Forever... by Judy Blume

23:05Details at Grubhub.com. Monster Energy. Everybody knows White Monster, Zero Ultra. That's the OG. It kicked off this whole zero sugar energy drink thing. But Ultra is a whole lineup now. You've got Strawberry Dreams, Blue Hawaiian, Sunrise, and Vice Guava. And they all bring the monster energy punch. So if you've been living in the white can, branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe. And every single one is zero sugar. Tap the banner to learn more. Let's talk about Bloom for a second. I was more of a Beverly Cleary kid. I sort of went from Beverly Cleary to adult books. But I definitely did some Judy Blume, and everyone really does at some point, if you're a reader of any kind.

23:52And heralding in the YA market as we know it is not the worst thing to hang on your Writer Hall of Fame plaque. And if anyone has that, it's Blume. Her own history is extremely interesting. She was raised in New Jersey. She graduated from NYU in 1961. She met her eventual husband there. She becomes a stay-at-home mom and is basically like Betty Draper with an English degree and a pen. And she starts writing to fill her days and becomes, over time, I think because she's not writing for a career or for advancement necessarily, she's writing for herself, that she writes something that no one else really would.

24:35and she's talking about things like masturbation and periods and birth control and death and it's like from from most of her many of her books were challenged right away and she just sort of got used to that and in reading interviews with her about her now like she seems like a pretty cool customer Judy Plume like it's like this sucks but I'm gonna keep going and it just kind of goes to show and I'm just gonna keep going like she doesn't seem very she seems frustrated but she doesn't seem thwarted. And I guess that must have been required of her in 1961, 1970, 1975 to write the kinds of books she was writing.

25:10If you were worried about what people thought about you too much, you weren't going to write the kind of books she did. One of the most, 100 most influential people in the world by time in 2023, and I don't know her later work well enough to know, like, what was the last or most recent book that, you know, became a phenomenon of some kind or did very well or became part of the conversation. I've long since aged out of that. And 90 million copies sold worldwide. Her 1969 debut. This is good trivia. I would have gotten this wrong. You have this in notes here. The one in the middle is the green kangaroo.

25:44What is that about? Did you look? Is that a kid's book? I have no idea.

25:47Jeff:It's a kid's book. She was doing like middle grade. She was doing picture books and middle grade before she really landed in her pocket of doing more young adult. But she's really known for Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret, which is the period book, Blubber, which is the bullying book, a young girl is bullied for being fat, Superfudge, and then all of the Fudge books, which are based loosely on her son, and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, many, many more. Then she has four adult novels that include Wifey from 1978, and Summer Sisters from 1998. I think Summer Sisters might really be the last Judy Blume books that kind of made waves.

26:24Jeff:She had a novel in 2015 based on a wild real event from her childhood where a plane crashed into a New Jersey suburb. I remember this now. And I read it in 2015 and was like, OK, this is a novel that Judy Blume wrote. But it's much it's pretty far outside of like this universe of things that she tends to write about or spent most of her career focusing on. Like she is the signal tween and YA writer for Gen X and millennial readers because YA just was not a thing. And she was the defining author of those zones of my life, for sure. Great titler. Are you there? Got it to me. Margaret Blubber, Supervudge, Tales of Fourth Grade.

27:06Nothing. Those are all really, really good titles. OK, I'm going to clear out for you here on First Exposure. You do not have to stand in for all people and all tweens and certainly not all women, except for right now, Rebecca, because I think you had probably as, I don't know, archetypal of a Judy Blume forever reading experiences you can possibly have.

27:25Jeff:Yeah, I think I read this in sixth or seventh grade. I don't remember exactly when, but I had worn out the library's copy of Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. And I heard through the tween grapevine that this one was the book about sex. And like, I wish that I had a story about like squirreling away somebody's big sister's copy of it. I know that I had friends that were hiding their copies of forever under their mattresses. But I have no memory of where I acquired it. I probably just checked it out at the library. You know, like, I am from that elder millennial, late Gen X generation of readers whose parents were like, whatever you want to read, we're just happy that you have a book in your hand.

28:03Jeff:My parents did not screen my reading at all. And I remember reading this and being like, oh my god like i'm not ready for that but it actually seems like maybe it's not as terrifying and potentially deadly as you know like evangelical churches in suburban kansas city want me to believe yeah it was it was powerful i read it a couple more times uh and notably like one of the unintentional pieces of humor in the book is that michael names his penis ralph and there are like conversations with and about Ralph in the text and jokes about do guys name their penises what would they name them like was sort of in the conversation with fellow teenage girls from this point on um I will say the loudest no comment that's ever been said by anyone ever to that I don't know if our friendship could survive any form of comment uh this was my first reading experience of forever by Judy Blume.

29:05I knew of it and what it was about, but I hadn't read it. I did read Superfudge and Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret, when I was a kid. I think I have a soft spot for Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret. I think it's such a beautiful book. Not that this one is bad, but that one I have a real fondness for. So this is my first time, so we'll get into the reading experience here in a second. Why don't you lead off? You have a great line to start. So I don't want to step on your line here.

29:33Jeff:I mean, my experience of reading it now is that it feels both timeless and very specifically like a relic of its time. Like, we don't talk about bodies in the same way that Catherine and her mom talk about bodies. There's a lot more instruction and socialization for kids today about not pressuring your partners. But I also kind of loved that Judy Blume hasn't updated this a million times to fit every social evolution over the last 50 years. Like she's really just let the book stand for itself. I know they've updated Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, so that the period products are more representative of today.

