Where did the women folk get the idea that writing about their lives might be interesting?
From Flickr user samelovesherdog
I’m not happy right now. A few days ago I read this article in The Guardian that included phrases like “unapologetically female” and tried to link all contemporary writing by American Women back to Candance Bushnell, author of the Sex & The City column which spawned a book and the HBO series and the most obnoxious 25% of the female population of New York City. I know it’s probably silly and naive and suspiciously female of me, but I expect more from The Guardian than an article like this.
Full disclosure: I didn’t know that Sex & The City was based on a book or that the book came from a column written in the 90’s in the New York Observer. That still doesn’t make any of it interesting to me. The whole Sex & The City phenomenon probably did have an effect on making Americans a little less prude in the way they talk about sex, and I can appreciate that from a distance. People in their 40’s and 50’s might be ‘more comfortable talking about sex’ now, but the 20 and 30 somethings I know were teenagers before sex & the city and already talked about sex more candidly than a bunch of white chicks drunk on vodka. We didn’t need their permission, but this is really beside the point.
The point is, I am not OK with The Guardian trying to find the root of a literary shift in Sex & The City. The tail didn’t wag the dog; the culture shifted. Nonfiction and memoir have been on the rise in America for a while now and trying to connect all female essayists back to Sex & The City is just lazy and absurd. Lazy and absurd and irritating.
“For a while after Bushnell’s extraordinary success, the publishing industry assiduously attempted to sniff out the next Sex and the City and a motley assortment of chick lit writers of varying talent found their books marketed with bright pink covers and an illustration of a pair of sparkly Manolo Blahniks.”
Ok, fine. Chick lit seems to have taken an upswing post-S&C, but I you could just as easily trace the rise in chick lit to a novel like The Ya-Ya Sisterhood, whose bright-blue spine you could find on the bookshelf of almost any warm-bodied woman who was between the ages of 12 and 70 during the 1990’s (whether or not that copy of Ya-Ya had been read or was a gift from some other warm-bodied woman between the ages of 12 and 70.) But chick lit is really all about marketing. If Sex & The City had any effect on books, it was that it taught American publishers that there are a lot of women who want to read bright pink books with high heels or diamond rings on the cover.
“Now, 17 years after the first “Sex and the City” column was published, a new wave of confessional writers is picking up where Bushnell left off.”
The article goes on to put Meghan Daum, Sloane Crosley, and Emily Gould in this presumed ‘wave,’ though it admits that these women don’t write about finding the perfect husband or pair of shoes.
“By giving the impression of accessibility and writing about topics that can be easily related to by the average female reader, the new generation of confessional writers seeks to communicate different depths of experience that take the reader beyond the stereotypical tale of a single woman obsessively on the hunt for the ideal mate. For all that Candace Bushnell might have broken down barriers for female writers by writing with clear-eyed candour about previously taboo subjects, Sex and the City was, essentially, shaped by this same, age-old assumption that a woman’s life could only ever be complete once she had settled down with the perfect man.”
But wait! If these new ‘confessional women writers’ aren’t writing exclusively about Jimmy Choos and men what the hell are they writing about? Oh, all kinds of things. Sloane Crosley is a humor writer. Meghan Daum (my favorite of the lot, by far) writes about ‘missing the point.’ Emily Gould writes about being Emily Gould. So… um… what’s the connection between Candance Bushnell and every living female American essayist working today? There doesn’t really seem to be one that’s what disappoints me about this article. Ever heard of Joan Didion? Sylvia Plath? Remember Virginia Wolff? Kate Chopin? Zora Neale Hurston? They all wrote confessional or semi-confessional and I bet Daum was reading a lot more Wolff & Didion than Bushnell or any Ya-Ya nonsense.
And while we’re at it, what does confessional writing even mean? I would go so far to say that all writing is confession, yet the term ‘confessional writing’ is slathered on women almost exclusively. Is any woman going to be able to write about being a woman without it being labeled as chick lit? I don’t mean about shoes and oh-my-god-why-isn’t-he-calling-me-back dilemmas. I mean the physical, emotional and cultural reality of being a woman. If such writing does exist, there is a good chance it’s under a cover I’d never touch.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this very topic, as I venture into writing about sex for the first time. I’m reading essays about it—by women who are concerned with this very topic. Somehow or another, at 32, I still feel embarrassed about being a woman, about having emotions and cultural experiences that are, in fact, different than a man’s. I feel like I should be super-human, transcend my skin and bone and bits and pieces—maybe particularly so that my writing isn’t deemed as chick-lit or overtly “feminine.” I internalize this and tell myself that it’s my own problem. I’m the problem. I have always prioritized my mind over my body. I really don’t care about shoes; until recently, I didn’t care a lick about much that’s labeled “traditionally female,” so it’s easy to have an us vs. them mentality. Rational vs. irrational, etc. Maybe the true measure is just good writing vs. bad writing. Like you say, nobody accuses Didion, Plath, Hurston, etc. of writing chick-lit, yet they’re certainly writing about being women…
“If such writing does exist, there is a good chance it’s under a cover I’d never touch.”
do you mean you wouldn’t want to read it? why?
Unfortunately, there could be some good writing out there being marketed as chick lit simply because it’s being written by a woman. I don’t care that the category of chick lit exists because it’s clearly something that some people enjoy reading and that’s fine. I take issue with the tendency publishers have to market any word written by a woman as a chick lit and putting some schmaltzy cover on the front of what might be a book that could have a wider appeal. I would never even think to pick up a book that has a stereotypically chick lit cover on it.
Great post, Catherine. The term chick lit is just a label for the kind of writing some women have been doing for ever and a day. I think the genre, such as it were, gets a bad rap and it troubles me when women try to separate themselves from chick lit like it’s a scarlet letter. “I write but I’m not that kind of writer,” for example. The physical and cultural reality of being a woman is very personal and for some women I do think that experience extends to “shoes and oh my god why isn’t he calling me back.” But to better address your question, I do think there’s a lot of women’s writing that isn’t lumped under the label “chick lit.” You’d never hear that term applied to the writing of Alicia Erian or Mary Gaitskill, for example. In terms of essayists, I don’t think that term would apply to Cheryl Strayed. There’s a specific quality that tends to conjure up the phrase “chick lit,” and writing that’s edgier tends to circumnvent that label.
The thing about writing about writing is that cultural critics are always looking for the lowest common denominator. To deconstruct women’s writing by identifying Candace Bushnell as the point of origin is something that cannot be taken seriously. Anyone who would make such a claim is not well-read or imaginative or capable of critical thought. If you’re going to go there, invoke Jane Austen or Edith Wharton, or any of the women you noted, for god’s sake.
Case in point:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/book_jackets/meet_the_new_consumerfriendly_alice_munro_75416.asp
Great post, Catherine.
That’s… wow.
Also — I think it is even more than how female writers are marketed; I think people often see women’s writing as having to do with less important things. I know so many people who say they don’t like Jane Austen because she writes about the small lives of rich women (of course, most of her protagonists are not rich). The same charge is never leveled at male writers who write about domesticity — Henry James, Cheever, Tolstoi, Ibsen, et cetera. Even when those male writers have female protagonists, it is STILL seen as more weighty than when women write about women.
It is leveled at James and Cheever, actually. Hmm.
There seems to be a lot of critical disdain directed toward writing about “small lives” as if personal and intimate experiences are somehow unworthy. There’s a book that talks about this (more than one actually) and I am struggling to remember the title on the tip of my tongue but when I do, I’ll come back to this.
I work in children’s book publishing so maybe that makes me under qualified to comment. But this article was very childish and I’m glad that someone else saw it/posted it. It was absolutely ridiculous. For starters, the continued lumping of Gould in with real writers is….well, lucky for her these other women have also released books at the exact same time. Otherwise, it would be all bad press. She should thank her lucky stars. I read her book and was really disappointed. I really wanted it to be dark and sexy and it was so light in a bad way. I also think she hides behind being a feminist but she’s not particularly bright or creative when she speaks about it. And poor Meghan Daum! She and Crosley are both funny and talented but My Misspent Youth was a long long time ago and so great (and Crosley’s 1st was years ago too?) and this article poorly ties together these women as if they were all born yesterday. Meghan is my favorite too and happy to see her quoted here. But still….thanks, Guardian, for making me embarrassed to be a woman.
Jaclyn
One book that gets at this idea of the personal as interesting and valuable, though not the book I’m trying to remember, and not in terms of gender, is deCerteau’s The Practice of Everyday Life.
Roxane, Why does it bother you when women want to separate themselves from the chick lit genre? It’s just a genre. I don’t wouldn’t write a romance novel or a mystery novel or a sci-fi novel or a chick lit novel. There are formulas to all of those genres and really nothing wrong with them, but it’s just not what I do.
You GO. Zadie Smith anyone? Thank you.
It’s not the separating in terms of genre but with some women, there’s a real tone to it, as if to say that they’re better than chick lit. It’s one thing to say hey, I write something completely different and want to be acknowledged for what it is I actually do. It’s another thing entirely to imply that you’re insulted that people would think you write “that stuff.” I am, here, drawing from my own history, where I used to get all indignant about the assumption I wrote chick lit until I realized, WTF am I doing getting irritated about this? I wasn’t indignant because I was misunderstood. I was indignant because I felt like hey, my writing is better than that and when I got over myself and thought about it more, I felt bad and bitchy and started to think about these things more along a continuum rather than a ladder where hey, we all write what we write and we shouldn’t be judging, at least in terms of genre.
I just saw Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter read with Aaron Burch and Reynard Seifert. No disrespect to Mr. Burch or Mr. Seifert, but … Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter.
Once more with feeling: Amelia Gray … Lindsay Hunter.
[deep breath]
I’d be surprised if Sex & the City made them the power writers they are today. I’d be very surprised.
And please don’t forget Marguerite Duras and Jeanette Winterson, pioneers well before Bushnell.
I haven’t read a lot of chick lit, but I honestly think it’s because I don’t want to be seen holding these kinds of books on the subway. But I will watch Nora Ephron movies until the cows come home, and I cried hysterically over The Bachelorette finale this week. Am I a hypocrite? A coward? I never got sucked into the Sex and the City vortex, but from the little I saw, I decided I “was” Charlotte, until I found out that most women dislike Charlotte. I guess she doesn’t have sex with enough people, and she likes puppies and babies, and therefore isn’t as empowered as the others.
To me, “confessional” writing suggests a vulnerability. It isn’t just telling the truth, reporting the facts. Like watching a striptease vs. going to a nude beach. I haven’t read enough contemporary memoirs by female authors to comment on that vein, but I know in poetry I go for what I would call a post-confessional slant…the truth, but disguised by lots of false threads and humor and smoke and mirrors. I think Ellen Kennedy, Elisa Gabbert, and Dorothea Lasky do this well.
I, too, struggle with the knowledge that I write from a very female POV, and yet still somehow resent being a “female poet.” I’ve been referred to as a “smart, young female poet,” and I resent “young” and “female.” As if I’m only talented/accomplished for someone my age. Or only talented/accomplished for someone with a vagina. Watch the poetess go! Go, poetess, go!
finally somebody mentions the bachelorette finale. i didn’t cry, but was very upset when ali let chris go and picked roberto. roberto is a nice guy and completely hot, but once the sex wears off and reality hits in, they won’t have long. chris is real husband/father material: took care of his mom when she was sick; not into nice clothes; big, strong, and silent; didn’t cry when he was dumped, but almost cried at the rainbow. but i bet roberto is a better lover, damn.
Just part of the (now) long tradition of identity literature which has plagued readers. The fundamental problem is that feminism has replaced humanism. Muriel Spark might be considered reactionary, but that’s an easy label used to dismiss her thesis that matriarchy is just as destructive as patriarchy.
And with such ideological blinders, it’s not surprising that in yet another arena, identity ‘politics’ (self-oriented jingoism) has lowered standards. There is a fundamental difference between Ya-Ya horseshit and Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mrs. Dalloway and Ceremony; and only some blithe bullshitmeister in need of a doctorate thesis is going to argue otherwise.
