Department Of This Advice Is Worth What She Paid For It
Dateline: September 4; early morning walk; listening to a recent Fresh Air podcast with guest host Tonya Mosley interviewing Jane Fonda.
At age 87 Fonda is perhaps even more interesting than she’s ever been. I’ve long admired Fonda for her acting and her activism, even during the times when I was shaking my metaphorical fist and saying to her, Stop working out your daddy issues by marrying controlling men! [1] I’ve admired her quest for knowledge in general as well as self-knowledge, and her willingness to fight for important causes. Even when I felt she was naive/mistaken in her methods and/or style (as in her trip to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War), she was correct about the substance of those causes.
And it’s about the latter issue that, were moiself ever to have a privilege to meet her, I might spoil that privilege (read: send her running from the room) with my statement, May I give you some unsolicited advice? And the advice would be:
Please don’t ever apologize again for what you did and said
during your anti-Vietnam war activism.
Notice the key word in the phrase: apologize again. That’s because Fonda has apologized, many times during the past decades, with sincerity and in great length and specificity.
The cause for anti-Vietnam-war activism was just and right. And as the years passed, with the help of the Freedom Of Information Act, as well people higher up in the decision-making – and as it turns out, deception-making – echelons of government being willing to confess and confront the “sins” of our nation’s foreign policy, we found out just how right the anti-war activists were. They were right to oppose a war we never should’ve been in the first place; they were right about how our government was lying to us ( anyone remember The Pentagon Papers? ); they were right to criticize a government which dug in its heels and kept sending our soldiers to kill and be killed by Vietnamese people both north and south, for *years* after their own research and analysis brought them to the conclusion that the war was unwinnable.
But, back to my advice. I would say:
“Ms. Fonda, please never apologize again when someone asks you about the mistakes both you and they think you made. Acknowledge their concerns if you must, with that prickly attorney’s rejoinder: Ask and answered. Then drop it.”
Because, this: at this point, anyone who is still holding a grudge re your anti-war activism (on behalf of himself personally or by taking it upon himself – mistakenly, I believe – to defend his country or the honor of US soldiers ) is either completely oblivious to and/or refuses to acknowledge the fact that you have, indeed, apologized. It’s a fact that he won’t accept. And he’s never going to…because he doesn’t *want* to. [2]
There are people who do not want to give up their anger against Fonda re her anti-Vietnam war activism. It’s part of their identity. There’s this guy in his 70s, and an important part of his self-perception is
* he wears his Ohio State University football shirt every Thanksgiving;
* his favorite music, which he listens to almost exclusively, is his collection of
Otis Redding and Glen Campbell albums;
* he’s an avid duck hunter, likes to ski and play backgammon with his wife and take his grandkids bowling
(even though the kids would rather play computer games with him);
* he describes his politics as middle of the road;
* he hates/will never forgive Jane Fonda …..
For all of the complicated reasons which only the-therapist-he-will-never-see could unravel, the grudge he is holding against Fonda is part of his identity. To give that up, to accept the fact that Fonda *has* apologized, would oblige a rational person to let go of that grudge – to let go of a piece of himself that, after all these years, he would feel incomplete without.
I admire Fonda’s never-say-never spirit, but the people who matter [3] are people who will listen to opinions other than their own and try to understand and their fellow human beings, whether or not they agree with them.
You can’t change the others. The precious time Fonda (and all of us) have remaining will be lost and can never be regained by repeating sincere apologies to insincere ears.
Thank you for listening, Ms. Fonda. And thank you for…
Cat Ballou; They Shoot Horses Don’t They, Klute; Coming Home; Julia;
The China Syndrome; Nine to Five; On Golden Pond; Agnes of God;
The Morning After; all those workout tapes [4]; Grace and Frankie;
Book Club; This is Where I Leave You; Our Souls At Night….
One of my faves: Two old pros reunited: Fonda and Redford in Our Souls at Night.
* * *
Department Of A Blast From The Past
Dateline: January. New Year; new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month). Perhaps moiself will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature for 2025. So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.
This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?! [5] friend gave me, all those years ago, [6] as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life. Journal/diary-resistant moiself would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.
Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago September to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )
Here is an excerpt from my blog of 9-13-13, The Keys I’m Not Losing. (Twelve years ago, ay y iyi. The segment I’m excerpting begins with a reflection on writing the next book I was thinking of writing, at the time….):
…And I have to choose the characters’ names as soon as I think of the character. I use baby naming books and other resources, to identify characters with names that hold special meaning, even if only to myself. Hmmm, how can I denote this character’s total prick-osity without actually calling him a dick?
* * *
Speaking of dicks (and thanking moiself for that segue)….
Dateline: last Sunday am (9-8-13); MH and I in bed; [7] listening to NPR’s Weekend Edition. My attention was caught and hackles were raised during Rachael Martin’s interview with author Norman Rush re his new novel:
“On the surface, Norman Rush’s new novel is about a middle-aged man, Ned, who reunites with a group of college friends after one member of the group dies unexpectedly. But what transpires over the next few days ahead of the memorial service is less about Ned’s relationship with these men and the heady, self-absorbed days of yore, and more about how Ned sees himself.
In his third, much anticipated novel, Rush takes the reader inside the most intimate parts of relationships — between Ned and his wife, between Ned and his deceased friend, and between Ned and his own expectations.”
Imagine that!, the cynical author part of moiself snickered to moiself while MH breathed deeply [8] beside me. A novel written by a middle-aged author that purports to take a reader “…inside the most intimate parts of relationships;” a novel that is, the author says (further into the interview), “about friendship.” Ah, that relationship-y thing again. And the novel is “much anticipated” and taken seriously, and is also described merely as what it is: a novel. There is no limiting modifier.
Now, change the gender (for both author and characters) in Martin’s commentary:
On the surface, Nora Rush’s new novel is about a middle-aged woman, Nell, who reunites with a group of college friends after one member of the group dies unexpectedly. But what transpires over the next few days ahead of the memorial service is less about Nell’s relationship with these women and the heady, self-absorbed days of yore, and more about how Nell sees herself.
In her third, much anticipated novel, Rush takes the reader inside the most intimate parts of relationships — between Nell and her husband, between Nell and her deceased friend, and between Nell and her own expectations.
It’s strange, having a flashback on a Sunday morning in bed, when I’ve never taken an acid trip (in or out of bed). But that’s what happened as I listened to the interview – I was back to a conversation with friend and fellow fiction author SCM about an unfortunate, ongoing, literary dirty laundry issue which, thanks to uppity female authors with more clout than moiself, has received some airing in the past few years:
* Novels dealing with (what literary critics perceive to be) ” relationships” are often
critically acclaimed when the author is male, and when the author is female, such books are dismissed as “domestic/family dramas”…if they are reviewed at all.
Not germane to the rant, but a cute picture
Warning: domestic drama ranting [9] ensues (via excerpts from an email, sent approx. two years ago re this topic, to SCM):
“I think it’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book – in short, it’s something unworthy of serious critic’s attention. [10]
On my way back from an errand this afternoon I caught the tail end of a rerun of NPR’s Fresh Air 2010 interview with author Jonathan Franzen, recorded not long after the release of his latest novel, Freedom. I felt an almost overwhelming urge to pull the car over to the side of the road, get out and find somebody’s yippie dog and give it a good kick.
The ways Franzen’s novels have been presented and marketed by publishers, and reviewed by the critics, have had me (and many other writers, almost all – surprise! – women) reflecting on the sexism and even misogyny that still pervades the wacky world o’ contemporary literature (well, the world in general). What sent me into Pomeranian-punting mode were several of Franzen’s ruminations, including [11] :
“I wanted in this book to write about my parents’ marriage and their parental experiences as I observed them … but I…wanted to set it in times contemporaneous with my own. So in that way, too, I turned my parents into people my age; into people I might be or I might know. And that was the real engine. It was something that came from inside.
“…much of the work on a novel for me consists in the kind of work you might do in a paid professional’s office of trying to walk back from your stuck, conflicted, miserable place to a point of a little bit more distance, from which you can begin to fashion some meaningful narrative of how you got to the stuck place.”
