Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Cantor
Your mini-essay sucks.
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It really does. And why do I get the feeling it's shockingly misogynistic? Maybe it's the reactionary tone? The pendulum freely swinging?
No, I think it's the authoritarianism. The willingness to sort, label, condemn. The sheer self-righteousness. Next we'll be hearing about upholding standards, and how things are going to hell in a handbasket. That there used to be a golden time, but now we live in an age of lead, and it's all because of X, where X equals immodesty and Y equals...
Hmm, there's a good question. Why? Is there some point, or is this simply rabid inverted exhibitionism? Is it an overcoat to cloak the narrator in until the schoolgirls walk by? He's awkward, and wants to hide, but wants to come out too? Could a narrator really loathe women, and himself, this much? Why would a reader have sympathy with such an invented character?
Or maybe that's the lesson here. In viewing with abhorrence the anti-hero, in recoiling from his exhibitionism and reviling his abominations, we can thus view ourselves as both modest and abominable, and since we desire to self-justify and, most of all, forgive ourselves, in doing so we forgive and justify the narrator, in a kind of Aristotelian catharsis, and we don't even have to pluck out our own eyes, or marry our mothers.
So maybe you and I are both wrong, Michael. Perhaps this is actually a brilliant essay, and we're the ones who suck. Perhaps it will save us from incest and sexual patricide. Maybe it really is misogyny in the service of male liberation. What could possibly be wrong with that?
Thanks,
Bill