book – Don't Gel Too Soon

Art, Truth, Feminism, JD Salinger, Lena Dunham and Sex

when: From Lena Dunham’s Website

Lena Dunham was just a little older, when she wrote this, than she was in the currently infamous story from her new book; it’s been raging through right-wing and/or feminist (?!) blogs for days. If you’ve been offline for the past few days, her new book Not That Kind of Girl, includes material about sexual curiosity, sisters, vaginas and sexual limits, all in the form of what were, to many, uncomfortable anecdotes.

Dunham and her book have been brutalized in the press and on blogs – mostly for telling the truth – a truth which some claim is the sexual abuse of a younger sibling. It seemed more like a less-than-attractive set of events and not, to child development experts, worthy of the outrage it generated.

Beyond that, it’s honest, real and revealing, so: is this cacophony of condemnation how we modern readers reward a writer’s honesty? It shouldn’t be – and JD Salinger told us why:

Since [writing] is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? … I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions.’ Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions. If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined.” (Seymour, an Introduction)

BlogHer, Bella, Books and Us Women

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend with 1,000 remarkable women. You know where; the Web has been full of posts and tweets and messages about BlogHer, the women bloggers conference. Since its founding, BlogHer has held four conferences, and I’ve been to three of them. For those three years I’ve wondered at the strength and power of both the gathering and each woman, most far younger than I, who is part of it. Audacious and rambunctious, honest and gifted, they are far beyond where I was at their age. I’ve always known that all of us, sisters from the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s, scratched and kicked and pulled and fought to move our lives, and those of the women around us, forward. In many ways, we made a difference. I’m proud of that.

Today though I was reminded of a real heroine, one whose star lit the way for much of what we did, in a wonderful piece in The Women’s Review of Books: Ruth Rosen‘s review of Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought
Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the
Rights of Women and Workers, … Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along
the Way–an oral history of the life of Bella Abzug. Among other things, Ruth says:

She fought for the
rights of union workers and African Americans, protested the use of the atomic
bomb and the Vietnam War, waged endless battles to advance women’s rights, and
spent the last years of her life promoting environmentalism and human rights.
When she plunged into the women’s movement during the late 1960s, Abzug infused
feminism with her fierce, strategic, take-no-prisoners spirit. As Geraldine
Ferraro reminds us,
She didn’t knock lightly on the door. She didn’t even push it open or batter it
down. She took it off the hinges forever! So that those of us who came after
could walk through!

And with a bow to Bella and so many others, walk through we have. It’s tough to pass the stories ‘I walked six miles to school in the snow’
fogey. Younger women, though, would find courage to fight their own
battles in Bella’s story and in many of our own."

For me, Bella was a brave, untamed beacon of defiance and energy. Her story, and ours, laid the ground for these determined, gifted "blogger generation" women. I would so love to be able to tell them about her – and about all of us, just so they could know the solidarity, the battles, the anger and the hope. And why seeing them all together, hugging, laughing and raising hell, makes me so damned happy. And that Bella would have loved them.

WAY BEFORE HER TIME- IN A HAT! REMEMBERING BELLA ABZUG

She was way before her time — way before. Loud, brash, confident, and always in a hat (even on the House floor), born in 1920 and elected to Congress in 1970, Bella Abzug was a force of nature who, early in her career, ignored serious threats on her life to defend Willie McGee, a Mississippi black man convicted of raping a white woman. Although very pregnant at the time, she went to Mississippi to argue his case and face the cruel segregation machine that was the Jim Crow South.

Later, she represented many of those attacked by Senator Joe McCarthy in the 50’s and became one of the leaders of the anti-Vietnam War movement – and an enduring symbol of the struggle to gain the kinds of rights women enjoy today. There was so much to her – and most of it was apparent in the force of her presence, and her impact on others.

Now two of her long-time colleagues, admirers, friends and founding editors at Ms. Magazine have compiled an exciting and inspiring oral history.

To many of those who read this blog Bella is a seeming anachronism. There’s no way to recall the desperation of those times not only because of the war but also because of the growing frustration of women trying to find an equal place in the world. Bella broke down barriers, put the fear of God into politicians (and her staff and many of her admirers) with her fierce commitment and energy, and was a funny, loving person between battles – and this book brings all that to life.

So take a look at this engrossing story. If you have a young woman friend who doesn’t know what came before there was an all-girl sweep of high school science awards (much less any girls competing at all), or women running the New York Times, or women so commonly in authority that their roles on TV are not “first” or “woman fill-in-the-blank” but simply jobs — chief residents like Miranda Bailey or hospital directors like Lisa Cuddy or even really bad bad guys like Angela Petrelli share it with her this holiday – or for her birthday – or when she graduates. And remind her of this:

When you get your meds from a woman pharmacist or get a ticket from a woman cop or have your plane waved to the gate by a woman airport worker — remember that they, and we, stand on the shoulders of this remarkable woman. Take a look at her story (the book is called – Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought
Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the
Rights of Women and Workers, … Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along
the Way— then decide what you’re going to do to take us to the next landmark.

