When I wrote yesterday's post, I linked it on my Twitter account so my friends could read it. Over 500 hits later, I'm humbled and stunned that it has traveled so far. Thank-you, everyone, so many of you, for your kind linking and for your support.
On Twitter, yesterday, I said that if I can help just one woman call "bullshit," then I'll have done something good in the world. Or maybe get someone to think, "Wow, this isn't my fault." Because it's not your fault, and you're not asking for it, and you have a right not to be treated this way. Please remember that.
If you've subscribed to this blog*, but haven't read anything else, I want you to know this is generally a humble book blog, and the talk will go back to that soon. You should also know I'm a feminist, and I'm not afraid of that word, or the politics that go along with it. If none of this is your bag, jump ship now. If you're interested, I'm very happy to have you along for the ride.
I do wish I had written a better, more coherent post, but it was the sort of thing that you write up in five minutes, and hit send before you can talk yourself out of it. Truthfully, I might have deleted had it not been linked within the first couple moments of its life. I'm glad I didn't delete. I'm glad you read. I hope, one day, more will write their own stories. I hope we can blow the lid off this thing, because I know; it's not just me either.
*Thank you, too, anonymous commenter. I've set up a button for that purpose. I never thought to do such a thing!
What It Feels Like For A Girl
Ever since the news about CEO of Penguin Canada, David Davidar's, departure came out, I've been thinking about making this post. About how much I could say, and whom it would implicate, and what would happen. In the end, I need to write this post, because it turns out a lot of women are silenced in publishing, by the small nature of the industry, and by the fact that most of the execs are men. I'm not in the industry any more, and I'm not going to name names. I am going to write about it.
I worked in a very small office, with a male boss. When I interviewed with my female soon-to-be-supervisor, we talked job experience, qualifications. When I had my second interview with the Boss, we talked about what music I liked and what I did on the weekends. This set up the "good cop/bad cop" dynamic I would work under for three years. She was mean, he would soothe our wounds. He was our buddy, she was the task-master.
I worked in an office of all women, save for the two six-month terms the two males lasted. Other than Supervisor, we were all under 30 when we were hired, and for most of us it was our first real job in publishing, after school and internships.
The atmosphere at the office was very casual. We were encouraged to view each other more as friends than co-workers. We laughed, we talked, we all went out drinking together. As friends, we were expected to talk about our relationships. So many many meetings disintegrated into conversations about whom we were dating. Those conversations often led to discussions of our sex lives, sometimes in graphic detail; the exact sort of conversations you'd have with your friends. We were young, we were among "friends," and we thought nothing of it. I'd often joke about "Boss's harem," though I was more right than I thought I was.
I have anecdotes, and hearsay about what my co-workers have gone through, with that Boss. I won't relate them here, because those are their stories to tell. I will tell you that on several occasions, outside of work hours, I was propositioned by the Boss. Once, at a club after a work dinner, all of us drinking till last call, he leaned in and said "You are a very sexy woman." I laughed it off. Like I laughed off the time we split a cab home from a publishing party and he said "Hey! Let's fuck!" I babied him, stuck in my own stupid Stockholm syndrome. "Now you know that wouldn't be a very good idea. You're drunk, and high, and I know you're not in your right mind." I got out of the cab at the end of my street, and let him go home alone. He apologized the next day, laughing about it. I told him not to worry, I wasn't "going to sue or anything." It was all just a big joke.
I flirted back, when he'd flirt, and I'm ashamed. But I blame him. I blame the way he manipulated us into thinking it was all part of the job, the "culture" of the office. We were often told to "entertain" people at our parties, like we were geisha. Dress sexy, be the first ones on the dance floor, get drinks. Looking back, I feel like we were supposed to represent not the brains and talent of our office, but the tits and ass. Lucky for him, we were a smart, hard-working bunch of people, and we managed to make that place work. That made him look good too. You know, I'm still not sure really what he does, other than take buyers to lunch. His tales of business trips always involved a lot of drinking, eating, and weed-smoking. At Book Expo, he'd point out all the women he'd slept with.
Some of my old co-workers still defend him. I can't begin to imagine why. Maybe if my termination from that place -- and let me make it clear I assuredly was not let go for my failure to sleep with the Boss* -- hadn't happened, I'd still give him a lot of leeway too. Maybe I'd still think he was a nice, but screwed-up guy. Right now, writing this post, I feel like my termination was a gift, so I could have the clarity to look back and say "No. You were wrong. This was wrong." I have been at my current job almost two full years, and no one's asked me if I like it up the ass yet. I'm pretty damn okay with that.
Edit: I had anonymous commenting turned off, due to spam. I've turned it back on, for the time being, in case you want to comment, but don't feel comfortable doing so under an online identity. I went through and removed all pictures of myself from this blog after publishing this post, so trust me, I get it.
*Shit, maybe it was.
I worked in a very small office, with a male boss. When I interviewed with my female soon-to-be-supervisor, we talked job experience, qualifications. When I had my second interview with the Boss, we talked about what music I liked and what I did on the weekends. This set up the "good cop/bad cop" dynamic I would work under for three years. She was mean, he would soothe our wounds. He was our buddy, she was the task-master.