In the end, this essay seems to come down to ‘confession,’ (never mind the patriarchy-heavy connotations of the word, due to its association w/ religious practice) as the unifying trait of supposed chick-lit. The very idea that you would include these tea-sipping degenerates & their narrow focus on humanity, w/ literary giants shows the enormity of your ideological blindness. The whole problem here is market oriented writing, as opposed to literary writing. You argue that by making ‘confession’ the primary trait of chick-lit, it denies ‘legitimate’ explorations into feminine confession. I’m not sure why anyone thinks that’s a valid literary telos in the first place. Self-indulgence has killed the readership. Every time I think about buying a book by a living author, the first few pages remind me why I’m better off w/ Michaux and Bishop. Sydney had it right; write to elevate and instruct, or get the fuck out of the game. All other motives are spurious. If it’s easy to paint chick-lit as shit, well, that’s because it is. And you can hide under the banner of ‘memoir’ all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s market-oriented writing (as opposed to reader oriented); and while that does a great job of selling books, it is at the expense of jading a generation of readers who eventually (and rightly) dismiss the offered fare as amateurish horseshit.
I can’t fucking believe you had the temerity to compare Wolff and Hurston to Sloane Crosley & Meghan Daum. Figures. You can’t reject the false-consciousness of chick-lit, so you attempt to take ‘ownership’ of it, by redefining it to suit your taste. If I wanted to read taste masquerading as a critical essay, I’d still be subscribing to The Atlantic.
I thought that finale was so boring. I liked Frank even though he ended up being a douche.
Amy, that is some pretty serious pouring of old wine into new bottles. Striking. If only the woman in the chick-lit rendition was reading a copy of the older version, the whole thing would be redeemed.
I’m interested in the design element of chick lit marketing. I was reading Gaitskill’s ‘Don’t Cry’ on the subway (pink cover, quivering retina close-up) and overheard someone referring to me as a gaywad.
Equally unrelated, Metafilter just posted Princeton’s gallery of women working in printing/binding/designing.
http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/rbsc2/ga/unseenhands/gallery.html
to understand the term “confessional writing,” you must understand the meaning and nature of guilt.
men are not taught guilt for the most part. guilt is used solely to control the minds of women.
so with guilt comes confession.
That’s actually a pretty interesting theory. Obviously, there are male exceptions like Robert Lowell, for instance, in poetry—probably the ultimate confessor-bound-by-guilt. What about someone like Bukowski. Isn’t he confessing shit? Or does confession connote guilty by its nature?
Right on, Roxane. I am in your boat. It’s all valid. Pie comes in all kinds of flavours.
It’s amazing that anyone ever thought a PINK cover for Mary Gaitskill is a good idea. I just don’t get it. I mean, I have some books I love that have pink covers (Jane Unrue’s Life of a Star, Lore Segal’s Lucinella) but Jesuschristalmighty if there was ever a bad marketing decision, it’s a pink cover on Mary Gaitskill. I’m being a little dramatic, but yeah.
Right on, Jereme.
I don’t think in ‘confessional writing’ there has to be an element of guilt overall, but you are right about the root of it. Basically, it seems like a mis-used term, at least in that godawful Guardian article.
i know plenty of men who feel guilt, they are, for the most part, catholics and jews.
also, let’s just hold hands and read bataille’s guilty instead. i’d rather read his confessions than be bored by my own.
well there will always be anomalies. i don’t think bukowski was confessing whatsoever.
he changed stories to make himself the hero. he is even quoted as saying, “in my shit, i’m the hero.” or something like that.
it is in the “born into this” documentary. he wrote about the film crew and director being absolute fuckups, which isn’t what happened.
i am not read on lowell. so i dunno.
i think confession connotes guilt by nature. yes.
what are you supposed to do with all that bullshit guilt? it will destroy you.
guilt isn’t even fucking real. it is something taught as a control.
i mean guilt isn’t even based off of an actual action. look at the witches in salem.
yeah i know. catholics and jews teach it. but i have met many men that fall into this category, and the ones i have met, ultimately don’t give a shit about guilt.
it is more of a fear of being caught. the action.
which is a different control. one for men.
I also think ‘guilt’ is a bit strong. ‘anxiety of disclosure’ seems a better approximation, to me – the author’s anxiety about perceived reception.
I feel like lowell is the progenitor of modern confessional work.
I also thought of Ginsberg, stripping, as a moment of radical whiplash confessional reading. But sort of canned.
Bukowski wasn’t “confessing”, he was Bragging
by the way, i think guilt is a key distinction between homosexuals and women. just as an aside.
steven, exactly.
anxiety is the physical manifestation of guilt.
guilt is fear.
yeah i think it is a misused term but also not.
by not i mean religion still shapes thought.
Hmm. Okay, I stand corrected abt Bukowski. I was just trying to think about a dude who was talking about his daily life sort of incessantly and recursively. I do agree that Lowell is the “progenitor of modern confessional work.” Maybe it’s the mental illness, for him, that created the guilt. “Everybody’s tired of my turmoil,” he wrote, and he was fucking tired of it himself, at least during his low periods.
This is the most interesting idea I’ve read in a week:
“to understand the term “confessional writing,” you must understand the meaning and nature of guilt.
men are not taught guilt for the most part. guilt is used solely to control the minds of women.
so with guilt comes confession.”
totally agree
jereme, hit me –
is Augustine’s “Confessions” confessional?
of course you liked Frank, he was the bookish neurotic
I’ve been thinking a lot about this very topic, as I venture into writing about sex for the first time. I’m reading essays about it—by women who are concerned with this very topic. Somehow or another, at 32, I still feel embarrassed about being a woman, about having emotions and cultural experiences that are, in fact, different than a man’s. I feel like I should be super-human, transcend my skin and bone and bits and pieces—maybe particularly so that my writing isn’t deemed as chick-lit or overtly “feminine.” I internalize this and tell myself that it’s my own problem. I’m the problem. I have always prioritized my mind over my body. I really don’t care about shoes; until recently, I didn’t care a lick about much that’s labeled “traditionally female,” so it’s easy to have an us vs. them mentality. Rational vs. irrational, etc. Maybe the true measure is just good writing vs. bad writing. Like you say, nobody accuses Didion, Plath, Hurston, etc. of writing chick-lit, yet they’re certainly writing about being women…
“If such writing does exist, there is a good chance it’s under a cover I’d never touch.”
do you mean you wouldn’t want to read it? why?
T,
I haven’t read it. So I can’t really speak on it fully. I did just read the synopsis on it and I would say no. It seems he is remorseful for what he has done.
he is in fear of his soul because of the consequences of his action.
that would be the other control i was alluding to earlier.
Ideological blinders? What a surprise. Pay attention to the origin & context of the use ‘confession.’ It’s a religious term. This is what I mean–your focus on feminism destroys your ability to be humanist. You dismiss the patriarchal structure of the Catholic Church and the pain it inflicts upon both sexes, claiming the pain women feel invalidates any pain men might feel from the same structure. And if you people aren’t too stupid, here’s the exciting move–the very use of the word ‘confession’ indicates an aping of the patriarchal idea-structure behind the word. So instead of ‘owning’ the word by exploring ‘confessional lit’ you simply reinforce the very idea that you supposedly are subverting through the use of the word ‘confession.’
Did any of you fuckers actually think about the shit they taught you in college? Never have I seen such a thread of self-satisfied know-nothings justifying their blighted aesthetic outlook. And I hardly consider it a cheap shot to get analytic w/ the word ‘confession’ as it was a pivotal concept that was barely examined in the above essay.
like i said i concur with catherine and think it is a misused term. but most people aren’t critical thinkers especially those in the media who coin stupid fucking phrases like this.
it is confessional because it is a book where women shun the guilt and do as they please. they perform the actions that are feared.
the audience of women find this to be empowering. as they should.
guilt is bullshit.
men are more consequence minded.
“Did any of you fuckers actually think about the shit they taught you in college? ”
lol. college teaches conformity. a true thinker educates himself.
or didn’t they teach you that in college?
Unfortunately, there could be some good writing out there being marketed as chick lit simply because it’s being written by a woman. I don’t care that the category of chick lit exists because it’s clearly something that some people enjoy reading and that’s fine. I take issue with the tendency publishers have to market any word written by a woman as a chick lit and putting some schmaltzy cover on the front of what might be a book that could have a wider appeal. I would never even think to pick up a book that has a stereotypically chick lit cover on it.
Great post, Catherine. The term chick lit is just a label for the kind of writing some women have been doing for ever and a day. I think the genre, such as it were, gets a bad rap and it troubles me when women try to separate themselves from chick lit like it’s a scarlet letter. “I write but I’m not that kind of writer,” for example. The physical and cultural reality of being a woman is very personal and for some women I do think that experience extends to “shoes and oh my god why isn’t he calling me back.” But to better address your question, I do think there’s a lot of women’s writing that isn’t lumped under the label “chick lit.” You’d never hear that term applied to the writing of Alicia Erian or Mary Gaitskill, for example. In terms of essayists, I don’t think that term would apply to Cheryl Strayed. There’s a specific quality that tends to conjure up the phrase “chick lit,” and writing that’s edgier tends to circumnvent that label.
The thing about writing about writing is that cultural critics are always looking for the lowest common denominator. To deconstruct women’s writing by identifying Candace Bushnell as the point of origin is something that cannot be taken seriously. Anyone who would make such a claim is not well-read or imaginative or capable of critical thought. If you’re going to go there, invoke Jane Austen or Edith Wharton, or any of the women you noted, for god’s sake.
I teach college. Or at least, I used to teach college. I didn’t teach conformity in the least.
Also: Confession: I. The action of confessing.
1. a. The disclosing of something the knowledge of which by others is considered humiliating or prejudicial to the person confessing; a making known or acknowledging of one’s fault, wrong, crime, weakness, etc.
b. Law. Acknowledgement before the proper authority of the truth of a statement or charge; acknowledgement by a culprit of the offence charged against him, when he is asked to plead to the indictment. confession and avoidance: admission of the truth of an adverse allegation, with the allegation of some new matter tending to avoid its legal effect.
2. a. As a religious act: The acknowledging of sin or sinfulness; esp. such acknowledgement made in set form in public worship.
3. Acknowledgement of a statement, claim, etc.; admission, concession.
4. The recognizing or acknowledging (of a person or thing) as having a certain character or certain claims; declaration of belief in or adhesion to; acknowledgement, profession, avowal when asked; spec. the testimony rendered by a Confessor (sense 2).
[Note: Confession did not attain its religious connotation until 1380, though etymologically, the word came from the 12C. I mean: the concept of confession ranges further than religion, to let it get caught in that muddle alone is short-sighted. To not mention it at all is even more short-sighted.]
Case in point:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/book_jackets/meet_the_new_consumerfriendly_alice_munro_75416.asp
Great post, Catherine.
That’s… wow.
Also — I think it is even more than how female writers are marketed; I think people often see women’s writing as having to do with less important things. I know so many people who say they don’t like Jane Austen because she writes about the small lives of rich women (of course, most of her protagonists are not rich). The same charge is never leveled at male writers who write about domesticity — Henry James, Cheever, Tolstoi, Ibsen, et cetera. Even when those male writers have female protagonists, it is STILL seen as more weighty than when women write about women.
lily,
you taught anything you wanted or you taught anything you wanted within the confines of the college system, what was allowable?
teachers, in my opinion, should be kept to a minimum. their very nature usurps power from the student.
and i think you are wrong about confession going past religion. religion taught morality. confession is born out of morality.
every example above bears the influence of religion. esp the law.
or do we not still swear on a stupid fucking bible in court? been some time since i have been incarcerated.
It is leveled at James and Cheever, actually. Hmm.
There seems to be a lot of critical disdain directed toward writing about “small lives” as if personal and intimate experiences are somehow unworthy. There’s a book that talks about this (more than one actually) and I am struggling to remember the title on the tip of my tongue but when I do, I’ll come back to this.
One book that gets at this idea of the personal as interesting and valuable, though not the book I’m trying to remember, and not in terms of gender, is deCerteau’s The Practice of Everyday Life.
Roxane, Why does it bother you when women want to separate themselves from the chick lit genre? It’s just a genre. I don’t wouldn’t write a romance novel or a mystery novel or a sci-fi novel or a chick lit novel. There are formulas to all of those genres and really nothing wrong with them, but it’s just not what I do.
You GO. Zadie Smith anyone? Thank you.
