The only people for me are the mad ones

Or how I cut out the Capote and started reading books by women

A guardian angel of sorts lords over the English department of the university I attend. This professor spent more than half a decade presiding over the literary lives of the students until her death earlier this year. Possibly the best fiction reader who ever lived, she was prolific in her love of the novel. Her literature classes were so well-loved that she even created a version for public consumption that ran for years. People adored her, but she also had a knack for being a hard ass and sniffing out an imbecile from five classrooms away. She was as hilarious as she was terrifying. She could be your best friend, but if you handed in a piece of dog-shit writing, there was always the threat that she would share it, verbatim, in lectures for years to come. 

When I finally settled into taking her class after avoiding it for years, it was her last semester teaching. It was either now or never, and I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to see what all the fuss was about. Right out of the gate, I knew this class would be special. You basically mainlined contemporary literature– each book hand-selected by her–and then got together in a circle twice a week to hash it out. If you said the right things, she loved you. If you didn’t, you became the object of mock and ridicule, but in the most fun-loving way possible. A massive supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, she was also very old-school and traditional. She was once scolded for not using correct pronouns with a student, and when we left the room that day, she whispered under her breath to me, “If you want me to call you a girl, you better look like one.”

For the most part, she loved me, but when I referenced one of her book selections as a beach read, she lost her patience. Still, I reveled in her colleagues' advice that the worse she treated you, the more she liked you. And by the end, she did get pretty ornery. Towards the end, she once gifted me a free dinner for two Cheesecake Factory after I did her a small favor, so I figured I was OK. And she knew her shit. Omar El Akkad, Richard Russo, Adam Haslett, Richard Flannigan, and that was just the men. 

See, there was one particular read I was not looking forward to. Margaret Atwood’s 1996 novel Oryx and Crake. The book was well-reviewed when it came out. It explores themes of genetic engineering, rat shit corporations, and the misuse of environmental resources. Now, this professor just happened to be BFFs with Ms. Atwood, a friendship built over decades when Atwood was a 1989 writer-in-residence at the university. This was a friendship this professor celebrated whenever she could, and it would be an understatement to say that she held Ms. Atwood’s books and opinions on a pedestal. This wasn’t what I was worried about. I was concerned about what would happen when the professor realized I had not read Oryx and Crake, The Handmaid’s Tale, or any other books by Margaret Atwood.

But it gets worse.

See, I had never read any of her books because, up until this point, I’d never really read any books by female authors. *The audience gasps*

When I first began to get deep into reading in sixth grade, I used books to win the affection of a certain boy in class. Nothing says how cool you are better than dragging your mother’s ratty college copy of Moby Dick around, propping it up on your desk every day, and lazily reading it on the playground when other kids are playing tiresome games like kickball and monkey bars. I used books to telegraph my intellectual prowess, hoping this somewhat snooty boy would notice that I was more interested in books than in being a cheerleader, even though I was, in fact, a cheerleader. 

I went to a boy’s boarding school as a day student for high school, and there, I didn't want to seem intellectually frivolous by reading books by women. This is so sexist, I know, but growing up in a world where male authors ruled, I wanted to be taken seriously. I was a boy’s girl, and my love of literature reflected that. Into my twenties, I hoarded books by Nabokov, Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Burroughs, and Bukowski. Had I ever read Jane Austin or either one of the Bronte sisters? No? But what did that matter when you had Whitman and Eliot to recite? If you could quote Kerouac and drive the boys wild!

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes….” Blah blah blah. You know the rest.

The only women exempt from this rule were Harper Lee, Carson McCullers, and later Donna Tart, as they themselves were tomboys who favored hanging with the guys. Did I—at the time—realize that I was a product of society’s literary sexism? One that has raged since the beginning of the written word? No. But I can tell you that by the time I walked into that class, I had purged myself of those feelings, even if that had not translated into actually reading books by women. 

Before we wound our way down to reading the Atwood, we read Jesmyn Ward (who quickly became one of my all-time favorite authors), Louise Erdrich, Celeste Ng, Rachel Cushner, and Karen Joy Fowler, so I had fully opened up to reading the modern female novelist with zest and enthusiasm. It still didn’t make up for the fact that I’d never read Virginia Wolfe, Alice Walker, Joan Didion, or Mary Shelly… if I continue too long here, I might vomit with embarrassment. 

Only now, as a 50 + year old woman, is it so easy to see why women collectively have been screwed up about being women. All you have to do is watch a TV sitcom from the 1990s and before to see women shamed and minimized for being overweight, ugly, too pretty, too smart, too ethnic, too stupid, too blond, or not blond enough. (Having rewatched Friends and How I Met Your Mother recently, there is an overload of jokes that make women the butt of. The jokes are often demoralizing and always followed by an uproarious laugh track.) No wonder so many women wanted to fade into the background. Music as well. So many songs have misogynistic views of women. Cock Rock of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, in particular, makes me cringe when I listen too closely to the lyrics. Not to mention growing up in a 1970s home where beat up paperbacks of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance were king.

Once, when I was working in the bookstore in my 20s, the infamous and insanely bestselling novelist Danielle Steel came in to sign books, and one of the store managers introduced me to her as “your biggest fan,” then laughed behind her back. At the time, I was mortified to stand there and engage with an author who thought I was a mega fan when I wouldn't be caught dead reading one of her books. When I think about it, who was that guy to mock someone who was a million times more wealthy and successful than he’ll ever be? 

Throughout the ages, women have had every reason to hate themselves. I was always envious of the ones who managed not to. Even though I grew up in a house full of women who would call themselves feminists, we did a pretty good job drinking the poison in the patriarchy department.

But back to Atwood. In the end, the professor didn’t really give two shits about whether or not I’d ever read any Atwood. I came clean about my lack of female literary loves, and I am sure that brought me down a few notches in her proverbial book. Being the true Texas lady that she was, she never let on. By the end of the class, she was busting my nuts every which way and knew I could be counted on as a foil for all her classroom pontifications. 

I carry the A she gave me (which was not easy to achieve, mind you) with pride on my transcript. And I have since remedied my reading to feature lots more ladies who letter—with more piled high on the TBR list.

I have still only read one Jane Austin book, but that’s something, right?

Give me time. I’ll get there.