I don't know where I found my copy of the Norton Book of Women's Lives (ed. Phyllis Rose, 1995). I think I may have picked it up for a quarter at a library. But after reading bits and pieces of it over the years (it turned me on to M.F.K. Fisher several years ago), I finally sat down and read the whole thing. It is 817 pages of selections from 20th century women's memoirs and diaries. Although I thought there were too many pieces by Russian writers, and many of the selections for writers I like were insufficiently representative of their work, and, for that matter, I would have liked to learn some important details from the introductions to each selection such as that Le Ly Hayslip and Billie Holiday didn't actually write their stories, for different reasons--still, I did find the anthology valuable as a guide for further reading. Here are my notes:
Those whom I don't want to read more of after reading their excerpts, but am willing to entertain encouragement about from other readers:
- Nina Berberova
- Vera Brittain
- Eleanor Coppola
- Natalia Ginzburg
- Billie Holiday
- Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
- Audre Lorde (up until now I've loved Audre. But while rereading Zami, I was appalled by parts of it. It is an important book, but sometimes it is also a bad book. This is very upsetting to me)
- Kate Millett (poor Kate)
- Eleanor Munro
- Anais Nin (honestly, who ever told the world that Anais Nin had anything important to say? Can somebody explain this to me?)
- Vita Sackville West
- Marie Vassiltchikov
Those I already knew were great:
- Maya Angelou
- Joan Didion (though the excerpt here wasn't particularly important)
- Isak Dinisen
- Zora Neale Hurston (I now want to read Mules and Men)
- Helen Keller (anybody else read The Story of My Life? It is an intensely weird book--among other things, Keller describes the colors of landscapes she travels through. Keller, as you probably know, was blind. So how did she know from color? Because Annie Sullivan--who was partially sighted--told her. The book asks subtly how you can know anything is true, whether you think you've learned it yourself or you've had it signed into your hand)
- Maxine Hong Kingston
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
- Gertrude Stein (did you know that Karl and I almost didn't go on our first date because of dear Gertrude?)
- Virginia Woolf
Those whom I want to read more of (if any of you have, please give me your input):
- Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life (I once saw a wonderful bit of footage in which Simone was talking about Jean-Paul: "Sartre thinks all the time. Now, I think a lot, but I don't think all the time, I'm capable of doing other things too--but Sartre, he just thinks." Jean-Paul sat there with his Rodney Dangerfield face, blinking as she talked.)
- Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai (if ever you think you're having a bad day, try this out)
- Colette, My Apprenticeships (everything else I read by her was just kind of fizzy and disgusting. But this stuff was good.)
- Jill Ker Conway, The Road From Coorain
- Annie Dillard, An American Childhood (I hated Pilgrim at Tinker Creek so much that I tried to throw myself under the LIRR, but this stuff was really enjoyable. Hmm.)
- Marguerite Duras, The War (all of us have a friend who can't manage her emotions and just kind of pukes her feelings out on the rest of us. Marguerite, though, takes the cake--but beautifully, beautifully)
- Eugenia Semyonova Ginzburg
- Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments (currently borrowed from Bobst and waiting to be read)
- Emily Hahn, Times and Places (I didn't think I could find a dope fiend so interesting.)
- Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (did anybody see Oliver Stone's "Heaven & Earth"? I haven't, but it's based on this book. Le Ly told about being a child Viet Cong. It's amazing stuff.)
- Lillian Hellman, Pentimento (any Lillian fans here?)
- Joyce Johnson, Minor Characters (a refreshing Beat, for once)
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
- Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
- Margaret Mead, Blackberry Winter
- Jessica Mitford, Hons. and Rebels (the excerpt was so addictive that I rushed out to read it. To be reviewed soon. A gloriously fun book!)
- Nisa, The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (I'm not sure I actually want to read this--it's grueling--but would like to hear if anybody else did)
- Cynthia Ozick, Art & Ardor (I'd stopped reading this, but now I'm wild to get back to it)
- Sylvia Plath, Diary (I was thankfully over the Sylvia thing. Then I read these excerpts about being a terrible teacher, and not getting any writing done, and wanting to DIE DIE DIE because you know you suck so horribly at anything involving the written word.... Did any of you know that the Mr. Fisher who was Sylvia's most important mentor at Smith, over whose margin comments she agonized, was the same Al Fisher whom M.F.K. divorced because he didn't like sex? Everything comes back, in the end, to The Gastronomical Me.)
- Sara Suleri, Meatless Days
- Sophia Tolstoy, Diary (can somebody please tell me more about Sophia? I am now terribly fascinated.)
Well, that's it for the Norton Book of Women's Lives, except for a few selections that didn't make any impressions on me either way.
