Women Writers

Reading Writing As Writing
I swear to the Leaping Lizards of Peshawar I never read books just because they were written by women or men, though from studying psychology and cultural anthropology I learned early it was a man's world (great James Brown song), male dominated, and that most dominant males were the most colorful males and they got the most females, on and on and culturally on and on. In Psychology I was not condescending as a male reader to the research and writings of say Karen Horney. Even Freud's daughter Anna carried on her father's work--what does it matter whether a psychiatrist is a woman or a man? Henry Miller got me to reading Anais Nin, who I found fascinating, but then Anais said she knew that men found her fascinating and that most of that male fascination for a woman like her was because of her sexuality, men wanting to fuck her, which Henry Miller did and that way found out what a fascinating thinker she was as well as being a fascinating fuck. My goodness gracious, my first acquaintance with a female writer on a serious and very astute basis was Gertrude Stein, to whom I was introduced by Ernest Hemingway, and though rumors were that Papa had the greedy hots for Gertie even knowing she was more inclined to the masculinity of Alice B. Toklas than she was for anything Hemingway had to offer in terms of macho (Alice B. was "Pussy"--from Hemingway's great book, A Moveable Feast (from Gertrude Stein, by golly, who said "Paris, Hemingway, is like a moveable feast"--and Gertie knew about moveable feasts, too, because at the time she was getting fascinated by the saints of the Catholic Church, especially Saint Teresa of Avila), a matter that bugged Hemingway who truly was fascinated by Gertrude Stein, fascinated yes by the way she wrote but fascinated by her potential as a sexual partner as well. In my time reading and studying and being influenced by Gertrude Stein's writing it never entered my mind that Gertie was a woman and therefore not as good a writer as a male (I'm told now by the new world everything world folks --the little sons and daughters of the creators and reward reapers of the Global Marketplace--that which started us thinking world rather than who we really are--world culture now--a unifying culture--so I'm now told that when discussing writers like American writers you must call them "writers of the English language." I might accept "writers of the American language" but I reject the English part of that--I write in the language I hear spoken around me daily--that language I express in my Texas-American voice--the translator of these millions of thoughts in my brain into words that I then type onto an empty space--like this blog. OK, OK, a Chinese guy needs it translated to understand it unless he learns English well enough to kind'a understand American, and especially Texas-American with New Yawk affectations and slang thrown in there, too. I grew up casually using Mexican words like, "Hay caramba" and bastardizations like "hoosegow," "calaboose"--"Hay caramba," just like it is to Bart Simpson, was my early favorite curse word when after I first saw it used in grade school in Dallas; the term was by the Mexican Army as it was trying to overwhelm the Alamo by climbing up ladders put against the old compound's walls but being repelled by, you know, seven or eight brave Texas lads (white men), and as the Texans pushed the Mexican soldiers off their ladders, the Mexicans shouted "Hay caramba" as they fell back--"foiled again," from a little Texas History comic book put out by the Magnolia Oil and Refining Company (soon to become Mobil, for Socony-Mobil, Socony for our old pal the Standard Oil Company of New York, Standard Oil thanks to our dear old accountant pal John D. Rockefeller the first, the little bookkeeper from Ohio who found out he could takeover the oil industry--it was then limited to a valley over in eastern Pennsylvania (right up close to Ohio)--actually in the city of Titusville and later the city of Oil City, PA, being put on the map--and old John D. took the oil industry over by first taking over the tank cars that took the oil from the wells to the refineries, of which there were many, except when John D. took over the tank cars, they would only ship to his refinery--aha, and that's how Standard Oil began and how it multiplied and kept multiplying--and the government had to come up with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to stop it finally--after Ida Tarbell exposed it for the amoebic-like company it was, eating its way to monopoly heights ne'er before seen by the upperclasses. And now, thanks to oil-rich G.W. Bush, we're giving back all the Sherman Anti-Trust Act took away from BIG BUSINESS. There are more monopolies today than then, except we have a Supreme Court of corporate lawyers (or worse, government lawyers like Clarence "Aw Shucks, Massuh" "Tom" Thomas) and they would never allow Congress to pass successfully an anti-trust act today, though that's a power We the People of the USA have--to revoke the charters of these "Delaware" chartered behemoths--even Halliburton even though its moved it headquarters to Dubai is still a US chartered corporation and yes its holdings can be taken over by the people of the USA if the corporation is ignoring the laws of this land, the regulations supposed to be imposed on these creatures that are under our old-fashioned Protestant-White Constitution solid US citizens with individual rights and shit just like you and me. And did I mention a woman writer's who exposed John D. Rockefeller and his crooked-as-a-snake nature when it came to business--accountants are all humorless lumps of oily clay who only know how to crunch numbers and make all sums balance no matter how crooked the creative process you use to make them balance.