30:12Jeff:Because like there are really old fashioned ones in the original copy of the book, like where you've got to like connect a pad to a belt and it's just stuff that no one - It looks like something Sally Field would have to wear in The Flying Nun, like some really origami stuff going on there. Yeah, like it's just technology that teens don't encounter today. But the like the nuts and bolts of forever are still relevant and relatable. And then, you know, again, that Jason Reynolds quote from the documentary about how she didn't set out to create something timeless, but she did by creating something timely.

30:42Jeff:Like, it's just frank and affirming and non judgmental. And this is a radically different version of teens exploring sex than I saw depicted anywhere else, growing up in the 90s inside purity culture. And I suspect that it was a radically different version than most people have experienced. Maybe Gen Z started getting better representations, but Gen X and millennial readers, this was kind of it. Yeah, it really was. And I think, too, I'm also glad she didn't update it, even because this line between being an instrumental kind of a book that's an instruction manual versus a work of art. You know, one thing we want from art, I think, over time especially, is to preserve the structures of feeling that were in circulation at the time of the writing.

31:29Facts and figures will stick around and get captured elsewhere. But interiority and cultural politics and dynamics and stuff about class and gender, those things can get lost to the sands of time easier. easier. I think often now about when Chuck Kloster was talking about when he was writing the 90s, one thing he wanted to do was try to capture what it felt like to experience the 90s. And I think that's something that's important and can be a source of its own interest. This is not just the sex book by Judy Blume. This is about her representation of sex in a specific setting. We don't have a lot here about class and religion, but it's situated in its moment.

32:14And if you do that correctly, not correctly is the wrong word. If you do that with some nuance and you do it well, it becomes a source of interest beyond, right? Like there's things about the great Gatsby that are about like the wonderful sentences, but also about the time and the place. And those things have moved on, but they become interesting. They become part of history. And I think it's really wonderful that this is not something that we think of like the owner's manual to a car where you got to update it for the new model. the things are put together a little bit differently. It can work to be an instructional and manualful feeling without keeping up with the specifics because the specifics are changing.

32:50But I think the underlying thing really isn't in a lot of ways going to change.

32:54Jeff:Yeah, I think that's right. And that's part of what makes the depiction of their first couple of times so realistic and powerful. It's a premature ejaculation story. Michael comes very quickly the first couple of times and he's embarrassed. and Kathy's disappointed, but he acknowledges it and she doesn't add to his angst about it and they keep going forward. And the frustration is real. Like Judy Blume lets them hold all of these multitudes. Catherine says at one point, I wondered if it would ever work out right between us. And like a couple of pages later, they have figured it out and everybody's having a great time.

33:30Jeff:But also like there are these wonderful letters that they write to each other. Catherine writes to Michael and her family members and her friends from summer camp. And those are so sweet and nostalgic and also really an artifact of the time. Like I felt a little sad for kids today who have grown up with phones and perpetual contact and have missed out on the experience of like truly being away from everyone and of the opportunity to write them a letter, to tell your story, to have that kind of distance. but it's even inside those Catherine is very straightforward about what she's thinking and feeling and feeling torn about their connection and what it will mean but she's honest with herself in a way that I think sets a powerful template throughout the whole story like when they meet and nothing has happened yet but she's all horned up like ready to see him she's telling us all I could think about was later and being alone with him and she owns her desire.

34:31Jeff:She says when like the second time they kissed, like when we kissed again, Michael used his tongue. I wanted him to. And just like that really clear, simple, this happened, I wanted it to happen or I wanted this and so I let it happen or we engaged some kind of conversation about it is really sophisticated. And Bloom presents it in such a grounded way. Yeah, and there really isn't a moment and you know when we get to notable quotes the opening sentence sets it up for us, there is no real acknowledgement or, I don't know, having to contend with the large purity culture absence idea out there. There's really not a lot of pushing against you.

35:10Well, we shouldn't, or people say we shouldn't, or this is bad, or I went to church and they told me this was bad. Like if anything, their parents are trying to, and grandparents who sends a box of literature and one of the more awkward postal exchanges, as I'm sure anyone's ever had, but they are trying to facilitate and, I don't know, direct, but not prevent or forestall or ignore the reality of the situation. I think that is important too, that these are desires that are natural and if not universal, because there's all kinds of experiences, but they're very familiar. And so many people are going to have them.

35:46They're going to happen earlier than they know anything of what to do with them or what they are. that to deny them or to vilify them is only going to create pathology later. That's the only thing that's going to happen out of situations like that.

35:59Jeff:Yeah. And Judy Blume refrains from any kind of value judgment about the sex itself or what kind of sex or should they or should they not throughout the whole thing. And I think that's a template for both the teenage characters, but also their parents. That like she does have, Catherine has this grandma who's like doing work for Planned Parenthood and is clearly like a feminist in a way. And she even considers telling her grandma that she has this appointment at Planned Parenthood, but she decides not to just because she wants it to be her own special experience, a private thing. It's not out of, there's no shame anywhere in this book.

