outrage over gay cowboy

[joanna bujes]

At 08:36 PM 12/16/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>And even if the picture is an "alienated picture" of what an X is, does 
>that mean it's worthless? Tolstoi's picture of Natasha in W&P collapses, 
>in the end, into a nightmare of antifeminist domesticity, as I see it. But 
>that doesn't mean that T couldn't do women -- Natasha for most of W_P's 
>1500+ pages is great, and this is also the creator of Anna Karenina. 
>Moreover, even Natasha's collapse depicts a certain female type (as well 
>as a male image of women) that is worth understanding.

I agree with you completely about wedding imagination to writing: that is, 
the fact that authors can exercise an empathetic imagination...and often 
do. But this thing about Natasha's "collapse" irks me. She does not 
collapse anymore than Pierre, but no one mentions his collapse -- from 
enlightenment ideals to self-satisfied domesticity. It seems, equally, that 
part of what Tostoy is saying is that, on an individual level, this 
"collapse" is far preferrable to the megalomania that drove Napoleon to lay 
waste to Europe.

A good deal of trouble comes to the world out of the fear of being ordinary.

Joanna