Time Out Reviews II
For those of you who haven't had the absolute
pleasure, let me introduce you to Stoner McTavish. Stoner is a mild-mannered
but partially paranoid travel agent from New England. Her Aunt Hermione is
heavily psychic, loves chrome and grows blue hybrid running beans. Her business
partner Marylou spends her days filing tour inventories under "Igopogo" on
the PC and burying herself under piles of food wrappers. Stoner met her lover
Gwen through killing her despicable husband in Wyoming.
Stoner is something of a amateur detective, but a reluctant one. She usually
hasn't the faintest idea what she's doing. After she cracked a nasty gang
of smugglers, unmasked a Bible-bashing slayer, exposed a corrupt sheriff
and uncovered a dastardly plot in Disneyland, Stoner has now turned her attention
to a women's theatre group. But surely, such a paragon of American feminist
virtue would be unsallied by notions of murder? You've guessed it. Stoner
hasn't the foggiest.
Swimming through an ocean of red herrings, Stoner sizes up her suspects with
the logic of a child (save for a fragment of that old McTavish luck and her
Aunt's telepathic encouragement) and endures physical pain, emotional trauma
and a feverish desire for an Egg McMuffin in pursuit of her quarry.
Stoner's disposition places her just above the likes of Emma Victor, VI
Warshawski and Kate Delafield. They exist and thrive on the cold light of
day while Stoner prefers to nap under sun-dappled cherry trees. If your penchant
is for lesbian detective in a thought-provoking thriller with nice spine-tingling
sex and a proper malodorous villain then 'Bad Company' (the sixth McTavish
Mystery) will certainly indulge you.
Those Americans. When they want to publish
an anthology, boy do they publish one. 'Dyke Life' runs to 374 pages and
has one of those atypically elongated subtitles: 'From Growing Up To Growing
Old: A Celebration Of The Lesbian Experience'. As you can probably guess,
it's pretty comprehensive and contains the writings of those really important
lesbians who have been credited with shaping the American sapphic history.
And as a result, the articles are pretty well faultless but the subject matter
may give you a feeling of déjà vu. The lavender balloon of
'Dyke Life' rapidly deflates even as you read the index: it covers little
ground that hasn't already been raked over a dozen times before, from now
almost tedious coming out stories and weepy wedding ceremonies, to lesbian
parenting (huge, juicy yawn) and the politics of that ample but crowded closet.
Once you've gone in, it's easy to skip chapters or just pick out the tales
of old written by people you've heard of.
Where has the inspiration gone? Are lesbian lives really so bland and cultured
that there can be no debate, no argument, no controversy? On this side of
the pond, we have publishing houses producing endless drivel that doesn't
even slap the face of oppression, let alone kick it to the floor and stamp
on it. The lesbian of the 1990's is too busy wearing tiny dresses and saying
"Ooh, isn't it all lovely?" to pick up a big orange book and discover what
lesbianism is all about. 'Dyke Life' does give you a sense of the history
of the fight but, for me, it doesn't go far enough: it is a truly confined
volume. I wouldn't read it in the bath for fear that it might get soggy when
I fell asleep.
©Megan Radclyffe Publ. Time Out 1998
To read the PR, you'd think Kirsty Machon
is the shining new epistler extraordinnaire of Australia - nay, the world.
Her debut anthology is 'stunning fiction... brilliantly infused with fresh
excitement and erotic energy'. To read the book, you might believe that for
once, the renowned effusive nature of the PR machine has not overprized her
talent. Machon's collection comprises twelve stories of death and sex, and
it is woven into the fabric of a queer world with exquisite stitchwork. She
creates one breath-taking milieu after another, and then deftly contrasts
it with the malevolence of life, mixes in a poisonous thought and completely
exceeds the boundaries of 'acceptable' concupiscence.
I'd like to exhort certain stories, but this is a remarkable and unique harvest
of juicy phrasing, evocative description and taut dialogue, and it was utterly
impossible to place any on a higher pedestal. The last time I reviewed Australian
erotica (the 1995 compilation 'Love Cries') I thought I may have been too
critical in my expectations of erotica. Despite the inexorable and possibly
disquietening link Machon makes between sex and death (you only have your
own fears to face) this is truly the sexiest little paperback to immigrate
in years.
©Megan Radclyffe Publ. Time Out 1997
There are times when I feel I'm just not
cut out to be a lesbian. The problem doesn't lie with all the fucking, feeding
the cats or fighting the bigots. It's the bloody ideology.
Take 'Lesbian Studies'. I always thought that was about eyeing up a delicious
dyke from across a smoke-filled room. Not so. Now it's all about staking
out intellectual territory while engaging with 'the problematic nature of
a liberatory politics predicated upon its status as stigmatised "other" within
the discursive regime of heteropatriachy.' So that's where I've been going
wrong!
I certainly don't mean to slate Wilson's work. She seems to be a highly evolved
being and certainly has a way with (very long) words. Call me Ms. Muddle,
with my two GCE passes and my Essex upbringing, but I just don't get it.
Could some bright young thing explain what on earth 'the totalitarian narrative
of heterobinarism' is? Or what 'the postmodern proliferation of truth-positions
and refusal to subscribe to meta-narrative coherence' means?
I'm positive that Wilson's attempt to set the agenda is completely laudable.
In fact, after Chapter 4 it isn't such a headache to read, but there's absolutely
no point in asking me precisely what this particular Senior Lecturer is on
about. I'll stick to me 'Catwoman' comics, live in blissful ignorance and
continue to study 'lesbian-ness' in my own sweet way.
©Megan Radclyffe Publ. Time Out 1997
Articles Books Clubs Films Misc
Skip to...