36:33Jeff:And that lets Catherine have a really complete experience of her sexuality, including her own ambivalence and her hesitation. Like she knows early in the book that like when they first started dating, she comes home from seeing Michael, She knows that he would have slept with her if she had let it happen. And she says, I'm not sure how I feel about that. And a little later on, she says, sometimes I want to so much, but other times I'm afraid. And Bloom captures, like, there is this internal push-pull about sexuality, not just when you're young, but this is a lifelong thing that we all have to consider.

37:10Jeff:And then she doesn't judge the conditions in which they have sex. Like, characters have this conversation about, what about love? Well, you don't need love to have sex, but it means more that way. And everybody gets to have their own framework for it. So Catherine thinks about being mentally ready, but her friend Erica is like, let's go. And there's another girl who we find out has had many partners and she becomes pregnant, but that's also not a life ending tragedy. it's just sort of here's a rainbow of ways that you might experience sex and let's consider them because you're going to go do it at some point and so like let's prepare for what's out there for you yeah i you know my note here is in reading it for the first time i wasn't super surprised by the content i guess the the feel of the reading experience felt more reportage like i don't know what I was expecting.

38:03Bloom is very good about representing and non-judgmental, as you say, but it does have a sort of detachment to it. Like, there's narrative third, the narrative third person is omniscient, but we don't dwell in when Catherine says, I wasn't sure I wanted to or not. Like, it just sort of stops there. Like, Bloom is saying this is what she was feeling, but we don't get, like, a bell jar quality or length of, like, internal monologues and thinking and observations. Like, we know what Catherine is thinking and feeling, but we're not really seeing from her eyes in like a grand sort of way. And I think that's interesting because I think it lets people identify with it differently.

38:39It makes it feel a little less specific, I think, to some degree. Catherine's personality and its own, I would have a hard time describing her, right? Like, what is she like? I have a better sense of what her parents like and what Erica is like and what Artie is like. But she herself, because of the point of view and sort of the limited nature of not limited, but like Bloom just doesn't dwell on her interior. We get representations of it, but this is not a portrait of a young girl named, you know, a 17 year old named Catherine having sex for the first time.

39:09Jeff:Yeah. And I think that's a really important point. And I don't know how much of it was intentional on Bloom's part, but that it's not highly specific about Catherine does make it easier for readers to project themselves into her moment, her experience, to imagine themselves in those kinds of places as well. Because even to the point of like physical description i i don't does she have brown hair was she tall like i don't even remember the specifics of stuff like that we just don't get a lot no it's it's really beside the point yeah okay rebecca time for straight thoughts there are many here um most of the most of most of our straight thoughts have to do with rebecca dealing with the passage of time in her own life which i'm always excited to see how it's going to manifest itself uh here the mom turns 40 at the end of this book and that just killed me so that means she would have had katherine she's like 22 23 something 22 yeah um i spent a lot of time reading this thinking about poor gay artie artie is we haven't talked about the b story here very much have we so far yeah he's in their friend group um erica uh katherine's best friend is trying to date artie he's the star of all the school plays.

40:20Jeff:Everybody loves being around him. And he is very clearly queer, but has not come to grips with that for himself. Like there is not a body of young adult literature about how to come out as queer. There's no Judy Blume for Artie. That was my thought. There's no Judy Blume for Artie at this point. And so like Erica is trying to help him figure out if he's queer while also hoping that he won't be because she wants to have sex with him. Notably, we do not get those encounters directly narrated. It's interesting to think about how Bloom would have handled Eric and Artie rubbing against each other in various ways to no avail.

40:54Jeff:Yeah, I just felt bad for Artie. Yeah, well, I should say, too, I mean, he attempts suicide. Like, that's a thing that happens in this book. And it is mentioned he survives and he is not, I don't know, exercised from the book. But he is very much like there's something else going on here. And Catherine has no language to deal with it at this point. And Bloom is sort of letting this be a B story. But you really could do a whole book about Artie and the challenges of being gay as a kid in the 70s. Catherine uses a lot of language about making love and Michael being her lover and them as lovers. And I know we're trying to soften language for teen readers, but not even Judy Bloom can make me come around to the making love and lovers language.

41:45Jeff:no one can do it no one can do it no one says this um also the adults in the book are really meddling oh yeah like they're just everybody's getting into these kids business trying to control them and it works they send them away for the summer to break michael katherine up and it works bloom is out here giving the wrong message to parents that's my hot take is that you get involved in your parent in your kid's life and if you send them the right summer camp you're going to break up with a person you don't like and in here i don't even think it's that they don't like them but they do not want their kids at this stage making life choices based on how they feel about someone at 16 and a half to 17 and a half that's what they really don't want and that's i'm the last person in the world that can give you this advice because i don't want too much of my own biography here but like i get that but also controlling your kids life at this point is stupid but it works i don't know i don't know how to feel about that that it worked here at this particular moment.

42:40Yeah, yeah.

42:40Jeff:It's, I mean, I kind of read it as they would have broken up at some point anyway, but their parents hastened it along. But like all the adults are so just nosy and meddling. And yet permissive too. Like, yeah, you could, they can sleep over. Like what? Like, I don't know. Like that wasn't a thing that was around by like 1994, 1995. We could like disappear for three days at a friend's house. Like even then that wasn't something that was really going on. And then for our ongoing collection of evidence that we used to be smarter, which is a thing we're doing here on Zero to Well, Red. I'm so glad you captured this.

43:14I just blew right past this.

