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Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories
Learning to Drive � Now a major motion picture starring Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley
Celebrated for her award-winning political columns, criticism, and poetry, Katha Pollitt now shows us another side of her talent. Learning to Drive is a surprising, revealing, and entertaining collection of essays drawn from the author’s own life.
With deep feeling and sharp insight, Pollitt writes about the death of her father; the sad but noble final days of a leftist study group of which she was a member; and the betrayal and heartbreak inflicted by a man who seriously deceived her. (Her infinitely patient, gentle driving instructor points out her weakness—“Observation, Katha, observation!�) She also offers a candid view of her preoccupation with her ex-lover’s haunting presence on the Internet, and her search there for a secret link that might provide a revelation about him that will Explain Everything.
Other topics include the differences between women and men—“More than half the male members of the Donner party died of cold and starvation, but three quarters of the females survived, saved by that extra layer of fat we spend our lives trying to get rid of”—and the practical implications of political “What if socialism—all that warmhearted folderol about community and solidarity and sharing was just an elaborate con job, a way for men to avoid supporting their kids?�
Learning to Drive demonstrates that while Katha Pollitt is undeniably one of our era’s most profound observers of culture, society, and politics, she is just as impressively a wise, graceful, and honest observer of her own and others� human nature.
Praise for Learning to Drive
“The kind of book you want to look up from at points so you can read aloud certain passages to a friend or lover.� � Chicago Tribune
“A powerful personal narrative . . . full of insight and charm . . . Pollitt is her own Jane Austen character . . . haughty and modest, moral and irresponsible, sensible and, happily for us, lost in sensibility.� � The New York Review of Books
“With . . . bracing self-honesty, Pollitt takes us through the maddening swirl of contradictions at the heart of being the sense of slowing down, of urgency, of wisdom, of ignorance, of strength, of helplessness, of breakdown, of renewal.� � The Seattle Times
“Essays of breathtaking candor and razor-sharp humor . . . [Pollitt] has outdone herself. . . . [Her] observations are acute and her confessions tonic. Forget face-lifts; Pollitt’s essays elevate the spirit.� � Booklist (starred review)
Celebrated for her award-winning political columns, criticism, and poetry, Katha Pollitt now shows us another side of her talent. Learning to Drive is a surprising, revealing, and entertaining collection of essays drawn from the author’s own life.
With deep feeling and sharp insight, Pollitt writes about the death of her father; the sad but noble final days of a leftist study group of which she was a member; and the betrayal and heartbreak inflicted by a man who seriously deceived her. (Her infinitely patient, gentle driving instructor points out her weakness—“Observation, Katha, observation!�) She also offers a candid view of her preoccupation with her ex-lover’s haunting presence on the Internet, and her search there for a secret link that might provide a revelation about him that will Explain Everything.
Other topics include the differences between women and men—“More than half the male members of the Donner party died of cold and starvation, but three quarters of the females survived, saved by that extra layer of fat we spend our lives trying to get rid of”—and the practical implications of political “What if socialism—all that warmhearted folderol about community and solidarity and sharing was just an elaborate con job, a way for men to avoid supporting their kids?�
Learning to Drive demonstrates that while Katha Pollitt is undeniably one of our era’s most profound observers of culture, society, and politics, she is just as impressively a wise, graceful, and honest observer of her own and others� human nature.
Praise for Learning to Drive
“The kind of book you want to look up from at points so you can read aloud certain passages to a friend or lover.� � Chicago Tribune
“A powerful personal narrative . . . full of insight and charm . . . Pollitt is her own Jane Austen character . . . haughty and modest, moral and irresponsible, sensible and, happily for us, lost in sensibility.� � The New York Review of Books
“With . . . bracing self-honesty, Pollitt takes us through the maddening swirl of contradictions at the heart of being the sense of slowing down, of urgency, of wisdom, of ignorance, of strength, of helplessness, of breakdown, of renewal.� � The Seattle Times
“Essays of breathtaking candor and razor-sharp humor . . . [Pollitt] has outdone herself. . . . [Her] observations are acute and her confessions tonic. Forget face-lifts; Pollitt’s essays elevate the spirit.� � Booklist (starred review)
207 pages, Paperback
First published September 4, 2007
20 people are currently reading
767 people want to read
About the author
Katha Pollitt
23books90followersKatha Pollitt is well known for her wit and her keen sense of both the ridiculous and the sublime. Her Subject to Debate column, which debuted in 1995 and which the Washington Post called “the best place to go for original thinking on the left,� appears every other week in the Nation; it is frequently reprinted in newspapers across the country. In 2003, Subject to Debate won the National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary. Katha is also a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.
