Barbie, Books & Why "Sentimentality" & "Commercial" Are Critical Curse Words in Literature & Movies

An Essay to Critics Who Hate Happy Endings

Growing up, I longed for a Barbie doll.

I couldn’t have one, of course, even though my grandma made Barbie clothes for girls in the area, because I grew up in rural America in the 1970s and little boys got BB guns but didn’t get dolls or Easy-Bake ovens because that would have meant I was weirder than Weird Barbie.

So, I waited until I was an adult. Gary and I began to collect Barbies when we met. I became the owner of my grandma’s (now vintage) Barbie outfits. Friends gave us dolls and clothes as their daughters grew up. We took them on vacation with us for decades — sort of like Flat Stanley — at a time when Barbie’s popularity was fading. People stared. They took photos of us taking photos of our Barbies.

Why did we collect them? Not for attention. It’s just … they made us feel good. They made us happy. They made us feel creative. They made us feel powerful. But mostly, they made us feel like kids again, as if we got a piece of our missing childhood back.

I’ve written about this experience before in one of my memoirs, and it did not get the reaction I thought. Most critics yearned for me to explore the bleakness of my childhood, how I was robbed of happiness, how that made me unhappy — and unloved — as an adult. But I am not a finger-pointer, in life or literature. I seek to understand. I seek the truth. Mostly, I seek the light.

The Oscar nominations were announced yesterday, and — as expected — the blockbuster Barbie was nominated multiple times. But NOT the two women who brought it to life.

Ryan Gosling as Ken was nominated, as he should have been. He was incredible. America Ferrara was nominated, as she should have been. Her speech toward the end of the movie made me bawl like a baby.

But not Greta Gerwig who brought this beautiful, complex spectacle to life, nor Margot Robbie, who brought complex, beautiful Barbie to life.

Perhaps the Oscar voters should watch the movie again because THIS IS WHAT IT WAS ALL ABOUT! Women, doing the job, and still being overlooked.

This, in essence, is why I write the books I do and why I bring my characters to life. The women in my life — amazing, hardworking, kind women who sacrificed everything for their families and for the world to be a better place — were too often overlooked in society and the world because they weren’t valued, or “worth” enough, and I mirror my mother, grandmothers, great aunts and friends in my fiction.

Speaking of overlooked, I also want to focus on an issue that is too often overlooked and rarely discussed in the arts: Critics hate anything commercial. If the masses like it, it’s not art.

Essentially, what most people like, critics hate.

For the most part, they deem anything too commercial — books, movies, TV shows, restaurants — as “less than” if they appeal to too many. In other words, they think most of us don’t have any damn taste.

They certainly don’t think I do.

I get this critical brushoff EVERY DAY OF MY CAREER.

Why?

First, my work is filled with emotion. There are tears. There is, God forbid, hope.

They have — GASP! — happy endings.

Typically, if a book (or movie) shows too much emotion it is considered a critical failure.

My books focus on real women. My novels are centered on their lives and issues. My novels have no sex, no affairs, no murder. They mirror your lives.

As a soul and writer, I was greatly influenced by the deeply emotional stories of my Ozarks family, from my mother's work as a hospice nurse to my grandparents' hardscrabble lives. My grandmothers’ stories — of loss, hope, grief, pain — were told around Formica dining room tables and under big dryers at the beauty parlor. I was the only man around to hear them. They changed me. Forever.

That is why my stories – a total of 17 books now, including 11 novels – are steeped in great emotion and sentimentality. As my esteemed former publisher Tom Dunne told me , "You write about bad things that happen to good people – the stuff life throws at all of us." He's right. And what do we all have in common to carry us through tough times? Love, faith, family.

I have had great success — USA Today bestsellers, #1 international bestsellers — but my books have never received a starred review from a literary critic. None of my books have ever been featured in the New York Times. All of my books — fiction and nonfiction — have been described as "sentimental” as if that were a curse word, sentimental often in italics in reviews as if it should be whispered.

Kirkus said The Charm Bracelet's "unabashed sentimentality" often felt "relentless," whereas Publisher's Weekly stated I "sobbed endlessly over emotional travails" in my first memoir. Writing is art, and art is subjective, so I welcome and respect literary criticism. In fact, I took a course in literary criticism when reviews used to different, when critics would look at the work itself not the work they wished an author had written.