I worked in an office of all women, save for the two six-month terms the two males lasted. Other than Supervisor, we were all under 30 when we were hired, and for most of us it was our first real job in publishing, after school and internships.
The atmosphere at the office was very casual. We were encouraged to view each other more as friends than co-workers. We laughed, we talked, we all went out drinking together. As friends, we were expected to talk about our relationships. So many many meetings disintegrated into conversations about whom we were dating. Those conversations often led to discussions of our sex lives, sometimes in graphic detail; the exact sort of conversations you'd have with your friends. We were young, we were among "friends," and we thought nothing of it. I'd often joke about "Boss's harem," though I was more right than I thought I was.
I have anecdotes, and hearsay about what my co-workers have gone through, with that Boss. I won't relate them here, because those are their stories to tell. I will tell you that on several occasions, outside of work hours, I was propositioned by the Boss. Once, at a club after a work dinner, all of us drinking till last call, he leaned in and said "You are a very sexy woman." I laughed it off. Like I laughed off the time we split a cab home from a publishing party and he said "Hey! Let's fuck!" I babied him, stuck in my own stupid Stockholm syndrome. "Now you know that wouldn't be a very good idea. You're drunk, and high, and I know you're not in your right mind." I got out of the cab at the end of my street, and let him go home alone. He apologized the next day, laughing about it. I told him not to worry, I wasn't "going to sue or anything." It was all just a big joke.
I flirted back, when he'd flirt, and I'm ashamed. But I blame him. I blame the way he manipulated us into thinking it was all part of the job, the "culture" of the office. We were often told to "entertain" people at our parties, like we were geisha. Dress sexy, be the first ones on the dance floor, get drinks. Looking back, I feel like we were supposed to represent not the brains and talent of our office, but the tits and ass. Lucky for him, we were a smart, hard-working bunch of people, and we managed to make that place work. That made him look good too. You know, I'm still not sure really what he does, other than take buyers to lunch. His tales of business trips always involved a lot of drinking, eating, and weed-smoking. At Book Expo, he'd point out all the women he'd slept with.
Some of my old co-workers still defend him. I can't begin to imagine why. Maybe if my termination from that place -- and let me make it clear I assuredly was not let go for my failure to sleep with the Boss* -- hadn't happened, I'd still give him a lot of leeway too. Maybe I'd still think he was a nice, but screwed-up guy. Right now, writing this post, I feel like my termination was a gift, so I could have the clarity to look back and say "No. You were wrong. This was wrong." I have been at my current job almost two full years, and no one's asked me if I like it up the ass yet. I'm pretty damn okay with that.
Edit: I had anonymous commenting turned off, due to spam. I've turned it back on, for the time being, in case you want to comment, but don't feel comfortable doing so under an online identity. I went through and removed all pictures of myself from this blog after publishing this post, so trust me, I get it.
*Shit, maybe it was.
Starting Over Easy, Gently Please
Last night a friend said to me "every act of writing is an act of starting over." This, after I told him I couldn't possibly write here any more. So I'm trying again. I miss the process of thinking more about the time I've spent with a book, rather than just consuming it.* All I can do is try. So here we go again, and be gentle please, I'm rather out of practice.
I still read the New York Times Book Review now and then, because I'm poncy like that. I try to pay particular attention to fiction reviews of authors I've never heard of, because at this point in my reading career, I prefer variety and new voices, to reading the complete works of one author, or re-reading an old favourite. This (not altogether positive) review of Bloodroot caught my eye, and into the library queue it went.
I have a proclivity for multi-generational sagas, and Bloodroot delivers, in the typical non-linear fashion of such things. The novel centres around Myra, the granddaughter of the first narrator, and the mother of subsequent speakers. The family is somehow "cursed," though their lives are no less difficult and tragic than others around them. The curse the family seems to hold onto, to explain their circumstances, could be equally applied to any of the neighbours or in-laws they come in contact with, with varrying degrees of intimacy. To illustrate that no one character is immune to this curse, the antagonist, Myra's husband John, is given voice at the very end of the novel, to show he too is only human, and suffers from social and familial difficulties that have shaped him into the extremely flawed human being he is.
Two related themes are prominent in Bloodroot: escape and incarceration. We are told that generations of women in Myra's family have "itcy feet" that keep them up at night, and many have difficulty remaining indoors for any length of time. They howl, they jitter, and they run from their mountain cabin with the first man that will take them away, mistaking "escape" for "love." What these women invariably find, however, is that life away from the mountain, down in the town, is more brutal and prison-like than they could have imagined. Myra's mother Clio falls to drink, and mental illness. Myra, too, is caged by the violence enacted upon her by her husband, twice being literally imprisoned, in the crawl space beneath their rundown house. Myra escapes her husband and flees with her twins back to the mountain, only to be found and judged an incompetent mother. When this last blow to her fragile state of mind comes, it reduces her to animalistic instincts, and she physically attacks. She is sent to a Nashville mental institution, where she spends the next decades.