Many of Katha’s contributions to the Nation are compiled in three books: Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism (Knopf); Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (Modern Library); and Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time (Random House). In 2007, Random House published her collection of personal essays, Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories.
Katha has also written essays and book reviews for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New Republic, Harper’s, Ms., Glamour, Mother Jones, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books. She has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air and All Things Considered, Charlie Rose, The McLaughlin Group, CNN, Dateline NBC, and the BBC. Her work has been republished in many anthologies and is taught in many university classes.
Katha has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship for her poetry. Her 1982 book Antarctic Traveller won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poems have been published in many magazines and are reprinted in many anthologies, most recently The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006). Her second collection, The Mind-Body Problem, was published by Random House in 2009.
Born in New York City, Katha was educated at Harvard and the Columbia University School of the Arts. She has lectured at dozens of colleges and universities, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brooklyn College, UCLA, the University of Mississippi, and Cornell. She has taught poetry at Princeton, Barnard, and the 92nd Street Y, and women’s studies at the New School University.
Many of Katha’s contributions to the Nation are compiled in three books: Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism (Knopf); Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (Modern Library); and Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time (Random House). In 2007, Random House published her collection of personal essays, Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories.
Katha has also written essays and book reviews for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New Republic, Harper’s, Ms., Glamour, Mother Jones, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books. She has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air and All Things Considered, Charlie Rose, The McLaughlin Group, CNN, Dateline NBC, and the BBC. Her work has been republished in many anthologies and is taught in many university classes.
Katha has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship for her poetry. Her 1982 book Antarctic Traveller won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poems have been published in many magazines and are reprinted in many anthologies, most recently The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006). Her second collection, The Mind-Body Problem, was published by Random House in 2009.
Born in New York City, Katha was educated at Harvard and the Columbia University School of the Arts. She has lectured at dozens of colleges and universities, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brooklyn College, UCLA, the University of Mississippi, and Cornell. She has taught poetry at Princeton, Barnard, and the 92nd Street Y, and women’s studies at the New School University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
October 14, 2015
Wifey and I went to see "Learning to Drive" a few days ago and loved it -- highly recommended for the acting, narrative economy, and sustained yet never manipulative emotional burn from beginning to end. Afterwards at a bookstore, wife bought a used copy of these "life stories" and I grabbed them. The first two appeared in the New Yorker and are New Yorker quality -- . The rest fall off, although the language is always worthy of prestigious magazine publication. There's an annoying superficiality to a lot of this wrapped in urbane upper-west-side cultural insiderness. She generalizes hatefully/idiotically about Men with a capital M (as though such a reduction of the complexity of humanity exists), seems to revel in her presentation of herself as a horrible person, and then wonders why all these men leave her. Vaguely interesting stuff early on about the internet and later on about letting herself go, but the Marxist and feminist talk throughout seemed put on, like she's an uptown NYC artist intellectual of a certain age embedded in an certain culture whose interest in such things is more accoutrement than activism. Formally fulfilling but ultimately shallow in content.