It’s not the separating in terms of genre but with some women, there’s a real tone to it, as if to say that they’re better than chick lit. It’s one thing to say hey, I write something completely different and want to be acknowledged for what it is I actually do. It’s another thing entirely to imply that you’re insulted that people would think you write “that stuff.” I am, here, drawing from my own history, where I used to get all indignant about the assumption I wrote chick lit until I realized, WTF am I doing getting irritated about this? I wasn’t indignant because I was misunderstood. I was indignant because I felt like hey, my writing is better than that and when I got over myself and thought about it more, I felt bad and bitchy and started to think about these things more along a continuum rather than a ladder where hey, we all write what we write and we shouldn’t be judging, at least in terms of genre.
I just saw Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter read with Aaron Burch and Reynard Seifert. No disrespect to Mr. Burch or Mr. Seifert, but … Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter.
Once more with feeling: Amelia Gray … Lindsay Hunter.
[deep breath]
I’d be surprised if Sex & the City made them the power writers they are today. I’d be very surprised.
And please don’t forget Marguerite Duras and Jeanette Winterson, pioneers well before Bushnell.
I wanted to thread this reply under Lily Hoang’s 4:51 pm post.
Are you fucking kidding me? You have to reach back to Middle English to rebut my point? I think people defending ‘confessional’ lit believe in the concept of ‘speech community’ so I find it perverse you’d even reach for such an intellectually dishonest rebuttal–just because you don’t like profanity mixed w/ your academese.
As for my strawman buddy, you attribute a position to me I did not declare; you mistake criticism for endorsement of the opposite. College may stunt independent thought, but it teaches one basic fucking rhetoric skills.
I haven’t read a lot of chick lit, but I honestly think it’s because I don’t want to be seen holding these kinds of books on the subway. But I will watch Nora Ephron movies until the cows come home, and I cried hysterically over The Bachelorette finale this week. Am I a hypocrite? A coward? I never got sucked into the Sex and the City vortex, but from the little I saw, I decided I “was” Charlotte, until I found out that most women dislike Charlotte. I guess she doesn’t have sex with enough people, and she likes puppies and babies, and therefore isn’t as empowered as the others.
To me, “confessional” writing suggests a vulnerability. It isn’t just telling the truth, reporting the facts. Like watching a striptease vs. going to a nude beach. I haven’t read enough contemporary memoirs by female authors to comment on that vein, but I know in poetry I go for what I would call a post-confessional slant…the truth, but disguised by lots of false threads and humor and smoke and mirrors. I think Ellen Kennedy, Elisa Gabbert, and Dorothea Lasky do this well.
I, too, struggle with the knowledge that I write from a very female POV, and yet still somehow resent being a “female poet.” I’ve been referred to as a “smart, young female poet,” and I resent “young” and “female.” As if I’m only talented/accomplished for someone my age. Or only talented/accomplished for someone with a vagina. Watch the poetess go! Go, poetess, go!
clearly it doesn’t since, as you originally pointed out, the college educated are lacking in such rhetoric skills?
the fact that you use the term “strawman” informs me greatly about your character.
have fun being an asshat.
Khakjaan: I wasn’t rebutting yr point, actually. I do, however, think there’s more to confession than just religion, unlike both you & Jereme. Ok. I’m out. Sorry, folks. I’ll respond to any further anger tomorrow morning.
awww lily i’m not angry. i heart you.
did i seem angry?
finally somebody mentions the bachelorette finale. i didn’t cry, but was very upset when ali let chris go and picked roberto. roberto is a nice guy and completely hot, but once the sex wears off and reality hits in, they won’t have long. chris is real husband/father material: took care of his mom when she was sick; not into nice clothes; big, strong, and silent; didn’t cry when he was dumped, but almost cried at the rainbow. but i bet roberto is a better lover, damn.
Just part of the (now) long tradition of identity literature which has plagued readers. The fundamental problem is that feminism has replaced humanism. Muriel Spark might be considered reactionary, but that’s an easy label used to dismiss her thesis that matriarchy is just as destructive as patriarchy.
And with such ideological blinders, it’s not surprising that in yet another arena, identity ‘politics’ (self-oriented jingoism) has lowered standards. There is a fundamental difference between Ya-Ya horseshit and Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mrs. Dalloway and Ceremony; and only some blithe bullshitmeister in need of a doctorate thesis is going to argue otherwise.
In the end, this essay seems to come down to ‘confession,’ (never mind the patriarchy-heavy connotations of the word, due to its association w/ religious practice) as the unifying trait of supposed chick-lit. The very idea that you would include these tea-sipping degenerates & their narrow focus on humanity, w/ literary giants shows the enormity of your ideological blindness. The whole problem here is market oriented writing, as opposed to literary writing. You argue that by making ‘confession’ the primary trait of chick-lit, it denies ‘legitimate’ explorations into feminine confession. I’m not sure why anyone thinks that’s a valid literary telos in the first place. Self-indulgence has killed the readership. Every time I think about buying a book by a living author, the first few pages remind me why I’m better off w/ Michaux and Bishop. Sydney had it right; write to elevate and instruct, or get the fuck out of the game. All other motives are spurious. If it’s easy to paint chick-lit as shit, well, that’s because it is. And you can hide under the banner of ‘memoir’ all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s market-oriented writing (as opposed to reader oriented); and while that does a great job of selling books, it is at the expense of jading a generation of readers who eventually (and rightly) dismiss the offered fare as amateurish horseshit.
I can’t fucking believe you had the temerity to compare Wolff and Hurston to Sloane Crosley & Meghan Daum. Figures. You can’t reject the false-consciousness of chick-lit, so you attempt to take ‘ownership’ of it, by redefining it to suit your taste. If I wanted to read taste masquerading as a critical essay, I’d still be subscribing to The Atlantic.
I thought that finale was so boring. I liked Frank even though he ended up being a douche.
Amy, that is some pretty serious pouring of old wine into new bottles. Striking. If only the woman in the chick-lit rendition was reading a copy of the older version, the whole thing would be redeemed.
I’m just flabbergasted that anyone would get angry over people talking to each other calmly and thoughtfully. ;)
I’m interested in the design element of chick lit marketing. I was reading Gaitskill’s ‘Don’t Cry’ on the subway (pink cover, quivering retina close-up) and overheard someone referring to me as a gaywad.
Equally unrelated, Metafilter just posted Princeton’s gallery of women working in printing/binding/designing.
http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/rbsc2/ga/unseenhands/gallery.html
to understand the term “confessional writing,” you must understand the meaning and nature of guilt.
men are not taught guilt for the most part. guilt is used solely to control the minds of women.
so with guilt comes confession.
That’s actually a pretty interesting theory. Obviously, there are male exceptions like Robert Lowell, for instance, in poetry—probably the ultimate confessor-bound-by-guilt. What about someone like Bukowski. Isn’t he confessing shit? Or does confession connote guilty by its nature?
Right on, Roxane. I am in your boat. It’s all valid. Pie comes in all kinds of flavours.
“most of her protagonists aren’t rich”
…but they do all have servants…
It’s amazing that anyone ever thought a PINK cover for Mary Gaitskill is a good idea. I just don’t get it. I mean, I have some books I love that have pink covers (Jane Unrue’s Life of a Star, Lore Segal’s Lucinella) but Jesuschristalmighty if there was ever a bad marketing decision, it’s a pink cover on Mary Gaitskill. I’m being a little dramatic, but yeah.
Shouldn’t Khakjaan be somewhere arguing with Mather?
Right on, Jereme.
I don’t think in ‘confessional writing’ there has to be an element of guilt overall, but you are right about the root of it. Basically, it seems like a mis-used term, at least in that godawful Guardian article.
i know plenty of men who feel guilt, they are, for the most part, catholics and jews.
also, let’s just hold hands and read bataille’s guilty instead. i’d rather read his confessions than be bored by my own.
well there will always be anomalies. i don’t think bukowski was confessing whatsoever.
he changed stories to make himself the hero. he is even quoted as saying, “in my shit, i’m the hero.” or something like that.
it is in the “born into this” documentary. he wrote about the film crew and director being absolute fuckups, which isn’t what happened.
i am not read on lowell. so i dunno.
i think confession connotes guilt by nature. yes.
what are you supposed to do with all that bullshit guilt? it will destroy you.
guilt isn’t even fucking real. it is something taught as a control.
i mean guilt isn’t even based off of an actual action. look at the witches in salem.
yeah i know. catholics and jews teach it. but i have met many men that fall into this category, and the ones i have met, ultimately don’t give a shit about guilt.
it is more of a fear of being caught. the action.
which is a different control. one for men.
I also think ‘guilt’ is a bit strong. ‘anxiety of disclosure’ seems a better approximation, to me – the author’s anxiety about perceived reception.
I feel like lowell is the progenitor of modern confessional work.
I also thought of Ginsberg, stripping, as a moment of radical whiplash confessional reading. But sort of canned.
Bukowski wasn’t “confessing”, he was Bragging
by the way, i think guilt is a key distinction between homosexuals and women. just as an aside.
steven, exactly.
anxiety is the physical manifestation of guilt.
guilt is fear.
yeah i think it is a misused term but also not.
by not i mean religion still shapes thought.
What does “self-oriented jingoism” mean?
Why say “telos” when you mean “end” or “goal”?
Who is Wolff?
Why the profanity?
Are you, perhaps, the worse for drink? Or graduate school?
Hmm. Okay, I stand corrected abt Bukowski. I was just trying to think about a dude who was talking about his daily life sort of incessantly and recursively. I do agree that Lowell is the “progenitor of modern confessional work.” Maybe it’s the mental illness, for him, that created the guilt. “Everybody’s tired of my turmoil,” he wrote, and he was fucking tired of it himself, at least during his low periods.
This is the most interesting idea I’ve read in a week:
“to understand the term “confessional writing,” you must understand the meaning and nature of guilt.
men are not taught guilt for the most part. guilt is used solely to control the minds of women.
so with guilt comes confession.”
totally agree
mather is like beetlejuice, say his name 3 times fast, and the worthless shit appears.
much to our dismay.
jereme, hit me –
is Augustine’s “Confessions” confessional?
of course you liked Frank, he was the bookish neurotic
I’m curious as to whether Ms. Lacey actually read the Guardian article to which she takes such exception, given that 1) it makes a pretty clear distinction between fiction and non-fiction, focusing on the latter and in particular the humorous essay collection (and barely mentions fiction at all); 2) mentions Didion in paragraph 9; 3) contains the following: “For all that Candace Bushnell might have broken down barriers for female writers by writing with clear-eyed candour about previously taboo subjects, Sex and the City was, essentially, shaped by this same, age-old assumption that a woman’s life could only ever be complete once she had settled down with the perfect man,” and ends with: “In the same way, one imagines it might be easier to dismiss the work of female confessional authors as being somehow facile and glib because, on the surface, they deal with the small moments of everyday experience rather than dealing with the grittiness of big ideas. But this would be to do them a disservice. By engaging with their readers and speaking to them on their own level with humour and candour, Gould, Daum and Crosley seek to illuminate broader truths.”
T,
I haven’t read it. So I can’t really speak on it fully. I did just read the synopsis on it and I would say no. It seems he is remorseful for what he has done.
he is in fear of his soul because of the consequences of his action.
that would be the other control i was alluding to earlier.
Ideological blinders? What a surprise. Pay attention to the origin & context of the use ‘confession.’ It’s a religious term. This is what I mean–your focus on feminism destroys your ability to be humanist. You dismiss the patriarchal structure of the Catholic Church and the pain it inflicts upon both sexes, claiming the pain women feel invalidates any pain men might feel from the same structure. And if you people aren’t too stupid, here’s the exciting move–the very use of the word ‘confession’ indicates an aping of the patriarchal idea-structure behind the word. So instead of ‘owning’ the word by exploring ‘confessional lit’ you simply reinforce the very idea that you supposedly are subverting through the use of the word ‘confession.’
Did any of you fuckers actually think about the shit they taught you in college? Never have I seen such a thread of self-satisfied know-nothings justifying their blighted aesthetic outlook. And I hardly consider it a cheap shot to get analytic w/ the word ‘confession’ as it was a pivotal concept that was barely examined in the above essay.
like i said i concur with catherine and think it is a misused term. but most people aren’t critical thinkers especially those in the media who coin stupid fucking phrases like this.
it is confessional because it is a book where women shun the guilt and do as they please. they perform the actions that are feared.
the audience of women find this to be empowering. as they should.
guilt is bullshit.
men are more consequence minded.
