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"She seeks to place herself above the sympathies of our common nature, which envelopes all human souls. See if that nature do not assert its claim over her in some mode that shall bring her level with the lowest!" NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
In stories like "Violation" and "Mrs. Cassidy's Last Year" Mary Gordon assaults the reader with sledgehammer blows, shattering the illusion that sex, tenderness and love are always connected. Rape is my reality, the victim/narrator all but screams at the conclusion of "Violation." Rape, rape, rape, rape! Like Malcolm X raining down curses on white America from a Harlem street corner, Mary Gordon uses her heroine's victim status like a club, forcing the oppressor to face the hatred of the oppressed. Her feminism is not just a call for justice but a scream of vengeance. The fury that drives the sexually damaged women in her greatest stories transcends resentment or bitterness. It's an Ahab-like unquenchable hatred that encompasses all men, all sexual activity, and ultimately all nature and all physical existence.
There's an undeniable exhilaration to reading those brain-battering early stories, written without compromise by an author who was willing to state the most horrifying truths imaginable in the bluntest terms. In the old days Mary Gordon took no prisoners. She told the truth (some of it, anyway) and she wrote with bone-breaking (not to say ball-breaking) force.
Now regrettably, all things human are subject to decay. And when fate summons, monarchs must obey. In her old age, Mary Gordon has grown soft and sentimental, straining to find a vision of virginity triumphant in a modern, vulgar, frighteningly democratic world of racial equality and dirty male desire. But there's a worm in the apple. Mary Gordon can dismiss male desire easily enough, but at the end of the day it's female desire she can't forgive, or even acknowledge. In the old days she could reject temptation and vomit out desire in a draft-riot style paroxysm of rage, the way that crazy old bat throws Bobby Kennedy's statue out the window in "Mrs. Cassidy's Last Year."
But in the new stories, Mary Gordon lets her heroines have it both ways. In "Eleanor's Music," sweet little old Eleanor runs an amateur choir group that sings banal, inoffensive Christmas carols every year, until a drooling homosexual deviant forces them to sing a sex opera about the life of Andy Warhol! (I am not making this up.) Eleanor's virginity remains intact to the end, however, thanks to the fact that her ex-husband was really gay all along. Thank goodness! Evidently Mary Gordon doesn't realize that there are plenty of gay men around who swing both ways and father children. (Just ask King James I of England.) She also doesn't bother to explain why Eleanor's fake marriage is so much more gratifying for all concerned than a real one. The supposed dirtiness and potential violence of sex is no longer written in lightning bolts, it's just sort of lazily assumed. Sentimentality takes the place of savage indignation.
In "The Deacon" a nun named Sister Joan runs a Catholic school in New York City. She's supposedly an effective teacher, a superb disciplinarian, a powerful bad-ass (Mary Gordon loves bad-ass women) but you never actually see her teach her students, or confront their history, or anything like that. (I would have loved to see her teach a lesson on those nasty Draft Riots, especially on why the Catholic Church loves black kids today but was quite literally willing to leave them hanging during the Civil War.) Anyway, tough old Sister Joan is a chain-smoker, and it's astonishing how Mary Gordon makes a sexual fetish out of cigarette smoking, like it proves Sister Joan is a real woman after all. The same applies to her fondness for red meat and alcohol, and the films of W.C. Fields. This stuff is supposed to be charming, but I wasn't convinced. What really comes across is desperate sentimentality, straining to disguise itself as tough-minded realism.
The guilt-driven nun-worship resurfaces in "Blind Spot," where yet another feisty and charming nun pops up out of nowhere and revitalizes a dying Catholic college in the Midwest, only to be foiled by -- you guessed it -- the corrupting horror of villainous male lust. In this case it's the nun's brother, a crude lout who calls himself a Beatnik and poses as an art teacher, who brings the castle of illusions crashing down. Presumably the nun has to be horrified by her brother's lust, because she can't acknowledge her own. Personally, I found it offensive that the nun's black female students are stereotyped as weak-willed, promiscuous, and childish, with a streak of savagery just under the surface. I also resented the way the brother's crude behavior has to be linked to the Beatnik poetry of Allen Ginsberg.
