, ``that men have had carte blanche CARTE BLANCHE. The signature of an individual or more, on a while. paper, with a sufficient space left above it to write a note or other writing. 2. In the course of business, it not unfrequently occurs that for the sake of convenience, signatures in blank are to do.'' Still, she acknowledges, ``there is a stigma, and it is still difficult for women to write about sexual experiences with the intensity and the humor humor, according to ancient theory, any of four bodily fluids that determined man's health and temperament. Hippocrates postulated that an imbalance among the humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) resulted in pain and disease, and that good health was we have when we talk about them with each other.'' As for the violence, ``Men have been writing for centuries about violent acts on the bodies of women. That doesn't mean that women should write about acts of violence on the bodies of men, but that now they are entitled to.'' Shute grew up in South Africa South Africa, Afrikaans Suid-Afrika, officially Republic of South Africa, republic (2005 est. pop. 44,344,000), 471,442 sq mi (1,221,037 sq km), S Africa. , in an English-speaking family, but was forced into exile when she was 22 as a result of what she describes as ``relatively peripheral'' political activity at the University of Cape Town “UCT” redirects here. For other uses, see UCT (disambiguation). . Coming to the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , she got a Ph.D. at UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX , then taught briefly at Smith College before coming to Boston to teach at Tufts and then Emerson. She now lives in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of and teaches at Hunter College Hunter College: see New York, City University of. . A new novel is in the very early stages - Shute says that she writes ``very slowly,'' with a first draft that gets pared down by half. CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: While she and her main character share many similarities, novelist Jenefer Shute says ``Sex Crimes'' is not autobiographical. The New York Times |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion