“There is no such thing as Women’s Writing. Just as there is no such thing as Left-Handed Writing, Red-Headed Writing, European Writing, Northern Hemisphere Writing, or Writing from the Planet Earth. All of these categories are so large as to be meaningless. Sadly, Women’s Writing is the only one of the above repeatedly used as a stick to beat women who write. Either Women’s Writing is fluffy and inconsequential, full of romps and buttocks – or Women’s Writing is coarse and aggressive and the kind of muck you’d expect from an off-duty stripper in a strop – or Women’s Writing is obsessed with plumbing and bleeding and bonding to whale music. Effectively, Women’s Writing is whatever has most annoyed any given journalist, commentator, academic, or author in the past few books by women they’ve read.”
Tag: 03.25.05
China Bans Sexy Mao Novel
Chinese censors have banned a racy novel and pulled it from book shelves. “The novella, Serve the People – named after Mao’s most famous slogan – has been rejected for publication and a magazine that had been serialising the contents has been pulled from the shelves. Although it was written by one of China’s most distinguished authors, Yan Lianke, propaganda ministry officials were reportedly apoplectic when they first read the tale of sexual revolution inside the People’s Liberation Army.”
Pierre Boulez At 80
“Today Boulez has become such a globally venerated figure, that it is difficult to appreciate how radical he was. To say he has mellowed would be an understatement: today he is often found conducting in those very opera houses whose demolition he earlier demanded and conducting operas such as Wagner’s Parsifal, whose lush late romanticism would surely seem to be inimical to the high modernism for which he used to be the noisiest proselytiser.”