This is all so sordid.

the NYTRB panned my last book too

But Toni Bentley's review does not. She says that your (my highlighting)

...three previous essay collections gathered brilliant commentary on welfare, abortion, surrogate motherhood, Iraq, gay marriage and health care....Her noble experiment in looking inward does not have the punch or conviction of her social and political essays. Her substance requires more substance to thrive.....

I read the review as her saying she did not like the result of you going "personal and shameless," she thinks others have done the personal genre better. Still, she found the ssctions on your parents "mosst interesting and moving."

Seems to me this is often the result when an author (or any artist, for that matter,) tries out things different from what he/she is known for and has become skilled at.

First, thanks for joining us.  You don't just give me a reason to look at the Nation.  More like you give me some reason to hope, since at least someone can come up with a sensible (and funny) analysis after whatever woman is being bashed for whatever inane reason.  Congratulations, then:  now it's you.  Perhaps your problem is that you're a columnist and not a politician.  Then you'd get lots of advice on your appearance, and accordingly your social life would be completely solved.  

One possibility is that she's just severely irony challenged. Make that, no sense of humor. One is that she just has this idea what you are like, as a person with political beliefs. So if you go confessional, there has to be a hidden agenda about men.  Alternatively, the Times book section just needs to continue its policy of having books by liberals derided. 

Well, this too shall pass.  Oh, and did I say I don't like your haircut?

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

When I first read Bentley's NYTRB review it struck me as yet another review by a writer projecting their own frustrations with their own craft on someone else. I have yet to read Pollitt's book, nor have a I read Bentley's, but the review in question certainly makes a strong case for critics who don't write.

Then you have all the parentheticals which strikes me as trying to be too clever by half by trying to hide snark in style.

The review rates a 1 out of 5 stars, which bodes well for the book.

I look forward to picking it up.

I'm sure that a lot of men would not write about it, but I suspect that would stem more from the belief that admitting you care about women is emasculating more than out of honesty. The easy-going contempt men have for women is very often a put-on, a way for men to affirm their superiority to women. It's weird, if you think about it, that men so often act like it's perfectly natural not to think much about the significant others, as if the person you share your most intimate life with is no more important to you than a throw rug or perhaps a second-best pet. It's sort of the dictionary definition of a put-on.

I just got your book, and am looking forward to reading it, then leaving it lying around for my wife and two teenaged daughters to eventually discover.

Your columns at The Nation almost invariably cause me to rethink long-held beliefs from a point of view I had not previously considered -- and that is the highest possible praise for an opinion writer.

I don't know a single guy who thinks that it's emasculating to care about women. Or about other men. Or other people, for that matter. Am I misunderstanding what you're trying to say?

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I replied to you above, but I want to add that I don't think that Katha "chose" to be cheated on. Her ex made that choice. So I'm not sure why you're scolding her about values. ;)

I didn't intend to say that, in particular, Katha "chose" to be cheated on.

What I'm really getting at here is that if one makes a very great deal out of the fact of being cheated on, and has difficulty moving on from this, and chooses to immortalize it with real bitterness in a memoir, then that's not really consistent with putting accomplishment first in one's life -- which most men, I think, for better or for worse, actually would do. Nor is it particularly consistent with the notion that women's self regard should be independent of how the men in their lives treat them. It's really pretty hard to see how one gets around that inconsistency.

Now while I talk about women "choosing" their lives, certainly you must agree that that is a more palatable explanation than the alternative: that they can't get around biological drives that compel them to care more about their relationships with men than men care about their relationships with women.

And I'm not really taking a position on whether feminists should massage their message or massage their lives, or both, to achieve consistency. I'm simply pointing out that in the end consistency must be attained.

Well, you have a point. I'm sure men don't want to expose their vulnerabilities with regard to their relationships with women due to a strong pressure not to do so.

But, look, there's another inconsistency here that needs to be thought about. Men, both heterosexual and homosexual, really are more promiscuous than women, on average. It's hard to see how that promiscuity doesn't translate into less concern, on average, about any particular relationship. Now I won't pretend to know whether that's nature or nurture going on there, or both. But I think it's fair to say that men, on average, simply find their partners more interchangeable, and this confers a relative sense of independence.

Now can women achieve that same sense of independence? I guess the real answer to that question must lie in whether it is indeed biology or culture that lies behind this difference. I have no reason personally to believe it lies in either direction; it's simply an open question, from my point of view; how can I presume to know?

But again the real point here is that it's pretty important for feminists to achieve consistency between their message and their lives - as it is indeed for all of us.

Mho, don't apologize, destor, don't get dragged into making a controversy where there is none, only a single book reviewer with poor communications skills who was unhappy with the book, expecting something different from the author.