“Did any of you fuckers actually think about the shit they taught you in college? ”
lol. college teaches conformity. a true thinker educates himself.
or didn’t they teach you that in college?
I teach college. Or at least, I used to teach college. I didn’t teach conformity in the least.
Also: Confession: I. The action of confessing.
1. a. The disclosing of something the knowledge of which by others is considered humiliating or prejudicial to the person confessing; a making known or acknowledging of one’s fault, wrong, crime, weakness, etc.
b. Law. Acknowledgement before the proper authority of the truth of a statement or charge; acknowledgement by a culprit of the offence charged against him, when he is asked to plead to the indictment. confession and avoidance: admission of the truth of an adverse allegation, with the allegation of some new matter tending to avoid its legal effect.
2. a. As a religious act: The acknowledging of sin or sinfulness; esp. such acknowledgement made in set form in public worship.
3. Acknowledgement of a statement, claim, etc.; admission, concession.
4. The recognizing or acknowledging (of a person or thing) as having a certain character or certain claims; declaration of belief in or adhesion to; acknowledgement, profession, avowal when asked; spec. the testimony rendered by a Confessor (sense 2).
[Note: Confession did not attain its religious connotation until 1380, though etymologically, the word came from the 12C. I mean: the concept of confession ranges further than religion, to let it get caught in that muddle alone is short-sighted. To not mention it at all is even more short-sighted.]
lily,
you taught anything you wanted or you taught anything you wanted within the confines of the college system, what was allowable?
teachers, in my opinion, should be kept to a minimum. their very nature usurps power from the student.
and i think you are wrong about confession going past religion. religion taught morality. confession is born out of morality.
every example above bears the influence of religion. esp the law.
or do we not still swear on a stupid fucking bible in court? been some time since i have been incarcerated.
Does that work for Wenclas, too?
?
try it.
While it’s true that Lacey quotes some of the same words I do, she seems to have drawn an intent from them that isn’t evident in the article, which argues that the Sex In The City phenomenon probably expanded the market for certain other books, which, the article’s author argues, should not be dismissed on the basis of their being marketed similarly, or of their superficial resemblance to what allowed them a wider audience. As for Daum, Gould, et al’s work having a closer affinity with the essays of Virginia Woolf than with the columns of Ms. Bushnell, I couldn’t say. But I don’t think the Guardian piece asserts that before Bushnell women never wrote about the experience of being women, just that there’s an expanded readership for such things. It also identifies SITC as having been shaped by a certain set of cultural assumptions, and not as having created them.
thank you, mickey. sorry i was just confused by your first comment.
I wanted to thread this reply under Lily Hoang’s 4:51 pm post.
Are you fucking kidding me? You have to reach back to Middle English to rebut my point? I think people defending ‘confessional’ lit believe in the concept of ‘speech community’ so I find it perverse you’d even reach for such an intellectually dishonest rebuttal–just because you don’t like profanity mixed w/ your academese.
As for my strawman buddy, you attribute a position to me I did not declare; you mistake criticism for endorsement of the opposite. College may stunt independent thought, but it teaches one basic fucking rhetoric skills.
clearly it doesn’t since, as you originally pointed out, the college educated are lacking in such rhetoric skills?
the fact that you use the term “strawman” informs me greatly about your character.
have fun being an asshat.
Khakjaan: I wasn’t rebutting yr point, actually. I do, however, think there’s more to confession than just religion, unlike both you & Jereme. Ok. I’m out. Sorry, folks. I’ll respond to any further anger tomorrow morning.
awww lily i’m not angry. i heart you.
did i seem angry?
Hi Mickey,
Yeah, I read the article. I wouldn’t have posted this without doing that.
While the writer does point out the obvious differences between SITC/Bushnell and the current American female nonfiction writers (which I am really reluctant to call a ‘wave’) she still makes the assumption that these writers are working in a tradition that was started by Bushnell and that just irks me. It’s the whole tail wagging the dog thing. It’s ridiculous to think that Bushnell is responsible for any American woman writer daring to write about sex post 1995. Furthermore, Daum is a very accomplished, talented essayist and I take issue with her being herded into the same category as SITC and, well, Emily Gould. I think Gould isn’t as bad as people make her out to be, but she can’t hold a candle to Daum.
I’m just flabbergasted that anyone would get angry over people talking to each other calmly and thoughtfully. ;)
Also, you’re right about the marketing issue. I think this article should have focused entirely on the marketing of these books and left out anything about a ‘literary tradition’ that ties SITC to any of the books mentioned.
My apologies for implying that you hadn’t read it. But again, given that the article quotes Daum re her indebtedness to Didion as well as on her concerns about the “confessional” label itself, I don’t think it’s as thoughtless as you claim, or that it argues that all current essay-writing by women is creditable to Bushnell. Not having read the books in question, I couldn’t speak to their literary merit. But based on the reviews I have read, I wouldn’t say that they sound particularly ambitious.
“most of her protagonists aren’t rich”
…but they do all have servants…
Shouldn’t Khakjaan be somewhere arguing with Mather?
What does “self-oriented jingoism” mean?
Why say “telos” when you mean “end” or “goal”?
Who is Wolff?
Why the profanity?
Are you, perhaps, the worse for drink? Or graduate school?
mather is like beetlejuice, say his name 3 times fast, and the worthless shit appears.
much to our dismay.
I’m curious as to whether Ms. Lacey actually read the Guardian article to which she takes such exception, given that 1) it makes a pretty clear distinction between fiction and non-fiction, focusing on the latter and in particular the humorous essay collection (and barely mentions fiction at all); 2) mentions Didion in paragraph 9; 3) contains the following: “For all that Candace Bushnell might have broken down barriers for female writers by writing with clear-eyed candour about previously taboo subjects, Sex and the City was, essentially, shaped by this same, age-old assumption that a woman’s life could only ever be complete once she had settled down with the perfect man,” and ends with: “In the same way, one imagines it might be easier to dismiss the work of female confessional authors as being somehow facile and glib because, on the surface, they deal with the small moments of everyday experience rather than dealing with the grittiness of big ideas. But this would be to do them a disservice. By engaging with their readers and speaking to them on their own level with humour and candour, Gould, Daum and Crosley seek to illuminate broader truths.”
Word to Catherine Lacey here.
nah, i didn’t think you were angry. i thought maybe khakjaan was angry. but i’m not angry, you’re not angry, we’re all pals here. hip hip hooray!
Does that work for Wenclas, too?
I think you mistake zealotry for something more than passive antipathy. But I always find it curious when facts are presented as an oblique rebuttal that never declares itself as a rebuttal, so that if there is some type of weakness in the inference, it was never claimed by the one sharing the facts.
The main problem with writers these days is that they spend too much time on the craft of writing and not enough on the craft of thinking. Hence, articles like the one above, which are premised on unexamined bullshit and simply perpetuate false consciousness. If expressing antipathy with profanity is demonstrative of anger, then I suppose you are filled with transcendental joy when you typed ‘hip hip hooray!’
Anyone who is incapable of feeling injured upon reading bad writing, isn’t much of a writer imo.
I’m astonished at how lightly you take literature.
If you saw me neuter Mather when he humped my leg one too many times, then you’ve also seen CombatWords!I’m surprised you have the balls to even hint at a talk of shit when you haven’t been tested in the arena. Another smug and artless dodger–implying more talent than he wields? I’ll withhold judgment until I’ve seen you write on the clock–I’ve been surprised before. But I do think it’s poor form to suggest that because Mather doesn’t like me, that that means I’m anything less than a magnificent personality. I also find it a poor substitute for rebutting my rebuttal.
Anyhow, I think we can all agree that Mather needs a trip from the Finger Fairy soon.
try it.
While it’s true that Lacey quotes some of the same words I do, she seems to have drawn an intent from them that isn’t evident in the article, which argues that the Sex In The City phenomenon probably expanded the market for certain other books, which, the article’s author argues, should not be dismissed on the basis of their being marketed similarly, or of their superficial resemblance to what allowed them a wider audience. As for Daum, Gould, et al’s work having a closer affinity with the essays of Virginia Woolf than with the columns of Ms. Bushnell, I couldn’t say. But I don’t think the Guardian piece asserts that before Bushnell women never wrote about the experience of being women, just that there’s an expanded readership for such things. It also identifies SITC as having been shaped by a certain set of cultural assumptions, and not as having created them.
thank you, mickey. sorry i was just confused by your first comment.
i’d add anaïs nin
really liked this catherine
i do feel like women can get more from women than men probably can, in some cases. for instance, chelsea martin’s writing i’ve always really enjoyed, but feel that women can probably see it on a level i can’t, which makes me a little sad but it’s like whatever.
Hi Mickey,
Yeah, I read the article. I wouldn’t have posted this without doing that.
While the writer does point out the obvious differences between SITC/Bushnell and the current American female nonfiction writers (which I am really reluctant to call a ‘wave’) she still makes the assumption that these writers are working in a tradition that was started by Bushnell and that just irks me. It’s the whole tail wagging the dog thing. It’s ridiculous to think that Bushnell is responsible for any American woman writer daring to write about sex post 1995. Furthermore, Daum is a very accomplished, talented essayist and I take issue with her being herded into the same category as SITC and, well, Emily Gould. I think Gould isn’t as bad as people make her out to be, but she can’t hold a candle to Daum.
Also, you’re right about the marketing issue. I think this article should have focused entirely on the marketing of these books and left out anything about a ‘literary tradition’ that ties SITC to any of the books mentioned.
My apologies for implying that you hadn’t read it. But again, given that the article quotes Daum re her indebtedness to Didion as well as on her concerns about the “confessional” label itself, I don’t think it’s as thoughtless as you claim, or that it argues that all current essay-writing by women is creditable to Bushnell. Not having read the books in question, I couldn’t speak to their literary merit. But based on the reviews I have read, I wouldn’t say that they sound particularly ambitious.
Word to Catherine Lacey here.
nah, i didn’t think you were angry. i thought maybe khakjaan was angry. but i’m not angry, you’re not angry, we’re all pals here. hip hip hooray!
I think you mistake zealotry for something more than passive antipathy. But I always find it curious when facts are presented as an oblique rebuttal that never declares itself as a rebuttal, so that if there is some type of weakness in the inference, it was never claimed by the one sharing the facts.
The main problem with writers these days is that they spend too much time on the craft of writing and not enough on the craft of thinking. Hence, articles like the one above, which are premised on unexamined bullshit and simply perpetuate false consciousness. If expressing antipathy with profanity is demonstrative of anger, then I suppose you are filled with transcendental joy when you typed ‘hip hip hooray!’
Anyone who is incapable of feeling injured upon reading bad writing, isn’t much of a writer imo.
I’m astonished at how lightly you take literature.
If you saw me neuter Mather when he humped my leg one too many times, then you’ve also seen CombatWords!I’m surprised you have the balls to even hint at a talk of shit when you haven’t been tested in the arena. Another smug and artless dodger–implying more talent than he wields? I’ll withhold judgment until I’ve seen you write on the clock–I’ve been surprised before. But I do think it’s poor form to suggest that because Mather doesn’t like me, that that means I’m anything less than a magnificent personality. I also find it a poor substitute for rebutting my rebuttal.
Anyhow, I think we can all agree that Mather needs a trip from the Finger Fairy soon.
i’d add anaïs nin
really liked this catherine
i do feel like women can get more from women than men probably can, in some cases. for instance, chelsea martin’s writing i’ve always really enjoyed, but feel that women can probably see it on a level i can’t, which makes me a little sad but it’s like whatever.
The one-off mention of Didion isn’t really adequate, I feel, and it doesn’t make up for the fact that the subtitle of this article is: “Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City columns inspired some dire chick lit, but also a generation of more serious young writers.”
Sure, the article says this generation is more serious, but using the word inspired is truly ridiculous. Daum was writing way before SITC became the thing it is. Her first book, My Misspent Youth, came out in 2001 & it is a collection of essays that include a few published in The New Yorker and Harper’s. I really doubt she was looking to the The New York Observer’s relationship column for inspiration.
Nor do I think Sloane Crosley & Emily Daum were doing the same. I feel like they’re only being connected to SITC because they’re women and that’s irritating, especially when it’s coming from the Guardian.
