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Reader Feedback on "The Secret Life of Kitty Lyons: Colin Powell"
Can anyone say vapid, shallow and downright silly? For crying out loud, my soul feels thinner just reading such drivel. Why waste writing talent on a character like that?
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06/26 |
Great, funny story!
--jg
10/22 |
Reviewing what I wrote more carefully, I'd say the first part stands: it's worthwhile to forgo peak sexual experience in the interest of political engagement and agency. There's a problem with using "your" in "your description...", implying the character's views are the author's. Otherwise, I'd say the second part holds: I think there is a tendency in the U.S., even among the liberal and educated, to take a simplistic, pejorative view of Pakistanis or Afghanis that's implicitly justified as an objection to intolerance.
--jdw
10/17 |
I remember that, now that you mention. Another humbling moment for the personals...
--jdw
10/17 |
Actually, Kitty's not a real person: she's a fictional character who has sexual fantasies about political figures. (It's an ongoing column.) Take it as multi-layered satire, not a personal essay!
--esn
10/17 |
Although desires deserve to be tended, the situation calls us - calls me, at least - to overlook them for now. It may not serve immediate self-interest to hear political analysis, but in this moment I think it's worthwhile to sacrifice peak sexual experience to political engagement in the hope that engagement leads to good agency.
Although it's not given at face value, your description of many Arabs as "poor souls who ask for nothing in life but to be rid of Jews and naked women," verges on an overly facile dismissal. I wouldn't object as much to a dismissive description of fundamentalist Christians in the U.S., because we're not at risk of taking their lives lightly. I'm concerned, however, that caricaturing Arabs could facilitate violence against them.
--jdw
10/17 |
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