Myra's children both spend time in detention centres. Johnny, her son, burns down his paternal family's hardware store, after he finds they want nothing to do with him. Laura assaults a children's aid worker, who comes to take her child away, in much the same way her mother did, resulting later in her incarceration. However, Luara is able to restrain herself somehwat, knowing that further outbursts of violence and mad behaviour won't help her get her child back, and moreover, she makes a conscious decision to break the cycle -- or curse. "I was fixing to bust out fighting again," she says. "But then I remembered how awful it was for me and Johnny, seeing Mama go wild. I didn't want to mark Sunny like Mama done me. I forced myself to be calmer."
Geographic and institutional barriers, however, stand-in for the true binding presence of violence, which touches the lives of everyone in the novel. If a man you repeat the violence, if a woman you crave it, because it means that you're cared for. Myra craves this ultimate possession proposed by John. He says "I want to marry you. But if you're going to be with me, you belong to me. I can't have it no other way" and she readily agrees, cheekily assuming "it works both ways." In a later section, John tells of the violence done to his own mother, which he unconsciously re-enacts on Myra, though time and distance are able to give him a perspective on the issue. In a rumination on the past, John notes, "Since I quit drinking and got a few decades older, I can look back and see how mean and crazy I was myself. I figure I ain't nobody to judge the way Myra acted, or where she ended up." Distance, however, is a luxury given only to males; men are free to move far away, and often do, but women only move by a few miles, into the houses of their husbands, and lives of drink, mental illness, and violence.
Bloodroot is compared to The Color Purple on its jacket, which I assume is a thematic comparison. The modern reader has likely come across many narratives about domestic violence, since The Color Purple. We are aware that those abused often abuse in turn, so Bloodroot doesn't really break new ground here. The New York Times tossed the word "gothic" around, and I suppose Bloodroot could loosely be termed as such. The curses and visions, decaying homesteads situated in a miasma of industrial chemicals and railroad noise, hysterical animalistic women, and dark family secrets can indeed be viewed as gothic devices. However, I think Greene makes a conscious decision to show that the horror is actually in the everyday details of familial violence, which in the end respects no border or class strata, but replicates itself through generations. Like a curse.
Ultimately, I feel like I've been through Bloodroot before, and I had a strange detachment** from some really horrific storylines. Maybe that's the point, I'm not sure. If you live a life of violence, for any period of time, maybe you check out and see that life like a reader or writer, instead of a participant.
*It's appropriate that my booklist tracking is on a companion site of All Consuming
**A rural-south-Americana novel I found far more moving, was the excellent Strange as This Weather Has Been, by Ann Pancake, which was in my top 5 list of 2007 (as requested by Steven W Beattie).
I still read the New York Times Book Review now and then, because I'm poncy like that. I try to pay particular attention to fiction reviews of authors I've never heard of, because at this point in my reading career, I prefer variety and new voices, to reading the complete works of one author, or re-reading an old favourite. This (not altogether positive) review of Bloodroot caught my eye, and into the library queue it went.I have a proclivity for multi-generational sagas, and Bloodroot delivers, in the typical non-linear fashion of such things. The novel centres around Myra, the granddaughter of the first narrator, and the mother of subsequent speakers. The family is somehow "cursed," though their lives are no less difficult and tragic than others around them. The curse the family seems to hold onto, to explain their circumstances, could be equally applied to any of the neighbours or in-laws they come in contact with, with varrying degrees of intimacy. To illustrate that no one character is immune to this curse, the antagonist, Myra's husband John, is given voice at the very end of the novel, to show he too is only human, and suffers from social and familial difficulties that have shaped him into the extremely flawed human being he is.
Two related themes are prominent in Bloodroot: escape and incarceration. We are told that generations of women in Myra's family have "itcy feet" that keep them up at night, and many have difficulty remaining indoors for any length of time. They howl, they jitter, and they run from their mountain cabin with the first man that will take them away, mistaking "escape" for "love." What these women invariably find, however, is that life away from the mountain, down in the town, is more brutal and prison-like than they could have imagined. Myra's mother Clio falls to drink, and mental illness. Myra, too, is caged by the violence enacted upon her by her husband, twice being literally imprisoned, in the crawl space beneath their rundown house. Myra escapes her husband and flees with her twins back to the mountain, only to be found and judged an incompetent mother. When this last blow to her fragile state of mind comes, it reduces her to animalistic instincts, and she physically attacks. She is sent to a Nashville mental institution, where she spends the next decades.
Myra's children both spend time in detention centres. Johnny, her son, burns down his paternal family's hardware store, after he finds they want nothing to do with him. Laura assaults a children's aid worker, who comes to take her child away, in much the same way her mother did, resulting later in her incarceration. However, Luara is able to restrain herself somehwat, knowing that further outbursts of violence and mad behaviour won't help her get her child back, and moreover, she makes a conscious decision to break the cycle -- or curse. "I was fixing to bust out fighting again," she says. "But then I remembered how awful it was for me and Johnny, seeing Mama go wild. I didn't want to mark Sunny like Mama done me. I forced myself to be calmer."
