Why Aren’t You Reading Katha Pollitt Right Now?
After the disappointments of Susan Fraser King, reading Katha Pollitt is like stepping into the AC after driving on the Beltway at rush hour. (Not that I have ever done such a thing, myself.) She’s a feminist! A leftist progressive! She, like me, is annoyed at “progressive” men who still expect women to worship at their altars!
I also found several essays in the collection particularly resonant. I first read it several years ago in the wake of a bad breakup, and “Webstalker” hit close to home. In this piece, Pollitt chronicles her attempts to discover the whole truth of her former relationship via the internet: “I was like Javert, hunting him through the sewers of cyberspace, moving from link to link in the dark, like Spider-Man flinging himself by a filament over the shadowy chasm between one roof and another.” (22) Uh, been there, done that.
I didn’t focus on my ex in my webstalking; my particular target was his new girlfriend. My crowning achievement was finding a forum post she’d made somewhere; it was barely literate, sprinkled with “u”s. I emailed it to friends: This is what he left me for. See. See.
So I squirmed in my seat along with Pollitt, who actually ended up calling her former boyfriend’s lovers. I never would have dared. What would I have said? I’m your older, wiser self–you’ll thank me in a year.
And then there’s Pollitt’s writing. Consider:
You think what people say is what matters, an older friend told me long ago. You think it’s all about words. Well, that’s natural, isn’t it? I’m a writer . . . But of course what my friend meant was that I ignored inconvenient subtexts, the meaning behind the meaning: that someone might say he loved you, but what really mattered was the way he let your hand go after he said it. It did not occur to me, either, that somebody might just lie, that there are people who lie for pleasure, for the feeling of superiority and power.(31)
Anyway, more on Pollitt tomorrow, I think. She’s that good.
