The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #111843 Message #2360629
Posted By: Bee
08-Jun-08 - 10:07 AM
Thread Name: BS: Trout Fishing in America (Richard Brautigan)
Subject: RE: BS: Trout Fishing in America (Richard Brautigan)
I read someone's biography of Brautigan after his death, and as I remember his not being found had to do with his withdrawing from contact rather than being an unpleasant person.
I'm no hero, M.Ted, but thank you for being aware of where we've come from and how we got here.
Another example of male establishment artists' attitudes follows, and perhaps it is a comment on how different publicly known personas (like Brautigan's) may be from the real person.
I met Shulamith Firestone shortly after her Dialectics of Sex was published in 1970. She was only 25 when she wrote it, and it is still considered by many to be one of the most radical and influential of feminist books, advocating as she did the abolition of pregnancy itself. She was part of the founding of several of the most radical American feminist organizations through the seventies, and has been roundly criticised for the extreme nature of her politics and was accused by the groups she helped originate of having an ego the size of Godzilla.
That may be true, but when I met her, I found her to be a lovely person, compassionate, impulsively kind, and oddly shy, given the harsh light her activities placed her under. She was invited to speak at the art college where I was a student - part of an effort by the administration to quell the rising protests of women students that the place was hostile to women (no kidding). Her speech wouldn't have sounded particularly radical to anyone listening today, and consisted mostly, as I remember it, of pointing out the glaring inequalities faced by women in the arts. I mostly remember that I felt excited and inspired by her words.
But afterwards, when I went looking for her to say thank you, I found her cornered by four male professors, all of them extremely angry, one to the point of shouting at her and calling her names. She was a slender, slightly built, almost elfin looking woman, and all of the men looked huge next to her. Myself and a male student stepped in and took her out of there. She was frankly shaken by the depth of their anger, and so was I. I spent the rest of the evening with her and some other students, and also part of the next day until she had to leave. I liked her very much, and feel privileged to have met her.