I've had a love/hate relationship with Politt for many, many years... you've made me very curious to read the book, now! Giving up her dignity? Good lord!

Why are people so afraid of an honest discussion of relationships and feelings? This type of writing is lauded in most authors these days, but not in feminists. The double standard is telling.

What also bugs me about this discussion is how short sighted the reviewer seemed about the difference between art and politics. Memoir writing is an art. It can be a politically motivated art. But it seems like the aesthetics have been entirely ignored here. Is it a good story? Is the writing evocative? I'm not getting any sense of that because people have chosen the ridiculous route of asking whether or not Katha Pollitt, of all people has feminist bonafides. News flash: she does! Now, how's her writing?

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

We have to "earn" the right to be considered people? Seriously? I have the feeling that you're trying to make a larger point...why not just make it?

Let me clarify that by adding that you, destor, a man, should be able to read this book and say something like "it's not far removed from crappy chic lit and it was boring" without feminists crying that you're attacking them, or "I thought it was an incredibly moving collection of works on human relationships" without feminists thinking you're supporting them. If you attack it or like it, you're addressing Katha Pollitt, the writer, not "feminists."

Come off of it. How can you say that the review was sooooo apolitical when Bentley basically made sure to work in a maximum number of jokes about how castrating feminists are. Plus, you are extremely naive if you think the NY Times just gives the book to someone to review and gets an honest opinion. If you really, sincerely have an issue with "agendas" (I don't think you do---I suspect you have an agenda of your own, actually), you should be angry at the NY Times who has an anti-feminist agenda, and deliberately seeks out reviewers who can be counted on to deliver catty take-downs of feminist writers, regardless of how good the actual writing is. Your whinging concern about feminists with agendas is betrayed by your comfort with people who really do have hidden agendas, so long as those hidden agendas dovetail nicely with your own.

But that doesn’t mean we should be bashed when one of us has the courage to come out as human.

You know, I'm seeing a very similar thing going on right now at another blogsite (The Hill Pudit's Blog). Clarence Thomas has published a book and nominal liberals are just jumping all over him for having the stupid audacity to express himself on matters like the senate circus that he had to go through, and racism. To them he's an obvious example of a black man with an everlasting chip on his shoulder. They're insulting him every way they can think of.

Thomas harassed women, he's stupid and arrogant, he talks too much, he doesn't talk enough . . . you name it. (Dyed-in-the-wool Anita Hill fans, I know I've lost you by now.)

Clarence Thomas was raised in a Georgia shack without indoor plumbing and went on to graduate from Yale Law. Unable to be hired as a lawyer, he hired on with a politician and after some other assignments is now a Supreme Court justice. While I thoroughly disagree with him that the states should be allowed to remove a woman's rights, THOROUGHLY, I believe that Clarence Thomas is an American success story and that he has a right to tell his story and not be bashed for it.

There is a parallel here between a black and a woman in terms of threatening the elite, isn't there?

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

Nothing more than my reaction to:

I think we may need a similar reminder of the radical notion that feminists are people.

are people reacting negatively to the person or the person's feminist beliefs?

added: in engineering, we say: "don't fall in love with your model!" i.e. the model isn't reality and reality always wins and hands you wisdom. the trick for all movements is to figure out how to encourage mutual empathy and work in that spirit of trust and that's way hard.

To boldly go...

The problem is that no one can write reviews anymore.

No one should be discussing their private domestic affairs in public in my opinion, and I don't care to read those books, but the book is what it is, and the criticism that she shouldn't have written it because it makes readers uncomfortable, is the equivalent of claiming that Picasso shouldn't have used so much blue - it doesn't go with my living room sofa. It is the author's prerogative to choose the subject and the medium and it is the reviewer's prerogative to comment on how the subject and medium are used by the author.

In this venue we are sharing our opinion of the book and our opinion of the reviews, neither of which I cared for, but it is not because I believe that as a feminist she should not write about her personal life, it's because I don't think anyone should write about their personal lives - some things should be private and not everything is grist for the mill. That of course, is my subjective opinion, but a review should be someone's objective, informed opinion, and I haven't seen anything near that.

RogerGathman

Art appraiser - my comment was to the effect that Pollit has the freedom of a writer. Hemingway, if you ever read him, was also a writer. And the the bizarre tone of smugness and condescension, crowned with a smiley face no less, about "the evils of machismo. :-)" - well, I admit that was a kneeslapper, and had me rollin'. Those bluenosed libbers! Whoee, we all know they have a hard time with a real man. But then I came to my senses, and thought, Jesus, that attitude was old about 1970. And the tired rightwing 'put upon by PC' spin has, by now, no juice left in it even if it is David Horowitz desperately trying to get a few more drops out of it.

Now, you might want to read Toni Morrison about Faulkner, whose prose, believe it or not, she praises highly and was influenced by, even though Faulkner was very definitely a segregationist and, at best, a tepid Southern liberal. There is such a thing as literature, and there is such a thing as feminists who know literature (somehow, I would guess that Pollitt has read much more Hemingway than you), and then there are feminists who aim to contribute to it. And yes, they have the same freedom to do so as Hemingway, who learned, and made it pretty plain that he learned, from a lesbian named Gertrude Stein.

