Re: JCO: RE: Talent vs Experience

In a message dated 10/18/2005 12:04:45 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, NotEnoughKittens@aol.com writes:

It strikes me as remarkably condescending from an author whose one great novel, The Naked and the Dead, is about war......he apparently never found anything else that suited his talents.  JCO is worth several dozen Norman Mailers, as a writer that and, I suspect, as a person

In many ways the Mailer quotation is quite flattering, in that he says that JCO's talent allows her to write about subjects about which she may not have very much personal experience. I cannot, however, see how his remark that a woman cannot be brave in the way a soldier is brave is anything other than blatant sexism. In other words, I get the sense he admires JCO genuinely, but from this quotation I gather he's a touch misogynist. To me, this is somewhat an unflattering characteristic. I heard Mailer speak last year and he was quite interesting. He got very political, and as I'm in the same camp as he I quite enjoyed it. (There was a woman in the audience, however, who got into a fight with him afterward saying that he was filling our college-student brains with propaganda or something.)

 

Andy

Re: JCO: RE: Talent vs Experience

It strikes me as remarkably condescending from an author whose one great novel, The Naked and the Dead, is about war......he apparently never found anything else that suited his talents.  JCO is worth several dozen Norman Mailers, as a writer and, I suspect, as a person

 

 

Christa

Re: JCO: RE: Talent vs Experience

Anna,

    Sounds like you are a R-E-A-L fan!  :-)

    Cindi

LSULLA@aol.com wrote:

It's a great quote and yes very condescending.  Mailer's ego is truly awesome.  JCO can out write and out think  Mailer, Philip Roth, Doctorow, and John Updike combined.

 

Anna

 

Re: JCO: RE: Talent vs Experience

It's a great quote and yes very condescending.  Mailer's ego is truly awesome.  JCO can out write and out think  Mailer, Philip Roth, Doctorow, and John Updike combined.

 

Anna

 

JCO: RE: Talent vs Experience

> "...So a woman can certainly write about brave soldiers, even
> though she's not the least bit brave, not at that level. Of
> course, she has to have an immense talent. I've often thought
> that Joyce Carol Oates, who is a very talented woman, will often,
> on the basis of a small bit of experience, write a
> six-hundred-page novel. I think she's an arch example of someone
> who does almost all of it through talent. She's willing to dare
> terrible humiliation. The irony is that she is rarely attacked. I
> expect she arouses a fundamental if somewhat bemused respect in
> many a mean spirit."

Does this strike anyone else as condescending?

I have no idea what, if any, other comments he has made about JCO, but this
seems like saying, "She's got b*lls."
K

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JCO: Talent vs Experience

An interesting comment from Norman Mailer,

"...So a woman can certainly write about brave soldiers, even though she's not the least bit brave, not at that level. Of course, she has to have an immense talent. I've often thought that Joyce Carol Oates, who is a very talented woman, will often, on the basis of a small bit of experience, write a six-hundred-page novel. I think she's an arch example of someone who does almost all of it through talent. She's willing to dare terrible humiliation. The irony is that she is rarely attacked. I expect she arouses a fundamental if somewhat bemused respect in many a mean spirit."

The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing. New York: Random House, 2003.

Randy

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