Why do you feel that Reynard? I want to see a longer post about this from a guy.
i dunno, guys (and gals?)… if there is any sense to the notion of there being a ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ quality to a block of text/writing, a good writer better well be able to maximize/utilize/exploitize both voices for the purposes of telling a better story/conveying a more protean hand to the act/art of storytelling.
/sorry to butt in, if that’s what i’m doing.
Apparently, in the field of collegiate wizard arts, it’s now accepted that certain effete men *can* write the very special, de-patriarch-O-lizing “l’ecriture” “feminine” — it just has to be fluid and/or curvy. ‘Cause scientists *hate* that shit, yo!
(So, yes…a text block can be feminine. Until you put on the queer theory hat. Then your vagina merely the product of discourse. Shame on you for your questions!)
Sorry, zusya. I misread your post as a question… (I don’t write well in any mode)
I want to be on board with this but I have my doubts…to label something as “chick lit” feels like it’s already to stamp it formulaic and thus less imaginative, somehow. Marketable, digestable, and more-mass-produced, ultimately, less distinctive. Synthetic vitamins versus cuisine. The reason Gaitskill isn’t categorized as chick-lit isn’t only because she’s edgier, though it might be part of the story. But the reason is because she’s so anti-formulaic…her sentences and explorations of sexuality, identity, etc. make the world utterly strange, like we’re seeing things underwater, such that even if we identify immediately with certain sensations the narrator’s mind continually surprises us, jolts us. For “us” read “me.” But I’ve just been reading Veronica, which feels at once brazenly confessional and yet continuously slipping away from the idea that it is even possible to “confess” re: something as elusive as sexuality.
Yes, of course, on the many flavors of pie. Gaitskill speaks rather ironically to this point in Veronica. “When Rene came, I told him I wanted to go somewhere that had pie. He laughed and said, ‘You will have French pie!’ We went to a patisserie with cakes that looked like jewelry boxes made of cream. I ate them, but I didnt’ like them. They had too many tastes, and I wanted the plain chemical taste of grocery store pie.”
I think you can take SOME of this piece out of context but the general point is there that the reporter clearly had what she was going to write ahead of time. She’s just connecting them because they are women who are writing after Sex & the City. But both Sloane Crosley and Megan Daum seem to be putting up a fight. Both bristling at confessional writing and bloggers….
Does anyone know if they have blogs? Ironically, I approve of their disliking of them but would totally read both of them. Any leads?
Thank you.
See, that’s why I want to start a corresponding bro lit genre. Brose. It sells itself, and what’s more masculine than packaging?
Just kidding. What’s dire is this article’s rewriting of the begats of contemporary (women’s) writing. “Gould is one of a new generation of female confessional writers who, according to Sittenfeld, ‘speak, in our often phoney and cheesy culture, to the truths of women’s lives’.” How is this saying anything new?
Also, BROADER TRUTHS: should I lol?
(“By engaging with their readers and speaking to them on their own level with humour and candour, Gould, Daum and Crosley seek to illuminate broader truths.”)
‘on their own level’
Jesus fucking christ.
brose sounds good
bros reading brose
The one-off mention of Didion isn’t really adequate, I feel, and it doesn’t make up for the fact that the subtitle of this article is: “Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City columns inspired some dire chick lit, but also a generation of more serious young writers.”
Sure, the article says this generation is more serious, but using the word inspired is truly ridiculous. Daum was writing way before SITC became the thing it is. Her first book, My Misspent Youth, came out in 2001 & it is a collection of essays that include a few published in The New Yorker and Harper’s. I really doubt she was looking to the The New York Observer’s relationship column for inspiration.
Nor do I think Sloane Crosley & Emily Daum were doing the same. I feel like they’re only being connected to SITC because they’re women and that’s irritating, especially when it’s coming from the Guardian.
Fratire?
Why do you feel that Reynard? I want to see a longer post about this from a guy.
Tucker Maxxx
dick lit
I’m sayin’! Think of the potential! Brose & its bro, broetry, the upstanding young ubermenschen of arts and letters. Maybe we could claim their lineage stems directly from Tucker Max and Chuck Palahniuk, but we shouldn’t forget to give a shoutout to Charles Bukowski.
Cool…I’ll write the brologue.
Didion is textually hermaphroditic: big oak dick plus capacious, nut-cracking vadge. Ditto Calvino, O’Connor, Bowles, Vonnegut, Brodkey, Beckett. Philip Roth was a tough young textual Lesbian who faltered when he became a soft old textual Queen. Burroughs was a leathery textual Queen with a jewel-encrusted dagger. Hemingway was a textual adolescent with a bb gun and an un-descended nut. Franzen is a tender young castrati.
!!!!
Apparently, in the field of collegiate wizard arts, it’s now accepted that certain effete men *can* write the very special, de-patriarch-O-lizing “l’ecriture” “feminine” — it just has to be fluid and/or curvy. ‘Cause scientists *hate* that shit, yo!
(So, yes…a text block can be feminine. Until you put on the queer theory hat. Then your vagina merely the product of discourse. Shame on you for your questions!)
Sorry, zusya. I misread your post as a question… (I don’t write well in any mode)
erratum: castrato
I want to be on board with this but I have my doubts…to label something as “chick lit” feels like it’s already to stamp it formulaic and thus less imaginative, somehow. Marketable, digestable, and more-mass-produced, ultimately, less distinctive. Synthetic vitamins versus cuisine. The reason Gaitskill isn’t categorized as chick-lit isn’t only because she’s edgier, though it might be part of the story. But the reason is because she’s so anti-formulaic…her sentences and explorations of sexuality, identity, etc. make the world utterly strange, like we’re seeing things underwater, such that even if we identify immediately with certain sensations the narrator’s mind continually surprises us, jolts us. For “us” read “me.” But I’ve just been reading Veronica, which feels at once brazenly confessional and yet continuously slipping away from the idea that it is even possible to “confess” re: something as elusive as sexuality.
cracka-ass cracka
Yes, of course, on the many flavors of pie. Gaitskill speaks rather ironically to this point in Veronica. “When Rene came, I told him I wanted to go somewhere that had pie. He laughed and said, ‘You will have French pie!’ We went to a patisserie with cakes that looked like jewelry boxes made of cream. I ate them, but I didnt’ like them. They had too many tastes, and I wanted the plain chemical taste of grocery store pie.”
Well, I think that’s very sad and actually superficial. I write erotica (my first novel is going to be published in spring in Germany by an editor here in Berlin) and the cover is probably going to be terrible, I don’t know how it is in the US, but in Germany it is really hard to publish and SELL erotica, so of course the publishers go for the readers who also read chick lit. But there’s still the chance to write about what you care about (for example writing on sex in some specific way). You shouldn’t judge so hard with that genre, because then it’s going to be hard to find something except Erica Jong or anais Nin. So think about reading a book that has a stereotypical chick lit cover.
Thank you, Roxanne.
I think you can take SOME of this piece out of context but the general point is there that the reporter clearly had what she was going to write ahead of time. She’s just connecting them because they are women who are writing after Sex & the City. But both Sloane Crosley and Megan Daum seem to be putting up a fight. Both bristling at confessional writing and bloggers….
Does anyone know if they have blogs? Ironically, I approve of their disliking of them but would totally read both of them. Any leads?
Thank you.
What are you talking about?
This is the latest entry on your blog:
“an ant just bit my neck. vampiric or something?
I don’t know. I do know I smells like antssss.
Ant in my tea mug made me spill tea on my ant-infested laptop.
Woot!!! antssss bleed from my nose.
sneezed out a lung and antssss crawled
all over it!!! they call me their Avatar
bcuz they controls my mind lol.
i see antssss drip from my ears
to the table. I feel so happy
and they are so cute. The horrors of the home
magnified over a million times,
form a pattern of blood, lung,
and antssss on my table.
everything is a beautiful swirl.”
Where have you people been all your short lives? A discussion about women writers and not a mention of Kathy Acker, Dorothy Allison, Lydia Davis, Eileen Myles, Maxine Hong Kingston, Aoibheann Sweeney, Amy Hempel, Lorrie Moore, Gertrude Stein, Banana Yamamoto, Anne Lamott, Jhumpi Lahiri, Grace Paley, Jayne Anne Phillips, Lynne Tillman, Teresa Hak Kyng Cha, Mary Karr — the list goes on and on. Please open your books, children, to page 1 and begin reading.
Sorry: Banana *Yoshimoto*
late to the party, but: good post, catherine, and good conversation.
See, that’s why I want to start a corresponding bro lit genre. Brose. It sells itself, and what’s more masculine than packaging?
Just kidding. What’s dire is this article’s rewriting of the begats of contemporary (women’s) writing. “Gould is one of a new generation of female confessional writers who, according to Sittenfeld, ‘speak, in our often phoney and cheesy culture, to the truths of women’s lives’.” How is this saying anything new?
For what it’s worth, 1) SITC would seem to have been peaking around 2001 as a phenom, and Bushnell started her column in the mid-1990’s; 2) Author of article likely wasn’t responsible for the headline; 3) Are any of these writers really worth getting worked-up over either way? I mean, is it really such a taxonomical atrocity to lump Daum, Crosley, etc in w/ SITC? Again, I haven’t read them, but presumably we aren’t talking about the next Elizabeth Hardwick here? [Please do read Hardwick’s SEDUCTION AND BETRAYAL if you haven’t] Or even Fran Lebowitz? Also, it might be worth mentioning that some of the most misogynist (or at least retrograde) representations of women in the culture come from women. I refer you to the oeuvres of Nora Ephron, Nancy Meyers, etc.
Also, BROADER TRUTHS: should I lol?
(“By engaging with their readers and speaking to them on their own level with humour and candour, Gould, Daum and Crosley seek to illuminate broader truths.”)
And to give credit to the Guardian, they did run this story as the other half of the debate: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/aug/04/chick-lit-debate-dj-connell
as well as this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/11/women-short-story
Now, now, now. I think you know that neither sarcastic nor needlessly aggressive comments on the internet take “balls,” KW. They only take a keyboard and an internet connection.
Don’t be so PC-compulsive, Angel G… also: Anne Lamott? Banana Yoshimoto? They don’t deserve to share my flat screen with K. Acker. Why not Sapphire, Ayelet Waldman, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Tama Janowitz while you’re at it? Have I missed anyone with an ovary?
‘on their own level’
Jesus fucking christ.
Again, this all is based on one blessed article in a newspaper about a trend. “Finding” or inventing trends is what newspapers do. The article was about essay collections by women writing “humorously” about the experience of being a woman. We all love getting exercised but maybe should chose our targets more carefully, just to save ourselves from sheer incoherence and overkill. Go write the essays and reviews you want to read, dammit!
Here’s a handkerchief to help you clean up some of that conescension.
Anyway… to hell with the pseudo-progressive Guardian. No one ever mentions the stylistic and intellectual kinship between Joan Didion and Harold Brodkey and this retrograde, stripper-pole-affirming “Chick Lit” nonsense makes it less and less likely to happen.
brose sounds good
bros reading brose
Fratire?
Tucker Maxxx
dick lit
I’m sayin’! Think of the potential! Brose & its bro, broetry, the upstanding young ubermenschen of arts and letters. Maybe we could claim their lineage stems directly from Tucker Max and Chuck Palahniuk, but we shouldn’t forget to give a shoutout to Charles Bukowski.
Too right, we are all armed equally. You forget that it takes–not only language–but a speech community for that meaning to be conveyed. Is this a non-committal way for you to dictate the mode with which one reads and responds to an essay?
I also note that you fixate on me and not my argument. Everyone’s gotta jockey for some kinda position in these discussions it seems. I fully admit my irritable nature, something you are more comfortable engaging than the argument I offered. Don’t be a simpleton.
“Choose.” Mea dumba.
Yeah, it’s a found poem. I also do pyrrhics, anapests, dactyls, trochees, spondees, and even our friend the iamb. I do it daily. What do you do daily, other than diddle your prosthetics?
Cool…I’ll write the brologue.
Wow, you have a lot of guts saying that given what I saw on June 25 on your website. Let’s see, since June 25th, I’ve written at least 84 poems. I should say verse; because any idiot can write prose with line breaks, frame it with a title, and call it a poem.
CombatWords is tomorrow, if you care to put your ass on the line. Though given the twaddle I saw on your site, I fully understand if you feel the need to chicken out.
