Diary
Promoting Someone Else’s Self
Ann Beattie, a well-known writer and a vice president for literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, has a problem: she’s tired of writing letters of
Lemurs and Leaders: The Cooperation Thing…
I recently came across the obituary of Alison Jolly, a primatologist who studied lemurs and wrote definitive studies of this species. I might not have stopped over the
When a Friend You Love is Ill
Right now, I am at my desk preparing my seminar for tomorrow, but my thoughts keep straying from Holocaust testimony―this week’s subject, as it happens―to the fate of
Bad Boys, encore?
You have to wonder what kind of anxiety about masculinity drives the editors at the New York Times. Last week it was “bullish on boyish-boys,” a survey of
The Persistence of Boy Power
“Bullish on Boyish for Late-Night TV” reads the headline of the lead article in this week’s Sunday Times “Arts and Leisure section” (the print edition). Seven talking-head faces
Feminist Friends Forever: Met and Unmet
Maxine Kumin died last week at age 88. In her typically thoughtful obituary, Margalit Fox highlights Kumin’s long life as a poet, teacher, mother, and friend. Although I
Forward into the past!
If I hadn’t already been depressed about how the publishing world treats women writers, the article in this week’s Nation would have made me reach for my Valium
Faces in a Crowd
On my way to work this morning, winding my way through the crowded streets of the garment district, I looked up to see three New York City policeman
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.