I think all the adults involved should spend a good long time in jail and never be in a position to care for a dependent ever again.

There are a lot of women who have gotten experience as writers inn Hollywood by being hired to go through a screenplay (written by a man) to fix the female characters’ dialogue so that they sounded like, y’know, people. Certainly, not all screenplays written by men require that treatment, but it seems that studios…

But here’s the problem: the whiny guys who came after them, who seek fame and recognition, try to emulate that and it’s all been done before. There’s never really a new take. It’s all naval-gazing, Gonzo journalism bullshit.

And aren’t willing to try.

I heard a story from a friend who teaches middle school that she would sometimes have her students do an exercise where they had to write a piece imagining a day living as the opposite gender. She said that the girls often produced long pieces full of clear detail, having clearly considered what life as a boy must be…

This made me question if my dad (74) and brother (31) have any women they admire, and I’m really happy to say their list of admired women goes on and on. Yay dad and brother!

Nope, Nellie Bly didn’t give one hot shit about “uneducated or antisocial types”. That’s why she had herself confined to a lunatic asylum so she could write an expose on the conditions. In 1887. Fuck this guy.

The statement that women aren’t interested in uneducated or antisocial types is the annoying part. I could care less if he is personally inspired by women writers, but his justification is completely ridiculous and shows that he obviously hasn’t paid enough attention to women writers to be uninspired by them. He’s…

Calmly saying something non-factual and ahistoric does not lend truthiness to a self-serving lie; it just makes the speaker look especially ignorant, because apparently that ignorance is willful rather than emotional (men get emotional when it comes to women and their inferiority, I’ve found). No one is complaining…

Yes, it's your intentions that I'm calling into question. I don't believe that you really don't understand the "outrage". I think you understand it perfectly well and are willfully blind to the "outrage" because you intend to generate attention for yourself. Which I have given you, oddly enough, and that makes me…

Oh, yes, I love when they’re like, “I am all for women as actors/musicians/politicians/whatever,” and you say “What about X?” and they are like, “Well, no, not her.” And you list 2000 other women, and somehow none measure up for him. But that anonymous, non-human imaginary woman that doesn’t exist yet? Oh, he loves…

Naaaaaawwwwww. There couldn’t poooooooooossibly be any such thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing...

Okay. So you’re completely missing the point when you take pains to emphasize that he was truthful and calm, because those things were not at issue.

Just in the short period of time from when I wrote that, others mentioned Hannah Arendt, Janet Malcolm, Gloria Steinem, and Nadine Gordimer (wow!) all had indirect professional connections with him at one time or another.

I certainly found him uninspiring. When I was forced to read him. Back in the day.

Yeah, it's wild. Thing is, I think some men have trouble relating to anything that is not in reference to their own experience. Women don't have this problem as much since most literature/music are not from the point of view of women.

Well first off, I think it’s a BIG stretch to include Talese with Capote, Mailer, etc. But second, in this thread alone, we’ve got Didion, Susan Sontag, Frances FitzGerald, Nora Ephron and Mary McCarthy who are all better known and are more influential than Talese. Third, though- and this is the important point that…

He’s never inspired a woman either so I call truce.

It’s amazing that he’s managed to reach that age and has somehow never met a single woman.

Who?