December 16, 2023
I feel a curious affinity for NYC Jewish women writers: often brassy and self-deprecating, always wry and world-weary. Pollitt reminded me somewhat of Nora Ephron with her humorous feminist writing about women in middle age ('letting herself go' by not upholding beauty standards in her 50s). Other topics are her mother's alcoholism, her Communist parents' FBI files, her boyfriend's philandering, and raising her daughter. The essays are all well crafted, with strong opening and closing lines, and the leftist political perspective is a point of interest. The opening title essay is the perfect setup, with her driving instructor encouraging her to be more observant and her admitting, "Observation is my weakness. I did not realize that my mother was a secret drinker. I did not realize that the man I lived with, my soul mate, made for me in Marxist heaven, was a dedicated philanderer." My two favorite essays were "Memoir of a Shy Pornographer," about her time proofreading pornographic novels (as boringly repetitive as they were overwritten) and "Mrs. Razzmatazz," telling the truths she only learned after her mother's death. I picked this up pretty much at random at Hay Cinema Bookshop and the author was a great discovery!
May 30, 2016
This didn't blow my mind or anything, but so much about it was so wonderful that I think it deserves five stars.
February 6, 2008
A surprisingly disappointing Katha Pollitt book. The essays about her communist, FBI-pursued parents were by far the most interesting. If I had to read one more word about her philandering ex-boyfriend, and all the women he slept with while they were together, I would have burned the book -- even though it's a library copy. She should stick to cultural and political criticism and stay away from memoirs as long as she lives.
December 31, 2017
I am here because I have lost my man.
Whether Katha Pollitt agrees with me or not, I came to see the above line as the thesis statement of Learning to Drive, a collection of essays from the feminist critic on topics ranging from destruction of green space to Botox. Yes, Pollitt lost her adulterous, sneaky, egotistical husband, and what was her response?
"I'm going to be a little obsessed for awhile."
Obsessed, indeed. Webstalking, tracking down her ex's mistresses(????), and as the title promises, finally learning to drive a car. "Beautiful Screamer" was perhaps the most relevant essay, detailing the author's entrance into motherhood, yet that still upheld an elitist barrier.
Too often, critics feel that if they analyze the heck out of something--and show a little self-deprecation in the process--it gains worth. But analysis without revelation, or even enlightenment, is glorified internal monologue, the pages of a personal journal turned out on the world.
"Almost everything is evidence of something," the Supreme Court passed down in a case tried by Pollitt's father, a known communist lawyer. There was a lot of evidence in this memoir, a lot of pontificating and bleeding, but that 'something' to which the strife gives meaning is illusive.
It is that dearth of focus that derails the collection. In the title essay, Pollitt was accused by her driving instructor of lacking observation skills. Not an ideal deficiency for a literary critic! And ultimately her downfall in several walks of life.
If she had noticed her mother's alcoholism....
If she had noticed her husband's decades of affairs....
If she had noticed the goldmine in her parents' FBI files beyond two, frustratingly condensed essays...
Then again, what would she have had to write about if she had?
Whether Katha Pollitt agrees with me or not, I came to see the above line as the thesis statement of Learning to Drive, a collection of essays from the feminist critic on topics ranging from destruction of green space to Botox. Yes, Pollitt lost her adulterous, sneaky, egotistical husband, and what was her response?
"I'm going to be a little obsessed for awhile."
Obsessed, indeed. Webstalking, tracking down her ex's mistresses(????), and as the title promises, finally learning to drive a car. "Beautiful Screamer" was perhaps the most relevant essay, detailing the author's entrance into motherhood, yet that still upheld an elitist barrier.
Too often, critics feel that if they analyze the heck out of something--and show a little self-deprecation in the process--it gains worth. But analysis without revelation, or even enlightenment, is glorified internal monologue, the pages of a personal journal turned out on the world.
"Almost everything is evidence of something," the Supreme Court passed down in a case tried by Pollitt's father, a known communist lawyer. There was a lot of evidence in this memoir, a lot of pontificating and bleeding, but that 'something' to which the strife gives meaning is illusive.
It is that dearth of focus that derails the collection. In the title essay, Pollitt was accused by her driving instructor of lacking observation skills. Not an ideal deficiency for a literary critic! And ultimately her downfall in several walks of life.
If she had noticed her mother's alcoholism....
If she had noticed her husband's decades of affairs....
