{"id":9189,"date":"2009-11-28T00:38:22","date_gmt":"2009-11-28T07:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9189"},"modified":"2009-11-28T00:38:22","modified_gmt":"2009-11-28T07:38:22","slug":"book-review-house-of-cards-by-david-ellis-dickerson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9189","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: House of Cards by David Ellis Dickerson"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Hallmark lured David Ellis Dickerson<\/a> to a Kansas City interview, they offered him a potential starting salary of $27,000. After interviewing him in person, they upped their offer to $32,000. \u201cTo this day,\u201d writes Dickerson, \u201cI am convinced that in person, I am $5,000 more charming than I am on paper.\u201d (p 49)<\/p>\n

I suspect this motivates the choice to promote Dickerson\u2019s new book, House of Cards: Love, Faith, and Other Social Expressions<\/a> (Riverhead Books, 2009), with a series of videos called Greeting Card Emergency<\/a>. Dickerson\u2019s audience provides him with a decidedly un-Hallmark-like greeting card scenario, such as breaking a friend\u2019s toilet<\/a> or letting your snake eat someone else\u2019s hamster<\/a>. Dickerson then documents the process of creating a suitable card.<\/p>\n

This promotion seems to be working. I\u2019ve seen Greeting Card Emergencies reposted on a number of well-trafficked blogs and the videos inspired me to purchase Dickerson\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

House of Cards is a memoir of Dickerson\u2019s experience with the Hallmark card company, documenting the period of time between when Dickerson first hears about nearby Hallmark interviews through the time when he decides to leave Hallmark for the presumably greener, warmer, and more licentious pastures of a Ph.D. program in Florida. Along the way, the book also documents Dickerson\u2019s journey from fundamentalism to atheism.<\/p>\n

There are three major reasons to recommend this book:<\/p>\n

1) David Ellis Dickerson may be more charming in person, but he\u2019s charming on paper, too. The memoir\u2019s light, easy writing style makes for a fast and fun read.<\/p>\n

2) The memoir provides an intriguing (if not wholly satisfying) case study about how a fundamentalist upbringing affects a twenty-something who has lost his faith. At the beginning of the memoir, twenty-seven-year-old Dickerson has already converted to Catholicism, become liberal, and started supporting feminism and gay rights. However, he still feels that he and his fianc\u00e9e must avoid sex until marriage, a conviction that shifts during the course of the book until, after the pair break up, twenty-eight-year-old Dickerson is left trying to lose his virginity approximately a decade after most of his peers.<\/p>\n

3)It\u2019s a great deal of fun to read about Dickerson\u2019s work process and word play. The memoir is peppered with his silly poetry, including a love poem about free popcorn:<\/p>\n

The popcorn that thou givest unto me
\nBringeth emotions I can scarcely utter.
\nFor thou art like this popcorn that I see:
\nLively and fresh, though thou contain\u2019st less butter.
\nAnd in the carbonated beverage, too,
\nWhich, like the popcorn, thou bestow\u2019st for free,
\nThough it consist of Brown Dye Number Two,
\nIn it, I see thy hair, and think on thee.
\nMy Pepsi tab would founder many banks.
\nI can\u2019t repay you; please accept my thanks.<\/p>\n

(p 18)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In chapter nine (How to Write a Card), Dickerson details the process of taking a Hallmark card category, brainstorming ideas for it, and proposing a suitable card (which editors subsequently reject or accept). He explains common card types, including cards that come with attachments like paper clips and golf tees, and cards that include pop-ups. This witty, informational sequence gives what the reader has been craving throughout the book.<\/p>\n

The memoir suffers some flaws. The first three chapters read like an unnecessarily long build-up: It\u2019s unclear why the book begins before Dickerson even interviews with Hallmark instead of with his Kansas City interview or his first day as a new-hire. The book is called House of Cards; we\u2019re here to read about Hallmark.<\/p>\n

Even at Hallmark, the text lacks focus. It gives too little information about work process and too much about petty work woes. It\u2019s not that the latter can\u2019t be interesting grist for a memoir, but here they\u2019re often rendered in long narrative sequences that could be summed up faster. Work events begin to feel repetitive. Worse, they take up space that might have been devoted to Dickerson\u2019s evolving spirituality. After all, there\u2019s more to the journey away from fundamentalism than sex.<\/p>\n

From a feminist perspective, the text is mixed. There\u2019s a lovely rant on page 135 defending female humorists, but in the same chapter Dickerson theorizes that women leave Hallmark\u2019s humor department because they can\u2019t handle the boss\u2019s relative masculinity. It\u2019s possible that Dickerson has evidence for this theory which didn\u2019t make it into the text; however, given the available information, Dickerson comes across as condescending. Perhaps women leave because being the only female in that work environment is intolerable. Perhaps they leave because the boss acts sexist in ways that aren\u2019t apparent when there are only male coworkers. Perhaps Dickerson should just ask the women involved?<\/p>\n

Other scenes are similarly fraught. For instance, Dickerson\u2019s fianc\u00e9e is depicted as sex-averse, but this is never satisfactorily explored. From the details in the text, the fianc\u00e9e appears to be suffering from some sort of sexual trauma*, but the narrative ignores that in order to focus on how angry Dickerson feels when she refuses to fulfill his romantic fantasies, such as a shared bath by candlelight. Perhaps Dickerson decided not to explore his fianc\u00e9e\u2019s perspective in more depth because he didn\u2019t want to violate her privacy. This is a respectable reason, but the text still feels incomplete.<\/p>\n

Of the many scenes discussing Dickerson\u2019s sexuality, the most compelling is a flashback to his early twenties when he was still convinced masturbation was sinful. He discovered that voyeurism gave him an excuse to see women\u2019s bodies \u201cby accident\u201d and thus without guilt. For this feminist reader, at least, the scene was extremely powerful because one identifies with Dickerson\u2019s need to navigate his sexuality within his repressive culture. At the same time, one recognizes that this is an example of how otherwise reasonable, pro-feminist men contribute to the rape culture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite its flaws, House of Cards is an entertaining, engaging read full of whimsical word play. Dickerson\u2019s memoir may not meet every possible literary expectation \u2013 what does? \u2013 but it\u2019s fun to listen to the man talk, even on paper.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

*I might have read her as asexual except for a scene in which she reacted defensively to Dickerson\u2019s attempts to touch her shoulders while she washed dishes. This read to me as a post-traumatic reaction; others\u2019 interpretations may differ. In any case, the absence of any attempt on the part of the text to understand her sex-averse behavior \u2013 whatever its cause \u2013 was a noticeable lack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Hallmark lured David Ellis Dickerson to a Kansas City interview, they offered him a potential starting salary of $27,000. After interviewing him in person, they upped their offer to $32,000. \u201cTo this day,\u201d writes Dickerson, \u201cI am convinced that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}