JH: Hotel du Lac nevertheless enters the list of the contemporary feminist debate to a certain extent.
AB: Yes, I think so, and I rather enjoyed it. But whatever the banner, you know, the competition goes on.
Then later...
JH: Do you study feminist writings?
AB: Only what gets into the popular press; I don't read Spare Rib or anything like that. Germaine Greer is a very intelligent writer; I think she's wrong but she's well worth reading. The Female Eunuch is a fine book, and it's written with great sadness that things should be as they were - that's what saved it - but I couldn't swallow the selective moral blindness that's infected the last book Sex and Destiny. I suppose the first position has been won, but the millenium was not to be found at hand.
Hotel du Lac I meant as a love story pure and simple: love triumphed over temptation. The ideal of love. Basically i don't like adversarial positions. I see no need for them, since life is too complicated and it's rarely just.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
AB on Germaine Greer
I'm going to the launch of Kill Your Darlings, Issue 2 tonight and its feature essay discusses the 40 year anniversary of The Female Eunuch. This reminded me of a comment by AB on GG from her interview with John Haffenden in 1985. AB's remarks follow an exchange about Hotel du Lac including her oft-cited assertion that "You'd have to be crouching in your burrow to see my novels in a feminist way. I do not believe in the all-men-are-swine programme". (I always imagine myself crouching in a burrow after reading this quote and frankly i've never believed in the men-swine equation either). Anyway, i should do a post on AB & feminism at some stage. I love her on female competition and female friendships and I read her as being progressive, in the 80's, for the way in which her comments deconstruct gender oppositions. The next bit is good too:
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3 comments:
Tks for your kindly sharing.( >з<)............................................................
人們不缺少力量，他們缺少意志。.......................................................
It's so wonderful to read AB's view on feminism and Greer's works. A lot of people say that Hotel Du Lac is a feminist work. But as you discovered in her statement, she is only being a romantic rather than a feminist. I belive I once read that one of her favourite novel is called Oblomov written by a Russian romantic writer. I've never read this novel but I have heard the essay on this novel on BBC Radio 3 and I thought it was terribly romantic.Hope all is well with you. Anything related to AB in your posts would be much appreciated and valued.
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