If she had noticed the goldmine in her parents' FBI files beyond two, frustratingly condensed essays...
Then again, what would she have had to write about if she had?
July 24, 2022
Katha Pollitt is an American icon. I haven't read much by her, and thought this book would be a good start. I was right. The essays in the first part of the book dragged a little, or rather, they placed her as New York City, Upper West Side intelligentsia. Yes, she has some Greenwich Village counterculture credentials - with a Marxist rather than hippie slant. The first part of the book also was imbued with her various feelings about her adulterous ex-husband and their divorce. I found that amusing, as I had a middle-age divorce (no adultery but...issues) and of course I had all kinds of feelings about it.
Although the book is imbued with feminism, it's not often specific about it. In the stories of Pollit's early adulthood, and even later, she seems to at least run in circles where, let's say, there's a lot of mansplaining, including to other men; in other words, a lot of men who are in love with their own opinions. She highlights this in the essay about the Marxist discussion group she belonged to. They were all, her included for a while at least, so serious about it!
It was the later part of the book that really engaged me. It included a lot about her parents. Her father was a serious Communist. Her mother maybe wasn't suited to a wifely role; she died of alcoholism at age 54. I am one year younger than Pollitt. My grandfather was a serious Communist; he, like Pollitt's father, was an apologist for the bad things that the USSR did; since it was communist, it could do no wrong. My father, his son, was fairly apolitical, probably in reaction to his upbringing (though quite liberal). My mother was a Young Communist (or whatever it was called around 1940) and then a member of the Communist Party from the mid 1940s into the early 1950s. I so wanted to compare notes with Pollitt, about these and other things about her parents. And her divorce, and her thoughts on feminism, especially the last essay in the book, "I Let Myself Go," about how women handle expectations of beauty as they age, and when they're younger too.
The four stars are for these essays, the ones that made me want to write out my thoughts on the matters as a conversation with the author. I'm not going to, of course - for one thing, the book is 15 years old - but that's how engaged I was.
Although the book is imbued with feminism, it's not often specific about it. In the stories of Pollit's early adulthood, and even later, she seems to at least run in circles where, let's say, there's a lot of mansplaining, including to other men; in other words, a lot of men who are in love with their own opinions. She highlights this in the essay about the Marxist discussion group she belonged to. They were all, her included for a while at least, so serious about it!
It was the later part of the book that really engaged me. It included a lot about her parents. Her father was a serious Communist. Her mother maybe wasn't suited to a wifely role; she died of alcoholism at age 54. I am one year younger than Pollitt. My grandfather was a serious Communist; he, like Pollitt's father, was an apologist for the bad things that the USSR did; since it was communist, it could do no wrong. My father, his son, was fairly apolitical, probably in reaction to his upbringing (though quite liberal). My mother was a Young Communist (or whatever it was called around 1940) and then a member of the Communist Party from the mid 1940s into the early 1950s. I so wanted to compare notes with Pollitt, about these and other things about her parents. And her divorce, and her thoughts on feminism, especially the last essay in the book, "I Let Myself Go," about how women handle expectations of beauty as they age, and when they're younger too.
The four stars are for these essays, the ones that made me want to write out my thoughts on the matters as a conversation with the author. I'm not going to, of course - for one thing, the book is 15 years old - but that's how engaged I was.
July 18, 2009
2.5 stars. Some essays were better than others. I thought Pollitt was at her best when she was writing about other people (her pieces about her parents were my favorites) and not herself, because I didn't find her to be a terribly interesting person, despite being a moderately amusing writer. I think there was a bit of a generational gap in her writing (for example, her depiction of current feminism didn't really resemble current feminism as I understand it), and a socio-economic gap as well (the idea of a bunch of upper-middle-class academics having communist study meetings without doing anything to effect the changes they're idealistically advocating seems rather pointless to me). Not bad, but not great -- at least it was a quick read.