What frosted my butt was not Franzen himself – don’t know him, personally – but the fact that when he, a male author, chooses to fictionalize the subject matter of family, feelings and relationships, the resulting work is touted as a “masterpiece of American fiction” (Time Magazine) and “an indelible portrait of our times” (The New York Times).
The Fresh Air site acknowledged the controversy:
“So many terrific contemporary female novelists cover the same terrain, yet their work receives a fraction of the highbrow fanfare that greets Franzen. It’s like how men still get praised for doing housework and taking care of their own kids: Any male involvement in the domestic realm still merits applause.”
In the interview Franzen spoke extensively about how his own feelings, experiences, family relationships and background influenced his writing. I was reminded of an excerpt I read many months ago, from article in New York magazine, in which a novelist noted that if a woman writes about herself or acknowledges using material from her own life in her writing, she’s a narcissist, and has no wider interest in or focus outside of [12] the domestic sphere. If a male novelist does the same, he’s describing universal truths or chronicling the human condition.
Of course, such inequities almost always sound better when put into the mouths of fictional characters. I love this observation, from the novel, Commencement:
“When a woman writes a book that has anything to do with feelings or relationships, it’s either called chick lit or women’s fiction, right?” one of the characters asks. “But look at Updike or Irving. Imagine if they’d been women. Just imagine. Someone would have slapped a pink cover onto ‘Rabbit at Rest,’ and poof, there goes the Pulitzer.”
Here is something the non-fictional character moiself wrote over a year ago, right around the time of the release of Freedom (it’s from one of the documents in my Things I Hate About The Publishing World file. Oy vey, it’s less expensive than therapy):
Freedom is being hailed as “a domestic drama about marriage and family.” Effusive, serious praise…for a domestic drama. Since it is a Jonathan and not a Joanna Franzen who wrote it, the book isn’t being consigned to the “women’s fiction” bin of commentary. When a female novelist writes about herself, or her protagonists’ ethnicity, age, social and economic circumstances are thinly disguised versions of herself or her peers, she’s a neurotic narcissist. When a female novelist tackles subjects related to family, feelings or relationships, her work risks being labeled “Chick Lit” (or the faintly more reputable, “women’s fiction”).
A (usually white) male author (e.g. Franzen, Updike, Irving, Cheever, Roth….) does the same thing, writes about the same “territory.” Do the literary critics – whose ranks are still overwhelmingly white and male – review his book in the category of…what? ITAL “Dick lit?” Noooooooo. He’s illustrating and critiquing the human condition! He’s doing some serious ITAL Li’t-ra-chure!
* * *
By the way, if you want to borrow the Dick Lit descriptor, feel free to do so.
Attribution would be nice (or, failing that, cash).”
* * *
* * *
Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [13]
A simple question, which is never satisfactorily answered:
* * *
May you stop holding decades-old grudges against…anyone;
May you never feel guilty for enjoying a book about relationship-y subjects;
May you check out some of Fonda’s recent work ( Our Souls at Night is quite touching) ;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Fonda has talked and written about her strained relationship with her cold, distant, hair-trigger-tempered father, actor Henry Fonda. And her husbands were French film director Roger Vadim, American activist and California senator Tom Hayden, and multimillionaire business entrepreneur Ted Turner.
[2] I’m using “he” because although I’m sure there’s some nasty grudge-loving old ladies out there, the fanatical Fonda-haters I’ve met have all been male.
[3] Yep, I’m treading into dangerous/judgmental, territory here, and that’s fine ’cause I got my combat boots on.
[4] Really! They were fun.
[5] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.
[6] Was it really over twelve years ago?
[7] Shame on (or, good for) you, but sorry, not that kind of dick reference segue.
[8] Notice I did not type, “snored.”
[9] Still awaiting its critical acclamation. Yes, I’ve mentioned this topic before, and will doubtless do so again.
[10] author unremembered – at least, by me.
[11] I checked the program’s website transcript to make sure I was recalling them correctly.
[12] No, there is no footnote in the middle of my email. How silly would that be?
[13] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
