Diary

Can we forgive them? Jews in the news.
Back in New York for a few days, and reading the Times (on paper, of course), I’m reminded how publicly Jewish a city New York is―compared, say, to

Plus ça change, or are women people?
“Murray ends the 77-year wait for British win.” Ooops. The headline misses the fact that Virginia Wade won Wimbledon in 1977. But she won in women’s singles. Feminist

Same boyfriend, different life.
We memoirists like to think our lives are uniquely ours, but often it turns out not to be true–at least not wholly true. I’ve been worrying these past

Do Nice Girls Have Sex?
Or how did nice girls have sex in the 1950s―you know, so twentieth century. In her controversial NYRB piece about two new Sylvia Plath biographies, the critic Terry

Is self-plagiarism really plagiarism?
I’ve just moved to London for the summer and one of the first things I did was attend the June meeting of “Laydeez do Comics,” a lively, successful

What’s in a name?
A few days ago I received an email from a high school friend I haven’t seen for many years. She said that on a recent trip to Paris

If Emily Dickinson tweeted…
I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you―Nobody―Too? (c. 1861) Despite Dickinson’s well-known gift for concision, these lines and the ones that follow in the poem, suggest that Dickinson

Is Twenty-Seven Old?
At some point in the interesting new movie Frances Ha someone declares: “Twenty-seven is old.” In his enthusiastic review film critic A.O. Scott observes: “while that may in

Welcome. Some musings on my current preoccupations with the worlds of illness and the worlds of books: the vicissitudes of living with cancer and the need, for now, to launch (a k a promote) my new memoir, My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism. Naturally, I inhabit both spaces, which makes for a strangely bifurcated, though far from boring, existence. Click to view both Feminist Friendship Archive and My Multifocal Life projects.