Women members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

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Women members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

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1Removido
Editado: Ago 27, 2012, 9:40 pm

If a person were to develop a reading list based on current women writers who are members of the AAAL, what would be the ONE selection from each that's a must-read?

You can list one poem, article, or short story for writers working primarily in those forms.

Renata Adler
Isabel Allende
Ann Beattie
Joan Didion
Annie Dillard
Rita Dove
Deborah Eisenberg
Louise Erdrich
Paula Fox
Louise Gluck
Mary Gordon
Jorie Graham
Francine du Plessix Gray
Shirley Hazzard
Ada Louise Huxtable
Diane Johnson
Jamaica Kincaid
Jhumpa Lahiri
Harper Lee
Alison Lurie
Janet Malcolm
Lorrie Moore
Toni Morrison
Joyce Carol Oates
Cynthia Ozick
Francine Prose
Annie Proulx
Marilynne Robinson
Jane Smiley
Elizabeth Spencer
Anne Tyler
Helen Hennessy Vendler
Rosanna Warren
Joy Williams

Edited to purge men off the list.

2CurrerBell
Ago 27, 2012, 11:44 am

For Oates I would definitely say, for short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (1966). With Oates there's so very much, and "WAYG" is such an early piece, but it's maybe her singlemost anthologized piece.

3CurrerBell
Ago 27, 2012, 12:02 pm

Do you mean you want to limit the selections to poems, articles, and short stories? No novels? Harper Lee, obviously, has only one choice and it's a novel. And Toni Morrison only wrote one short story that I'm aware of, though it's one of my top twenty-five stories or so, "Recitatif."

And Helen Vendler's a critic. All I've read/sampled of hers is Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries, which is magnificent, but I've got to get around to reading/sampling The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets, which I've got in one or another Mount TBR. Those two books aren't something you read start-to-finish anyway.

Incidentally, on that AAAL list you posted to the other thread, I noticed (a man) M.H. Abrams, the first editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, which celebrates it's fiftieth anniversary this year with a NY Times interview of Abrams, who is now a hundred years old.

4Removido
Ago 27, 2012, 4:53 pm

What I want is for people to give me one gem--novel, short story, poem, essay--from each of these women. Not some work you've just heard of or read one time because you had to, but something you really recommend.

That way I get you people to work up my reading list for next year with any effort on my part. Besides, I culled all the men out of the group :-)

I still have my Nortons (with Abrams' name on the covers) from the Brit Lit survey courses I had to take in College 40 some years ago, the hand-me-down brilliance of my long-dead profs still faintly penciled in the margins.

I used to be able to rent those books out for $15 a semester because the notes were so good. That's when $15 could buy you three pitchers of beer, a burger, and enough quarters to keep you playing pool until 2 a.m.

Those Nortons paid for themselves many times over.

5lquilter
Ago 27, 2012, 9:03 pm

Amiri Baraka is not a woman ...

6Removido
Ago 27, 2012, 9:41 pm

Thanks. He's gone now.

7CurrerBell
Ago 27, 2012, 9:45 pm

4>> Well, for Harper Lee, surprisingly I wouldn't recommend that you read Mockingbird. I'd recommend you listen to it in SISSY SPACEK's unabridged audiobook reading, which is the best audiobook I've yet heard (though I've yet to listen to my unabridged reading of Ulysses). Spacek captures Scout's voice to absolute perfection. Just be careful, if you listen to it in your car while driving, that you keep the windows up whenever it's playing because the n***** word is of course used throughout.

8Removido
Ago 28, 2012, 8:52 am

I suppose I should try that. Sigh.

I know it's heresy, but I never really liked "To Kill a Mockingbird." I'm old enough to remember Jim Crow, and I've read it several times just to make sure I wasn't missing something. But I'm a 7th generation Yankee, and all those people just seemed crazy to me.

Plus, not sure how somebody gets into AAAL with just one book, even if it's an "important" one.

9CurrerBell
Editado: Ago 28, 2012, 1:41 pm

8>> My biggest problem's with the movie. I thought Gregory Peck stole Scout's story. It's like casting Orson Wells or George C. Scott as Rochester in Jane Eyre.

Personally, I think Jack Lemmon should have won for Days of Wine and Roses though I wouldn't quarrel at all with giving it to Peter O'Toole for Lawrence of Arabia. Peck won because Atticus Finch was the feel-good character for white liberals in the early sixties, but there's something racially condescending about Atticus as the Great White Hope standing up for truth, justice, and all them po' darkies.

Still, Sissy Spacek's reading is magnificent, and her reading restores the focus to Scout, which is where it belongs.

ETA: Plus, not sure how somebody gets into AAAL with just one book, even if it's an "important" one. Thinking about this, I took another look at the list and I see Ralph Ellison wasn't included. Now, even though he did write a bit more than just Invisible Man, he was still pretty much a "one book wonder" but I think he could have been included just for Invisible Man alone.

10rebeccanyc
Ago 30, 2012, 6:17 pm

For Paula Fox, I recommend her memoir, Borrowed Finery (and secondly her novel Desperate Characters.
For Francine du Plessix Gray, her memoir, Them: A Memoir of Parents.
For Janet Malcolm, Iphigenia in Forest Hills, although I haven't read the two other books I have by her.
For Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer.
For Jane Smiley, Moo for satire and Horse Heaven if you like horses.

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