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"In Search of Our Mother's Gardens"
[from Josh Carney's notebook]
GROAN. I don't even want to start with this one. If there were a
lightning storm outside on this beautiful Saturday evening when everyone
else in Walla Walla is enjoying themselves--Wait a minute! That's a false
premise. Chances are that quite a few people in Walla Walla aren't
enjoying themselves tonight. There are domestic disputes, injuries, financial
woes, family tragedies and the like going on all over town tonight while I'm
sitting here smugly typing away in a cozy house. Who cares if I have to
spend all day tomorrow working on my thesis? Who cares if the last day I
didn't do homework was last summer while I was spending 65 hours a week
out in the desert? Who cares if its getting beautiful outside and I'll be
trapped in computer labs until the end of May? I have a lot to be thankful
for and, DAMNATION! I'm going to enjoy writing about Walker's piece!!!
Did you find my little change of heart convincing? Or did you,
perhaps in spite of the fact that most of what I said was true, find that it
rang false in your ears? If your answer was"B"--false in your ears, you've
won a prize: you understand how I feel about Walker's work in general, and
especially about this abominably putrescent behemoth of an essay. (Okay,
maybe it's not that bad, but it still sucks.) If your answer was "C"--I'm still
wondering what you would do if there was a lightning storm, then I'll tell
you I would hope that it came down and struck . . . you? NO . . . that book
sitting in front of you which happens to be turned to an essay by Alice
Walker
entitled "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens"? YES!
Anyway, on to Walker's work. She starts with a quote from Jean
Toomer, and immediately I'm thinking: "Hey, this might be pretty cool." I
haven't read much of Toomer's work, but I remember a poem, "Reapers,"
that I explicated in high school, and I liked it quite a bit. Went something
like this: "Black reapers, scratching the sound of steel on stones . . ." Okay,
that's all I remember . . . It was a long time ago! Anyway, on to Walker's
work. (Can you tell I'm avoiding it?)
First of all: why does Walker turn to Toomer and Woolf for the basis
of her essay? Toomer had experience to write from, that's what made him
credible. Woolf had, I guess, genius and confidence (not to imply that
Toomer lacked these) which made her credible. Walker has . . . other
people's statements worked into a funky tangled mess that reminds me, 1) of
the "spidergraph" outline form for organizing ideas, after it's been attempted
by a first grader, and 2) of a nasty old cobweb which has lost all semblance
of organization or use--it has bits and pieces attached to things, but really
it's just waiting to fall apart. I suppose we could say that Walker has
experience to write from too. I wish she'd just stick to that instead of taking
other people's theses and trying to expound on or reinterpret them.
On 276, I wonder what is Walker's and what is Toomer's. I wonder if
the inclusion of Toomer isn't just a way to cop out. And then when she
says, "they forced their minds to desert their bodies and their striving spirits
sought to rise, like frail whirlwinds from the red clay" I wonder how she can
actually know this sort of thing. And then when I read, "for these
grandmothers and mothers of ours were not Saints," and look back towards
the top of the same pages and see "Who were these Saints? These crazy,
loony, pitiful women? Some of them, without a doubt, were our mothers and
grandmothers" I get a little confused. I know this isn't accidental. I know
Walker's trying to work with these inherent contradictions, but unless she's
trying to show us how the mind of a mad saint/not-saint works (living with
inherent contradictions--which, by the way, I think would be a pretty cool
thing for her to do, but I don't think she's doing it--), unless this is her
motive, I don't quite see what she's getting out of contradicting herself, and
I know I'm to blame for this, but I'm not going to spend my time reading it
twice to find out; from what Walker's shown me so far, I'd do better to go
find some of Toomer's work and read it.
Walker says (277): Listen to the voices of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday,
Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, and Aretha Franklin, among others, and
imagine those voices muzzled for life. Then you may begin to comprehend
the lives of our `crazy,' `Sainted' mothers and grandmothers." What? I
don't think so Alice! I think you just want to drop a few more names to
bolster your beleaguered bungled up batch of bul, bul, bul, baloney! My
imagining the voices of these incredible artists stifled is a powerful thing.
Just the thought of it makes me a bit sickened. But you overestimate my
imagination if you think that imagining a life without these voices can paint
a picture for me, or in your words, make me "begin to comprehend the lives"
of the women to whom you dedicate your essay. (The italics are mine, and
I emphasize "lives" because that's what we're talking about--people's lives.