Geographic and institutional barriers, however, stand-in for the true binding presence of violence, which touches the lives of everyone in the novel. If a man you repeat the violence, if a woman you crave it, because it means that you're cared for. Myra craves this ultimate possession proposed by John. He says "I want to marry you. But if you're going to be with me, you belong to me. I can't have it no other way" and she readily agrees, cheekily assuming "it works both ways." In a later section, John tells of the violence done to his own mother, which he unconsciously re-enacts on Myra, though time and distance are able to give him a perspective on the issue. In a rumination on the past, John notes, "Since I quit drinking and got a few decades older, I can look back and see how mean and crazy I was myself. I figure I ain't nobody to judge the way Myra acted, or where she ended up." Distance, however, is a luxury given only to males; men are free to move far away, and often do, but women only move by a few miles, into the houses of their husbands, and lives of drink, mental illness, and violence.
Bloodroot is compared to The Color Purple on its jacket, which I assume is a thematic comparison. The modern reader has likely come across many narratives about domestic violence, since The Color Purple. We are aware that those abused often abuse in turn, so Bloodroot doesn't really break new ground here. The New York Times tossed the word "gothic" around, and I suppose Bloodroot could loosely be termed as such. The curses and visions, decaying homesteads situated in a miasma of industrial chemicals and railroad noise, hysterical animalistic women, and dark family secrets can indeed be viewed as gothic devices. However, I think Greene makes a conscious decision to show that the horror is actually in the everyday details of familial violence, which in the end respects no border or class strata, but replicates itself through generations. Like a curse.
Ultimately, I feel like I've been through Bloodroot before, and I had a strange detachment** from some really horrific storylines. Maybe that's the point, I'm not sure. If you live a life of violence, for any period of time, maybe you check out and see that life like a reader or writer, instead of a participant.
*It's appropriate that my booklist tracking is on a companion site of All Consuming
**A rural-south-Americana novel I found far more moving, was the excellent Strange as This Weather Has Been, by Ann Pancake, which was in my top 5 list of 2007 (as requested by Steven W Beattie).
Quotes Without Context
"If my life wasn't funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable."
-Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
"[A]n unhealthy soul requires a healthy body."
-Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
-Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
"[A]n unhealthy soul requires a healthy body."
-Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Silence
In April of 2008 I had the rug pulled out from under me. My already weak career trajectory took a sharp turn. I was no longer employed in publishing. Everything I wanted, my entire adult life, became completely unreachable to me. And for a couple weeks, I stopped reading. I couldn't do the one thing that I'd always done well. Picking up a book made me want to vomit. My entire life was different.
The first book I opened, when I could make my eyes work again, was The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton. Yeah, I wasn't in a great mood.
Eventually, I went back to reading fiction, but it's no longer the passion it was. It's simply instinctive now. I can't blog about books anymore, because as soon as I finish them, they slide off me, like dollar-store fridge magnets.
The weird part about all this, is the number of books I have read this year; it's actually up from last year. Even with the two-week blackout. Maybe because I'm not thinking anymore, just devouring.
So here's the 2008 list of the 58 books I read.
The first book I opened, when I could make my eyes work again, was The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton. Yeah, I wasn't in a great mood.
Eventually, I went back to reading fiction, but it's no longer the passion it was. It's simply instinctive now. I can't blog about books anymore, because as soon as I finish them, they slide off me, like dollar-store fridge magnets.
The weird part about all this, is the number of books I have read this year; it's actually up from last year. Even with the two-week blackout. Maybe because I'm not thinking anymore, just devouring.
So here's the 2008 list of the 58 books I read.
Water, Water, Everywhere
Wild West
I had some outside responses linking to my last post, which I wasn't really expecting.
I'm always surprised when Steven W. Beattie links me, because his is the sort of writing I aspire to. I don't know if I'd ever want to review books professionally, but to be able to talk about them on a level slightly more academic than "durrr, book good" would make me happy. While Beattie didn't agree with me, there was a good discussion over there.
I found another write up on the offending op-ed (via Bookslut), and hoped the author of that blog would come over here to see what I had to say. Of course, putting that link in the comments directs all sorts to my post, and one of those sorts had less kind things to say*. In the comments section of that post, he said something like "I don't need to be right, I just want people to think." Which, in his responses to my comment, doesn't really seem to be the case. Anyway, according to his comment to me, I invented the concept of male privilege, which I guess makes me one of the greatest feminist thinkers of our time. SWB, you were right about me all along! Ha!
Really, this is all just musing on the nature of the internet. Two writers who disagreed with my view point linked me, and I find it odd. Beattie, well, we do have a back and forth. Stranger "Academic" Man? As I said to him in his blog, I think he used my write-up because it was easy to pick apart. I don't spend too much time on my blog posts: I don't get paid for this, have a regular readership of about five people, and write here for fun. I'm not in academia, or the business of writing, producing, or reviewing books.