43:15Jeff:Michael and Catherine go on a special date. He had planned a special celebration. First, we went to see Candide at the Paper Mill Playhouse. And that's the person they were trying to break her up with. The guy who took her to Candide. What are we doing here? If there are teenagers going to see Candide on their dates in the year of our Lord, 2026, or YA authors writing this into text. I need to know about it, but I do not believe it's happening. Yeah. I have a couple, then I'll go back to yours here real quick. The college application process seems awfully drama-free from contemporary eyes. Like, yeah, I applied to three colleges and maybe one more, and I got into Denver, and I guess I'm going.

43:59Whoa, whoa, whoa. Again, that might tell you about the anxiety levels of certain members of the class of which I am clearly a member there. I don't know if this is a hot take or a straight thought, but teenage boys would have done very well and would do very well to read this book.

44:18Jeff:Yes. And that's not instrumental. I don't want to sound creepy, but one of the most difficult things of anyone is to try to triangulate your desire with someone you're interested in who may be interested in you. And that's one thing we see here. They're sort of mismatched from the beginning of what they want and what they're willing to do at what particular moment, but they eventually become aligned. And that is difficult. And those conversations now have a lot to do with consent. Like that's the word that we use, but so much of it is also who's interested in what and what are you comfortable with and knowing how to think about what your partner may or may not be feeling and having language and knowing that it's going to be awkward and your counterparty feels just as if not more awkward than you.

45:02it would be a real help to a lot of people to have a better time dating and with their bodies and with their partners. I don't know. My question here, my hot take at the end was like, is there a dude version of this? I don't know what it is. You know, I don't know. The other hot take is like maybe to do the Stephanie Meyer thing, which is to write it from a different version from Michael's point of view. Same story like Stephanie Meyer did with Twilight here. And again, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with this book. It's certainly welcome and important to have it from the female character's point of view.

45:35But all of the same conditions are present for young men and or people that identify differently. But the perspective change would be interesting. And I think it would be fruitful and teach the people some things and gives them the ways to feel and think about their own experience that would be generous. And again, because I'm going to, what I'm trying to do is connect this back to your point up here about the prevalence and accessibility of pornography in our current culture. Oh, yeah. And that's where so many boys, I think, are getting the kind of instruction they would better off beginning from a book like this to be to be really put on the nose.

46:11Jeff:Totally. Yeah. So I was wondering about that as well, about how does this land for teenagers today when their expectations are shaped by having access to porn 24 seven? And I asked Kelly, our colleague, if if there's been a version of that or like, well, of course, we don't know if Judy Blume ever thought about updating it for teens that are so exposed to porn. But Kelly said, Jason Reynolds's novel 24 seconds from now that came out a few years ago, does some of this and is contemporary and has a lot of the boys perspective. So that might be a version of it. But that's maybe the it's both the like, sweetest thing about this, that they their expectations and their hopes are kind of just internally generated or from things that they've heard from their friends, like that your first time will be kind of awkward.

46:59Jeff:They don't have all these images in their heads of how this is supposed to go. But that's certainly not the situation that teenagers grow up in today. I totally agree. I think that straight teenage boys would do really well to read this book. And, and, you know, like, there's a whole class of contemporary, like sex writing around this, like one of the things that Michael and Catherine land on without Judy Blume, putting a pin on it is that like foreplay is important and there are entire books about that now for straight men who are trying to navigate sex with straight women um that like that just kind of really direct instructional validating conversation um would be especially potent in contrast to the lessons and images of porn today and instructional pieces is certainly important but I guess this will go to my next straight thought is what the narrativization and dramatization of those moments, I think does something that even a straight touch this person for this long in this sequence, and you're going to get the result that you want is different, right?

48:02Because I would just watch the most recent episode of the pit and spoiler alert for the people that haven't. And there is a sequence in that episode that walks the viewer through the process of rape evidence collections and intake in the emergency room. A woman has been sexually assaulted and she comes in and they go and they show you the process, at least in this particular hospital and jurisdiction of what that all entails. And it is extremely informative and educational, unless you have some reason to go and count for that by yourself. Like, what does that actually look like? But as important or differently important for a work of art is to suggest how those things might feel, what it might be like to experience them from multiple angles, to see them, what does it mean for that person?

48:46What does that mean for the person dealing with that situation too? So it gets outside of like educational politics and cultural politics and sort of like textbook, like here's what happens. But art can dramatize those structures of feeling that then give you some structure on which to hang your own feelings and experiences when and if those things happen or how you engage with them in your life. And they're differently and clearly different pieces of human life, but that the art is doing something similar. I thought it was pretty interesting to think about. Like there's a version of it that's like a thousand word description of, you know, of the thing, but it's meaningfully different, categorically different to do it through art and representation and feeling in human relationship too.

49:32You know, so many times in this book, and this is true of the larger bloom corpus, something that feels so loaded and scary happens. And it turns out not to be that big of a deal and scary and final. Like it's important and it matters, but it is not the life ending, you know, hell sending calamity that you might be afraid of or might be told it is from various corners of cultural life. You know, losing your virginity, even going through labor. Sybil says, that wasn't that big deal. You sort of huff and puff and they gave you some gas and the baby pops. I was like, whoa. Anyway.