December 18, 2019
Katha Pollitt wrote , and the piece I most identify with, about life during the Trump presidency. I didn't like this book of essays as much. It's repetitive and often pretty boring, and in the earlier essays she goes on and on and ON about a boyfriend who cheated on her. Which I'd be more sympathetic about if she was younger, but this was a guy she dated in her fifties after already marrying, having a kid with, and divorcing another guy.
June 22, 2017
Maybe it's better as a major motion picture.
March 14, 2021
So many times I laughed while reading this. Pollitt, who previously I had not heard of (and now I cannot recall how I came to seek out this book) can so perfectly capture the humor as well as the absurdity of her experiences. And those that rang familiar were especially lovely. Her essay 'Beautiful Screamer' did remind me of the mother-to-be competitiveness and craziness� ah, so long ago, when I was so young and stupid. Her essays, while not completely winning, I felt all held a moment of 'oh, that's good, that's right." (And the ending of her essay Mrs. Razzmatazz did make me catch my breath.)
Oh, now I recall how I came to seek her out; some essay quoted her as noting that the of the survivors of the Donner Party, most were women, who were able to live off the extra body weight (fat) that we strive so hard to lose.
Would someone younger than the author (and me) enjoy this set of essays, I wonder?
Oh, now I recall how I came to seek her out; some essay quoted her as noting that the of the survivors of the Donner Party, most were women, who were able to live off the extra body weight (fat) that we strive so hard to lose.
Would someone younger than the author (and me) enjoy this set of essays, I wonder?
December 26, 2024
I finally finished this book!! It was a slog. I was interested in reading it because of the essay on learning to drive as an older person since I learned when I was 50. That essay disappointed me as she seemed very incapable of doing so. That was followed by a couple of essays about her obsession with an ex who cheated on her with a lot of women, which I found annoying. It may be that after that, I just felt annoyed! She does make some interesting points in most of the essays, but they seem long, and it feels like a lot to get through. I had to keep stopping and taking breaks while reading most of them. I thought “End of� was quite good. I believe I read Reasonable Creatures long ago and liked it, but overall, this one was tough going.
February 16, 2018
This was recommended by a Loft instructor whom I met at a HCLib class in Oct. 2017.
Memoir writing style was okay, but I was just not interested inKatha Pollitt's observations and feelings about her personal life. New Yorker, self absorbed (well it IS a memoir) and relationship-dependent. I slogged through it and found a couple of her stories/chapters insightful and a bit amusing, like the title piece. Overall, just not my cup o' joe.
Memoir writing style was okay, but I was just not interested inKatha Pollitt's observations and feelings about her personal life. New Yorker, self absorbed (well it IS a memoir) and relationship-dependent. I slogged through it and found a couple of her stories/chapters insightful and a bit amusing, like the title piece. Overall, just not my cup o' joe.
September 10, 2018
I was terribly unsatisfied with this collection of essay. While Pollitt is undoubtedly an excellent writer, she comes across as highly elitist. I had a really difficult time getting through several essays, especially the one in which she webstalks her ex and his lovers. I really didn't enjoy the book but I have to give her credit for her writing.
**I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**
**I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**
December 24, 2019
I'd never heard of this author and didn't see the movie (my copy of the book had Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley on the cover) so I was surprised that the title piece was so short. I was expecting a much longer story about this part of her life! The rest of the memoir was mostly interesting.
July 9, 2017
based on the blurbs, i was expecting more feministy and less white-girl whiney. but then, i guess many people wouldn't distinguish between the two.
August 24, 2017
This book bored me to death! Usually I prefer the book over the film, but in this case, the film was a million times better. The film is funny and highly entertaining!
May 18, 2019
Mostly wonderful essays; lots to relate to, lots to laugh at.
August 19, 2008
This was a really lovely collection. Pollitt manages to strike a perfect balance of honesty, bitterness and hope. I wish I could bracket all the knowledge garnered in the book for a later date. Someday I expect her words will resonate with me even more. Her reflections on motherhood, her upbringing, failed careers and relationships are told with an astute maturity that I don't yet I have. But we can all hope to age as gracefully (and humorously) as Pollitt. A great feminist writer!