CARE ABOUT 2008? READ THIS BOOK – THE ARGUMENT BY MATT BAI

I have three half-finished posts saved as DRAFT right now but Saturday, all day, I read this book and I want to talk about it. You need to read it too. Matt Bai, the very smart political correspondent for the New York Times Magazine , and author of my favorite piece about the 2004 elections, WHO LOST OHIO? writes about the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party in the period after the 2004 election. He has a great narrative style – it’s like reading a novel. There are real characters, and intrigues and hubris and everything.

I really care what happens to our country and am so often troubled by the way that those with whom I most agree chose to engage the rest of the nation (Yes Mr. Colbert, the nation.) There’s so much at stake. Our choice of things we want to happen — and how we propose and describe them – is critical to whether we earn the right to make them happen. Do we spend too much time thinking about the elections themselves– and not enough about the policies to be implemented if we win? How do we talk to/with our fellow Americans and what do we say? What do we know about what they want – and do we care enough?

Matt has provocatively portrayed a political dialog that’s doesn’t deal with these questions nearly enough — as well as the "adventure story" of how we got here. I’m being vague on purpose — you really need to read this yourself. It’s quick, fun, smart, useful and very important.

GOOGLE ME THIS

I worked for Excite when it was a brand new search engine. The idea was to write 20 word descriptions of every site and differentiate Excite as the search engine with quality descriptions to help guide the searcher. I wanted to learn about the Internet (it was around 1995 – near the beginning of search) and they were paying $5/review. It was a blast. Why am I telling you this?

I just finished a book called THE SEARCH: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, by John Battelle, who is a remarkable pioneer – one of the founders of WIRED, the late INDUSTRY STANDARD and blog advertising syndicator Federated Media Publishing, Inc. among others.

As the title suggests, it’s about considerably more than the brilliant and turbulent birth and ascent of Google. Battelle makes the very good case that the rise of search as a web application was essential to more than the future of the Internet as the universal tool that it is. In addition, says Battelle, “Search is no longer a stand-alone application, as useful but impersonal tool for finding something on a new medium called the World Wide Web. Increasingly, search is our mechanism for how we understand ourselves, our world, and our place within it. It’s how we navigate the one infinite resource that drives human culture: knowledge.”

In other words, search is changing us, our culture and our world. It’s a very exciting examination of something that’s become so automatic and familiar that it’s easy to forget just how transforming a force it is. The book is out in paperback and if you’re a web rat like me, you’ll really enjoy it.

9/11 AND ART

One of my favorite books is William Gibson’s PATTERN RECOGNITION. It’s the story of a "cool hunter" named Cayce Pollard . Her job is to help worldwide companies evaluate their logos and design for "coolness ." She’s a gypsy, finding Pilates studios in the cities she visits and completely engaging the reader (at least this one.) Behind her quite remarkable self, however, lies her grief of the loss of her father in lower Manhattan on September 11. It’s a shadow that haunts all the elegant activity, spectacular writing and remarkable plot lines that are part of any Gibson work. Published in 2003, it was one of the early novels dealing with the horrors of that day in 2001.

There have been several since then, as well as, in the past year, three movies including Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. IMDB lists 11 altogether, not counting Stone’s new film. Apparently, at least to those I know who’ve seen them, several of these films are pretty good.

Last night I finished a book saved, in its last chapters, by that terrible time. THE EMPEROR’S CHILDREN, by Claire Messud, got spectacular reviews — front page in the Sunday Times Book Review — and sounded great. What it is is a kind of lesser BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES about lefties living on the West Side (the Beresford is on the cover — not too subtle, right?), their offspring and several other 30-somethings who went to Brown. The whole point of its 431 pages is to reveal the phony side of the lives of the politically correct with their Central Park West apartments, their kids – haunted by parental successes they can’t match, and the rest of the crew ten years out of college and aimless. It’s all OK – but not great. Then, in the middle of a serious act of betrayal by Grand Old Man liberal and a friend of his daughter, two planes hit the World Trade Center — right outside the window of her apartment. Everything that felt so false for all those pages is rendered just as superficial as we thought it was.

I’m not sure it’s enough for me – maybe if I hadn’t lived 20 years on that very West Side and admired many of those people myself – all the while realizing that maybe many of them weren’t who I wanted them to be, it would make more sense. I’m not sure why the book irritated me so and maybe that makes it better than I’m telling you it is – but it’s in my head and it’s making me mad. Can someone else can help me figure out why?