50:07Jeff:Also, labor was different in the 70s. Yeah, they give you a different gas then. I don't think you're getting the gas, speaking of Betty Draper. You're not getting the gas. Yeah, and then even suicide attempts where it's present and it's certainly important, but it's not taboo, right? Like it should be included. It should be discussed. It should be mentioned. Even if Artie doesn't get the full shrift we might like in a current model, his story is there and he is not swept under the rug and his difficulty is not swept under the rug. So like they matter, but they're not harbingers of end times. survivability seems something that bloom seems intent on communicating to young people um and i think that's really important and it's super useful and validating yeah that like you will go through this it will be hard and weird and awkward and maybe scary and you you will come out on the other side of it and life will go on and that whether it's having sex or your first big breakup like it's ultimately you're going to be okay this episode is brought to you by Palmolive.

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52:37Jeff:Let's do some notable quotes because this book has an amazing first line. I say really. Just like an all-timer. It really does. It throws you for a loop if you're really coming to a cold. Rebecca, why don't you do the honors? Yeah. Sybil Davison has a genius IQ and has been laid by at least six different guys. Can we do a close reading real quick of this? I want to mention two things. I would be delighted. one thing um has a genius IQ and they go together right they are not in contrast they're not in conflict like those are two things that are not really related in any way you can be dumb and have more sex than maybe people think you can be smart like that's a coordinating conjunction there's no relativistic implication there I also love the at least six different guys like it's kind of a legend right the legend of cybil davison right like we know there's six we know but how many more could there be right there could be so many more and then of course you know cybil the two-faced cybil like you know i don't know if bloom is doing this intentionally but the two-faces are two these are two sides of cybil davison stories and they're both part of her stories but and then sort of equally valid right like she's a genius and she has had more sexual partners than were presented the narrator or at least the main character of this book would seem to be she's outside of one standard deviation Rebecca let's put it that way a really wonderful line um to start and you're like okay here we go like if you're a teenager in 1975 and that's the opening line it's like buckle up because this is going to be a book right um there's also a great moment where Catherine realizes that books can't give you all the knowledge about things.

54:18Jeff:I used to think if you read enough books, you'd automatically know how to do everything the right way. Like, turns out that some things you actually have to experience to figure them out. There's a how can you love one person and still be attracted to another like, just really basic stuff about human sexuality and relationships that Catherine is figuring out. And then she also gets the rite of passage moment where she watches her mom and dad and says he and mom started reminiscing about their college days. I didn't tell them that with Michael and me, it's different, that it's not just some 50s fad like going steady that with us, it's love, real, true, honest to God love.

54:59Jeff:Like, what teenager hasn't thought that the thing they're experiencing is so much bigger and more authentic than anything anyone but especially their parents has ever felt. No human has had the hormone level I have ever had at this particular moment. How could that possibly be? Again, I don't have a full document. It's shorter, but it's not a sentence level on the whole kind of a situation where there's a lot of close reading kind of things for me to do. Other people might feel differently, but there were a couple. One I have, like my mother said, you can't go back to holding hands, which I think is poignant because it's not saying that, you know, your life is going to be ruined and you are forever a fallen woman, but it does suggest this is a rite of passage.

55:45This is, I was reading a book about myth last week and talked about myths of threshold passing. And it is a threshold. And the world is different. And you're going to experience things that you wouldn't want to go back, maybe even if you could, but things will be different on the other side of it. And that foretelling of difference is important. And I think that's so much of what people get afraid of in any situation, which their status quo is going to change is they don't know what it's going to be like on the other side of that threshold. And one thing rites of passage do is suggest not only that it's going to be okay, but others have come before you and they've been okay.

56:20And that seems also like something Bloom is working on, giving people a model or a structure for this particular rite of passage, where here's one story of how this has happened, and they were okay on the other side. And if you look around, the world must be peopled, as one thing Shakespeare says, I think in Much Ado About Nothing. All these people around you were the product of these kinds of relationships, some better and some worse than others. But it's so common, even if it's so unspoken at the same time.

56:45Jeff:Yeah. And I mean, there's like, talk about survivability and getting that message across. Like Sybil Davison of the genius IQ and the being laid by at least six different guys gets pregnant, keeps the baby, or keeps the pregnancy, gives the baby up for adoption, and then says that she's getting an IUD because she doesn't plan to give up sex. And like that one moment is radical enough to ignite a bunch of book banners, but also really powerful in its message to teenage girls that even if the thing that you are told is the big scary boogeyman at the end of your sexuality is that you even if it happens, even if you get pregnant you can make choices about how you handle that and you do not have to then become a nun you get to retain sexual agency and desire and it's it's so blunt i was like this is radical in 2026 well people must have lost their minds well it made me think in this i had a subterranean hot take i didn't put here because i want to spring it on you are we sure we didn't want sybil davidson's story are we sure we didn't want her to be the main character what would that have been like always everywhere every everywhere everywhere everyone everywhere all at once that sybil sybil was having a good time i mean what i wonder if she even considered that um and maybe that would have been too much for sure but uh i did i'm sure we're getting the most interesting story like between arty and sybil like did we get the most boring version of the anyway that's not what bloom was trying to do here it's the most maybe common or yes yeah it's the most relatable story I think.

