We endure claims that the most profound kinds of pain are the exclusive possessions of men, that they are best equipped to make art from this suffering. Instead of bearing witness to it, we are asked to be killed by it, quietly if possible. But Courtney did nothing quietly. She said in 1995, “The American public really does have a death wish for me. They want me to die. I’m not going to die.”19 And she has made good on that promise. The word “survivor” comes up often in sympathetic profiles of her. But “survivor” has connotations of thriving, of some conquering of life’s wreckage rather than a
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