I'm not saying I don't stand behind what I put up here. Of course I do. And it's public, it's for everyone to see, and people will take what they want from it. However, people also take the internet really, really seriously, when most of the time, it's not. I have a free site on Blogger because I was too lazy to deal with the layout issues of Typepad. I update a couple times a month. This blog is not a serious discussion of the state of literature, or feminism, or the weather. It's simply a "brain dump." It was the place I put all the stuff I didn't want to bore my friends with. Still is.
I do have to think, too, that there must have been something to that Orange Prize post, to get random people on the internet quoting it. Perhaps it wasn't so poorly written as to be ignored completely?
I'm not new to the internet by any means. I tooled around on Usenet, where I learned hard lessons about the permanence of words online, and their ability to misquoted, misconstrued, and willfully misunderstood. I know human nature is such that if someone is unwilling to see your viewpoint, there's nothing you can do (and years on the internet taught me that there's little use arguing it). And yet... and yet it's still so unsettling to see my words chopped up on the page of a stranger**. To see them miss the point completely, in their quest to denounce the fiendish, feminist foe. How the heck did I become an example? And of what?
*Bloggers live and die from hits. Why do you think I'm not giving him any?
**And, granted, all blogs use others' words as fodder. Mine is no exception.
I'm always surprised when Steven W. Beattie links me, because his is the sort of writing I aspire to. I don't know if I'd ever want to review books professionally, but to be able to talk about them on a level slightly more academic than "durrr, book good" would make me happy. While Beattie didn't agree with me, there was a good discussion over there.
I found another write up on the offending op-ed (via Bookslut), and hoped the author of that blog would come over here to see what I had to say. Of course, putting that link in the comments directs all sorts to my post, and one of those sorts had less kind things to say*. In the comments section of that post, he said something like "I don't need to be right, I just want people to think." Which, in his responses to my comment, doesn't really seem to be the case. Anyway, according to his comment to me, I invented the concept of male privilege, which I guess makes me one of the greatest feminist thinkers of our time. SWB, you were right about me all along! Ha!
Really, this is all just musing on the nature of the internet. Two writers who disagreed with my view point linked me, and I find it odd. Beattie, well, we do have a back and forth. Stranger "Academic" Man? As I said to him in his blog, I think he used my write-up because it was easy to pick apart. I don't spend too much time on my blog posts: I don't get paid for this, have a regular readership of about five people, and write here for fun. I'm not in academia, or the business of writing, producing, or reviewing books.
I'm not saying I don't stand behind what I put up here. Of course I do. And it's public, it's for everyone to see, and people will take what they want from it. However, people also take the internet really, really seriously, when most of the time, it's not. I have a free site on Blogger because I was too lazy to deal with the layout issues of Typepad. I update a couple times a month. This blog is not a serious discussion of the state of literature, or feminism, or the weather. It's simply a "brain dump." It was the place I put all the stuff I didn't want to bore my friends with. Still is.
I do have to think, too, that there must have been something to that Orange Prize post, to get random people on the internet quoting it. Perhaps it wasn't so poorly written as to be ignored completely?
I'm not new to the internet by any means. I tooled around on Usenet, where I learned hard lessons about the permanence of words online, and their ability to misquoted, misconstrued, and willfully misunderstood. I know human nature is such that if someone is unwilling to see your viewpoint, there's nothing you can do (and years on the internet taught me that there's little use arguing it). And yet... and yet it's still so unsettling to see my words chopped up on the page of a stranger**. To see them miss the point completely, in their quest to denounce the fiendish, feminist foe. How the heck did I become an example? And of what?
*Bloggers live and die from hits. Why do you think I'm not giving him any?
**And, granted, all blogs use others' words as fodder. Mine is no exception.
Orange Prize Brings Out the Neanderthals... Again
Every year when the Orange Prize lists are announced (long or short), someone steps up and says that the women-only prize is "sexist" and not needed. Every. Damn. Year. Boring! Yet rage-inducing! Such ambivalence!
This year, they've trotted out my beloved A.S. Byatt to do the dirty work (it's okay, Antonia, I still love you). Bah. I'm not going to get into all the arguments (wooops, I actually do, further down), since about three people read this blog, but there's no such thing as a reverse -ism, friends, and until women are equal players in the world, things like the Orange Prize are, yes, still needed. Consider that the most recent winner of the PEN/Faulkner award, Kate Christensen, is one of only a handful of women to do so.
And the opinion pieces come out of the woodwork. Here's another one, from Telegraph, that I'm purposely not linking to (for several reasons, the hateful reader comments being but one):
First, I'm not sure how it is in the U.K. but in Canada, something like 80% of the workforce in publishing is female, while only 3% of the executive is.* So, tell me, where is the real power? Secondly, "they" sell most of the books do they? You mean most of the people in the pink ghetto of retail are women? Well yes, that's true. Or do you mean female authors sell more books? If that's the case, then you're going to have to be more clear in your writing, and back that up with some stats. I'd love to see them, because I'm definitely interested.
The author of this silly piece seems to think that women are a "dominant" group, like "whites" (wrong). He continually makes these sorts of comparisons between gender and race based oppressions. While -isms do work together to create layers of oppression, comparing oppressions (sexism and racism in this article), is very, very tricky business (see Hilary v Obama), and really shouldn't be done. Ever.