These singers are a powerful image, but Walker trivializes their importance
by trying to give this image so much responsibility. Too bad. It was a nice
image.)
Walker says of Phillis Wheatley (278) "had she been white, [she] would
have been easily considered the intellectual superior of all the women and
most of the men in the society of her day." I don't know if this is true, and
I'd be willing to bet that Walker doesn't either. What the HELL kind of
statement is this in an essay that's asking for readers? IF Walker wanted a
crowd of rabid abolitionists to read and accept it, she'd still have to make
her point more convincing. The thing that really bugs me here is that
Walker has chosen a nice point to argue. It would be VERY difficult to
screw this one up. She's trying to say that oppression made it both
difficult --if not impossible-- and confusing for women in Wheatley's time --
and other times-- to express themselves artistically.[Greg
href="greg.htm">footnote's this] About the only way she could
possibly screw it up is by making a claim which couldn't be proven about
anyone under any circumstances. (With the exception of Walker and
myself: Walker was obviously the "intellectual superior of all the women and
most of the men in the society of her day" if she can make a claim that no
one else can, and I am obviously even higher still --the superior in my day--
if I can shoot down Walker's arguments so easily. What's that? You say
I've created a paradox? Oh, a pair of ducks . . . I see, you get my point,
you think my shooting down Walker's argument and her superiority falls
from the sky with those dying ducks --that's a paradox--, falls down to a
dock next to the lake over which the foggy miasma of Walker's deluded
arguments wafts putrescently, falls right next to the dock on which the pair
of dead ducks now rests giving us, at the end of it all, a pair of docks with a
pair of ducks and my dead superiority.) Hmm. Yeeesssss. Well, anyway . . .
Dillard, "The Deer at Providencia"
[From Greg Matthews' Notebook]
The most down-to-earth thing Annie Dillard ever wrote she stole from
the mouth of another woman. That `Man, it just isn't fair,' from the wife of
the Annually-Torched-Gas-Station-Attendant/Hunter Champion and Poster-
Effigy is clear as glass. It's heavy. You know what I mean? It has some
misery and tragedy tacked on to it. Not that everything has to be miserable
and tragic to be heavy or to pack a punch (spiritual, moral, intellectual), but
Dillard seems to try and evoke these qualities and sentiments in her work,
as if she's trying to tap into the well-spring of human suffering or something.
What the hell do I know? It's just an impression. And I realize that my
characterization of the burn-victim was unnecessarily cruel. But why does
the narrator keep the article taped to her vanity mirror, for heaven's sake?
It's things like that, those emblems and patches that say `I care, I really d.
I'm compassionate; look, read my t-shirt; it says, "Don't worry, be happy."'
that send me through the roof. Action talks, bullshit walks. Forever.
That's the way it's always been. And so what if I've spent my whole life
walking rather than talking? Yeah, I know, that's where the problems start.
I hate to be an asshole, but why does Dillard write things like this? Okay,
so you're different--maybe even exceptional--Annie, but so what? What's
your point? And what does a South-of-the-border Bambi have to do with a
crisp of a man in Florida? When you find out what is going on, mail me the
carbon.
Dillard, `Sojourner'
Okay, so I'm an asshole with no argument and no reason. I guess I'm
disappointed with myself, but I just can't seem to like Dillard. She seems to
get more abstract (with her subjects) the more confident she gets with her
language. I guess what I'm trying to say is that she buys her own poetry too
easily, or at least seems to. Take `--smooth-barked, glossy-leaved, thickets of
lapped mystery--,' and `The planet itself is a sojourner in airless space, a wet
ball flung across nowhere.' It's all got the same quality of the vast and
magnitudinous wonder of the metaphysical and physical realms--and
especially the bridge between the two (`you and I, my love,/set out like
patients/etherized upon tables/in the surgery room of Doctor Love,/Physician
of the Soul . . .')--that you would find in bad poetry by sexually liberated
people who wear crystals. That's it: Dillard's a holistic writer! She's trying
to do everything at once, and she either says too much or too little (take
that last essay). I've been trying to discover some type of sentence structure
in her work, but can't. Some long sentences, some short. I like this
sentence the best: `Shrimp seek shelter there.' [7] I guess my major
complaint is that I don't quite know what she's talking about, and after
awhile, I just lose interest and just don't want to know any more.
