gillpolack @ 2011-05-30T23:48:00
I'm re-reading The Female Man, because I really thought I ought to. I was right. I totally, totally had to. What I missed when I was a confused teenager was the humour. What I miss as a much more ancient person (with half a life behind me and with some profound social changes having happened) is the in-your-face quality. It's almost an entirely different book to the one I read when I was so very much younger. The words are familiar, and the plot and the characters, but whole categories of meaning have shifted.
What came between then and now? Being a feminist. Not arguing the ideas or wondering about what one can do, but actually trying to change the world. I want to be worried that this means I find Russ ineffably amusing (and intentionally so), but I suspect it's simply that I see the world now more the way she wrote it, then. The world is, indeed, a strange and amusing place, for all sorts of reasons that were not apparent to me when I was a teenager.
Canberra friends - the book is now available for loan (like most of my library). I'd love to have someone to talk with about it, face to face, this time round.
What came between then and now? Being a feminist. Not arguing the ideas or wondering about what one can do, but actually trying to change the world. I want to be worried that this means I find Russ ineffably amusing (and intentionally so), but I suspect it's simply that I see the world now more the way she wrote it, then. The world is, indeed, a strange and amusing place, for all sorts of reasons that were not apparent to me when I was a teenager.
Canberra friends - the book is now available for loan (like most of my library). I'd love to have someone to talk with about it, face to face, this time round.
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