I think it’s hilarious you hold up the poem as flawed prima facie and say nothing about it. I know a new fan when I see one.
Didion is textually hermaphroditic: big oak dick plus capacious, nut-cracking vadge. Ditto Calvino, O’Connor, Bowles, Vonnegut, Brodkey, Beckett. Philip Roth was a tough young textual Lesbian who faltered when he became a soft old textual Queen. Burroughs was a leathery textual Queen with a jewel-encrusted dagger. Hemingway was a textual adolescent with a bb gun and an un-descended nut. Franzen is a tender young castrati.
I’m fixating on you because I think you are sexy.
Oh, forgot to mention, you didn’t cite and since the work is copyrighted, you ought to be more careful. It’s only Fair Use with attribution. So I expect you to personally add the cite, or remove the post.
I’m totally sure it was an accident and you had no intention of putting anyone in legal jeopardy for something as stupid as an internet discussion. But you really ought to be more careful, when the page says the material is copyrighted. Not everyone on the internet is a joker, know what I mean, yuk yuk yuk?
I’m happy you’ve grown accustomed to rejection. It should serve you well in the years to come.
And is that mistyping or an attempt at a pun?
This comment-page has the best catering.
“Gould is one of a new generation of female confessional writers who, according to Sittenfeld, ’speak, in our often phoney and cheesy culture, to the truths of women’s lives’.”
The niche she speaks for is so small that I totally understand their obsession with being seen as a majority, or a relevant demographic. What’s the niche? Hey, wouldn’t you know, it’s white, reluctantly affluent, over-educated women trying to make their way in the Big City. Same old shit.
Exactly! It’s an over-privileged demo affecting an identity-struggle. It is (seemingly) writing that wouldn’t exist without niche marketing, but which protests its own inclusion under a heading without which it wouldn’t sell.
Damn.
“How many mics do we rip on the daily? Say me say many money. Say me say many many many.”
!!!!
Khakjaan Wessington keystyling and shit. Got mad diss poems and shit.
Cockjaan,
dude, why are you so uptight and passive-aggressive? are you british or something?
that would make sense.
the brits are like that.
seriously dude. why are you so pissy? when is the last time you spent a night with a women and drained your balls?
well i meant woman, but women work too.
tea for three.
how can one be over educated?
If one’s common sense and/or humanity are impeded by an excess of rationalization and/or categorization.
mickey, dude. you made a typo four posts above this one. wtf?
erratum: castrato
I think you can answer your own question.
and i think if you are going to use loose terms like that you should explain them. how the fuck can a woman be over educated?
like they know more shit than they should? or like they are destined to be lower class housewives and don’t need to know that much?
trying to wrap my head around your bullshit rhetoric.
edify me.
I honestly didn’t know if it was a typo or an attempted neologism on Ms. Gay’s part.
common sense and education have nothing to do with each other.
lol
are only white women able to become over educated? like are black chicks just able to learn forever with no cap or is it the reverse?
what about asian women?
what about those girls you can’t tell what race they are but they have immaculate hips and your only desire is to watch them walk around?
can those girls educate the shit out of themselves?
come on dude. you fucking deserve this.
Yeah, that “on their own level” thing kills me.
What are “immaculate hips,” if they’re not on the Virgin Mother?
ok
It’s worth mentioning that this has pretty much been the opposite of a “good discussion.” It’s been a lot of knee-jerk identity-politics-based indignation and ill-considered assertions, with a generous helping of homeless-wino peanut-gallery crosstalk. And I do not exempt myself from culpability.
I have been arrogant. I have been cruel. I have been careless. I submit myself to your collective mercy, and hereby retire from the fray.
cracka-ass cracka
Well, I think that’s very sad and actually superficial. I write erotica (my first novel is going to be published in spring in Germany by an editor here in Berlin) and the cover is probably going to be terrible, I don’t know how it is in the US, but in Germany it is really hard to publish and SELL erotica, so of course the publishers go for the readers who also read chick lit. But there’s still the chance to write about what you care about (for example writing on sex in some specific way). You shouldn’t judge so hard with that genre, because then it’s going to be hard to find something except Erica Jong or anais Nin. So think about reading a book that has a stereotypical chick lit cover.
Thank you, Roxanne.
what the fuck is a virgin mother?
I think it’s Madonna during her first record.
That sounds more like a smug dismissal than an accurate assessment. I notice you didn’t chase that thread w/ Middle English. What, is that beyond your element?
I still assert that the whole idea of ‘confession’ in ‘identity lit’ is structurally unsound.
I could frame that thesis if you need it to be clearer. Or you could quit being a conversation thwarter, whip out your OED and fucking talk lit–not about how you’re supposedly above the fray.
madonna has always had shitty hips.
I see this is more your speed; talking about television shows & their cultural impact. Totally asinine.
What are you talking about?
This is the latest entry on your blog:
“an ant just bit my neck. vampiric or something?
I don’t know. I do know I smells like antssss.
Ant in my tea mug made me spill tea on my ant-infested laptop.
Woot!!! antssss bleed from my nose.
sneezed out a lung and antssss crawled
all over it!!! they call me their Avatar
bcuz they controls my mind lol.
i see antssss drip from my ears
to the table. I feel so happy
and they are so cute. The horrors of the home
magnified over a million times,
form a pattern of blood, lung,
and antssss on my table.
everything is a beautiful swirl.”
Where have you people been all your short lives? A discussion about women writers and not a mention of Kathy Acker, Dorothy Allison, Lydia Davis, Eileen Myles, Maxine Hong Kingston, Aoibheann Sweeney, Amy Hempel, Lorrie Moore, Gertrude Stein, Banana Yamamoto, Anne Lamott, Jhumpi Lahiri, Grace Paley, Jayne Anne Phillips, Lynne Tillman, Teresa Hak Kyng Cha, Mary Karr — the list goes on and on. Please open your books, children, to page 1 and begin reading.
Sorry: Banana *Yoshimoto*
late to the party, but: good post, catherine, and good conversation.
good to know. thanks.
good to know. thanks.
For what it’s worth, 1) SITC would seem to have been peaking around 2001 as a phenom, and Bushnell started her column in the mid-1990’s; 2) Author of article likely wasn’t responsible for the headline; 3) Are any of these writers really worth getting worked-up over either way? I mean, is it really such a taxonomical atrocity to lump Daum, Crosley, etc in w/ SITC? Again, I haven’t read them, but presumably we aren’t talking about the next Elizabeth Hardwick here? [Please do read Hardwick’s SEDUCTION AND BETRAYAL if you haven’t] Or even Fran Lebowitz? Also, it might be worth mentioning that some of the most misogynist (or at least retrograde) representations of women in the culture come from women. I refer you to the oeuvres of Nora Ephron, Nancy Meyers, etc.
And to give credit to the Guardian, they did run this story as the other half of the debate: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/aug/04/chick-lit-debate-dj-connell
as well as this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/11/women-short-story
Now, now, now. I think you know that neither sarcastic nor needlessly aggressive comments on the internet take “balls,” KW. They only take a keyboard and an internet connection.
Yes, the noted gameshow host Elizabeth Hardwick. I was trying to keep the terms of discourse based in fact, in fact.
Yes, the noted gameshow host Elizabeth Hardwick. I was trying to keep the terms of discourse based in fact, in fact.
Don’t be so PC-compulsive, Angel G… also: Anne Lamott? Banana Yoshimoto? They don’t deserve to share my flat screen with K. Acker. Why not Sapphire, Ayelet Waldman, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Tama Janowitz while you’re at it? Have I missed anyone with an ovary?
Again, this all is based on one blessed article in a newspaper about a trend. “Finding” or inventing trends is what newspapers do. The article was about essay collections by women writing “humorously” about the experience of being a woman. We all love getting exercised but maybe should chose our targets more carefully, just to save ourselves from sheer incoherence and overkill. Go write the essays and reviews you want to read, dammit!
Here’s a handkerchief to help you clean up some of that conescension.
Anyway… to hell with the pseudo-progressive Guardian. No one ever mentions the stylistic and intellectual kinship between Joan Didion and Harold Brodkey and this retrograde, stripper-pole-affirming “Chick Lit” nonsense makes it less and less likely to happen.
Too right, we are all armed equally. You forget that it takes–not only language–but a speech community for that meaning to be conveyed. Is this a non-committal way for you to dictate the mode with which one reads and responds to an essay?
I also note that you fixate on me and not my argument. Everyone’s gotta jockey for some kinda position in these discussions it seems. I fully admit my irritable nature, something you are more comfortable engaging than the argument I offered. Don’t be a simpleton.
“Choose.” Mea dumba.
Yeah, it’s a found poem. I also do pyrrhics, anapests, dactyls, trochees, spondees, and even our friend the iamb. I do it daily. What do you do daily, other than diddle your prosthetics?
Wow, you have a lot of guts saying that given what I saw on June 25 on your website. Let’s see, since June 25th, I’ve written at least 84 poems. I should say verse; because any idiot can write prose with line breaks, frame it with a title, and call it a poem.
CombatWords is tomorrow, if you care to put your ass on the line. Though given the twaddle I saw on your site, I fully understand if you feel the need to chicken out.
I think it’s hilarious you hold up the poem as flawed prima facie and say nothing about it. I know a new fan when I see one.
I’m fixating on you because I think you are sexy.
K. Wessen Oil sez–
Come on, can’t you fuckers take a little Cartesian whim-wham? That’s right, I write. Foucaultian sestinas, mainly. Can you handle it? I can’t fucking believe you just shit a Middle English strawman. Typical bastards. Let’s see you say that on the clock. June 25, motherfuckers. Do I stutter?
[Etc., etc.]
K. Wessen Oil sez–
Come on, can’t you fuckers take a little Cartesian whim-wham? That’s right, I write. Foucaultian sestinas, mainly. Can you handle it? I can’t fucking believe you just shit a Middle English strawman. Typical bastards. Let’s see you say that on the clock. June 25, motherfuckers. Do I stutter?
[Etc., etc.]
Oh, forgot to mention, you didn’t cite and since the work is copyrighted, you ought to be more careful. It’s only Fair Use with attribution. So I expect you to personally add the cite, or remove the post.
I’m totally sure it was an accident and you had no intention of putting anyone in legal jeopardy for something as stupid as an internet discussion. But you really ought to be more careful, when the page says the material is copyrighted. Not everyone on the internet is a joker, know what I mean, yuk yuk yuk?
I’m happy you’ve grown accustomed to rejection. It should serve you well in the years to come.
And is that mistyping or an attempt at a pun?
This comment-page has the best catering.
“Gould is one of a new generation of female confessional writers who, according to Sittenfeld, ’speak, in our often phoney and cheesy culture, to the truths of women’s lives’.”
The niche she speaks for is so small that I totally understand their obsession with being seen as a majority, or a relevant demographic. What’s the niche? Hey, wouldn’t you know, it’s white, reluctantly affluent, over-educated women trying to make their way in the Big City. Same old shit.
Exactly! It’s an over-privileged demo affecting an identity-struggle. It is (seemingly) writing that wouldn’t exist without niche marketing, but which protests its own inclusion under a heading without which it wouldn’t sell.
Damn.
“How many mics do we rip on the daily? Say me say many money. Say me say many many many.”
Khakjaan Wessington keystyling and shit. Got mad diss poems and shit.
Cockjaan,
dude, why are you so uptight and passive-aggressive? are you british or something?
that would make sense.
the brits are like that.
seriously dude. why are you so pissy? when is the last time you spent a night with a women and drained your balls?
well i meant woman, but women work too.
tea for three.
how can one be over educated?
I know! It looks so easy to do a found poem with scraps of prose, but as you just demonstrated, it takes more talent than you have. And it’s not like I have the benefit of drawing from text as fine as my own. You would be both flattered to Heaven and mortified to Somalia if I drew my sword here and mocked you in verse. But this is more a scouting mission than anything.
I invite you to bring better game than this to CombatWords… but it’s probably safer if you don’t try–the word salad you offered above is probably indicative of the best you can do. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to become more laughable than Mather. Better not to try.
ps: Maybe you want to read the poem I wrote today while you composed this crayola sketch? http://toylit.blogspot.com/2010/08/riddle-of-hunger-todays-news-poem.html
I know! It looks so easy to do a found poem with scraps of prose, but as you just demonstrated, it takes more talent than you have. And it’s not like I have the benefit of drawing from text as fine as my own. You would be both flattered to Heaven and mortified to Somalia if I drew my sword here and mocked you in verse. But this is more a scouting mission than anything.