Alice Walker, `The Black Writer and the Southern Experience'
I've read all of these essays before and I was impressed by the idea
that Walker wanted to reforge a new language for women while at the same
time suggesting a Black-American narrative voice that wasn't reminiscent of
Uncle Remus. But her writing always struck me as very regular and formal,
neither extravagant nor excessive. Maybe that's the key to her writing
success, because I always know what she's talking about (unlike Ehrlich,
Dillard, and even King). Her prose is, however, `passive-city.' All her ideas
are being acted upon, having something done to them, like the first
sentences in paragraphs 9 and 10: `In this small story is revealed the
condition and strength of a people.' and `The black Southern writer inherits
a sense of community as a natural right.' What's wrong with writing `This
small story reveals the strength and condition of a people,' or `The black
Southern writer inherits a sense of community as a natural right.' And I
wonder why she isn't angry about the contributions and the elevated status
given to Faulkner and O'Connor. When she talks about how these writers
have failed in a certain way (by, I assume, paradoxically criticizing and
mythologizing the South, spots and all, and stopping there rather than taking
the process one step further by suggesting potential answers to the
problem), she uses a very even and judicious tone, what with all of those
`One might concede,' and `One reads.' I guess I wonder why she doesn't
discuss these contentions with a little more bile in her throat. Then again,
maybe it's to her credit that she uses this dull and elevated formalistic
language to rise above the petty disillusionment and grudges that one could
hold against the writers in question. The bottom line of this essay happens
to be, for me, that Walker's writing leaves me cold. I mean, I can
understand and appreciate (what an overused and abused word) her ideas
and her sentiments--I'd even stick my neck out on the line to defend them--
but it seems that she'd have a greater stake in ideas such as these. Hell, this
is her life.
Alice Walker, `In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens'
I never knew if Walker was writing this essay just for women or what.
I realize that everybody has a mother of one kind or another, but some
women writers have this uncanny gift for making a male who is reading their
work very uncomfortable. I remember that essay by Adrienne Rich (but not
the title) where she always refers to the poet as `she.' I can understand that
she's switching the polarity of language around a little, but it's unnerving
(here some woman might say, `See, you don't like it do you?' and she'd have
a point). This is the type of effect Walker has on me in this essay. I'm not
sure why, and it's not necessarily threatening but I still wonder how she does
it. Maybe it's just her subject. Wait. Maybe it's the passion--the genuine
passion--that Walker conveys as she writes: `I notice that it is only when my
mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant, almost to the point of
being invisible--except as Creator: hand and eye.' And all of those `is's'
work in such an interesting way by affirming and reaffirming Walker's
subject: `it is,' `mother is,' and `she is.' It's almost as if she is making her
mother live and breathe right there on the page by constantly affirming her
being. I know, that's excessive, but still pretty damn neat. Walker seems o
recover all of the passion that she simply suggests in those other essays and,
well, revel in it. This essay seems to convey a joy that the others don't. I
think that joyous prose may be the hardest kind to write. I tried to make
that piece on guitars joyous, but it didn't work. Maybe I just don't have any
passion, for anything. Oh hell, there's always tomorrow.
Virginia Woolf, "The Death of the Moth"
[Hashimoto's entry]
Hmmm.
I don't know how many times I've read this over the last few years, in
different anthologies. If you put together a book of essays, you gotta have
that dying moth.
But I don't like the piece. I don't like that "one" as in "One was,
indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him"--Why "one"? Why not
"I"? I suppose because the "one" is non-committal. Take the line, "the
thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other
shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity." What? a
"kind of pity"? (Notice how the sentence begins with an abstraction--a nice
way to keep from saying very much, reacting, very strongly.)
And how does "one" feel about this moth? I don't think "one" feels a thing.
At one point she says "He was little or nothing but life"--there is a thread of
"enormous energy" here--but soon, she forgets about him till he falls out of
the window and then she says, "It flashed upon me that he was in
difficulties." Well no kidding.
At the end, the moth is some kind of struggler against a "power"; he wiggles
his feet and his struggle is "superb"; he gets stiff and fills Woolf with
"wonder"--wot baloney. What is a "superb" struggle when alls you're doing is
dying? How is that full of "wonder"? And the ending is baloney, too--"O
yes, . . . death is stronger than I am." No kidding.