I grew up with a woman writer in my house--my mother's mother, my grandmother--in fact, I am rereading her novel these days and find it fascinating storytelling, OK, maybe not great writing, but she was a writer and she wrote every day of her life I got to know her and live with her; she was also a champion flower grower, but mainly she was a writer, a published writer, 3 books altogether, but she was always at her typewriter when I knew her best and I loved that typewriter, an L.C. Smith upright she'd bought brand new in the 1930s, and she kept that machine clean as a whistle and when she wasn't using it she put the cover on it and then threw an old wall-hanging of some Italian ruin scene, a souvenir of someone's trip to Italy, probably back around WWI, that had been given to her way back when because I know my grandmother never went to Italy, though she did love Nathaniel Hawthorne and Lord Byron both of whom wrote books about Italy. My grandmother's typing and her typewriter so fascinated me that when I was 11 she taught me enough typing--the home keys and where to put my fingers, etc.--that I was soon typing out full pages--yes, I hunted and pecked at first but by the time I got to high school I could type like a typewriting whiz.

By the bye, as a jaunty aside, I once worked in the world of accounting (I was an editor) with the world's fastest typist, over 130 words per minute; and I've watched him on an IBM Selectric (a whaaaat?) speed type and it was like a concert pianist playing a very difficult piece flying high with arpeggios and glissandos and great sweepings of crescendos and divings of diminuendos. The poor sweet man later while living the life of Riley on the beaches of Puerto Rico (his mother's native land) he survived two aneurysms that left him like a little kid in terms of memory and mental ability--he had to learn what everything was all over again, shit like that--what "upstairs" meant and where "downstairs" was--I wonder if he can still remember to type fast?--though that's kind'a cruel and I take that back--the fellow was one of the finest, most honest, nicest, friendliest persons I've ever known--he wrote a very funny play when I knew him about a Puerto Rican Pope.

Alice Munro
I have barely ever heard of Alice Munro and I've certainly never read her. She's been getting published in The New Yorker for like 30 years now, but I quit reading The New Yorker many years ago--yes, about 30 years ago, just in time to miss Miss Munro.

I was acquainted with Joyce Carol Oates--she beat me out of getting published back in 1964 in the Southern Review--and I've never been able to read her since--and I thought her boxing stuff obnoxious and in general her stories boring. Plus, JC is a Canadian. Why do we so love Canadian women? It's a white thing.

[Hell, I was reading Ralph Ellison today and he said Charles Parker, Jr., was really a white hero and not a black one. Strange, I thought, I'd never in my life thought of that, but I think it's true--I think I could even go on and say white people gave jazz its time in the golden-age light--black people thought jazz was like the blues "the devil's music."]

And Alice Munro is a Canadian--one of those "deep thinking" Canadians and her writing is said to be insightfully psychological in its deepest meanings and values. Then I heard a woman on the radio (yes, I still listen to the radio--it's my natural-born medium) say that Alice Munro is the finest writer in English happening today. What the hell does that mean? You mean in French Alice Munro has no meaning at all? Stupid statement. But politically correct and it gives a woman writer power in girl terms over men writers. Perhaps there is a "female" novel form and a "male" novel form no matter the language--since all languages are saying the same damn things no matter how complicated it sounds while they're speaking it.

So come let us read an Alice Munro story together. This one, "The Bear Went Over the Mountain," was recently made into an artsy-fartsy film by a very young Canadian actress, Sarah Polley (28 years old and already producing her first film--must have a rich lover). Here ya go, over to the offices of The New Yorker, once very Amurican now velly Britishy thanks to the influence of girl-star-editor-and-Princess Di-lover Tina Brown ("If it's brown, flush it down"). Anyway, here ya go, your bear's goin' over dat-dere moun-tane.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/12/27/1999_12_27_110_TNY_LIBRY_000019900

Women Writers I Read
I still love reading Gertrude Stein though Gertrude is not for everyone. It's the way she writes, the flowing way, that stream of consciousness way that Bill Faulkner is given credit for turning into a metier, especially wonderfully used in Bill's A Light in August--good reading no matter your literary allegiances.

I once liked reading Katherine Anne Porter, a Texas woman gone Yankee--Ship of Fools is a jolly good book--such irony.

Yes, you should know if you've ever read this blog more than this second you're passing by it that I have a sexual fantasy and therefore literary bent toward the writing of H.D. (Hilda Doolittle--Ezra's girl)--you talk about a strange writer--and POET, too, don't let me forget.

Off the top of my head, I've enjoyed reading Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy (oh how Bunny Wilson talked about her "bowing her delicate fingers over his hard violin string"--and Mary was certainly a sexual object as a young writer), Willa Cather (Death Comes to the Archbishop is a great piece of American writing), Mary Austin (Earth Horizon), Diane Di Prima, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elinore Wylie...etc., etc.

I never read writers according to their gender. I think a writer is a writer is a writer.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler