Re: JCO: Small Avalanches

Hi, Lara. We had a brief discussion of Small Avalanches here a few years
ago. To my surprise, some of the participants thought that the young heroine --
who evades a dirty old man who's stalking her -- was mentally retarded. I
remember first reading SA when it appeared in a magazine in the mid-1970s. I was
thrilled that for once a JCO girl-character managed to escape her attacker.
At the time, that plot twist was very revolutionary for JCO. Most of the
women in her fiction from that era ended up in total defeat: either murdered as in
the story "Down by the River" or mired in a hopelessly unpleasant life as in
"Four Summers." By contrast "Small Avalances" seemed less artistically
accomplished than those other two stories -- not as mesmerizing and hypnotically
captivating. But it FELT a lot better. I particularly recall the "Small
Avalanche" heroine trusting her strong legs to carry her to safety -- unlike poor
Connie in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been," who can't even trust her
own heart to function, who thinks that it belongs to Arnold Friend and is too
weak to let her escape him. No surprise that JCO giving the feminist heroine of
the novel Foxfire the nickname Legs.
What visual equivalents did you select to express your depiction of the
Small Avalanches heroine? I may never get to see it, but I'd like to know. I
particularly enjoyed that story's final image of the girl returning home
after her heroic adventure: her mother bitches at her for not having done the
ironing and flings a wet shirt at her. The girl good-naturedly catches the damp
shirt and wipes the sweat off her brow. The perfect concluding gesture for
that story. I could never understand how anyone could mistake her for a mentally
deficient person. Her total lack of regret for -- or even much interest --
in her stalker's fate delighted me.
Best,
Cyrano

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