Go Easy On Me, Queen of Languages

One can live quietly and try to do tiny good things and harm no one. I cannot think of any tiny good thing to do at the moment, but perhaps I shall think of one tomorrow.¹

Once a boy was lying in my bed and said, “I don’t read women writers.”

That was a while ago, and I still think of it and cringe. Not only because it was obnoxious and he was a weird kisser, but because I knew what he meant.

Fiction by a female writer implies something knitting-needlish and kitchen-witchy and lunar-worshippy. Everyone who went to a liberal arts college knows the girl who made a painting in art class with her menstrual blood. How do you get away from a stigma like that? Who wants anything to do with that? Not me. Also, penis envy. I’ve got it bad.

As the boat left the harbour and turned seaward a breeze stirred about them and the bay broke up into long oily undulations, then into ripples tipped with spray.²

So I let the guy stay in my bed, feeling guilty and defensive. He might even have mentioned Flannery O’Connor, which, in a way that’s hard to explain, is like mentioning no one at all. Not that I don’t adore her. But she’s the go-to chick for dudes who don’t like chicks. I don’t know why.

…the children themselves were even now repaying her in small joys for her suffering. Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and in trying moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments, too, when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.³

Three of my favorite writers happen to be female. But when you’re talking to a guy who’s not familiar with them, there’s a glazing over of the eyes. Do sachets of pot pourri descend from the heavens and dance around my head, or what? The only place that glaze belongs is on the pot I sculpted at my Saturday morning ceramics class. It holds a clutch of pretty pens, which I use to keep track of my cycle in a journal I made in Sunday afternoon book binding class. Neat!

There was a vase of flame-coloured tulips in the hall–surely the most graceful of flowers. Some thrust their heads forward like snakes, and some were very erect, stiff, virginal, rather prim. Some were dying, with curved grace in their death.⁴

Last week I was cleaning out a purse when I came across the February issue of Harper’s, which I’d bought for a plane trip and never read (it was easier to watch the makeover shows on HGTV. Girly much? Zang!). I paged through it during breakfast and came across the Alice Munro story “Child’s Play.” Like an asshole, I couldn’t commit to reading the whole thing, so I skimmed the first few columns before grudgingly settling down to a real read.

The story made my neck tingle. Lady can write! And it’s about two girls, and the intense friendship they develop at summer camp. You can’t get more moon-tidey than that, but I didn’t care. After I finished, I went back to the beginning and read it all again. I was momentarily at peace with being a woman. I was momentarily at peace with admiring the work of women writers.

Still jealous of dick–but I guess I’ll settle for hanging out with one every once in a while. Of course, reading cock-owning writers never hurts either.

For let us not deceive ourselves: most of the minds we associate with are housed in heads that have little more to offer than overgrown potatoes, stuck on top of whining and tastelessly clad bodies and eking out a pathetic existence that does not even merit our pity.⁵

WORD.

Title: male (Destroyer aka Daniel Bejar, Thief)
¹female (Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea)
²female (Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence)
³male (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenin)
⁴female (Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie)
⁵male (Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein’s Nephew)

by Left Hook | 4 July 2007 | reading | Comments