Status Updates From What Purpose Did I Serve in...

There is an air of To Be Continued. This is Rogerian process. (Double entendres welcome.

The worst thing of all is perhaps that she hardly ever sounds as if she's having fun.

Finished all the new material. Didn't really want to re-read 'Adrien Brody' or 'Jeremy Lin' but will prob. skim before writing review.

Insights later in the book make a lot of the above semi-redundant. Sounds like potential start of new phase. Also contemplating extent to which MC could be a persona or character.

Criticism chapter "she's highlighting pornification of women & rape culture" TBH, and this is rude, I think she demonstrates how one can inculcate oneself into it if one so chooses. (Some may not consider this "choice" depending on how they conceptualise agency in traumatised people. It is something she could become more aware of in retrospect)

Actual quote from book, quoting a blog: A lot of people want to rip Marie Calloway to shreds. She is a spectacle because she has made herself vulnerable; her transparent desire for affection entertain in part because it is sad, and frightening, and such a very perfect reflection of so many people’s desires. As though a desire to be told that you’re worthy makes someone lesser. http://irreverently.wordpress.com/tag/ma

Have urge to write traditional narrative story based on this. Ain't gonna happen. But I'm sure someone will do it.
Unrelated...The cover looks angry, doesn't it?

All this stuff serves to reinforce her negative view of men in general. I would really like to read how she would write about all this stuff after reading a good number of heavyweight psychology books relevant to her experiences. Being true to self and not jut regurgitating jargon. If she's to be more of the public intellectual I think she wants to be, that would be one good way to start going about it.

Raises questions of social libertarianism (how does one phrase that for Americans who see the term differently?): people saying she shouldn't be doing this so publicly because it's a re-enactment of trauma or similar. But that's also seeking to control. And she's not doing anyone any severe harm. And she may or may not be embarrassed about it all in 15 years time – that's her business. Denying her agency.

Also, these guys she's emailing are rubbish-to-indifferent writers. Which is very unattractive

Her stories will have wider significance, especially to women near her age with traumatic pasts, but I think the thing is not that it has no degree of universality or interest. for me the prob is how it's written. She is too close to the time and too numb to describe really well... it needs distance. You need to be able to feel more to describe better.

...They mesh. It's both. But it doesn't mean the writer is/ was characteristic of the majority, just of a particular visible / sensationalised trend.

... and one in which I'm also conscious that the writer may even see this. But simply because of my age, who I've been and what I've read, the biggest thought in my head is a) this is nothing new and b) like A Confession of a Child of the Century, this is partly about a writer's own attachment / trauma and partly about a time and culture. You can't say it's just the latter. But you can't dismiss as the former either.

Also she's basically just following the ideas Elizabeth Wurtzel set out in Bitch. As far as I can remember... I read that book almost as soon as it was released (1998?) and got rid of it several years ago.
In writing about this I want to find a way out of the dichotomy of being patronising/ pathologising v just being "whatever". It's an intellectual exercise to write about,

But her numbness and her "Alfie" view of men is very much like myself at her age, and especially a bit younger. It took a long time to completely wear off though. (I sort of re-categorised men if they were in a sexual context... if I didn't fancy them or knew nothing was going to happen all the equality and fluidity of roles applied again.)
Lots and lots of notes made at p.40...