I think you're on the right track: we have been a "tell-all" nation for at least a couple of decades now, all sexes. (To me, the discussion looks to be developing like this: certain participants are going to try to take us into the wayback time machine, recreate the controversy over Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying" or something.)

See, I think the affected attitude men have about how their wives and girlfriends are unimportant and not worth mentioning is not something for women to emulate. It stems from the belief that men are superior to women, and that women are mainly functional to men, and as such, it's best to pretend that the loss of a relationship was no more distressing than an old car dying on you. Just get yourself another one and move on.

I don't think men really think this way. I think wives and girlfriends are important. I think men who defensively act like they can't be affected by mere women are being silly and foolish. I think that men who really aren't affected by women are assholes in the worst way, incapable of respecting the humanity of half the human race.

I don't know any men who would feel that way about expressing their feelings about the woman in their life. Demeaning is about the last thing I think most men would think about that.

I also think your assumption about why most men wouldn't write such a book is not very accurate. I think most men would not find the subject matter of interest to anyone else and therefore would not write about it. Most men see their relationship with their significant other as important to them and their partner but not as something of much interest to others. Men who are in love with their significant others typically feel they couldn't live without them and their deepest feelings and sense of self are strongly tied to their partner.

Yes, men often internalize much of what they feel and they don't share that with lots of others. You've not seen the half of it if you think an ulcer from a divorce is bad. But I see the same thing in women too because people, regardless of gender, tend to hide their vulnerability from others. I think sterotyping groups of people is a poor lense to view humans through and that goes for stereotyping based on gender too.

Why are men more able to move on and less likely to obsess?

I blame the patriarchy. Women are defined through their relationships to men, and men aren't defined by women. Sexism 101.

But it's a huuuuuuuuuuge stretch to claim that some sort of male superiority prevents men from writing a book like this. A percentage of it is about men. She also writes about children, her parents, other women, her work. If men can't even write about their most important relationships in life in the context of writing about other things, that's a sign of male weakness, not strength. I consider male attitudes of contempt---calling her the ball-and-chain, laughing at women as they scramble to organize a wedding thrown to demonstrate how much they love their men---to be pathetic and irritating, not admirable.

Hey womanhattan, if you need driving lessons, I recommend Teddy Kennedy's Advanced School of Driving.

laughing at women as they scramble to organize a wedding thrown to demonstrate how much they love their men

You've got to be kidding. I see the growing popularity among women of the "Bride-zilla" theme is one of the healthiest feminist developments of late. You want real pure patriarchy, look to the manipulations of women's emotions in the bridal industry, not to men to whom it was never targeted. Women could benefit greatly from freeing themselves of the sickness of feeling the need for expensive weddings where they get to be princess for a day. I have rarely been so disgusted by a job as when I had to attend to a booth at a bridal fair when I was in my youth. Since then, the industry has gotten ten times worse. It would be a wonderful thing if the majority looked down upon the selling of one-day princessdom, and the ball-and-chain theme that comes as part of that whole package.

Falling for the bridal industry is pathetic. A wedding photographer to record a rite of passage is one thing, having a nervous breakdown over color-coordinated candy almonds is another. If you aren't wealthy enough to have someone color-coordinate your almonds for you, and it's going to stress you out to do it yourself, you should probably take a pass on the almonds. Because not only does your groom not care, your guests don't care either. You really don't have to be a princess, it's not required by anyone except your own brain.

If men can't even write about their most important relationships in life in the context of writing about other things, that's a sign of male weakness, not strength.

Sounds like to me like you're stuck in hip-hop culture, targeted to the male adolescent demographic, and have never been anywhere else. Try like, oh, Stanley Kowalski screaming for Stella? Or how about Percy Sledge/Marvin Gaye?

Yes, children on the playground in our society separate themselves by gender, and boys hate girl stuff and girls hate boy stuff, and then in adolescence in our culture, boys look down on women to make themselves feel better. But then most of them grow up and fall in love with various women, except for the ones stuck in adolescence, that is.

Suggestion: read Evan S. Connell's "Mrs. Bridge" and you will find eerie parallels to Pollitt's "Learning to Drive" essay. It's the story of an American woman, written by an American man, in 1959.

That many "very serious people" chose not to write about their own personal life, but might hide their personal experiences and understanding of the other sex in attempts at fiction, poetry, or song, or wait until the end of their life to "tell all" in a memoir, is not particularly gender-specific. Otherwise, biographers & historians would not have to be begging for old letters and interviews all the time. Rather, you might focus on the thingie that maybe not enough women are not in the "very serious people" category where it is not common to want to share one's personal problems with the general public.