Allen Ginsberg?
Mary Gordon rats him out by name. But she doesn’t quote any of his poetry.
Well, dig this. Allen Ginsberg was gay. I mean, really gay. Poets like Lord Byron wrote about seducing and ruining innocent girls for centuries. But read HOWL and the only lover the poet seems to want is a guy named Carl Solomon. So what gives? I racked my brains for weeks trying to figure out why Mary Gordon has to make up weird lies and slander some poor dead queer Jew who never did any harm to anyone. Finally I uncovered the answer. Dean Martin.
Dean Martin?
That's right, Dean Martin. You see, the oafish brother in "Blind Spot" is always talking about women like they're pigs, tramps, cheap gold-diggers, broads he can use and throw away. His attitude is very Fifties, so Mary Gordon is right about that much. But it's not the Fifties of Allen Ginsberg, it's the Fifties of Sinatra's Rat Pack. So why must this tough, brilliant feminist author slander a harmless poet like Allen Ginsberg? Who or what is she really covering for?
I once read that when Dean Martin was through with a broad, he didn't like talking. One time a Vegas showgirl started talking to him in bed, and Dino supposedly snapped, "Listen, doll, if you want to talk, go to a priest." Now I’ll concede that men of all races and religions treat women badly. But Mary Gordon just can't face the fact that the men in her world who treat women badly have been trained to disrespect them by a church that worships virgins and demonizes all other women as whores. Mary Gordon can't solve that problem because she's part of it. She hates whores too, just like Dino. And her hatred is all the more violent because so much of it is directed inward.
When the sweet nun in "Blind Spot" finds out her brother has slept with a young woman on campus, her only response is rage and the urge to blame someone else. She can't acknowledge her brother's lust, because that would mean acknowledging her own. Someone else has to suffer. An outsider must be punished for the sins of the chosen group. Yesterday it was Andy Warhol. Today it's Allen Ginsberg. In the Civil War it was the blacks.
Who will it be tomorrow, Mary Gordon? Who will it be tomorrow?
In stories like "Violation" and "Mrs. Cassidy's Last Year" Mary Gordon assaults the reader with sledgehammer blows, shattering the illusion that sex, tenderness and love are always connected. Rape is my reality, the victim/narrator all but screams at the conclusion of "Violation." Rape, rape, rape, rape! Like Malcolm X raining down curses on white America from a Harlem street corner, Mary Gordon uses her heroine's victim status like a club, forcing the oppressor to face the hatred of the oppressed. Her feminism is not just a call for justice but a scream of vengeance. The fury that drives the sexually damaged women in her greatest stories transcends resentment or bitterness. It's an Ahab-like unquenchable hatred that encompasses all men, all sexual activity, and ultimately all nature and all physical existence.
There's an undeniable exhilaration to reading those brain-battering early stories, written without compromise by an author who was willing to state the most horrifying truths imaginable in the bluntest terms. In the old days Mary Gordon took no prisoners. She told the truth (some of it, anyway) and she wrote with bone-breaking (not to say ball-breaking) force.
Now regrettably, all things human are subject to decay. And when fate summons, monarchs must obey. In her old age, Mary Gordon has grown soft and sentimental, straining to find a vision of virginity triumphant in a modern, vulgar, frighteningly democratic world of racial equality and dirty male desire. But there's a worm in the apple. Mary Gordon can dismiss male desire easily enough, but at the end of the day it's female desire she can't forgive, or even acknowledge. In the old days she could reject temptation and vomit out desire in a draft-riot style paroxysm of rage, the way that crazy old bat throws Bobby Kennedy's statue out the window in "Mrs. Cassidy's Last Year."
