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laura_sonja's review against another edition
4.0
This was WAY more progressive than I was expecting- feminist! pro-choice! (relatively) sensitive about mental health issues and suicide! I’m really glad that this edition included an interview with Taylor at the end. I was (and still kind of am) disappointed with the fact that the protagonist ends up with a man at the end, and in the interview Taylor’s just kind of like “too bad, it’s my book, I wrote it the way I wanted to and this is the ending that seemed right.” Also, this interview reveals that she was a socialist. Rad!
caseythecanadianlesbrarian's review against another edition
3.0
A fascinating, albeit far from uplifting read--which is pretty much what I expected from a lesbian pulp novel. There's also a very interesting subplot about the main character Joyce's friend getting an illegal abortion.
The way Taylor writes is odd. Overall, there's a lack of complex, emotional interior. She tells readers what characters are feeling more often than showing and bringing you through the experiences. For a lot of the book, it's hard to discern why Joyce does what she does. But I was nevertheless compelled to keep reading.
(I should note that Taylor does provide a textbook-like explanation pulled from Freudian psychology that Joyce's childhood growing up without a mother and with a sexually repressive aunt has fucked up her sexuality and relationships with women and men.)
Considering this character motivation is taken seriously, it's hard to discern how much we are supposed to believe and take seriously John's later diatribes on homosexuality being an immature state of arrested development, pulled from the same Freudian theory. Taylor confirms her belief in this theory in the interview that follows the novel: "[Joyce] ends up with a nice young man and she really is not a lesbian. She's a young girl looking for a mother image."
The essay introducing the novel, by groundbreaking lesbian publisher Barbara Grier, is fixated on reading the book in the specific lesbian lens of her generation that came of age in the 70s and 80s, despite the essay being written in 2006. For me this results in a reading that feels very forced and doesn't have textual evidence. (Although it did provide a lot of food for thought, mostly passionate disagreement, ha.)
Grier reads Edith (the older woman and school dean who seduces Joyce) and her diatribes about the superiority of lesbian sex in a rosy light, as an example of a persecuted lesbian who offers a pure female sexuality and wisdom about the perils of heterosexuality. This is despite her being described often in a villianlike way--Taylor even says she's a villain in an interview included at the back of the book! There's also the fact that Edith's speeches come off as over the top, like she is trying to convince herself rather than that she truly believes the extreme heterophobic and misandrist things she's saying. (These rants were great, very amusing, if they weren't all together convincing).
Grier also reads John (the dude Joyce ends up with, representing the happy heterosexual ending) as a caricature not fully realized in comparison to the other characters. I'd argue that most if not all the characters are somewhat caricatures, especially Edith as the repressed, predatory lesbian.
And finally, Grier reads an irony in the enforced heterosexuality at the end that I really don't see at all. Grier is conscious of Taylor's historical context to a certain extent, but her own in the recent history of her lifetime and how she's imprinting it on this pulp novel from decades before not at all. I understand wanting to read this novel as affirming and pro-lesbian, particularly in the context of having come of age as a lesbian in the very difficult period of the 70s/80s. But to do so ignores the vast amount of internalized homophobia we see the characters struggling with and the negative, stereotypical, pitying way in which all the queer people in the book are portrayed! I see the book as a complicated, nuanced look at internalized homophobia, both in its queer characters, and in the narrative/authorial voice of Taylor's, who had not come out as lesbian yet when she wrote this book.
There's a particular animosity in the book towards anyone who's queer and gender non-conforming (the gym teacher and some of the gay bar patrons stand out in that regard), both from the narrative / authorial voice and from Edith as a character. Joyce too, pities and looks down on the queers she meets at the party Edith takes her to, *as if she can't possibly be one of them* even though she's there with the dean of her school whom she's been sleeping with and obsessed with for weeks! This stuff is intellectually thrilling, I think, but a bit depressing as a 21st century queer person.
Predictably, there's no acknowledgement that there is any identity available to Joyce other than straight or gay, from either the narrative or Grier's introduction. Bi erasure in the 1950s is one thing; it's a little harder to swallow from 2006.
Is this worth reading? Absolutely! Will it make you feel warm and fuzzy and delightfully queer? Absolutely not!
The way Taylor writes is odd. Overall, there's a lack of complex, emotional interior. She tells readers what characters are feeling more often than showing and bringing you through the experiences. For a lot of the book, it's hard to discern why Joyce does what she does. But I was nevertheless compelled to keep reading.
(I should note that Taylor does provide a textbook-like explanation pulled from Freudian psychology that Joyce's childhood growing up without a mother and with a sexually repressive aunt has fucked up her sexuality and relationships with women and men.)
Considering this character motivation is taken seriously, it's hard to discern how much we are supposed to believe and take seriously John's later diatribes on homosexuality being an immature state of arrested development, pulled from the same Freudian theory. Taylor confirms her belief in this theory in the interview that follows the novel: "[Joyce] ends up with a nice young man and she really is not a lesbian. She's a young girl looking for a mother image."
The essay introducing the novel, by groundbreaking lesbian publisher Barbara Grier, is fixated on reading the book in the specific lesbian lens of her generation that came of age in the 70s and 80s, despite the essay being written in 2006. For me this results in a reading that feels very forced and doesn't have textual evidence. (Although it did provide a lot of food for thought, mostly passionate disagreement, ha.)
Grier reads Edith (the older woman and school dean who seduces Joyce) and her diatribes about the superiority of lesbian sex in a rosy light, as an example of a persecuted lesbian who offers a pure female sexuality and wisdom about the perils of heterosexuality. This is despite her being described often in a villianlike way--Taylor even says she's a villain in an interview included at the back of the book! There's also the fact that Edith's speeches come off as over the top, like she is trying to convince herself rather than that she truly believes the extreme heterophobic and misandrist things she's saying. (These rants were great, very amusing, if they weren't all together convincing).
Grier also reads John (the dude Joyce ends up with, representing the happy heterosexual ending) as a caricature not fully realized in comparison to the other characters. I'd argue that most if not all the characters are somewhat caricatures, especially Edith as the repressed, predatory lesbian.
And finally, Grier reads an irony in the enforced heterosexuality at the end that I really don't see at all. Grier is conscious of Taylor's historical context to a certain extent, but her own in the recent history of her lifetime and how she's imprinting it on this pulp novel from decades before not at all. I understand wanting to read this novel as affirming and pro-lesbian, particularly in the context of having come of age as a lesbian in the very difficult period of the 70s/80s. But to do so ignores the vast amount of internalized homophobia we see the characters struggling with and the negative, stereotypical, pitying way in which all the queer people in the book are portrayed! I see the book as a complicated, nuanced look at internalized homophobia, both in its queer characters, and in the narrative/authorial voice of Taylor's, who had not come out as lesbian yet when she wrote this book.
There's a particular animosity in the book towards anyone who's queer and gender non-conforming (the gym teacher and some of the gay bar patrons stand out in that regard), both from the narrative / authorial voice and from Edith as a character. Joyce too, pities and looks down on the queers she meets at the party Edith takes her to, *as if she can't possibly be one of them* even though she's there with the dean of her school whom she's been sleeping with and obsessed with for weeks! This stuff is intellectually thrilling, I think, but a bit depressing as a 21st century queer person.
Predictably, there's no acknowledgement that there is any identity available to Joyce other than straight or gay, from either the narrative or Grier's introduction. Bi erasure in the 1950s is one thing; it's a little harder to swallow from 2006.
Is this worth reading? Absolutely! Will it make you feel warm and fuzzy and delightfully queer? Absolutely not!
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