58:18And then also, if it's strange, when it comes right down to it, I never do fall apart, even when I'm sure I will. And who haven't felt that before? That thing you're worried about, 95 % of the time, it's not as bad as you think it's going to be. Sometimes it's as bad, but a lot of the time, so much fretting and so much anxiety actually makes the thing worse than the thing is going to be by itself. And even if it is very bad, so much so many more things are survivable in their own way than it feels like especially when you're young and you don't know anything rebecca because that's the other thing we haven't said here you don't know anything about you don't have reps you don't have like exposure therapy to life like you can get through a hard conversation you can have a bad breakup you can have a you can lose a job you can get fired you can you know these things can happen and that's not to diminish that There are situations in which people have life-altering, very damaging to the uttermost peril events.

59:13But it's also true that so many things that we worry about don't have to go that way and are even exacerbated by the worry over time. Is it for you is a really interesting question here. I'll start first. I think this is largely at this point a historical document, though as we've been talking about it, the thing it's documenting hasn't gone away. So I'm guessing there are more contemporary versions that would speak more directly to the sexual comings of age of today's teenagers, but I'm not 100 % certain of that. And I also don't know that how much quote unquote better or more useful or resonant those things are.

59:52Like, does it sort of get the job done even in this day and age? I don't know. I think maybe it does. I don't know what you think about that.

1:00:00Jeff:I think it might. Yeah, I think it might. For the basics of you've got to talk to people that you're in relationships with, that it's important to know your own mind and your own desires and to communicate those and to have conversations about them. And this sort of nonjudgmental examination of your own feelings that Catherine's just like, here's what's going on with me. I'm attracted to this other guy, too. And I feel bad, but I'm not like, but I'm not sorry that we're having these relationships. Like, I think it really does a lot of the work. Like this wouldn't be a complete sex ed class for today's teenagers, but I think it could be an important component of the conversation.

1:00:38Jeff:On the flip side, like maybe not for you if either you're offended by a frank discussion of teenagers having sex because like, boy, this does it. Or if you're upset by outmoded language related to sex and dating, because this manages to do both of those things. It's very frank, but some of the way that Bloom engages with it is very much a product of 1975, and it's not the way that we would talk about bodies or that we would be hoping to train young people to engage with it. And I think Bloom would be sensitive to, as a historical document, reading it for context and situation, you want to look at what's not said in the book as well.

1:01:17You know, the class, the race, the gender orientation, like Catherine's ability to get to New York and like have that moment at Planned Parenthood. For example, she speaks English. She knows it exists. Right. She can get there. Like there are things this is not a universal document. It's a historical one. And maybe all it's good of us to remember that all documents are historical. Even something was written yesterday is situated in a time and place that cannot be nor should be try to encompass everyone's experience all the time. But, you know, that's something to keep in mind, especially for this when you're looking at, okay, this is a story of sexual coming of age.

1:01:53It is not all sexual coming of age is for all people in all places and all times. Right. It cannot be. But I think if you acknowledge that, you can see what structures and what pathways are useful and important for a particular reader, a particular person. Immortal questions that aren't asked. I haven't looked at this at all because I thought it would be cool to do cold. The categories we have are what is the good life? What do I owe my neighbor? How do I know what I know? Is this all there is? How to deal with the certainty of death? What else might there be? What's the deal with good and evil, free will, real or not?

1:02:27Really slips through the cracks here a little bit. I do think there is a what is the good life question here. I agree. I think that's probably the easiest one. What do you think, Rebecca?

1:02:38Jeff:Yeah, I think that's the one here. As Catherine is figuring out what she wants and how to negotiate for her own desires in the context of a relationship with someone else, and then ending the potential end of that relationship because she wants something else. It is very much a young person starting to put the pieces together of what she thinks a good life is. And that that good life is going to involve other people and that that's complicated and difficult and exciting and fun and all of those things. But how to navigate it? Maybe not so much on really any of the other big immortal questions.

1:03:16Another one I had to try it out for you maybe real quick is how do I know what I know? Because like the gap between theoretical or educated or even whispered peer to peer knowledge about sexuality versus a lived experience of sexuality. again maybe I've got this threshold metaphor but she has a different understanding of herself and sex on the other side of this relationship than before it and I do think there's something to the the limits of a book learning uh here um and and and she figures that out yeah and that can be useful and it's all you've got until you've got I guess the the the other side of that cord would be body knowledge here right sort of sort of lived corporeal experience of sexuality but like you know some things because it's whispered and told and educated but then you know some things because you know it firsthand and how those things combined um matters here and i think it matters for a lot of people's lives in so many different kinds of ways i think that's a good point we can allow that all right thank you very much are we sure this is about art and writing this is the easiest one so far it's not rebecca this is not about writing this one is not about art and writing though there's plays and letters and indeed but it's not about art and writing um could you get most of the gist from watching the Signal adaptation.

1:04:26Talk to me about the recent Netflix series adaptation.

1:04:29Jeff:Yeah. So there's not a 70s or 80s adaptation, like from the time in which the book was made. If there had been, I think you probably could get the gist. Like, there was a movie from 2023 of Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret. And it does really capture the feeling and spirit of the book. But there's a 2025 Netflix series that's set in contemporary, like it's set in 2018 on up. It's set in LA, though, it's about two young black teenagers. And by virtue of being in a different place about people who are having a different racial experience and in a different time with technology, it is true to the spirit of the book, but not to the letter of the book.

