Auntie Dynamite

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April 11, 2005

Volume 38: I pinned an Iron Cross to my lapel

Spook,

I re-read "Money: A Suicide Note" cover to cover this weekend, for once without any morbid intent... Proof is that I found a shuttle slip in it and I'm still here.

Money is an amazingly well written book and I would kill... not to be able to write that well, because I already do, but I'm missing the key that turns the engine. I think I've figured it out, though. I think it's not actually me as such... it's the same problem plaguing female stand-up comedians. There are just so few role models - and those that are are obsessed with a narrow range of topics. Amis's book, Money, is this super-masculine fantasy of the id - the character, John Self, has barely any restraint or decorum. He interrupts a pitch meeting to go puke because he was on a bender all night. He talks constantly about 'handjobs - say what you will about handjobs, they're deeply democratic'. He cries. He gets into fights. He is horribly lonely but he can't connect to people (despite being around them constantly). He fucks the wrong girl... girls... but can't get it up for the right one. He is amoral but not psychopathic... sympathetic but does not elicit sympathy because every wrong thing he's done has been out of his own foolishness.

What I want is to write about a woman who is comparable, but it seems like the closest we've seen in fifty years is Bridget Jones, and she's... she's okay, she's funny enough, and can be related to on a certain level, but she's not good enough - she's not saturated enough. Bridget is a hyper fantasy of a woman caught in a man's world. I want to write about a woman who is a plausible overstatement of a woman in any world. The problem is... you ask a man, what do men want, and you can come up with all kinds of answers, and they'll all be pretty much true. But women don't know what women want any more than men know what women want. Men know what women can be bought with. Women are being trained to want the same things men want. But what do women _really_ want? (I am not asking you, obviously.) The answer is that women don't know what they want. They've been conditioned to respond - er, we have. Conditioned to ... ho ho ho... I wonder if this is true or if I'm just Freuding. I wonder if women in general end up assuming roles that they - er, we - do not necessarily like, not because we want... because we don't know what we want. So we end up largely doing what we do well, instead. Perhaps this happens a lot to men also, but it's not so mandatory.

I think the princess character is so common because if she is reduced to living in subhuman conditions it's tragic, but if a peasant woman is, it's not just ordinary, but... it's... whatever the reverse of schadenfreude is, where instead of taking joy in the discomfiture of our enemies, we're feeling shame in the discomfiture of one who does not need to be shamed further. The princess starts higher on the meter, so being pushed down a certain amount means she's not going lower than we can stand. Ah, because she started with more opportunities. A peasant woman being crushed probably had no opportunity to not be crushed. There is no sport in that. Nobility derided, however, always has an opportunity for renewal.

I want to write about a woman who is like Flashman in the sense that she is successful in spite of her baser impulses - like John Self in that she is grotesque yet still attractive and sympathetic. But who could one possibly use as a model? Adventuresses like Lola Montez are interesting, but they're basically men in drag. Elizabeth? Hatshepsut? Closer, but they also rose using masculine methods and fighting men. So who?

I am not talking about a feminist, obviously. I am talking about a woman who is monstrous but still appealing. Perhaps I should read up on Livia again... but surely she qualifies as a psychopath. What with all the killing.

AD

Posted by gtaylor at April 11, 2005 03:03 AM

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