She dedicates her book to every person who has ever been told, “You are too smart for your own good.” Is it a compliment or...Does it change meaning when said to a woman? Michelle Dean profiles ten women writers in her book “Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion”. “The title Sharp is a compliment paid to all these women but it also has a tail end of destructiveness attached to it. It implies that it is going to cut you...the duality within the idea of sharpness is within what I could glean of sharpness in these women’s writings and also their experiences in their personal histories,” says Dean who feels her collection is part of history of literature that is not really reflected in a general history of literature.
“Journalism has a place in the history of a country’s literature...,” Dean says the book is about women who, “...did not come from writing backgrounds...not to the manner born so to say...not like Virginia Wolf for instance...These women weren’t typically writing for literary people, they were writing for the general public...Indeed this book is about how such bright women turned their own formidable intelligence on their own lives...This book is about self confidence but more about how one maintains self confidence because there were times when every woman in the book had a large public controversy attached to their work or received a significant push back, mostly from men but also from women....”
Dean says she begins her book with Dorothy Parker because, “As I looked into Dorothy Parker more and more, I realized her life was more complicated than we knew...all women writers, particularly those who write critically, owe something to her whether they like what she writes or not. She had a very particular type of insight. She created the space for a woman to be caustic. This was not available to women before her...she was a singular voice....”
Dean is quick to present the other side as she quotes Parker as saying, “I wanted to be cute...that’s the terrible thing. I should have had more sense.” Dean says that was her typical way of cutting herself down to size as she did, others! “She was prone to listening more to the critical side of herself....”
And this is common to most women in the book, “Most of them in some point in their career evinced disappointment for not having lived up to their own standards. I do think disappointment is common in an artist’s life but it gets more accentuated when you are analytical and focussing more on the flaws than the generative aspects of life...While these women made it possible for men to see women as greater equals, there is a space of ambivalence about feminism.” Hannah Arendt said in an interview: “You ask me what I think my influence is...I think that is a very masculine question...Men are looking for influence, I am trying to understand...women seek to understand....”
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