About last night
Last night to the monthly reading series at the SF Public Library hosted by Michelle Tea. Among the readers were Diane DiPrima and Charlie Anders, as well as a woman I hadn't heard of before, Diana Cage (a quick look at her credits shows just how clueless and inattentive I am about new authors), whose fiction was a little uneven but funny and satirical and charmingly self-deprecating. DiPrima was the prime attraction, and though she read for only a few minutes, as soon as she began reading I was riveted. Such a powerful, authoritative authorial voice -- I don't mean her reading voice but her writing.
After the readings, Michelle offers home-baked cookies to anyone asking a question. When my turn came around, I asked a question about how, in our heterogenous society, an author can speak to a wider community than just their own. Michelle turned to DiPrima to answer first, and she responsed by laughing. "Ha ha ha ha ha! That's my answer," said the famous poet.
That was deflating. And when I got home, I got email from an anthology editor rejecting a story I'd recently submitted. So it was kind of a downer night all around. Except, of course, for my companion for the evening, Katia Noyes, who will be reading from her forthcoming novel Crashing America at next month's event.
Michelle Tea,Diane DiPrima,Diana Cage,Charlie Anders, Katia Noyes
3 comments:
That's funny... I didn't find her guffaw deflating! Think of what's always done to her as "the girl beat poet" - (THE, as if only one existed) it's so completely bogus how she is tokenized and ghettoized at the same time. Also, after the other writers answered your question, she spoke up again and had some things to say about how you can't control how you will be seen. I think from her perspective of having been through the mill, from 70 years old, it all looks very different. I saw what you were asking, I think, about genre and getting pegged as being a certain thing and trying to break out of whatever niche that is (for you, erotica). A marketing and identity question together. But her situation is wildly different. And she is old enough to realize she is going to die at some point and lose all control over what her writing means and that control was illusory in the first place - ask a zen master about control and illusion, and get a laugh or a whack with a stick! (But, also, the answer being so long and complex from 99 flavors of bitterness to resignation, that she couldn't possibly answer it, or, answered it in her giant biography...)
Well, that said, I kinda wanted to ask her about having 5 kids and HOW?????..... how......????!!!!!! but was afraid of getting that same laugh, or worse, the sort of "Oh, it was no problem" answer that makes me crazy. I should read her autobigraphy too.
Yes, seeing her reaction as a sort of zen comment was how I finally decided to take it.
I've read half of Recollections of My Life as a Woman and it's really great. Reading about the New York literary scene in the 50s is almost like science fiction -- it's a lost world. She doesn't glamorize it but you can tell it was wonderful in its way.
i like what Badgerbag said about the context of the guffaw. good points.
i remember a time when it seemed everybody on a panel would laugh at the question-ers. i haven't seen anybody do that in a long time. i find it disrespectful, but i think sometimes in the face of a really hard question, people don't know what else to do.
i think yr first question involved a lot of side issues that i find pretty complex, even as i try to think about them later. let me just say that assuming at any time there has truly been one shared culture is problematic.
you qualified your question somewhat, but still it's the kind of inquiry you could find yourself writing a book to answer.
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