Tracking the ever-elusive Great American Novel

[jd]

Sorry for the tangent but I found what she wrote and I figured I'd
share it since I find it hilarious.  I was wrong about the
mis-spellings, that was another thing she did:

----

            I haven't enjoyed reading these stories.  They are hard
for me to swallow; I until now, how extreme a person's family history
and culture can affect her life.  This is extreme!

            Why couldn't Maxine have entered this world at 21 years
old, a blank slate and ready to live?  Why did she have to be raised
on a steady ingest them and I immediately want to vomit them up.  When
I take a break to wash the dishes, they are still there haunting,
hissing in my ears.  When I cruise across campus, they are there
waiting for me at the corner.  Just how Maxine is haunted by her
Chinese history, so I feel haunted by her stories.  She is a
remarkable writer.  The more I want to throw-up, the more convinced I
am of her writing talent.

----

Ah, trickster literature class, how I loved you.

On 5/23/06, jd <wescac at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mal, it's just that literary taste is relative... a lot of people
> think Pynchon sucks because GR isn't straightforward enough (for
> example a few people I tried to get to read the book)...  I think
> they're a little closed-minded but I can't really condemn them for
> having what I consider bad taste.
>
> Now, Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior, for example, I can make an
> explicit statement about - it's not non-fiction (this was a book that
> was discussed in a class of mine, in which I was told I was intolerant
> of asian culture because I refused to consider it non-fiction, which
> is partially where my touchiness on this sort of subject comes from).
> For those who haven't read it, it's a memoir that consists partially
> of fantasy and partially of long-ago conversations with second-hand
> sources... which I don't think can be considered non-fiction (though
> it won an award for best non-fiction of the year when it came out) -
> like simply a novel that spoke of asian (I believe Chinese, if I
> remember correctly, just to not be quite so broad) culture wasn't good
> enough, and she had to qualify it by claiming it as non-fiction.  It
> was a class in which I was the only guy and pretty much everyone
> disagreed with me, but it doesn't make me feel so bad since one of the
> lines someone in the class wrote about the book was something like
> "Maxine Hong Kingston's writing haunts me and makes me want to puke
> and the more I want to puke the more I'm convinced of her talent",
> though with many mis-spellings and improper grammer (and she wasn't
> foreign).
>
> On 5/23/06, jbor at bigpond.com <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> > On 24/05/2006, at 7:58 AM, MalignD at aol.com wrote:
> >
> > > << And those words were? We still don't know, because the report we
> > > got  was
> > > that Toni Morrison (an African American women) complained that the
> > > Venus de
> > > Milo was a misogynist work while labouring under the mistaken  belief
> > > that it
> > > was created without arms. You found it "a funny story"  >>
> > >
> > > If it's true, and I have no idea regarding its truth, it is a funny
> > > story
> > > about Toni Morrision.  But not therefore about African American Woman.
> > >  Isn't
> > > equating one with the other -- individual with group -- a little ...
> > > racist?
> > > Sexist?
> >
> > Sure it'd be funny story if it were accurate. But if it isn't accurate,
> > which seems likely enough, then how come it's getting the mileage? I
> > mean, it does make her seem ridiculous. That was what it was intended
> > to do, isn't it?
> >
> > Most complainants about Morrison and her work in this thread have been
> > careful to say that they'd say the same if it were anyone, Bono or an
> > albino on steroids, for example. I'm not saying that they wouldn't.
> > However, because Morrison's work is explicitly about "correcting the
> > record", as you yourself note, then it's important that we're clear
> > about which "record" it is that she's trying to correct.
> >
> > The comment (not yours, note) that "there's a percentage of those who
> > get caught up with the fact that she's black and female and fail to
> > make an honest judgement based on her written text alone" runs both
> > ways.
> >
> > best
> >
> >
>