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Wednesday, July 09, 2008 - Posts

  • The Gray Area


    Dahlia, you ask , "Why do we want to cast our marriages in such cartoonish extremes?" I think the gray area — where a marriage is neither deliriously euphoric for years on end, nor a bastion of bitterness, infighting, and "divorce dreams" — may not be Read More...
  • He’s Good at Apologies


    Jesse Jackson says he wanted to "cut off" Barack Obama's "nuts" because the presidential contender has been saying black men have to take more responsibility for their behavior, stop acting "like boys," and not father and abandon children. Jackson said Read More...
  • Competitive Complaining, and Other Strategies for a Happy Life


    Like Emily Y., I did not exactly grow up planning my wedding—or picking out baby names, for that matter. In fact, the whole time I was single, I had this recurring nightmare that it was my wedding day and there was nothing I could do about it. Even as Read More...
  • Only in My Dreams


    Well, what confused me is that Tien does not describe her marriage as a bad marriage, or her predicament as particular. "Don't misunderstand. I would not, could not disparage my marriage," she writes, after spending 500 words describing her husband as Read More...
  • My Funny Valentine


    It seems we are having two discussions here: writing about a rotten marriage, and having one. I agree with Hanna , I don’t know how you write a piece that begins, “I contemplate divorce every day” and not end up writing the sequel, “How I Chose My Divorce Read More...
  • The Mommy Wars, Repurposed?


    Forgive me for wondering whether the whole “women-who-crave-divorce-in-print” boomlet we’re contemplating here is yet another manifestation of the “mommy wars” phenomenon. That is the media-created dustup wherein approximately 18 women (all of them upper-middle-class Read More...
  • Better Than the Train Tracks


    Well, I suppose that through a certain feminist lens everything looks like progress (From Anna Karenina to Ellen Tien). There was a time when any literary heroine who attempted some escape from the confines of a dull, loveless marriage wound up dead or Read More...
  • Clubbing the Plankton


    Ann and Meghan , when I tried to come up with male journalists and essayists who run down their wives last night, Norman Mailer kept popping into my head. Wrong era (and maybe wrong kind of misogyny). The men's companion volume to The Bitch in the House Read More...
  • The Guys'-Eye View?


    Meghan , you ask how male writers treat their wives in print, and I can't say I've been browsing the magazine racks. But for a recent sample, I looked back at Philip Weiss' New York magazine piece on "the trouble with sex and marriage," which supplied Read More...
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