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Rabbits, Witches, Updike, Bitches
New York, 4:57 PM
Thu Nov 12
73 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/21/08
As for the man juice...I can't shut him down for that. I choose to think the same thing about any fluid that comes out of me. "He's loving it; he thinks it's great." Mostly likely though, he feels the same way I do...it's not terrible, but certainly nothing worth spreading on toast.
11/21/08
11/21/08
Now excuse me while I go back to contemplating my unspeakable nether-parts....
11/21/08
The sufferer was usually, in his youth, holed up in his bedroom with (inevitably) comic books. His diet was an endless stream of self-love, provided by the teat of a mother whom he adored into his teens. She, in the oldest but sadly the truest of Freudian cliches, is the archetypal woman for her son - virtuous but altogether sexuallly passive.
The Father (this type of dude always grows up in heteronormative environment) worked and was frequently absent but was a "good man." This "good man" always harboured, however, some kind of "dreamer"'s impulse, which had obviously been kept in check by the selfish need of his wife and child for food and a roof over their heads.
As the Father started, and always failed at many a business endeavour designed to fulfil his Destiny as a good man, his young son came to see the Father as a brave man trying to escape his circumstances rather than as merely what the rest of the world saw, which is to say, an incompetent fool. And he grew angry with his mother, even as he loved her in her womanly perfection, for having needs that did anything but serve the Father.
Fast forward to this man's late twenties, in which he has already met, married and divorced a Sweet Young Thing who, again selfishly, mimicked his mother's slavish devotion to practical things like "actually eating." Shed of this young woman (and the child(ren) they share, of course, his mind being on Greater Things than mere progeny), he decides it is time to answer his True Calling, and write The Great American Novel...
And so it goes...
11/21/08
11/21/08
I read that and had a total flashback to an ex-bf. I did think that was well said for a man to write.
Other than that though, yeah I totally agree. He made her sound pretty fat and gross throughout the entire book.
11/21/08
11/21/08
Ha haaa, don't all women do this? As a joke? 'Ooh, it's so big and you're so strong!' Maybe some men just don't get it.
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That's why I love the work of John Updike (number two, behind Margaret Atwood for me).
Oh, and -- "I know. I know. Leaving aside the notion of "writing women" as some singular, definitive Arabesque, How the fuck would they know."
You're not suggesting a writer can only write within the cage of his or her immediate experience? A writer lets their mind flow; their imagination go. If someone were to suggest a female writer could only write about other females -- I'm sure you wouldn't like that.
11/21/08
And it's been discussed many a time around here whether "men can write women" and vice-versa, etc...there's no clear answer because nobody's read /everything/ and analyzed it down to a science...But when it comes to making a woman feel "real" I think it takes more than just letting one's imagination go to make a successfully realistic portrayal. I could imagine that all men secretly wear lacy bloomers, garters, cowboy boots and love to do the dishes...but it doesn't make them real or relateable.
11/21/08
I don't think "male authors" can't write women, I think Updike can't convincingly write women, or people of color, or basically anyone who isn't an erudite white man of a certain age who feels insecure about his masculinity and needs to assert his superiority. And the characters he does write convincingly he convinces me are shallow and in no way contributing to my understanding of life/art/anything.
11/21/08
11/21/08
I don't want to limit one's literature portrayals to their personal experience. I think there are many men who can 'write women' and vice versa, but in both of your examples, their other-gender portrayals fall flat.
11/21/08
@samethingwedoeverynightpinky: And the characters he does write convincingly he convinces me are shallow and in no way contributing to my understanding of life/art/anything.
Aha -- this is the language I was groping for when I was thinking of a response. It's not enough to promote "thought", it's about promoting/furthering/contributing to understanding or discovery.
11/21/08
11/21/08
It does seem like a weird thing for men to congratulate other men on being able to do, though.
11/21/08
The mark of a good writer is not "engagement" or "infuriation" - because by that standard Ann Coulter is a good writer. It is, to me, the level on which the writing feels authentic or true. Now, the kind of authenticity/truth here I'm talking about is not necessarily literal truth - it's not that the writer must convey the price of mangoes in South Dakota, for example - but rather that something in what they write illuminates and clarifies the world.
Sure I want something more than solipsism from my writers. But I do not want them to stretch out into the realm of ludicrous just to prove a point - which indeed they only prove to themselves - about how well they "understand" some other experience. Moreover, if they do make these stretches, the writer needs to come from a place which understand the limits the writer's own experience might have imposed on him. Nothing Updike has ever written, past or present (and yes I've read a lot of it) suggests that degree of writerly self-awareness. Which, by the by, I would say is the real way to actual truth - which is to say, humility.
11/21/08
11/21/08
I stand by my a good writer engages you and makes you think. And we're taking fiction here, not rants by cable TV people.
11/21/08
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But, that's the beauty of books -- everyone takes away something a little different.
11/21/08
I'm a stickler for a dash of realism in the midst of my fantasy. And by real I mean...identifiable as something that could exist given the author's self-defined parameters.
/language parsing
11/21/08
11/21/08
(although I do think the "full of oneself" genre is pretty insufferable anyway so I might try to make out that claim when I've thought more about it.)
11/21/08
That sounds more like an old, old moral argument than an aesthetic one. In particular, a moral argument arising out of suspicion of the power that accrues to some artists, at the (presumed) expense of other, worthier candidates.
11/21/08
"Brain"=not entirely available
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11/21/08
Is he serious with this line?! It sounds like something out of a Penthouse Letter.
11/21/08
Are there women who really dig that?
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11/21/08
I do love Witches of Eastwick though.
11/21/08
I feel the need to head to the library. How have I never read any Updike? Hmm . . . I may need to pay-off my fine first.
11/21/08
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11/21/08
Great green globs of greasy grimey gopher guts....
11/21/08
Also, may I nominate "nards".
11/21/08
Note: I do remember smirking, in high school, during our school's performance of West Side Story. I was in the orchestra and seriously had to bite my finger not to laugh whenever they referenced "Nardo".
11/21/08
(And now you know my thought process. How awkward.)
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11/21/08
(heeheehee)
11/21/08
That would eliminate most icky words from being used.
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11/21/08
I will read ANYTHING. ANYTHING! I usually pride myself on my ability to get through any book, be it "Beowulf" or "Twilight".
However, I have tried and tried and tried, but I cannot get through the Witches of Eastwick. Or any other Updike work, for that matter.
I really feel like something is wrong with me.
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