Candace Bushnell Week: Eleven Years After "Sex"

Remember how it was just Memorial Day? Yeah, that happened! And I failed to blog about it, and now it is over. Short answer, I'm still reading the Review Book of Giantness, although I see the light at the end of that 900-page tunnel. But we will move forever forward into Candace Bushnell Week.

Last year the New York Observer, a weekly arts and culture paper here in NYC, began re-running Candace Bushnell's original pieces from when she was their sex and love columnist. Nowadays we know the television show that sprung from them, "Sex and the City," but I was struck by the very different tone the columns have as collected in the book, SEX AND THE CITY.

This book bears very clearly the marks of having come from a newspaper column, one that was driven by topics which change from week to week. There really isn't a linear story except with Carrie and Big, for which Bushnell provides a definite beginning, middle and end. The episodes are anthropological rather than narrative, dealing with "issues" in the New York dating scene like vacations for couples (they never work), threesomes (apparently many men want them?) and Bicycle Boys (a particular species of immature male). Some of them I found curiously applicable, others not so much, but I enjoyed the collection all in all.

Some stray observations:

• In the show, we follow the adventures (primarily) of four characters. The book has many more characters, some of whom share the names of their fictional counterparts, but there is also the unnamed narrator who herself goes on bad dates, makes mistakes and has adventures. I guess this character is closest to Carrie, because she's a sex columnist just like Bushnell was.

• If possible, there's even less emotion tied to the sex in this book than in the show. Most married couples are broken off in a one-sentence aside right after their mentions; a trip to Westchester County to a baby shower, where four New York City singles are surrounded by happily married women and their children, is colored by a little longing and a whole lot of disdain. But most of them don't seem that eager to settle down, not even the character named Charlotte (who, in the TV version, is the most conservative, marriage-seeking one of the four friends).
  

• These women do not date using the personals. They don't bother going on Match.com (if indeed it even existed back then, it must've been pretty embryonic). This world is pretty foreign to me; I know more than one couple whose relationship began via Craigslist. It seems almost quaint to go back to blind dates.

• Another thing foreign to me: I am normally not bothered by this, but holy cow were there a lot of drugs in this book. I had expected to find that HBO had toned down the sex in this book for the show; I had not expected that in nearly every chapter someone is snorting or smoking something. I do neither and far be it from me to keep people from indulging in their illegal vices -- my favorite one is drinking coffee on the subway, did you know you can get a ticket for that? -- but there would have been even more outrage at the creators of "Sex and the City" had they kept all that in. (Though there was that one episode where all of the girls get high, it's tinged in a kind of sweet nostalgia -- Oh, they're just having fun, smoking a little pot, no one being harmed.) Maybe I'm just sheltered because I don't normally see people doing coke when I'm out, but... wow. Just wow. Feel free to tell me how naive I am anonymously in the comments.

Tomorrow, la bella novella and 2001's 4 BLONDES. Thursday we'll follow one of those blondes in her adventures in 2003's TRADING UP, and Friday we will fight through the LIPSTICK JUNGLE. Plus, a special Saturday Filmbook of "Sex and the City: The Movie." Goodness, is it pink in here, or is it just me?