Why Women Don’t Make Top Ten Lists: Prose on Prose

Dear CF,
Laura Miller’s article on Publishers Weekly’s top ten list led me to Francine Prose’s article, “Scent of a Woman’s Ink,” which was published in Harper’s Magazine in 1998.  It’s not available to nonsubscribers but it’s a formidable piece and relevant still, though it’s equally interesting to think about the ways in which some things [...]

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The Bitch

Dear M.,
I just ate two tamales happily microwaved into melty Trader Joe’s delight, and feel fortified to write what I was going to originally try to work into my earlier post.  On one of my recent library scavenging hunts, I picked up Norman Mailer’s The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing.  I read it yesterday while [...]

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Canada, Oh

Dear Millicent,
Let’s move to Canada.  Why? While the healthcare will be nice, and we’ll have the seasons, they will be extras.  The real benefit will be good television, radio, and publishing.  It seems as if in Canada the arts not only matter, but they are inclusive.
My ridiculous proof for this is a TV show that [...]

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Susan Boyle’s Got Balls

Dear CF,
Tonight I give you the contrarian Snuggie of blanket statements, so general it comes with sleeves:
Men are better at demanding an audience. BUT—if an audience is supplied (in teaching, say)—women go to greater lengths to please.
That is to say, I think you (and the MLA) are onto something: it’s easier to respond to a [...]

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On Flirting: The Meeting of Eyes and Ayes and Is: Part I–Theory

Dear CF,
So enjoyed your last few posts which–as it happens–coincide with what I wanted to write you about anyway: flirting. I’ve conducted a smallish experiment and am eager to share the results with you.
But first, let me agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the sexes’ attitudes toward pizzle and cooch instrumentality. Yes! Having read figleaf [...]

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Turkey Is In, No Shit

Dear Millicent,
I am sure you are familiar now with Gwyneth Paltrow’s pet project Goop, and the amount of vitriol it has inspired.  Jezebel covers its absurdities quite well.  Today, Gwynnie was vomitous in a helpful way: she offered a perfect example of a particular kind of annoyance that was mentioned in our earlier conversations of [...]

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Schizophrenia, Hyper-Mentalism, and the Happy Puppet

Couldn’t stop thinking about it.
What to make of the Firecracker’s attraction to schizophrenia as a word and lifestyle, and why did it become the writer-singer-songwriter’s passport into a different kind of world? Schizophrenia, after all, goes beyond the mere desire for altered states of mind. Yeah, Coleridge loved opium, but this exceeds drugs, hallucinations, trumps [...]

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Madwomen in the Attic, Madmen in the Garage

Dearest Carla Fran,
I can’t help wondering if the “sensual pleasures” the ladies received as a result of their chocolate and eggs are the subject of the “grateful confidences” that gratify the Professor’s ears. It puts me in mind of the “traditional” cures for female hysteria in the 19th century, and the peculiar forms therapy [...]

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Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Dear CF,
I started the evening rereading “Brief Interviews” and felt convicted and abased, recognizing in myself too much of what the Depressed Person says. And you, dear friend, are the beleaguered Support System with whom I (i.e. the depressed person) try constantly to really truly literally “share,” to whom I reach out for a glimmer [...]

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The Post-Mortem

Dear one,

How to explain the death of a powerful crush? Curiously enough (or not curiously at all), I too talked to a beloved mutual friend about firecrackers, only in a romantical connection—-namely, the problem of love/hating them.

The Firecracker (Male) is exciting. He takes you to unexpected places and shows a different way [...]

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