Showalter: “Chick lit is a very belittling label for a genre of women’s romantic realism, but the books themselves have to looked at individually. I think many of the best-selling writers in this genre are very talented.”
Rumpus: [It seems you and I got off the same page for a moment. You should know I didn’t coin the phrase “chick lit,” and I hate the person who did. Tone is difficult to decipher in writing, so please understand I was being totally ironic. I have to know: what do you think of Oprah’s Book Club?]
Showalter: “Oprah’s Book Club is wonderful. Also the book reviews in O.”
Rumpus: [But what about those glaring OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB stickers on classic books? It’s hard to remove those stickers if you’d like to (like mattress tags), and her name is so big that it looks there are two authors of each book. I don’t want to read a book by William Faulkner and Oprah.]
Showalter: [—]
Rumpus: [Anyway. Perhaps I’ve offended you and my gender by making assumptions about “chick lit” and “Oprah.” I failed in these questions. My simpering intolerance of that which lies outside the academic sphere is humiliating. Thank you for making me reconsider what I’ve refused to consider.]
Showalter: [No problem.]
Rumpus: [We’re cool?]
Showalter: [Sure. You and I are like “this” (crosses her index and middle finger).]
Rumpus: [Back to the interview.] Women as lovers and servants. Women as writers. Women as activists. Grace Paley “insisted that storytellers must first be story hearers, open to all narratives of suffering and survival,” including (but not limited to) women’s liberation, political upheavals, and protest movements. Can you speak about contemporary women as storytellers and story hearers? I’m thinking about such writers/listeners/recorders as Naomi Klein, Rachel Maddow, Terry Gross, and Ariel Levy (among countless others).
Showalter: [—]
Rumpus: [Was that not a very interesting question? Fine.] Margaret Fuller said, “‘If she followed her womanhood, her heart, she had to keep her feelings private. If she followed her intellect, her writing would seem stiff, artificial, and cold.’ As Fuller perceived it, the essential problem for women writers was finding, or inventing, a suitable form: not traditional poetry, not the romantic novel, not the philosophical essay, but some combination and transformation of them all.” What would Margaret Fuller have said about the Internet?
Showalter: [—]
Rumpus: [Still no good? You said we were cool. Perhaps you are bored? Perhaps I am stupid? Perhaps a combination of the two?]
Showalter: [Perhaps.]
Rumpus: [I wish I had the confidence to tell you now what Sylvia Plath told her mother years ago: “I have it in me [to be a] genius of a writer.” Plath received a fellowship to write. Similarly, one Christmas, Harper Lee’s friends invited her to open presents, and the “surprising and generous gift to her was a kind of private fellowship—a year off to write” (the one string attached was to write with a “19th Century regimen of discipline”). Beyond godsends and benefactors, do you have advice for women like me seeking the time and money to write for a living? (I’d like to add an important nota bene that Lee ran out of money during her many rewrites; let us be warned.)]
Showalter: [At what point in this interview did you stop being white and privileged with a hefty inheritance? Just kidding. I empathize. My advice is to be good. Have confidence. Write to connect.]
Rumpus: Five-part question. Women had to change language to be included in it, to allow it to carry their voices. Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) was one of the first to rebel: “Warren was unable to express herself so vividly in iambic pentameter burdened with ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and ‘ne’er’ and ‘o’er.’” You say, “language is a fundamental issue,” and wonder, “is the dominant language adequate to express the experience and reality of muted or marginal groups?” You asked this rhetorically in A Jury of Her Peers, but I’ll answer it earnestly now: no. Contemporary women expanding language include Lydia Davis, Miranda July, Kelly Link, Mary Karr, Kathy Acker, Michelle Tea, and artist/writer Maira Kalman (to name a few). These women, and more like them, explode literary genres with experimental plays on language and meaning. Beyond the interest of time and space, why leave them out? Have you been thinking about them? And further, similar to having a language of our own, many reviewers question the idea that women need a literature of our own. Can you suggest a short reading list of authors we need to read—I’m interested in those who make you think the most, the few who alter your internal life, and the ones who inspire you to write. Which books are the most influential to you in terms of style, content, and representing women as dynamic individuals?
Showalter: “I posted a list on Amazon.com of my ten recommended women’s novels—it’s still there.”
Rumpus: [Yeah, I’ll check that out. I’m sure it’s great. So, Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre shared the same lovers. This isn’t a question; I just can’t believe it.] Here’s a question: in her memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings, “[Eudora] Welty acknowledged that she had had a sheltered life, but ‘a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.’” As someone who enjoys writing, I find it’s a luxury and necessity to remain confined in my house. I relate to the madness of the attic, a popular place in women’s literature, because of what my thoughts do to me when I’m alone. In this way, I’ve come full circle and agree, beyond hesitation, that women need to get out of the house, if only to avoid depression, consumptive dipsomania, and schizophrenia.
Showalter: [Think about how you’d describe the smell of winter, capturing the colors and ecology and small things making the big things go right. Can you explain how it made you feel? How it quieted your mind? How it touched the standing hairs on your body? Can you remember the air, smelling not unlike smoked bacon, settling in your nose? No. You cannot if you remain inside your apartment. Get out of the goddamn house.]
Rumpus: Do you believe there could be a section in Jury for funny women writers? This is not to say any of the women you highlight aren’t often witty, wry, and hilarious. But some say women aren’t funny. How much do you disagree with that wrong sentiment? For a more appropriate question: what do you think of the connection between humor and women’s writing?
