Here was another protoypical teenage boy story. I never saw my old man get into a physical confrontation with anyone's dad: the only kid on my street I ever fought with didn't know who his dad was (which is probably one of the reasons he liked to fight so much.) My dad was always a big guy, like my Danish grandfather: tall and thick with wide shoulders and an enormous head. Somehow I got to be short and chubby like my mom's Hungarian father. Anyways, that's another subject. My old man used to fell trees in our woods with his chainsaw and then me and my older brother would chop them up for firewood. My best friend's dad chopped and delivered firewood for a living. I always associated the whole process with masculinity, the way the boy in the story is doing with smoking and muscles. I still find myself sometimes looking at a man that I meet for the first time and thinking, "I wonder how many swings with an axe it would take him to split a trunk?" or "Does this guy know how to operate a chainsaw?"Another thing my old man used to do was to tell my little brother and I stories before we would go to bed. They were pretty outlandish stories about his boyhood in Washington: spearing a steelhead with a fencepost, the three-legged coyote with green spit who took off with the neighbor's goose, the avalanche he drove through with his milk truck, his Indian friend John Moses who killed a guy with a shotgun. So another thing I've always associated with masculinity is the ability to tell a good story (regardless of getting the facts straight.) My mother would read to us often, but never tell stories the way Dad did. I suppose that's why he became a preacher.
I grew up in the country too and this story was a really wonderful flashback of what it was like sneaking off to the creek looking for something interesting to do. We spent hours trespassing and digging around the creek for crayfish and frogs.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing we did not bring up was the whole Solomon thing--he was the King that wanted to cut the baby in half, right? When I read it I thought of it, but we might have to dig a bit to line it up.
Yes, I felt the woman with the boobs was a bit fantastic--but there was a time, not too long ago, when people actually hitch hiked without fear of being chopped up into bits.
This also speaks to the idea of gender roles. As far as sneaking off to the creek, I would get in trouble, while my brother could be gone in the woods for an entire day without consequence. "Because you're a girl and it's different" was the only answer I was given.
I wonder if there are any real-life short stories written from the young female perspective about looking for crayfish and thinking about sex, because that happens too. It seems like the only escape for girls like this--in literature, for the most part and probably every other type of media--is about traveling pants and kissing vampires. For me, that is not an accurate representation of my childhood. I am not big on fishing, but I saw myself in this protagonist.
(the above is a response to the fish story)
ReplyDeleteYeah, you don't see too many stories aimed at girls or around or about girls (or any other prepositions) that don't involve getting a boy or some form of gender agenda. There is Annie Dillard, though. Has anyone read her stuff? I have only read "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" and it is exceptional stuff. Very poetic, rambling prose about walking around in fields and by creeks and watching frogs. Great stuff.
ReplyDeleteBeave
I have sadly not been made aware of good fiction by women writers in quite some time. I really, really like H.D., I think she is the most honest of the Imagists, Pound can take a flying leap. I do like Eliot though.
ReplyDeleteI read Virginia Woolf and enjoyed Willa Cather and Emily Dickenson--Matt actually took me to the Dickinson Homestead in Amherst, Mass. for my birthday way back in aught three. I was really into all things Victorian then. I will check out Dillard, for sure.
There is also Sarah Vowell, but I think she is more of a humorist/journalist--what is that genre "narrative non-fiction" or something? "Creative non-fiction". I ran through the npr/TAL featured writers a few years ago when I ran out of David Sedaris.
Yeah, it's a shame that a female grad student who began work on an MA in English not too long ago is having a hard time thinking of contemporary female authors to identify with. I am not so into Harry Potter, vampires or sexing in the city. I know there are a lot of hard-core feminist writers out there right now--I subscribed to BITCH for a spell--I appreciate that, but that's not exactly the conduit I find myself connecting to the universal through.
The gossamer thread that connects us to each other's ideas, you know. I got that from H.D. and the Penelope episode in Ulysses (which was written by a man).
I did a google search for "contemporary women writers" and basically all that came up was Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison and Arundhati Roy (who I am unfamilar with, so will check out).
I wonder if there is a popular place for contemporary women writer's that does not have to do with vampires and girlie stuff like "celebrating" womanhood, cuz that aint me, babe. A real, honest look at female subjectivity and experience. Carrie Bradshaw, LC do not represent me.
On that note, I am wondering if there are any pieces of contemporary writing that just represent human subjectivity. That would be cool. Is that even possible?
Even one of my favorite Ani lyrics is from a song called "If he tries anything" about liking boys and protecting ourselves. Is that what womanhood is really about? I know Ani has changed her tune in the last two decades, but still...I still rock out to this, you know:
tell you one thing
I'm gonna make noise when I go down
for ten square blocks
they're gonna know I died
all the goddesses will come up
to the ripped screen door
and say,
what do you want, dear?
and I'll say,
I want inside
Whelp, I'm off to go celebrate my ya-ya traveling goddess pants and check the roller derby yahoo board, maybe fall in love with a vampire while I'm at it. Take that, H.D. and Iris Murdoch.