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For decades, all around me, women were laying claim to forbidden manly skills--how to fix the furnace, perform brain surgery, hunt seals, have sex without love. Only I it seems, stood still, growing, if anything, more helpless as the machines in my life increased in both number and complexity.
What I loved about the Internet was its purity and swiftness, I told him, the feeling of being without a body, of flying into space in all directions at once, of becoming a stream of words going into the blue, a mind touching other minds.
I'm a writer; I can float for hours on a word like "amethyst" or "broom" or the way so many words sound like what they are: "earth" so firm and basic, "air" so light, like a breath. You can't imagine them the other way around...Sometimes I think I would like to be a word--not a big important word, like "love" or "truth," just a small ordinary word, like "orange" or "inkstain" or "so," a word that people use so often and so unthinkingly that its specialness has all been worn away, like the roughness on a pebble in a creek bed, but that has a solid heft when you pick it up, and if you hold it to the light at just the right angle you can glimpse the spark at its core.
"We're intellectuals," G. would say with a shrug..."So we try to understand things. Even if it's useless."
Some people just get to you, even though everything your friends say about them is true. And in a small, etiolated, late-night-on-the-Internet way, those men still do. You look them up and, amazingly, they still exist; their lives have branched and thickened and twisted, just like yours...You wonder if when the old loves die you'll know somehow--as if a gossamer-thin, invisible connecting thread had suddenly sagged, even though that thread was really something only you were holding.
And for a lot of couple, ones who thought they were modern and egalitarian because they had jobs, low standards of cleanliness, and enough money to eat out or order in whenever they wanted, having a baby meant becoming gender Republicans. The old assumptions about men and women, which had been lulled by money and leisure and youthful bohemianism and feminism, woke up.
People talk about feminists being anti-motherhood, but I never would have had my daughter if it hadn't been for the women's movement. From what I saw growing up, becoming a mother was the end of being yourself--you might as well have a lobotomy and get it over with...It was feminism that let me see a woman could have children and still have her life, maybe even a richer, intenser life because a child was another person to love.
----------------------------------
For decades, all around me, women were laying claim to forbidden manly skills--how to fix the furnace, perform brain surgery, hunt seals, have sex without love. Only I it seems, stood still, growing, if anything, more helpless as the machines in my life increased in both number and complexity.
What I loved about the Internet was its purity and swiftness, I told him, the feeling of being without a body, of flying into space in all directions at once, of becoming a stream of words going into the blue, a mind touching other minds.
I'm a writer; I can float for hours on a word like "amethyst" or "broom" or the way so many words sound like what they are: "earth" so firm and basic, "air" so light, like a breath. You can't imagine them the other way around...Sometimes I think I would like to be a word--not a big important word, like "love" or "truth," just a small ordinary word, like "orange" or "inkstain" or "so," a word that people use so often and so unthinkingly that its specialness has all been worn away, like the roughness on a pebble in a creek bed, but that has a solid heft when you pick it up, and if you hold it to the light at just the right angle you can glimpse the spark at its core.
"We're intellectuals," G. would say with a shrug..."So we try to understand things. Even if it's useless."
Some people just get to you, even though everything your friends say about them is true. And in a small, etiolated, late-night-on-the-Internet way, those men still do. You look them up and, amazingly, they still exist; their lives have branched and thickened and twisted, just like yours...You wonder if when the old loves die you'll know somehow--as if a gossamer-thin, invisible connecting thread had suddenly sagged, even though that thread was really something only you were holding.
And for a lot of couple, ones who thought they were modern and egalitarian because they had jobs, low standards of cleanliness, and enough money to eat out or order in whenever they wanted, having a baby meant becoming gender Republicans. The old assumptions about men and women, which had been lulled by money and leisure and youthful bohemianism and feminism, woke up.
People talk about feminists being anti-motherhood, but I never would have had my daughter if it hadn't been for the women's movement. From what I saw growing up, becoming a mother was the end of being yourself--you might as well have a lobotomy and get it over with...It was feminism that let me see a woman could have children and still have her life, maybe even a richer, intenser life because a child was another person to love.