I invite you to bring better game than this to CombatWords… but it’s probably safer if you don’t try–the word salad you offered above is probably indicative of the best you can do. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to become more laughable than Mather. Better not to try.
ps: Maybe you want to read the poem I wrote today while you composed this crayola sketch? http://toylit.blogspot.com/2010/08/riddle-of-hunger-todays-news-poem.html
If one’s common sense and/or humanity are impeded by an excess of rationalization and/or categorization.
mickey, dude. you made a typo four posts above this one. wtf?
I think you can answer your own question.
and i think if you are going to use loose terms like that you should explain them. how the fuck can a woman be over educated?
like they know more shit than they should? or like they are destined to be lower class housewives and don’t need to know that much?
trying to wrap my head around your bullshit rhetoric.
edify me.
I honestly didn’t know if it was a typo or an attempted neologism on Ms. Gay’s part.
common sense and education have nothing to do with each other.
lol
are only white women able to become over educated? like are black chicks just able to learn forever with no cap or is it the reverse?
what about asian women?
what about those girls you can’t tell what race they are but they have immaculate hips and your only desire is to watch them walk around?
can those girls educate the shit out of themselves?
come on dude. you fucking deserve this.
Yeah, that “on their own level” thing kills me.
What are “immaculate hips,” if they’re not on the Virgin Mother?
ok
It’s worth mentioning that this has pretty much been the opposite of a “good discussion.” It’s been a lot of knee-jerk identity-politics-based indignation and ill-considered assertions, with a generous helping of homeless-wino peanut-gallery crosstalk. And I do not exempt myself from culpability.
I have been arrogant. I have been cruel. I have been careless. I submit myself to your collective mercy, and hereby retire from the fray.
what the fuck is a virgin mother?
Wessington crossing the Dell, aware.
Wessington crossing the Dell, aware.
I think it’s Madonna during her first record.
haha
no biggie. though i must say, i adore the idea of PhDers being rebranded as ‘collegiate wizards’.
have there been any good novels/short stories told from the perspective of an honest-to-god hermaphrodite? i can’t think of any.
t’would be a fine addition to the author’s broeuvre…
Hold the phone— it’s hard to sell Erotica in GERMANY? What can you even count on anymore? Is this just because of the internet, or what?
And you’re right, I shouldn’t be so snobby about book covers, but I have been and likely will continue to be. Right now most of the books I read have ‘advance reader copy’ on the cover, anyway. They just keep appearing.
Hold the phone— it’s hard to sell Erotica in GERMANY? What can you even count on anymore? Is this just because of the internet, or what?
And you’re right, I shouldn’t be so snobby about book covers, but I have been and likely will continue to be. Right now most of the books I read have ‘advance reader copy’ on the cover, anyway. They just keep appearing.
Khaki Jeans,
Khaki Jeans,
Make Mather Seem Genius.
Khaki Jeans,
Khaki Jeans,
Make Mather Seem Genius.
Isn’t that the basis of Middlesex?
Isn’t that the basis of Middlesex?
That sounds more like a smug dismissal than an accurate assessment. I notice you didn’t chase that thread w/ Middle English. What, is that beyond your element?
I still assert that the whole idea of ‘confession’ in ‘identity lit’ is structurally unsound.
I could frame that thesis if you need it to be clearer. Or you could quit being a conversation thwarter, whip out your OED and fucking talk lit–not about how you’re supposedly above the fray.
madonna has always had shitty hips.
I see this is more your speed; talking about television shows & their cultural impact. Totally asinine.
Oh my god. Broeuvre.
Oh my god. Broeuvre.
Zusya:
I think Daniel Schreber’s Memoir of My Nervous Illness qualifies. It’s not a novel (and he was psychotic, not a hermaphrodite) but it’s bound to be the most compelling and bat-shit crazy tale of hermaphrodism you’ll ever read.
Also Middlesex, too, I thought, but I haven’t read it.
Zusya:
I think Daniel Schreber’s Memoir of My Nervous Illness qualifies. It’s not a novel (and he was psychotic, not a hermaphrodite) but it’s bound to be the most compelling and bat-shit crazy tale of hermaphrodism you’ll ever read.
Also Middlesex, too, I thought, but I haven’t read it.
brobdingnagian and brotesque bromides, bro…ntosaurus.
in all honesty, one my of my biggest pet peeves? brobots.
i think i’ve just gone brover broard…
Herculine Barbin (Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite)
Herculine Barbin (Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite)
good to know. thanks.
Yes, the noted gameshow host Elizabeth Hardwick. I was trying to keep the terms of discourse based in fact, in fact.
See, you jokers never spare a chance to make yourselves seem smart–if there was anything at all you could criticize in the poem, you would have. You’ve been pwned just by my daily output.
Anyhow, is there anyone smart around here or do you all fake it?
See, you jokers never spare a chance to make yourselves seem smart–if there was anything at all you could criticize in the poem, you would have. You’ve been pwned just by my daily output.
Anyhow, is there anyone smart around here or do you all fake it?
I admire that you write every day, and today’s poem is certainly striking.
Holy fuck, this was a great post. High five!
I admire that you write every day, and today’s poem is certainly striking.
Holy fuck, this was a great post. High five!
K. Wessen Oil sez–
Come on, can’t you fuckers take a little Cartesian whim-wham? That’s right, I write. Foucaultian sestinas, mainly. Can you handle it? I can’t fucking believe you just shit a Middle English strawman. Typical bastards. Let’s see you say that on the clock. June 25, motherfuckers. Do I stutter?
[Etc., etc.]
KHAKJEEN BE CAREFUL YOUR ARROGANCE COULD CATCH YOU IN A LABYRINTH
I just thought it was ridiculous to attack people for not taking literature seriously when you post ‘found poems’ with lines like “bcuz they controls my mind lol.”
Writing a lot of poems is not necessarily a good thing.
KHAKJEEN BE CAREFUL YOUR ARROGANCE COULD CATCH YOU IN A LABYRINTH
I just thought it was ridiculous to attack people for not taking literature seriously when you post ‘found poems’ with lines like “bcuz they controls my mind lol.”
Writing a lot of poems is not necessarily a good thing.
thanks!
HA HA JEREME IS ALWAYS RIPPING ON THE BRITS
HA HA JEREME IS ALWAYS RIPPING ON THE BRITS
KATHY ACKER NEEDS TO BE MENTIONED STEVEN
KATHY ACKER NEEDS TO BE MENTIONED STEVEN
Blargh. Just read the rest of the thread. Now I just want to die.
Blargh. Just read the rest of the thread. Now I just want to die.
I know! It looks so easy to do a found poem with scraps of prose, but as you just demonstrated, it takes more talent than you have. And it’s not like I have the benefit of drawing from text as fine as my own. You would be both flattered to Heaven and mortified to Somalia if I drew my sword here and mocked you in verse. But this is more a scouting mission than anything.
I invite you to bring better game than this to CombatWords… but it’s probably safer if you don’t try–the word salad you offered above is probably indicative of the best you can do. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to become more laughable than Mather. Better not to try.
ps: Maybe you want to read the poem I wrote today while you composed this crayola sketch? http://toylit.blogspot.com/2010/08/riddle-of-hunger-todays-news-poem.html
well, i should say, if i were a woman i might get more from reading women. not that i don’t get a lot as it is. but especially when it comes to emotions, sometimes there are ways of feeling i feel like i don’t feel maybe. i dunno. it’s not even something that i can tell you about because it’s only my perceived lack of comprehension. at the same time, i don’t think it’s much more complicated than to say that there are different chemicals in my brain. but also, i feel it’s beyond my understanding. i’ll try to think more about it soon.
well, i should say, if i were a woman i might get more from reading women. not that i don’t get a lot as it is. but especially when it comes to emotions, sometimes there are ways of feeling i feel like i don’t feel maybe. i dunno. it’s not even something that i can tell you about because it’s only my perceived lack of comprehension. at the same time, i don’t think it’s much more complicated than to say that there are different chemicals in my brain. but also, i feel it’s beyond my understanding. i’ll try to think more about it soon.
ZZZIPP I feel drawn to you after that comment.
ZZZIPP I feel drawn to you after that comment.
Why are you so obsessed with gauging intelligence? You think someone’s ability to write fucking poems is a good indicator of intelligence? Don’t make me laugh. 33 people follow your blog and hardly anyone comments except you. I don’t think anyone’s impressed.
Anyway, I think that you and Mather should get married. An anti-intellectual windbag and a pretentious twat–match made in heaven! I can see it now, him always asking you what words mean, and you always telling him he wouldn’t understand even if you did explain.
Khaki Jeans,
Khaki Jeans,
Can’t explain to Mather
What words mean.
Why are you so obsessed with gauging intelligence? You think someone’s ability to write fucking poems is a good indicator of intelligence? Don’t make me laugh. 33 people follow your blog and hardly anyone comments except you. I don’t think anyone’s impressed.
Anyway, I think that you and Mather should get married. An anti-intellectual windbag and a pretentious twat–match made in heaven! I can see it now, him always asking you what words mean, and you always telling him he wouldn’t understand even if you did explain.
Khaki Jeans,
Khaki Jeans,
Can’t explain to Mather
What words mean.
Wessington crossing the Dell, aware.
Hold the phone— it’s hard to sell Erotica in GERMANY? What can you even count on anymore? Is this just because of the internet, or what?
And you’re right, I shouldn’t be so snobby about book covers, but I have been and likely will continue to be. Right now most of the books I read have ‘advance reader copy’ on the cover, anyway. They just keep appearing.
Khaki Jeans,
Khaki Jeans,
Make Mather Seem Genius.
Isn’t that the basis of Middlesex?
Oh my god. Broeuvre.
Zusya:
I think Daniel Schreber’s Memoir of My Nervous Illness qualifies. It’s not a novel (and he was psychotic, not a hermaphrodite) but it’s bound to be the most compelling and bat-shit crazy tale of hermaphrodism you’ll ever read.
Also Middlesex, too, I thought, but I haven’t read it.
Herculine Barbin (Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite)
See, you jokers never spare a chance to make yourselves seem smart–if there was anything at all you could criticize in the poem, you would have. You’ve been pwned just by my daily output.
Anyhow, is there anyone smart around here or do you all fake it?
I admire that you write every day, and today’s poem is certainly striking.
Holy fuck, this was a great post. High five!
KHAKJEEN BE CAREFUL YOUR ARROGANCE COULD CATCH YOU IN A LABYRINTH
I just thought it was ridiculous to attack people for not taking literature seriously when you post ‘found poems’ with lines like “bcuz they controls my mind lol.”
Writing a lot of poems is not necessarily a good thing.
HA HA JEREME IS ALWAYS RIPPING ON THE BRITS
Dear ZZZIP, I’m not really qualified to expound on Acker… I only lay screed on topics I can genuinely speak to in some depth… but it frustrates me that this “Chick Lit” nonsense-meme, and the picayune diarists who genuinely belong in that campy camp, are getting more detailed attention, in this thread, than any particular Great Writer. Lumping profoundly-unrelated writers together because they all have tits… Christ. And Edith Wharton writing about the life-or-death gender-boundaries of a world a century behind us shouldn’t really be compared to some cosseted 21st-century airheads writing about consumerist fetishes (shoes/dicks) for other cosseted airheads.
Anyone wants to talk Didion, I’m up for it (but not about “The Year of Magical Thinking”, her least-representative work but the one they love to brand her with because she’s reduced to a grieving wife and a grieving mother in it).
Dear ZZZIP, I’m not really qualified to expound on Acker… I only lay screed on topics I can genuinely speak to in some depth… but it frustrates me that this “Chick Lit” nonsense-meme, and the picayune diarists who genuinely belong in that campy camp, are getting more detailed attention, in this thread, than any particular Great Writer. Lumping profoundly-unrelated writers together because they all have tits… Christ. And Edith Wharton writing about the life-or-death gender-boundaries of a world a century behind us shouldn’t really be compared to some cosseted 21st-century airheads writing about consumerist fetishes (shoes/dicks) for other cosseted airheads.
Anyone wants to talk Didion, I’m up for it (but not about “The Year of Magical Thinking”, her least-representative work but the one they love to brand her with because she’s reduced to a grieving wife and a grieving mother in it).