Then, he casts every woman he comes in contact with as unable to defend their position with logic; their only tactic is to "hit him on the head," literally or with "verbal abuse." He was called, and I quote, "a BUM." How he must suffer! Personally, if I was faced with these tired old arguments against women-only institutions, I'd be prone to violence too. Not because I'm unable to engage in "mature debate," but rather because my opponent has set the bar so low with their reactionary drivel, a hit on the head is the only logical response.
And P.S.: the patriarchy is not "a trick that men played on women for thousands of years." Leave it to a man to take millennia of world-wide, systematic oppression, abuse, and subjugation and minimize it down to something like putting a whoppie cushion on your chair. That, my friends, is what we call privilege. Additionally, with the implication that women fell for this "trick" for so long, the writer once again gets to call womankind stupid.
But yeah, we're all like totally equal and powerful and shit. *headdesk*
My ex-pat friend Axel did mention in the comments a while back, how right-wing the Telegraph is, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised to see this sort of thing published there.
I've gotten intoarguments mature debates at Bookninja about this sort of thing, and it's unhelpful that there aren't (that I know of) statistics on how many books are published by men and women each year (for the casual observer, it seems pretty even in the fiction realm), how big the advances are for men vs women, that sort of thing. This is a casual observation, but I have noticed The New York Times often gets really, really excited over quirky, clev-ah, first time male novelists, giving them pages and pages and pages of press**, yet women don't get the same treatment†. There have been studies that indicate that women are the bulk of the fiction readers, but nothing so much on the writing front. I'd be interested to know, at any rate.
The Orange Prize long list is here.
I've read:
Jennifer Egan The Keep
Anne Enright The Gathering
Heather O'Neill Lullabies for Little Criminals
Based on my small list, I'm pulling for Egan. The Keep was one of the most transporting things I've ever read.
*This is based on my memory of a Quill and Quire industry survey I read in 2005. I doubt things are 50/50 as of this writing. Call me a pessimist.
**I'm sorry, please allow me to indulge my incredibly shallow side. Look at that photo!! If I saw that guy in a coffee shop, my first thought would be "douchebag."
†Sarah Seltzer, in the latest issue of Bitch, addresses the anti-feminist bias at The NYT, that I mentioned in this post. Unsurprisingly, Seltzer writes about it far better than I did. Well worth a look.
This year, they've trotted out my beloved A.S. Byatt to do the dirty work (it's okay, Antonia, I still love you). Bah. I'm not going to get into all the arguments (wooops, I actually do, further down), since about three people read this blog, but there's no such thing as a reverse -ism, friends, and until women are equal players in the world, things like the Orange Prize are, yes, still needed. Consider that the most recent winner of the PEN/Faulkner award, Kate Christensen, is one of only a handful of women to do so.
And the opinion pieces come out of the woodwork. Here's another one, from Telegraph, that I'm purposely not linking to (for several reasons, the hateful reader comments being but one):
Women are predominant, in terms of numbers and power, in most of the major publishing houses and agencies. They sell most of the books, into a market that largely comprises women readers.
First, I'm not sure how it is in the U.K. but in Canada, something like 80% of the workforce in publishing is female, while only 3% of the executive is.* So, tell me, where is the real power? Secondly, "they" sell most of the books do they? You mean most of the people in the pink ghetto of retail are women? Well yes, that's true. Or do you mean female authors sell more books? If that's the case, then you're going to have to be more clear in your writing, and back that up with some stats. I'd love to see them, because I'm definitely interested.
The author of this silly piece seems to think that women are a "dominant" group, like "whites" (wrong). He continually makes these sorts of comparisons between gender and race based oppressions. While -isms do work together to create layers of oppression, comparing oppressions (sexism and racism in this article), is very, very tricky business (see Hilary v Obama), and really shouldn't be done. Ever.
Then, he casts every woman he comes in contact with as unable to defend their position with logic; their only tactic is to "hit him on the head," literally or with "verbal abuse." He was called, and I quote, "a BUM." How he must suffer! Personally, if I was faced with these tired old arguments against women-only institutions, I'd be prone to violence too. Not because I'm unable to engage in "mature debate," but rather because my opponent has set the bar so low with their reactionary drivel, a hit on the head is the only logical response.
And P.S.: the patriarchy is not "a trick that men played on women for thousands of years." Leave it to a man to take millennia of world-wide, systematic oppression, abuse, and subjugation and minimize it down to something like putting a whoppie cushion on your chair. That, my friends, is what we call privilege. Additionally, with the implication that women fell for this "trick" for so long, the writer once again gets to call womankind stupid.
But yeah, we're all like totally equal and powerful and shit. *headdesk*
My ex-pat friend Axel did mention in the comments a while back, how right-wing the Telegraph is, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised to see this sort of thing published there.
I've gotten into
The Orange Prize long list is here.
I've read:
Jennifer Egan The Keep
Anne Enright The Gathering
Heather O'Neill Lullabies for Little Criminals
Based on my small list, I'm pulling for Egan. The Keep was one of the most transporting things I've ever read.