1:05:09Jeff:It drops some of the most important conversations that Catherine and Michael have in the book. But the girl Keisha in the show is coming out of a relationship where a boy has distributed a video of her that they took in private and that has made its way out and she's changed schools and meet she meets the justin the boy after that happened to her and he doesn't know about the video at first so they're they're negotiating sexuality in contemporary culture um i watched it over the weekend the the like eight episode series i had a cold and i was yeah it's eight episodes i was looking for something to marathon No, no, no.

1:05:48I'm just saying that's a weird choice to make for this book. That's a lot of episodes for this book.

1:05:53Jeff:Well, it's an eight episode season that follows them through their senior year and they're getting ready to leave for college. And then it's Netflix. So they have picked it up for a second season. but it's gorgeous like it looks like netflix spent some money on it it was well acted i think it's great as a piece of tv but it's it's just more a great thing that happens to have been inspired by a judy bloom book than it is like an actual representation of the judy yeah um then also if you had to make another adaptation movie musical tv series or muppets muppets is uh also it's always the wild card in this situation you have the point here that needs to say in book form because of interiority.

1:06:30I agree that how Catherine is feeling and what she isn't saying while she's going through her life and these experiences so much of the time is the meat of this particular story. I will say though that musicals can be great because the songs are great. You know, the one song clearly like can go along both for Michael and Catherine's version and they're good for expressions of melodramatic, melodramatic yearny, interiority. I do think though that it matters that we get relatively specific play-by-play of their sexual encounters and i don't think you can do that on a stage just because people like it just doesn't i was waiting for that i don't i don't know how you actually represent those things because it matters who's touching what what happens and right comes at what point and where they are i just don't

1:07:17Jeff:know how you do that that's not yeah i was waiting for that watching the show of like like you see them kind of go off on the day that they're going to have sex together for the first time in the tv series and i was waiting for like oh are they going to do the moment like is is he going to come too quickly are they going to have to talk about it and they did they elided that wow so yeah and it's i think that's easier to put on the page than to really depict but also how powerful would that be for teenagers to be able to see this is like a pretty normal common experience and sexuality between straight people and for them to be able to see it and watch young people actually have a conversation about it could be really important um so it's a little i was disappointed that some of those big conversations from the book did not make their way into the series even though the series does some other important kinds of conversations i mean yeah Yeah, that is a tough elision because for many young men, that is a signal concern of early sexual encounters is that particular thing.

1:08:26Jeff:And also for then the young girls, the women that they're having sex with, like, how do you respond? How do you handle that? What creates like we're trying to create an environment here where everybody feels safe and supported and where we can explore this together. So what does that look like? And the great gift that Judy Blume gives is actually showing one version of what that looks like. What they said, the contrast between what she thought and what she said. Like, she tells him that she's not disappointed, but she tells us that she was and that she didn't really feel anything. and even navigating.

1:09:02Jeff:What of your experience do you share with this partner? What do you keep private because you don't want to hurt them or it's not necessary as you're moving forward? It's really delicate stuff. And I think books do that better than almost anything. Interesting. All right. Trivia, adaptation, rumors, misrepresentation, quotes, etc. Oh, you know what? I didn't see you had this here, but I had the thing about the daughter asking her to write something about which young people had sex. I love this. I do love that too. I haven't watched the 2023 documentary. I thought I might do with my kids at some point.

1:09:30We just haven't got around to it called Judy Blume Forever about her life and legacy. Notable, I was reading an interview with her yesterday. She sat for a lot of interviews, but she didn't have final cut or anything about this. In this day and age where so many artists do like, here's my vanity project. I actually kind of find it important to know if the subject has final cut or not in a document like this.

1:09:51Jeff:Yeah, it doesn't feel like a Judy Blume propaganda piece. It feels like a celebration from the filmmakers. one of her daughter randy became a therapist whose subspecialty is helping writers finish their work which is amazing kind of amazing as judy bloom's kid um and she owns a bookstore in key west where she still works three days a week you get some footage of it in the documentary and you have in the notes here apparently women come to see her and it's a moment for them and that is captured in the documentary i hope so i really am glad to hear that i was telling bob yesterday that like i like i mean you know this about me i don't have like a big fandom gene but i do think that i might become quite emotional meeting judy blue yeah i i get how that's a thing for people uh hot takes rebecca uh i think i mean this could have had more staying power if bloom had updated it with modern technology but the technology and the conversations around teenage sexuality shift so often that i don't think she needs to also judy bloom's doing just fine like she doesn't just let someone else do it yeah let someone else try to take their hand at um this particular passage i talked about sybil davison and her pregnancy and giving up the baby for adoption and then getting an iud because she has no intention of giving up sex but that's a totally valid decision and it's bold to say it now in 2026 but especially in 1975 like just really great stuff there um i liked your note here about imagining if judy bloom had pulled a stephanie meyer and told the story from michael's perspective too yeah i don't i don't want to pull a um but what about the boys but i i do think a similar story from michael's point of view would have educated a different kind of reader in things that useful to be educated from like stranger things erica is the real mvp it's not the same erica but that was the erica i was uh you know that's the most recent erica that who is a spark plug who's ready to do some things and uh is attracted to someone who just not the right vessel for her desire and interest um and she's just a spark plug i i don't i can't imagine what the character was like in that adaptation but a real chance for a side character to shine in an adaptation but every she every time she comes and she serves as both a hype woman and sort of emotional antagonist for catherine and sort of broadening her along to own her own desire.