December 18, 2007
Enjoyed this book more than I expected despite the fact that
I've admired her articles in the Nation for what has now become years and years.
She has a refreshing sense of humor and a perspective with which I feel a strong affinity.
She too is deeply disatisfied with where the new century's popular culture, et al has landed after so much progressive momentum in the 90's that we may have taken for granted.
Her writing is so lucid that even though she walks the personal memoir line, she's touchingly confessional without being maudlin or a tattler, etc.
The stories of her parents as card carrying communists are harrowing. And, not surprisingly, she had no idea of their political affiliations until well into adulthood. This is a not often stated reality of the fear of the fifties that is always needed testimony, especially in our current state of fear and surrveilance.
Lastly, it takes a ton of courage, me thins, for a thinker of her stature to admit so much vulnerability. After being told by her driving instructer that her weak point was in "observation" and she was told this while taking driving instructions at the age of 52, she has an appreaciable sense of self-deprecation and humility in this age of glaring and glitzy narcississtic emptiness. Her self-observations are right on at every turn.
June 29, 2015
I've always loved Katha Pollitt, and this book was no exception. I was blown away - I didn't expect it to be so laugh out loud funny and I certainly didn't expect to relate. My favorite stories were the ones about herself, which seems to go against the general consensus.
Reading people's reviews of the book after the fact, Pollitt has gotten a lot of flack for this one. The reason that so many people expressed discomfort and dislike was a major part of why I loved it. Feminists aren't supposed to display vulnerability, and they're certainly not supposed to air the feelings and experiences in regard to men that she does. A feminist isn't supposed to be "reduced" to all of the emotional things we negatively associate with women.
I felt privileged to witness her grapple with this vulnerable, embarrassing, human side in her stories. There was definitely a time when I would have been sad to read this book, wondering what would have possessed her to think it was okay to show this side. Now, I find myself trying to negotiate these boundaries all the time - the ones that don't necessarily "mesh" with the front that a world hostile to feminism requires one to espouse. Highly recommended.
A review that says it all so much better -
Reading people's reviews of the book after the fact, Pollitt has gotten a lot of flack for this one. The reason that so many people expressed discomfort and dislike was a major part of why I loved it. Feminists aren't supposed to display vulnerability, and they're certainly not supposed to air the feelings and experiences in regard to men that she does. A feminist isn't supposed to be "reduced" to all of the emotional things we negatively associate with women.
I felt privileged to witness her grapple with this vulnerable, embarrassing, human side in her stories. There was definitely a time when I would have been sad to read this book, wondering what would have possessed her to think it was okay to show this side. Now, I find myself trying to negotiate these boundaries all the time - the ones that don't necessarily "mesh" with the front that a world hostile to feminism requires one to espouse. Highly recommended.
A review that says it all so much better -
October 1, 2011
At first I started reading this author's life's lessons/observations and thought they were quite funny, and much of it fascintating, although it did not go into depth at all about her parents being Communists in the 50s which I would have loved to have read tons more about; however, soon the author started to sound like a middle-aged whiner and somewhat bitter single woman who had been left by her husband in one part of the book (actually the more humorous part to me, not that it was funny that her husband was leaving her, but funny about her cyber-stalking him and his new girlfriend), but her acknowledgements include a husband so possibly this book spanned many years. She definitely has her issues, but who wouldn't coming from the home of a closet alcoholic mother.
Happy to move on to another more impressive book.
Happy to move on to another more impressive book.
September 12, 2008
Yet another recommendation from my mother, who must statistically be my #1 recommender of books. Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation. She's a New York intellectual who was born and raised in New York, which alone makes her fascinating. I read the second essay in this collection of personal essays, "Webstalker," when it appeared in the New Yorker a couple of years ago. It's about obsessively stalking her ex-live-in-boyfriend online, and while that's hardly newsworthily novel behavior to people my age, she does a good job describing the mental state of one who is web stalking, and, as an added bonus, evoking the blistering pain of being left in the way she did. Her writing seems simple but I think it's the kind of simplicity that's the product of great skill. I'd read more by her.