*This is based on my memory of a Quill and Quire industry survey I read in 2005. I doubt things are 50/50 as of this writing. Call me a pessimist.
**I'm sorry, please allow me to indulge my incredibly shallow side. Look at that photo!! If I saw that guy in a coffee shop, my first thought would be "douchebag."
†Sarah Seltzer, in the latest issue of Bitch, addresses the anti-feminist bias at The NYT, that I mentioned in this post. Unsurprisingly, Seltzer writes about it far better than I did. Well worth a look.
Visiting Lives
Early-to-mid 20th century British literature is a particular favourite of mine (The Rainbow is in my Top 10 of books). Thus, I've been meaning to read Brideshead Revisited for a long, long time now. I read this article earlier in the month, and was reminded, once again, of this glaring gap in my repertoire. So on Friday I went book shopping, picking up the latest issue of Bitch upon walking in the door, then heading over to the fiction section. Found Brideshead, then wandered a bit. Browsed the biographies, picked up, then rejected the latest Hardy bio. Looked up and saw a biography of the Mitford sisters.
The letters of the Mitfords have recently been compiled and published, and if I remember correctly The Globe and Mail reviewer was rhapsodic about the family* (the review is behind the stupid, outdated Globe paywall); I was intrigued. Since finances are a bit tight, I had to choose only one book. I've read nothing but fiction all year, so I decided to put Brideshead away, thinking that the Mitford story would at least be a change of pace. Of course, turns out two of the elder Mitford sisters were pals with Evelyn Waugh in their early years, and Brideshead is based on parts of their circle. So the next book up, should definitely be Brideshead. It's fate! Unless, of course, something in my library queue comes in.
Biographies can be really painful for me to read. They're not a genre I usually enjoy, though a well-written one is an excellent thing, so I continue trying them. The Sisters is one of those excellent biographies. I'm about 200 pages in having been reading only for a couple days. One might make the argument that it's the subject that can make or break a bio, and the Mitfords are very interesting subjects indeed. However, I once read an Ann Sexton bio and it took me almost a month of slogging to complete. Ann Sexton is beyond fascinating to me, but there was just something about the writing that didn't grab me. On the other hand, Rough Magic, a Sylvia Plath biography, was an excellent and intriguing read, and I actually dislike Plath for the most part. So for me, a good bio isn't really about the subject, it's about the skill of the writer. Mary S Lovell, author of The Sisters, is skilled at keeping things moving, and not getting too bogged down in the fine details. She's also fantastic at introducing a large cast of secondary -- and even tertiary -- characters, without losing the reader in complex family and social trees.
I likely won't go on and read the letters, however. Published letters hurt my brain more than biographies ever could. I've tried. I've read the letters of authors I love, and I never get more than 100 or so pages in, before I lose all interest.
Mitford sisters: from left, Jessica, Nancy, Diana, Unity, Pamela 1935
Image from Telegraph.co.uk.
Guardian review of The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters
NYT review of The Sisters.
*There was also a blogger writing about the Mitfords recently, but I read so many blogs these days, I forget which one it was.
The letters of the Mitfords have recently been compiled and published, and if I remember correctly The Globe and Mail reviewer was rhapsodic about the family* (the review is behind the stupid, outdated Globe paywall); I was intrigued. Since finances are a bit tight, I had to choose only one book. I've read nothing but fiction all year, so I decided to put Brideshead away, thinking that the Mitford story would at least be a change of pace. Of course, turns out two of the elder Mitford sisters were pals with Evelyn Waugh in their early years, and Brideshead is based on parts of their circle. So the next book up, should definitely be Brideshead. It's fate! Unless, of course, something in my library queue comes in.
Biographies can be really painful for me to read. They're not a genre I usually enjoy, though a well-written one is an excellent thing, so I continue trying them. The Sisters is one of those excellent biographies. I'm about 200 pages in having been reading only for a couple days. One might make the argument that it's the subject that can make or break a bio, and the Mitfords are very interesting subjects indeed. However, I once read an Ann Sexton bio and it took me almost a month of slogging to complete. Ann Sexton is beyond fascinating to me, but there was just something about the writing that didn't grab me. On the other hand, Rough Magic, a Sylvia Plath biography, was an excellent and intriguing read, and I actually dislike Plath for the most part. So for me, a good bio isn't really about the subject, it's about the skill of the writer. Mary S Lovell, author of The Sisters, is skilled at keeping things moving, and not getting too bogged down in the fine details. She's also fantastic at introducing a large cast of secondary -- and even tertiary -- characters, without losing the reader in complex family and social trees.
I likely won't go on and read the letters, however. Published letters hurt my brain more than biographies ever could. I've tried. I've read the letters of authors I love, and I never get more than 100 or so pages in, before I lose all interest.
Image from Telegraph.co.uk.
Guardian review of The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters
NYT review of The Sisters.
*There was also a blogger writing about the Mitfords recently, but I read so many blogs these days, I forget which one it was.