KATHY ACKER NEEDS TO BE MENTIONED STEVEN
Blargh. Just read the rest of the thread. Now I just want to die.
I try to get into Acker, but just can’t. It’s like she wrote a whole buncha almost-good, coulda-been-good books. Maybe for a lot of peeps of grad-school age, they appear to fulfill some arcane, poorly-understood linguistic theory, but for my money…blech. Even as a fan of loose, fractured, often theory-inspired works, she just seems way over-hyped. I’m sure we can find better writers who challenged the world with their short haircuts and sexual candor…
(Also, is ZZZIP the Tao Lin persona, or someone making fun of the Tao Lin persona? I can’t tell…)
I try to get into Acker, but just can’t. It’s like she wrote a whole buncha almost-good, coulda-been-good books. Maybe for a lot of peeps of grad-school age, they appear to fulfill some arcane, poorly-understood linguistic theory, but for my money…blech. Even as a fan of loose, fractured, often theory-inspired works, she just seems way over-hyped. I’m sure we can find better writers who challenged the world with their short haircuts and sexual candor…
(Also, is ZZZIP the Tao Lin persona, or someone making fun of the Tao Lin persona? I can’t tell…)
Pem: I pick and choose with Ack
Pem: I pick and choose with Ack
well, i should say, if i were a woman i might get more from reading women. not that i don’t get a lot as it is. but especially when it comes to emotions, sometimes there are ways of feeling i feel like i don’t feel maybe. i dunno. it’s not even something that i can tell you about because it’s only my perceived lack of comprehension. at the same time, i don’t think it’s much more complicated than to say that there are different chemicals in my brain. but also, i feel it’s beyond my understanding. i’ll try to think more about it soon.
ZZZIPP I feel drawn to you after that comment.
Why are you so obsessed with gauging intelligence? You think someone’s ability to write fucking poems is a good indicator of intelligence? Don’t make me laugh. 33 people follow your blog and hardly anyone comments except you. I don’t think anyone’s impressed.
Anyway, I think that you and Mather should get married. An anti-intellectual windbag and a pretentious twat–match made in heaven! I can see it now, him always asking you what words mean, and you always telling him he wouldn’t understand even if you did explain.
Khaki Jeans,
Khaki Jeans,
Can’t explain to Mather
What words mean.
Dear ZZZIP, I’m not really qualified to expound on Acker… I only lay screed on topics I can genuinely speak to in some depth… but it frustrates me that this “Chick Lit” nonsense-meme, and the picayune diarists who genuinely belong in that campy camp, are getting more detailed attention, in this thread, than any particular Great Writer. Lumping profoundly-unrelated writers together because they all have tits… Christ. And Edith Wharton writing about the life-or-death gender-boundaries of a world a century behind us shouldn’t really be compared to some cosseted 21st-century airheads writing about consumerist fetishes (shoes/dicks) for other cosseted airheads.
Anyone wants to talk Didion, I’m up for it (but not about “The Year of Magical Thinking”, her least-representative work but the one they love to brand her with because she’s reduced to a grieving wife and a grieving mother in it).
I try to get into Acker, but just can’t. It’s like she wrote a whole buncha almost-good, coulda-been-good books. Maybe for a lot of peeps of grad-school age, they appear to fulfill some arcane, poorly-understood linguistic theory, but for my money…blech. Even as a fan of loose, fractured, often theory-inspired works, she just seems way over-hyped. I’m sure we can find better writers who challenged the world with their short haircuts and sexual candor…
(Also, is ZZZIP the Tao Lin persona, or someone making fun of the Tao Lin persona? I can’t tell…)
Pem: I pick and choose with Ack
what an uneducated/un-common sensical thing to say.
ZZZZIP is legit. people shouldn’t sleep on him.
ZZZZIP is legit. people shouldn’t sleep on him.
hahahahahahaha
hahahahahahaha
PEMULIS ZZZZZIPP IS NOT TAO LIN THOUGH HE BEARS TAO LIN NO ILL WILL. ZZZZIPP DID NOT TRAIN AT HIS FEET HE WAS CALVED IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC BY A CRACKING GLACIER.
STEVEN ZZZZIPP KIND OF AGREES BUT DOESN’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE INDIVIDUAL CONCERNS OF THOSE WRITERS AND BEING A WOMAN WRITING (IN A MASCULINE TRADITION) USUALLY TURNS OUT TO BE A BIG CONCERN SO ZZZIPP THOUGHT IT WOULD BE NICE TO GIVE ANGELA THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT.
ZZZZIPP THINKS ACKER’S PERSONA WAS “KIND OF INTERESTING” BUT ALSO “KIND OF SILLY” AND HE DOESN’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT IT BEYOND WHAT HE HAS LEARNED HERE. BUT IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT MASCULINE/FEMININE WRITING OR SOMETHING SHE SET OUT AND WROTE AN EMOTIONAL NOVEL (“GREAT EXPECTATIONS” IS THE ONLY ONE ZZZIPP HAS READ SO FAR) AND SHE DID IT WITH STRONG & EVOCATIVE LANGUAGE.
PEMULIS ZZZZZIPP IS NOT TAO LIN THOUGH HE BEARS TAO LIN NO ILL WILL. ZZZZIPP DID NOT TRAIN AT HIS FEET HE WAS CALVED IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC BY A CRACKING GLACIER.
STEVEN ZZZZIPP KIND OF AGREES BUT DOESN’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE INDIVIDUAL CONCERNS OF THOSE WRITERS AND BEING A WOMAN WRITING (IN A MASCULINE TRADITION) USUALLY TURNS OUT TO BE A BIG CONCERN SO ZZZIPP THOUGHT IT WOULD BE NICE TO GIVE ANGELA THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT.
ZZZZIPP THINKS ACKER’S PERSONA WAS “KIND OF INTERESTING” BUT ALSO “KIND OF SILLY” AND HE DOESN’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT IT BEYOND WHAT HE HAS LEARNED HERE. BUT IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT MASCULINE/FEMININE WRITING OR SOMETHING SHE SET OUT AND WROTE AN EMOTIONAL NOVEL (“GREAT EXPECTATIONS” IS THE ONLY ONE ZZZIPP HAS READ SO FAR) AND SHE DID IT WITH STRONG & EVOCATIVE LANGUAGE.
IT WOULD NEVER WORK OUT TIM
(UNLESS YOU ARE A PHOTON)
IT WOULD NEVER WORK OUT TIM
(UNLESS YOU ARE A PHOTON)
This thread is a lulz magnet…
I lol’d.
This thread is a lulz magnet…
I lol’d.
The best of the Zen cock-blockers
The best of the Zen cock-blockers
This is my found poem. It’s called “you don’t try”:
safer if you don’t try
text as fine as my own
It looks so easy
I know!
it’s probably safer
Maybe
the word salad
if I drew my sword
to bring better game
Maybe you want
Heaven
a scouting mission
in verse.
This is my found poem. It’s called “you don’t try”:
safer if you don’t try
text as fine as my own
It looks so easy
I know!
it’s probably safer
Maybe
the word salad
if I drew my sword
to bring better game
Maybe you want
Heaven
a scouting mission
in verse.
KW, you are unreal.
KW, you are unreal.
Zen Cock-Blockers seems like a pretty good name for a band
Zen Cock-Blockers seems like a pretty good name for a band
(I’m detecting the overlapping netonymic Joyce references)
(I’m detecting the overlapping netonymic Joyce references)
ZZZZIP is legit. people shouldn’t sleep on him.
hahahahahahaha
PEMULIS ZZZZZIPP IS NOT TAO LIN THOUGH HE BEARS TAO LIN NO ILL WILL. ZZZZIPP DID NOT TRAIN AT HIS FEET HE WAS CALVED IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC BY A CRACKING GLACIER.
STEVEN ZZZZIPP KIND OF AGREES BUT DOESN’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE INDIVIDUAL CONCERNS OF THOSE WRITERS AND BEING A WOMAN WRITING (IN A MASCULINE TRADITION) USUALLY TURNS OUT TO BE A BIG CONCERN SO ZZZIPP THOUGHT IT WOULD BE NICE TO GIVE ANGELA THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT.
ZZZZIPP THINKS ACKER’S PERSONA WAS “KIND OF INTERESTING” BUT ALSO “KIND OF SILLY” AND HE DOESN’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT IT BEYOND WHAT HE HAS LEARNED HERE. BUT IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT MASCULINE/FEMININE WRITING OR SOMETHING SHE SET OUT AND WROTE AN EMOTIONAL NOVEL (“GREAT EXPECTATIONS” IS THE ONLY ONE ZZZIPP HAS READ SO FAR) AND SHE DID IT WITH STRONG & EVOCATIVE LANGUAGE.
IT WOULD NEVER WORK OUT TIM
(UNLESS YOU ARE A PHOTON)
This thread is a lulz magnet…
I lol’d.
The best of the Zen cock-blockers
This is my found poem. It’s called “you don’t try”:
safer if you don’t try
text as fine as my own
It looks so easy
I know!
it’s probably safer
Maybe
the word salad
if I drew my sword
to bring better game
Maybe you want
Heaven
a scouting mission
in verse.
KW, you are unreal.
Zen Cock-Blockers seems like a pretty good name for a band
(I’m detecting the overlapping netonymic Joyce references)
CombatWords is on right now on Trickwithaknife, so if any of you want to slay the zombie, now’s yer chance: http://trickwithaknife.com/?p=877
CombatWords is on right now on Trickwithaknife, so if any of you want to slay the zombie, now’s yer chance: http://trickwithaknife.com/?p=877
I wish writers would spend less time on marketing and more time on developing. If the eccentric kid down the road tells everyone he’s going to build a flying car and invites everyone over to see a heap of components (frizzy with wires) and a pile of steel spars and rods and tools scattered all around the garage, and the kid tinkers intermittently between bouts of walking up and down the streets of the neighborhood with a megaphone… isn’t that rather less wonderful than the kid who keeps to her/his self until one day… when she/he maybe isn’t even so much of a kid anymore… unveiling a fully-assembled, fully-functional, flying car?
Something about the American ethos seems to argue against the latter model. Walking the streets of the neighborhood, it’s hard not to notice (and be a little disappointed by the observation) that every single garage has a pile of “flying car parts” cluttering up the driveway.
I wish writers would spend less time on marketing and more time on developing. If the eccentric kid down the road tells everyone he’s going to build a flying car and invites everyone over to see a heap of components (frizzy with wires) and a pile of steel spars and rods and tools scattered all around the garage, and the kid tinkers intermittently between bouts of walking up and down the streets of the neighborhood with a megaphone… isn’t that rather less wonderful than the kid who keeps to her/his self until one day… when she/he maybe isn’t even so much of a kid anymore… unveiling a fully-assembled, fully-functional, flying car?
Something about the American ethos seems to argue against the latter model. Walking the streets of the neighborhood, it’s hard not to notice (and be a little disappointed by the observation) that every single garage has a pile of “flying car parts” cluttering up the driveway.
I won’t do it bcuz they controls my mind lol.
I won’t do it bcuz they controls my mind lol.
CombatWords is on right now on Trickwithaknife, so if any of you want to slay the zombie, now’s yer chance: http://trickwithaknife.com/?p=877
I wish writers would spend less time on marketing and more time on developing. If the eccentric kid down the road tells everyone he’s going to build a flying car and invites everyone over to see a heap of components (frizzy with wires) and a pile of steel spars and rods and tools scattered all around the garage, and the kid tinkers intermittently between bouts of walking up and down the streets of the neighborhood with a megaphone… isn’t that rather less wonderful than the kid who keeps to her/his self until one day… when she/he maybe isn’t even so much of a kid anymore… unveiling a fully-assembled, fully-functional, flying car?
Something about the American ethos seems to argue against the latter model. Walking the streets of the neighborhood, it’s hard not to notice (and be a little disappointed by the observation) that every single garage has a pile of “flying car parts” cluttering up the driveway.
I won’t do it bcuz they controls my mind lol.
wow. this is an awesome analogy re: hype vs. work ethic, though i wouldn’t there’s anything distinctively “american” about shameless self-promotion or hucksterism. people tend to lap that stuff up no matter where you go.
seriously though, make sure this bit of writing of yours ends up somewhere… useful.