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A review by savaging
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
4.0
I noticed something about myself reading this book. I learned that I'm old enough to be bored by stories about young people in dysfunctional relationships. Especially those girls who love the cads who do them wrong. Snore.
But also I learned that in these my elder years I love stories of old people finding lost letters or failing at prospecting in the Nevada desert. Also the final story about extinction and depression and Dumbo's mom. Nothing reached the magic of Gold, Fame, Citrus, but Claire Vaye Watkins is a great writer with a view of the world that keeps me interested and whatever she writes from here I am sure to read.
She herself wrote this beautiful criticism of this book (which I think is too harsh but also illustrative): https://tinhouse.com/on-pandering/
"I wrote Battleborn for white men, toward them. If you hold the book to a certain light, you’ll see it as an exercise in self-hazing, a product of working-class madness, the female strain. So, natural then that Battleborn was well-received by the white male lit establishment: it was written for them. The whole book’s a pander. Look, I said with my stories: I can write old men, I can write sex, I can write abortion. I can write hard, unflinching, unsentimental. I can write an old man getting a boner!"
But also I learned that in these my elder years I love stories of old people finding lost letters or failing at prospecting in the Nevada desert. Also the final story about extinction and depression and Dumbo's mom. Nothing reached the magic of Gold, Fame, Citrus, but Claire Vaye Watkins is a great writer with a view of the world that keeps me interested and whatever she writes from here I am sure to read.
She herself wrote this beautiful criticism of this book (which I think is too harsh but also illustrative): https://tinhouse.com/on-pandering/
"I wrote Battleborn for white men, toward them. If you hold the book to a certain light, you’ll see it as an exercise in self-hazing, a product of working-class madness, the female strain. So, natural then that Battleborn was well-received by the white male lit establishment: it was written for them. The whole book’s a pander. Look, I said with my stories: I can write old men, I can write sex, I can write abortion. I can write hard, unflinching, unsentimental. I can write an old man getting a boner!"