I Love You, Katha Pollitt (Reviews of Reviews pt 3)
Katha Pollitt responds to the flagrant use of controversy to get page views*, Charlotte Allen's Washington Post piece on how women are just silly bints after all. Of course, the rebuttal was also in the Post, so they're just going to get more page views of out this. However, it's also right that they should publish the rebuttal, and kudos to them for printing a piece that calls the editors out for having published "Women vs. Women" in the first place.
I also just finished reading Learning to Drive this week, so my Pollitt love is out in full force. As I mentioned, the book got a pretty bad review in the New York Times. Now that I've read the book, I can form my rebuttal. The NYT reviewer's problem, it seems, is that Pollitt took a break from writing "brilliant commentary on welfare, abortion, surrogate motherhood, Iraq, gay marriage and health care" and got personal. The reviewer, of course, missing -- or ignoring -- the basic second-wave feminist tenant "the personal is the political" (and Pollitt even talks about this in her book). The personal essays in Learning to Drive are sometimes deeply affecting, especially the essay on her mother's alcoholism (if you only read one thing from this collection, that is the one). These are micro pieces about macro topics: population boom, gentrification, and gender relations are all treated here, with honesty, humour, and compassion. When Pollitt brings her personal "dirty laundry" to the table, the reader can take such large issues and relate them to their own life. Books like Learning to Drive are important books, whether or not you agree with the politics, because one can see how the political can -- and will -- affect them personally.
I see that the author of this review is also the author of something called The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir. Not that there's anything wrong with erotic memoirs, and it's possible that Ms. Bentley is a political person herself. I just feel like she missed the (easily understood) point of a noted political journalist turning the focus onto herself, and perhaps it's due to her own ideas of what a personal book should consist of. That said, I think it's hugely hypocritical to take Pollitt to task for "wav[ing] her dirty laundry" when you've written an erotic memoir. Does the laundry get any dirtier? Odd person.
Interesting that the reviewer of Learning to Drive was female, that the reviewer of The Terror Dream was female**, and that this blog post started off talking about woman-on-woman misogyny. I'm not so naive as to think that all women need to agree with each other, or bond in some feminist utopia of sisterhood. People have diverging opinions; that will never change. Much as I wish it were so, the whole world is not going to be liberal, socialist, and pro-equality. It does, however, sadden me to see women consciously engaging in this sort of behavior. For a female reviewer to use such terms as "shrill" or "vagina dentata intellectuals" (what?!), or for a woman to write about how all women are just silly dim creatures, really pisses me off. We are all free to disagree with each other, but it feels like such a step backwards to be using such patriarchal devices on ourselves, instead of fighting for better treatment. I know, it's wishful thinking, but I'll keep wishing.
*And yes, I know I'm just contributing to it by linking here
**I don't know why it didn't occur to me to just google her at the time
I also just finished reading Learning to Drive this week, so my Pollitt love is out in full force. As I mentioned, the book got a pretty bad review in the New York Times. Now that I've read the book, I can form my rebuttal. The NYT reviewer's problem, it seems, is that Pollitt took a break from writing "brilliant commentary on welfare, abortion, surrogate motherhood, Iraq, gay marriage and health care" and got personal. The reviewer, of course, missing -- or ignoring -- the basic second-wave feminist tenant "the personal is the political" (and Pollitt even talks about this in her book). The personal essays in Learning to Drive are sometimes deeply affecting, especially the essay on her mother's alcoholism (if you only read one thing from this collection, that is the one). These are micro pieces about macro topics: population boom, gentrification, and gender relations are all treated here, with honesty, humour, and compassion. When Pollitt brings her personal "dirty laundry" to the table, the reader can take such large issues and relate them to their own life. Books like Learning to Drive are important books, whether or not you agree with the politics, because one can see how the political can -- and will -- affect them personally. I see that the author of this review is also the author of something called The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir. Not that there's anything wrong with erotic memoirs, and it's possible that Ms. Bentley is a political person herself. I just feel like she missed the (easily understood) point of a noted political journalist turning the focus onto herself, and perhaps it's due to her own ideas of what a personal book should consist of. That said, I think it's hugely hypocritical to take Pollitt to task for "wav[ing] her dirty laundry" when you've written an erotic memoir. Does the laundry get any dirtier? Odd person.
Interesting that the reviewer of Learning to Drive was female, that the reviewer of The Terror Dream was female**, and that this blog post started off talking about woman-on-woman misogyny. I'm not so naive as to think that all women need to agree with each other, or bond in some feminist utopia of sisterhood. People have diverging opinions; that will never change. Much as I wish it were so, the whole world is not going to be liberal, socialist, and pro-equality. It does, however, sadden me to see women consciously engaging in this sort of behavior. For a female reviewer to use such terms as "shrill" or "vagina dentata intellectuals" (what?!), or for a woman to write about how all women are just silly dim creatures, really pisses me off. We are all free to disagree with each other, but it feels like such a step backwards to be using such patriarchal devices on ourselves, instead of fighting for better treatment. I know, it's wishful thinking, but I'll keep wishing.
*And yes, I know I'm just contributing to it by linking here
**I don't know why it didn't occur to me to just google her at the time
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