But in the new stories, Mary Gordon lets her heroines have it both ways. In "Eleanor's Music," sweet little old Eleanor runs an amateur choir group that sings banal, inoffensive Christmas carols every year, until a drooling homosexual deviant forces them to sing a sex opera about the life of Andy Warhol! (I am not making this up.) Eleanor's virginity remains intact to the end, however, thanks to the fact that her ex-husband was really gay all along. Thank goodness! Evidently Mary Gordon doesn't realize that there are plenty of gay men around who swing both ways and father children. (Just ask King James I of England.) She also doesn't bother to explain why Eleanor's fake marriage is so much more gratifying for all concerned than a real one. The supposed dirtiness and potential violence of sex is no longer written in lightning bolts, it's just sort of lazily assumed. Sentimentality takes the place of savage indignation.
In "The Deacon" a nun named Sister Joan runs a Catholic school in New York City. She's supposedly an effective teacher, a superb disciplinarian, a powerful bad-ass (Mary Gordon loves bad-ass women) but you never actually see her teach her students, or confront their history, or anything like that. (I would have loved to see her teach a lesson on those nasty Draft Riots, especially on why the Catholic Church loves black kids today but was quite literally willing to leave them hanging during the Civil War.) Anyway, tough old Sister Joan is a chain-smoker, and it's astonishing how Mary Gordon makes a sexual fetish out of cigarette smoking, like it proves Sister Joan is a real woman after all. The same applies to her fondness for red meat and alcohol, and the films of W.C. Fields. This stuff is supposed to be charming, but I wasn't convinced. What really comes across is desperate sentimentality, straining to disguise itself as tough-minded realism.
The guilt-driven nun-worship resurfaces in "Blind Spot," where yet another feisty and charming nun pops up out of nowhere and revitalizes a dying Catholic college in the Midwest, only to be foiled by -- you guessed it -- the corrupting horror of villainous male lust. In this case it's the nun's brother, a crude lout who calls himself a Beatnik and poses as an art teacher, who brings the castle of illusions crashing down. Presumably the nun has to be horrified by her brother's lust, because she can't acknowledge her own. Personally, I found it offensive that the nun's black female students are stereotyped as weak-willed, promiscuous, and childish, with a streak of savagery just under the surface. I also resented the way the brother's crude behavior has to be linked to the Beatnik poetry of Allen Ginsberg.
Allen Ginsberg?
Mary Gordon rats him out by name. But she doesn’t quote any of his poetry.
Well, dig this. Allen Ginsberg was gay. I mean, really gay. Poets like Lord Byron wrote about seducing and ruining innocent girls for centuries. But read HOWL and the only lover the poet seems to want is a guy named Carl Solomon. So what gives? I racked my brains for weeks trying to figure out why Mary Gordon has to make up weird lies and slander some poor dead queer Jew who never did any harm to anyone. Finally I uncovered the answer. Dean Martin.
Dean Martin?
That's right, Dean Martin. You see, the oafish brother in "Blind Spot" is always talking about women like they're pigs, tramps, cheap gold-diggers, broads he can use and throw away. His attitude is very Fifties, so Mary Gordon is right about that much. But it's not the Fifties of Allen Ginsberg, it's the Fifties of Sinatra's Rat Pack. So why must this tough, brilliant feminist author slander a harmless poet like Allen Ginsberg? Who or what is she really covering for?
I once read that when Dean Martin was through with a broad, he didn't like talking. One time a Vegas showgirl started talking to him in bed, and Dino supposedly snapped, "Listen, doll, if you want to talk, go to a priest." Now I’ll concede that men of all races and religions treat women badly. But Mary Gordon just can't face the fact that the men in her world who treat women badly have been trained to disrespect them by a church that worships virgins and demonizes all other women as whores. Mary Gordon can't solve that problem because she's part of it. She hates whores too, just like Dino. And her hatred is all the more violent because so much of it is directed inward.
When the sweet nun in "Blind Spot" finds out her brother has slept with a young woman on campus, her only response is rage and the urge to blame someone else. She can't acknowledge her brother's lust, because that would mean acknowledging her own. Someone else has to suffer. An outsider must be punished for the sins of the chosen group. Yesterday it was Andy Warhol. Today it's Allen Ginsberg. In the Civil War it was the blacks.
Who will it be tomorrow, Mary Gordon? Who will it be tomorrow?