As for your comments about Twain, is there a point there?

Did you read the post? I didn't say she should be crucified for anything. Secondly, I don't recall any of those authors writing painful accounts of finding mysterious underwear in the wash or stalking a former lover and his girlfriends or befriending a woman who was cheating with him on her - that was left to the picklocks of biographers, which of course is another genre.

I enjoy Pollit's writing, I think she is an excellent essayist, all of these essays were well written, but combined in this book form it created a tone I didn't care for - a kind of conceit that was offensive to me.

I'm bored already with Clarence Thomas, but, from that blog:

And he spews nothing but bile in his memoir, comparing opponents of his nomination back in 1991 to members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Are you refuting the claim that Thomas compares people who opposed his nomination as KKK?

Or are you simply ignoring that?

Regardless, to call Thomas an "American success story" is a peculiar description, completely dismissive of the sexual harassment charges against him, and completely dismissive of Anita Hill's recent op/ed in the Times.

It's, again, like Alberto Gonzales. Because he, or actually I think his father, is an immigrant, we're supposed to set aside the fact that he thinks the Geneva Conventions are "quaint," or that he's worthy of holding any office in our government.

I think Sexual Harasser Thomas trumps Grew Up Without Running Water Thomas.

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

RogerGathman
Rousseau's Confessions, among other things, included an account of how he and his mistress had abandoned a number of their babies to foundling hospitals, and a very detailed account of his discovery of sperm. So, yeah, there is a long tradition of political writers - Rousseau was perhaps the most influential political writer of the 18th century, and his Emile is - ironically - still a major influence in the theory of educating children - writing painful accounts.

Rousseau's "Confessions" was an attempt by him to rationalize and justify his behavior just as all confessions are. He included the account of his abandonment of his children by offering rather pathetic excuses and wrote the account after his embarrassment of being found out by his enemies of which he had many, both real and imagined. "Emile" is a semi-fictitious book and did its part to set the women's movement back - it certainly didn't help it.

Again, you have failed to read the post - I don't care if authors choose to write about their personal lives, I don't want to read it. I don't want to read about Rousseau's sperm and I don't want to read about Pollit finding some other woman's panties in her laundry. There are some things that because they concern other people are too private and personal to write about. As I said, this is my own personal opinion and has nothing to do with Pollit's feminism or politics. I learned nothing new from this book - we all live conflicted, contradictory lives and I already knew that before I read the book.

RogerGathman

Well, and I do want to read about Rousseau discovering that he can produce sperm, and I do want to read about Pollit discovering that she can track down her ex lover on the Net. So I guess the solution is, write the book, publish it, and let the market and history sort it out. So many people have wanted to read Rousseau's confessions that it is still in print, so I have a feeling history is on Pollitt's side. But, BevD, unless you take a class on Rousseau, you probably won't have to deal with it. And instead, you can write at length about how you don't want to deal with it.

RogerGathman

Bevd, honest to god, your argument is one big bait and switch. First, you claim you don't want to know about the details of Pollitt's personal life. Well, then you are an awful strange audience for a book of personal essays. Although the truth is, I'm not sure I even believe that, since you seem to have gone out of your way to hook into a comment thread about Pollitt's book, but let's bracket the obvious hypocrisy, and say that you are making a sincere claim about you alone.

Then you write, "I don't recall any of those authors writing painful accounts of finding mysterious underwear in the wash or stalking a former lover and his girlfriends or befriending a woman who was cheating with him on her - that was left to the picklocks of biographers, which of course is another genre."

I point out the fact that this ignores almost all of western literature, to which you reply, "you didn't read my post". Huh? I could reply, why should I, when you didn't seem to read it yourself? You seem to be writing in some sort of trance in which you don't even know what you wrote. Is this a Ouija board thing? In fact, I quoted you and replied exactly to what you wrote.

But you have also written: "There are some things that because they concern other people are too private and personal to write about. As I said, this is my own personal opinion and has nothing to do with Pollit's feminism or politics. I learned nothing new from this book - we all live conflicted, contradictory lives and I already knew that before I read the book." I'd believe this, except that you don't - if you really thought this was some private opinion for yourself alone, you wouldn't be writing, what, on every thread about the book? So you are looking, contra your claim, for others who will also condemn the book. Thus, when you begin with a categorical claim - "No one should be discussing their private domestic affairs in public" - it is a claim about everyone. It isn't softened by adding 'in my opinion' - that is simply a weasel phrase, so that you can make a categorical claim and then pretend you didn't. "In my opinion" can be a way of avoiding confrontation, or it can be a way of coercing consent, but in this case it certainly doesn't soften your claim - "no one should be discussing their private domestic affairs in public.' Now, not only do I happen to think that is wrong, but it is emotionally crippling, it strangles the moral imagination in the community, and it leads to soulless, emotionally hollow lives. But it is a claim, and you could defend it with some argument, maybe you think it is better if people were more robotlike, shared nothing of themselves, and died in utter solitude, and perhaps you can make a case for that. However, it definitely have a social, political and ethical dimension.