14 Comments

1. January 28th, 2014 / 2:25 pm Jeremy Hopkins—

   “However, as someone who aspires to fit into Auster’s definition of “boy writer,” I’m wondering if he might extend his coinage to include “girl writers” as well. Who are they among women, the creative sparks, the gleeful, the ones who make you want to read?” — Anne Margaret Daniel
   Could we split the difference and call them all “tomboy” writers, thereby pleasing everybody? That way boys would be girls, and girls would want to be boys; they’d all want to be boys [points for boys] but they’d all really be girls [points for girls].

2. January 28th, 2014 / 3:29 pm bartleby_taco—

   being a boy is embarrassing

   being a boy is like wanting to impress adults with little bow ties but actually being a sweaty rodent scratching pieces of wood

3. January 28th, 2014 / 8:16 pm Rauan Klassnik—

   sweat rodents don’t get a fair shake

4. January 29th, 2014 / 12:19 am Richard Grayson—

   Sounds dopey.

5. January 29th, 2014 / 8:55 am Bobby Dixon—

   i wore a bowtie in high school

6. January 29th, 2014 / 12:19 pm Rauan Klassnik—

   my closet contains nothing but bowties

7. January 29th, 2014 / 1:21 pm deadgod—

   Dickinson communicates “how great it is to invent things and make things up” as joyfully as anyone, and she doesn’t seem to me to be a tomboy.

8. January 29th, 2014 / 1:24 pm deadgod—

   it’s pretty cool tho that chick writers don’t remind us of how great it is to be alive

   where else would we get sugar and spice… and everything nice!

9. January 29th, 2014 / 1:30 pm deadgod—

   He seems to have been trying to unspool a thread about joy in making things, about a sense of conflict between joy and discipline–maybe how, concretized, they imply each other even as they seem in conflict. But gendering his idea, even if it was a teasing troll, seems a dingbat move. …an experimental, innovative, boyish dingbat move, sure.

10. January 29th, 2014 / 3:24 pm Rauan Klassnik—

    “boy writer” audio

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbIj3uyMxso

11. January 29th, 2014 / 4:11 pm Jeremy Hopkins—

    I’m not very familiar with—[her, his, its?]—that poet’s work.

12. January 29th, 2014 / 5:13 pm deadgod—

    Well, it’s a ‘she’, so: safely ignored.

13. January 30th, 2014 / 12:28 am Jeremy Hopkins—

    I was like “If he means the girl Dickinson, I can pretend to not even know her sex; and if he doesn’t, then I actually don’t know.” It’s fun, not knowing whether or not you yourself are kidding.

14. January 30th, 2014 / 12:22 pm Jeremy Hopkins—

    Of course, I was assuming you are male.
    Forgive me.