A question

My friend Marc Travanti ,whose artwork is featured regularly on this blog, told me that unless feminism becomes more inclusive it will die out as a movement.  I asked him to review the website I am creating for my book project, Tales from the Velvet Chamber.  He said, You should invite male writers as well.   Part of me agrees with him.  I've never wanted to participate in a movement that shuns or belittles or sets itself off in an ivory tower.  I've never wanted to be a member of a group that is portrayed as strident, bitter or angry.  That's not the feminism I practice.  Or at least this is what I tell myself. 

But to be honest, the books I read are primarily by female authors.  There are exceptions; recently I've read books by Jose Saramago and Jonathan Lethem.  I tell myself that I am just tired of the male voice.  In my 20's and 30's, including my years as an undergraduate, the canon was strictly male: Blake, Shelley, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Aristotle--- well you know the drill.  Every once in awhile a female voice would explode like a rocket--- Woolf!  Plath!  Austen!  But these exceptions were few and far between.

I grew up--- my consciousness and my culture--- framed primarily from a male point of view.  For many women this is not earth shattering news.  But bear with me.  When I became aware of this, I was already in my 40's.  For a long time, I've considered it my duty and my responsibility and my pleasure to shape my world-view and my politics and my dreams through another lens, one that is feminine, different.  My work as a writer has been shaped by this as well; what is the other version of this story?  Where is the female voice? I remember working on a series for National Public Radio--- Lost Voices.  I wrote and produced a piece called, The Trial of Agnes Gaudry. 

I reconstructed her voice from actual trial transcripts from the height of the witch craze in the 17th century. I collaborated with Anne Barstow Ph.D, a prominent and well known scholar in this field.  I can't begin to you tell you how how exciting and dangerous and forbidden this felt.  These ordinary women; some old, some young, some rich, some poor spoke to me from the grave.  These ordinary women were all convicted of sleeping with the devil and conspiring against the Catholic Church.  They all died horrible, brutal deaths.  I found their voices eloquent, passionate, articulate.  I found them beautiful. 

But now, I am considering including male voices for Tales from the Velvet Chamber because I think Marc might've been right when he said, "That would be totally post modern feminsism. That would be the next wave."  This also feels dangerous and exciting.  How would male voices respond to the platform for the anthology? However, I am not 100% convinced.  Part of me still feels like I have to make up for lost time--- all those years deep inside the male canon.  What do you think?

happiness :(

Barbara Ehrenreich my favorite writer on the dark side of the American dream, has a new book out. "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, published by Metropolitan Books.  When I passed  by Book Court, and saw it in the window, I thought; Christ.  At last.  I thought I was the only person that got depressed every time I watched a special on public television.  By a  motivational speaker.  Exhorting us poor slobs to improve our lives, increase our wealth, live forever, and totally be at peace.  I also got depressed when I read a self-help magazine.  The message was always a version of: think positive. Initially I would judiciously note all the things I should be doing and thinking in the pursuit of positive thinking, but an hour later, I just needed a pint of chocolate ice-cream or a drink.   Or both.

According to Ehrenreich, in an interview on bloomberg.com, the whole movement of positive thinking got its start in corporate America.  During a cycle of lay-offs.  Motivational speakers were hired.  Preach a message of wealth and prosperity, and the power of positive thinking.   Soon, according to Ehrenreich, "Positive Thinking became the ideology of the business world in America." When she had breast cancer, she felt "oppressed  by the feel-good aspects of the culture."  

We can't grieve, we can't mourn, we can't be depressed, we can't be sorrowful, we can't be angry, anxious, edgy, tired.  Getting nervous at a party, especially if we don't know anyone, which is completely normal, completely human---  has been  pathologized;  social anxiety disorder.  And guess what?  You can take a pill and cure it.   You can always feel good.  You don't ever have to feel bad.  And if you do feel bad, it is your own fault.  You just have to think positive.

This is the message we hear.  This is the message I hear.  How am I standing in my own way?  How can I work harder to be happier?   What am I doing wrong?  Am I doing something wrong?  Why aren't I happier?  I should be happy. Everybody else is. According to Ehrenreich, forced optimism, "..silences people and quells dissent."   Its embarrassing to be sad.  We never say that.  Or if we do, more often than not, we hear in response,

Think Positive.

Boroughing Brooklyn likes my work

Many thanks to Boroughing Brooklyn for reposting my piece on P.S. Bookshop, All things literary, on their site:

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The snake swallows its own tail

Just finished A.S. Byatt's Babel Tower. It's a story inside a story, inside more stories. At times it felt the novel was just a vehicle for deep analysis on how we use language--- which in part is the spine of its Biblical counterpart. The snake swallows its own tail. She quotes Nietzsche, Blake, Freud, R.D. Laing, Rilke, Simone de Beauvoir.

The dominant narrative is Frederica's story: A young woman, a young mother, highly educated at Cambridge University, is trying to unravel the knot of an abusive marriage in the late 1960's. For her, there has been no revolution. Educated women are trouble. The judge tells her this in the courtroom during her divorce proceedings.

The other major narrative is an allegory set in the Middle Ages--- there are echoes of Chaucer's dispossessed pilgrims fleeing the plague. The world has become too violent, too brutal and so these gentle patricians, these educated souls set out to create their own world. A new world with new rules. Their ultimate decline towards total sexual anarchy is both erotic and disturbing.

We find that the author of the above story, Jude Mason, is a friend of Frederica's. That she in fact recommended the book to the publisher and it is now on trial for obscenity. Much is made of D.H. Lawrence's trial for Lady Chatterley's Lover. Through all of this then is a constant examination of language--- how to manipulate it, parse it--- how its used in education, in law, in poetry, in philosophy, and last but not least, how it tells stories. The snake swallows its own tail.