Award-winning poet, essayist, and columnist for the news journal The Nation, Katha Pollitt presented an excerpt from her most recent book, “Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories” this Wednesday, Sept. 26, at Russell House.
Besides the numerous students in attendance, faculty spanning five departments, as well as professors who traveled from Trinity College in Hartford, gathered to attend the night’s lecture. Four members of The Hartford Courant also were present, no news-hook allure necessary.
“It’s not about learning to drive,” Pollitt said of the book’s title, provoking an uproar of laughter from the audience. “It’s a metaphor.”
“I feel that I have to say that because when the title story was first published in the New Yorker, about 40 percent of the mail was people wanting to tell me how they learned to drive,” she added.
She proceeded to read from one of her essays entitled “The Study Group,” in which she recounts her experience as part of a Marxist reading group. In the essay, Pollitt discusses with her boyfriend the possible reasons why her study group was predominantly male.
“Maybe it was related to sexual perversions, most of which seemed to be male as well,” she read. “You never hear about a female foot fetishist.”
Lighthearted and witty, Pollitt’s essay regarded even such things as cheating and divorce as common malpractice.
“The women in the group were mostly girlfriends. In fact,” she continued, “although I didn’t know this at the time, several were, or had been, girlfriends of my boyfriend. He liked to keep them around.”
In the essay, Pollitt concluded that being an active liberal sometimes seemed futile, and being in a Marxist study group where nothing was being done to facilitate change was equally fruitless.
“Surely voting couldn’t be a more ineffectual way to shape the future than talking to each other in Ruth’s living room?” she asked herself.
Throughout the essay, Pollitt questions why she would stay in such a group of seeming do-nothings.
“The group offered me a way to rethink my own increasingly marginal, futile-seeming, dated liberal pinkishness,” she said.
Though often the author refers to various members of the group in satirically ridiculing terms, the excerpt’s conclusion was a reflective retraction.
“The truth is, I miss the group,” she recalls. “If I were there I would be fidgety and irritable, as at a family gathering that has gone on too long, but I forget that part.”
Many members of the audience contributed during the question–and–answer period following the close of Pollitt’s lecture.
“Why aren’t all women feminists?” a faculty member asked.
Pollitt replied, “I think that there is a real cost to calling yourself a feminist. Somebody might make fun of you. Somebody might not want to go out with you.”
“Actually,” she added, “feminists do very well in the romance department. That’s the big secret!”
A book signing followed the question and answer session. Pollitt encouraged all to purchase her collection.
“There’s a story about proofreading pornography, which is something I did when I graduated from college… so let’s hope you have better career plans lined up,” she said.
Students were receptive to the lecture, especially those who were already familiar with Pollitt’s work.
“I was drawn to come by my experience with her in ”The Nation,“ said Abe Bobman ’11. ”I’m glad it happened on Wesleyan, that we were given access to her.“
President Roth also gave Pollitt a rave review.
”I thought she was great!“ Roth commented. ”A wonderful writer, a powerful thinker. I’m just delighted she’s at Wesleyan.“
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