I just wonder why "sentimental books" are often seen as "less than" by critics, while thousands of readers – on Goodreads, in emails and letters, and in person at book events – have thanked me for just that, saying there is not enough sentimentality in literature or life.

When – and more importantly, why – did sentimentality and emotion become a curse word in critical review and critical respect, considering some of our greatest books and movies are steeped in sentimentality?

Is saying "I love you" or a happy ending seen as a literary weakness because reviewers see it as a cop-out? Or has life made too many of us unsentimental and believe that arms-length is better than a hug? If intellectual distance and posturing is not the best way for humans to navigate life, why is it seen as a strength in the narrative that parallels our existence?

I have been part of many literary festival panels where fellow authors said they never wrote, and hated reading, characters that were largely "good" or "overly sentimental." Other panelists agreed, with many in the audience shaking their heads.

I typically ask the audience and authors if they consider themselves to be good people? They nod. I then ask if they consider their lives to be boring. Few do. “And do you think bad people get more than their fair share of attention, be it in politics, or our families, or work?” People nod. “And when bad things happen to us, don't most of you take a deep breath and trudge forward, a bit broken but with our heads high, hoping, believing, praying that tomorrow will be better?” Again, people nod.

I understand that books provide escapism, and reading about Amy and Nick Dunne in Gone Girl certainly made my heart race. But isn't it appropriate, if not vital, to write books and characters who honestly parallel our own existences?

At another literary fair, I was on a panel where the subject of ‘commercial vs. literary’ came up, as if they were — and always had been — polar opposites and could never exist together.  All of my other panelists had been reviewed by the New York Times.  They thought I was lying when I said I hadn’t and likely never would be.

The literary “intellectual elite” has deemed that in order to be ‘literary’ you must reflect not the world you see or want, but the world they see, and they believe that world is full of pain, loneliness, hopelessness, awfulness and despair.

As a result, only books that mirror that POV will get the hot fudge sundae with the cherry on top:  the NYT reviews, the Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Awards.

Those aren’t the books I like to write.

My parents and grandparents scrimped and saved for me to have a better life. They were poor, and I was raised in a family who for a very long time had little to give but the gifts to say I love you and Thank you, and to dole out hugs freely. Hokey? Perhaps. Life-changing? Yes. And when my mom cared for them at the end of their lives, they told me life came down to two options: You can either become jaded, distanced, removed, or you can move on with the belief amazing things are possible.

Am I sentimental? No. I think I’m powerful. I think I’m a realist.

Those in charge of making things happen — mothers, grandmothers, sisters, friends, Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie — are often overlooked because they make it all seem so easy.

It isn’t.

I believe that Barbie is one of the best films ever made. Laugh if you want. Everyone has his or her own opinion when it comes to art, and, yes, everyone deserves that opinion whether I like it or not.

But hear me out: Greta Gerwig took an impossible task — Hey, take Barbie and make it complicated, deep, emotional and human, with deeper insights about our society than I’ve seen a movie embody in years — and made it sing. Margot Robbie took an impossible task — Hey, take a plastic doll and make her complicated and deep, emotional and human, with deeper insights about society than I’ve seen a character embody in years — and made her sing.

Barbie is unabashedly sentimental. You cry without shame. Your heart swells. And I bet most of you left the theatre filled with hope and happiness. And THAT, my friends, is a big reason it was overlooked for some big awards. It wasn’t cold. It was as warm as “beach” and as big a Barbie’s smile. And didn’t that feel wonderful?

Life is extraordinarily hard. It is filled with grief and pain and rejection and tears and awfulness. It is also incredibly beautiful and filled with love and empathy and laughter and hope.

Sometimes the greatest art reveals all that hardship but in a beautiful, sentimental way that invites the masses to feel, heal, escape and, yes, cry and hope. Sometimes the greatest art gives us a happy ending. That’s not stupid. It’s wonderful.

I am deeply proud of the sentimental side in my books and myself. That's why I chose a pen name: To pay tribute to my grandparents.

And when I go to my grave – both real and literary, carrying my Barbies – I will go with my sentimentality intact. And that, I believe, will always be my greatest gift no matter that anyone else thinks.

XOXO,

Wade/Viola

P.S. My next Substack will be a lesson on the importance of editing!