Letters to the Editor
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Yuck.
Really. Just yuck.
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@BabyGrumpus
The point, my dear BabyGrumpus, is to give you (and all the other curmudgeons who have nothing better to do than read Salon articles and then complain about them) something to live for. Writing grumpy letters is your best entertainment value; God knows it's cheaper than cable.
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Note to Salon and Sloane.
"All right" is two words. "All [space] right." Not one word. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.
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you guys are MEAN!
you knew what is was about from the tagline, so if it's not your interest why read it.
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@slcgrad
All right all ready! (rolls eyes) Two words! Nag nag nag. I'm sure they'll get it next time.
Sorry, I'm just in a weird mood.
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I wish
I could post anonymously. If I could post anonymously, I would have the courage to expose a faux-memoir scandal. Because my judgement is addled by flu-like symptoms and boredom, I am going to speak anyway. The person who confided in me knows me for an unstable blabbermouth, so I'll probably be fulfilling his expectations.
There is no "Sloan Crosley," daughter of privilege and pretty good diction. She is in almost every respect a fiction. Yes, the true author has eaten potatoes, and has walked barefoot, but beyond those details, and the common bonds of humanity, there is no similarity to note. The author of this excerpt, and the rest of the "Sloan Crosley" corpus, is Kwame Adesa, former child-soldier, former refugee, probable native of Burkino Faso. He was introduced to English through parsing the operation manual for a grenade launcher, at 12, under conditions where failure would entail a severe beating and loss of food privileges. His first choice of a second language was French, but the beetles had eaten that portion of the manual. Had the beetles continued, he would be writing to us in Korean. Or not at all. Demobilized at 17, he spent the next four years in camps, where he refined his English skills with the intermittent assistance of Red Cross workers and Peace Corp volunteers, one of whom had an uncle in publishing.
Asked (by me, in the anteroom of a Berlin diskotek) why he doesn't write about his personal experiences, Adesa replied, "I prefer worlds that are prettier than the world I knew. I love lexicons where the terms, "Safety" "Danger" and "Loss" enjoy nuanced associations. You know, Jane Austin? Collette? Yes, many readers find these situations where "Happiness" means retaining your limbs so... compelling. The drama of keeping the vital organs out of the beaks of vultures. The very very very bad things, about which there is no question. But what may be said at the end of such a tale? Only, "God did not choose to strike me with his hammer." Or, "God struck me, but I survived." I said those sentences years ago. Now I want to write. Would you like another beer? Or shall we dance?"
Fictively yours,
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I've wandered in
I've wandered into a party full of graduate students.
This is a perfectly reasonable, and representative, coming of age story. The author writes well and with humor at her own experience.
Perhaps you don't like coming of age stories? That explains both your attitude and your lack of production. Go write your own damn stories.
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Give Sloane Crosley a regular column!
Seriously. I so miss my weekly dose of reader generated smackdown that Kansas O'Flaherty used to generate. Reading the much deserved criticism here, I got just the faintest taste of that KOF grade bile. I miss it. I do.
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pretty cute
This was a pretty cute essay. I enjoyed it in about the same way I'd enjoy a clever letter from one of my friends. My friends are all about as clever and interesting as Ms. Crosley. The only difference is that because they're my friends, I have some reason to care about their trivia. I have no particular reason to care about hers.
Last night I glanced at the sidebar of Salon's front page and it was like a send-up of Salon. China not so nice to animals? Who knew? Are comic books most culpable for the generation gap than rock and roll? Wow, they might have something there. Are flushable nappies actually green? I'm sure the vast majority of Americans burn to have the answer to that question!
Would you guys pretty please get your collective heads out of your collective navels and take a look in the mirror?
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Oh the Folly
of stressing about shit that doesn't really matter.
I'd say Crosley's main hurdle was worrying about looking like a slut. Hard to be a slut when you're worrying about looking like one.
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*eyeroll*
Uh huh, very cute. People make way too much out of this shit. It's just sex, for gods' sakes, not rocket science. If you want to get laid, get laid. If not, don't. BFD.
Oh, and I can't imagine what planet this girl lives on. Here on earth, there's always some guy around who'll be happy to tumble, especially with a chippy who looks like that. Maybe her standards are too high. But like others have said, who cares?
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Navels?
I'm not sure that's the right orifice...
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Note to reasonably attractive young (and old) women: If you want sex, the world is your oyster
If you meet a man and determine he's somebody you'd like to writhe naked with, all you have to do is say, "Would you like to have dinner?" If he says yes, go to dinner. Drink a glass of wine or two. Flirt with him. Invite him over to your place afterward.
He's all yours. It's easy. Don't get worked up into a neurotic knot over the entire process. Most guys will say "yes." If they don't, the next 10 guys you ask probably would.
Oh, by the way, make sure he wears a condom.
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Oh, look. A celitbutante.
I am so tired - so exceedingly tired - of this sub-sub-genre of relatively intelligent, adequately talented, undeniably attractive young women writers who insist on using their sexual allure to bludgeon the world with tales of their unrestrained naughtiness. They appear oblivious to the fact that the topics they choose (sex! how I lost my virginity! my all-powerful blowjob technique! did I mention sex? well, then - how about light bondage? how very saucy I am! want to see my knickers? wait; I'm not wearing knickers!) effectively land them in the sewer of Cosmo freelancers.
They're the writerly equivalent of the obnoxiously loud, overly-made-up, sun damaged, drunk, wannabe Housewives of Orange County that show up at even the best parties. They're the women that make men uncomfortable and other women embarrassed, the ones who think they're still skating through life on assets that actually crapped out on them a decade or so ago.
It's ugly. It's tiresome. It was ugly and tiresome when Erica Jong did it; it's only grown uglier and more tired since then. Sex and the City ended, women. It ended about three years after it had peaked, but it did end. You wriggling tarts are starting to look as dated as a Girls Gone Wild video from 1997.
It disgusts me to think that so many women are out there crusading against the exploitation of women while people like Sloane "Look at me, I'm SAUCY!" Crosley get rich by exploiting themselves. Way to represent the sisterhood.
Why do this? Why become the Paris Hilton of the literary set? You women have talent; why prostitute it for a few moments' notoriety in the more easily titillated sectors of the internet? Why settle for being known as a celitbutante?
Take a clue from Diablo Cody: quit stripping and make some art.