April 5, 2009
I'm not a great fan of personal memoirs, in general. But the personal is the political, after all, and Pollitt is one of our finest political writers. Pollitt is a representative of the generation of feminists who made the case that the personal was political. She's making the best case for it, by describing her own life with little reference to the ostensibly political, through a politically informed sensibility. I don't agree with some of her core beliefs -- particularly her essentialist view of gender (which is partly informed by her life experience, of a generation older than my own) -- but she puts it out in beautiful, intelligent, clear-headed prose. And the essays about her Communist parents, complete with extensive descriptions of their FBI files, are revelatory.
July 15, 2015
Katha Pollitt has some very strong opinions...and is masterful at expressing them in a way that is thought provoking and entertaining. Her background alone is reason enough to want to hear what she has to say, both parents being Communists with FBI files on them, she having been a member of a Marxist study group, a poet, and a columnist for The Nation. Although I do not agree with all of her non-sugar coated opinions on things as varied as motherhood, socialism, and plastic surgery, her irony-laden humor and ability to self reflect are so appealing as to make me want to lay the book aside for a few months and then read it again, taking more time to do some self reflection of my own along the way.
March 5, 2008
I have only ever read Katha Pollitt in the Nation magazine, but I liked her enough to dive into this book based on a half-hearted recommendation from an acquaintance. Her musings on aging, parenting, love, and loss were appreciated. Learning to Drive is a quick read, as much as those dense feminist columnists are able, and entertaining enough to read out loud to a loved one as a bedtime story. For those of us looking to the aging of the second-wave as a to-do or not-to-do list for our own middle ages, it's an adequate text. I appreciate her ability to shit-talk past lovers without compromising her own dignity. Shit-talking is a fine art.
May 8, 2008
I picked up this book because, like Ms. Pollitt, I, too, learned to drive later in life (and could also relate to her essay about the perils of addictive Googling). This book got a lot of flak for how self-revelatory the author was about some sorry moments in her personal life -- particularly as a prominent feminist -- but I appreciated her candor and the insights she drew from some messy personal experiences.
The only jarring note for me was all the talk of Marxism ... but as it has obviously been a significant part of the author's life, I suppose it belonged here as much as anything else.
The only jarring note for me was all the talk of Marxism ... but as it has obviously been a significant part of the author's life, I suppose it belonged here as much as anything else.
March 25, 2010
Well written non fiction pieces from a woman who writes for The Nation. She reflects on her life with a full spectrum of historical feminist & political wisdom. Names have been changed. Early pieces cover men she had relationships with, socialist meetings she attended; later pieces in the book explore her relationship with time's passage, with her mother, and with growing older. She provides a woman's perspective throughout the book. She talks about one man's comment that the other women he was cavorting with were her 'sperm sisters,' a term I've never heard. It was fascinating to read side by side with the book Against Love.
September 26, 2007
huh. Well, I was looking forward to this, I like her articles in the Nation and other essays..but this was a strangely second wave experience for me. Lots of talking about men, how they ruined her, made her miserable, cheated on her, and now, shes finally found happiness, and is getting married. Yay!?
The other autobiographical aspects I liked quite a bit-stories of her socialist family and how they grew up, essays on the world at large. I'm not sure why I was so irritated with her relationship essays..but, I was.
The other autobiographical aspects I liked quite a bit-stories of her socialist family and how they grew up, essays on the world at large. I'm not sure why I was so irritated with her relationship essays..but, I was.
December 27, 2007
A long-time fan of Ms. Pollitt's column in "The Nation," I was glad to see the messy, human side of her. I am a feminist and sometimes I feel like my messy sides don't jibe with my professed beliefs. Some people are uncomfortable with her confessions of stalking a former boyfriend, a nightmare of a self-righteous, Marxist, supposed feminist boyfriend. I could so relate. During my Riot Grrrl years, I was involved with the same guy, albeit in a younger, skinhead (not the racist kind of course), activist body.
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