Heroines

by Kate Zambreno

For my criticism came out of, has always come out of, enormous feeling. Often the feeling was anger, finally allowed to let loose in these visceral rants. (I had written book reviews previously, for publications like Bookforum or The Believer, but my editors expected the pretense of objectivity, a journalistic gloss, these blog posts felt like I was committing a gleeful hari-kiri on my journalist girl-self.) Virginia Woolf hiding behind Mary Carmichael in Room, not wanting to write the self in her criticism (although like Elizabeth Hardwick, it is everywhere diffused in her essays). Writing about the “red light” of anger as impeding one’s mind, one’s argument (in opposition to the “white light” of truth). But what’s wrong with writing out of anger?