1:12:20Jeff:Yeah, there's not really a correlated character in the adaptation. It's mostly just Keisha and Justin together. What are we doing? Okay, well, I'm glad people are enjoying that, but now I'm having the least fun book reader's experience. Like, that sounds terrible as an adaptation. My last one for you here, this was also a subterranean hot take, is what if Romeo and Juliet had had forever to read? I don't think they're committing mutual suicide. hopefully not she does judy bloom seems to be writing directly into that space where teenagers are melodramatic and think that the relationship that they're currently in when they're 15 is going to be the one that they're in forever and that they'll die if the breakup ever happens yeah judy bloom could have saved romeo and juliet but also ruined shakes that's right yeah uh it's exactly the kind of book that Romeo and Juliet didn't have to read.

1:13:14Actually, you know who should have used it? The calculus. Because if we get Juliet a summer job on the Amalfi coast, she's going to forget all about this Romeo fella.

1:13:23Jeff:Yeah, don't pressure them into getting married young. Just make them teach tennis to 12-year-olds. Also, I have another quick, this is more of a straight thought, but her younger sister, Jamie, breaks out the F-word. We're trying to be, you know, keep the label here. I laughed loudly when he did that bad words but uh that is not a bad word i thought that was really funny that is the most popular goodreads quote from oh we didn't do that the most popular good that makes a ton of sense to me i went and looked yeah uh for the reading uh recommendations okay 24 seconds from now by jason reynolds uh is a contemporary story inspired by this uh our colleague Kelly interviewed him for our YA podcast a few years ago.

1:14:10Jeff:We'll have a link to that in the show notes. And he cites Forever as one of his inspirations for it, but deals with young people in a sexual relationship, how are they navigating the relationship and being teenagers and their parents and all of it, like his mom finds her bra in his room, and they've got to deal with stuff. I also do think the Judy Blume Forever documentary is a good place to go. and the corpus of Judy Blume like if you liked if you read forever or you have read it and you like that frankness she does that in each of her books just about a different thing and it's refreshing and fun even though it's dated Cocktail Party Cripsy three to five takeaways we have just one here and I think this is it this is your line so again I'm not going to step on your line it's a groundbreaking and pretty timeless book about first love and sex and all that comes with it our final beat is our zero to well-read score.

1:15:03Each one gets a score from one to 10 with 10 being the highest. Our five categories are historical importance, readability, current relevance of central questions, book nerd, read credit, Oh damn factor. Historical importance is probably its highest scoring category here. I mean,

1:15:18Jeff:I think so. Nine or 10 here somewhere. Nine. I would give it a nine, probably a 10 at the time. Actually, if you basically invent the category of young adult fiction, you probably have to be yeah but it wasn't this book that's judy bloom like this particular we'll do nine and a half okay uh very readable i guess also a nine yeah what would make it less i mean it's i guess if the actual reading experience was i don't know more page turnery a lot of plot you know wonderful sentences kind of stuff not that's bad but that's not that's it's a ya book so it's trying to do different things than what it's not high 47 year old is looking for in a lot of reading experience current relevance of central questions i mean there's a way this is a 10 and there's a way it's a three i think it's a 10 though yeah i think it's a 10 yeah it's the questions not the answers right the question the answers might be given differently now but the questions are a 10 book nerd read cred um why don't you try to you you bloom is more in your i don't know you have the early reading experience i don't know which one of us is a better take on how to evaluate this one this is in the pantheon of well it really depends on how old you are i think so many of these if you did it by yourself on your own later you're like wow that was a real you did a real right a real reading work there yeah if you're like in your anywhere from your i don't know mid to late 30s on um book nerd read cred is more likely to be just kind of built in Like if you didn't read forever, you probably had some Judy Blume exposure or somebody.

1:16:59Jeff:Judy Blume was in the water, even if you weren't reading her. But if you're really like Gen Z or on down, I think you have to seek out Judy Blume. So you do. I should talk to the public school librarians. I know a couple like, is this a book that still gets circulated in those libraries? Do people pick it up or do you recommend it? Well, are they like, where's Judy Blume on the shelf in your house with teenagers?

1:17:25you know there's so much more middle grade in ya that she doesn't have the primacy in there

1:17:32Jeff:there's like new stuff coming out for them yeah yeah okay so i think i'm gonna give it five six like a five or a five and a half somewhere in there yeah i mean the oh damn factor i guess i'll speak this is maybe maybe this is one where my first time experience is is interesting um the scenes of them trying to figure out what they want to do with each other's bodies still are fascinating and surprising like you feel like there's something going on there that is not worn out that is not overly familiar that's not completely out of fashion um it still feels like there's something going on in those moments that's important for the writing and the reading.

1:18:18So seven, seven and a half.

1:18:20Jeff:Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. All right, Rebecca. That brings us to the end of our discussion of forever by Judith Bloom. Stick around if you would like to sign up for our patron to hear us talk to Kelly Jensen, who is our resident YA expert and expert nationally in book bannings and censorship conversations. Looking forward to that conversation. You go to patreon.com slash zero to well read for those detailed show notes, the free newsletter and other membership options. follow us on the social media Zero to Well Read podcast and then email us at Zero to Well Read at bookriot.com thanks to Thrift Books for sponsoring this season of Zero to Well Read and as always Zero to Well Read is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network Rebecca we'll see you out there

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