Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism

by Katha Pollitt

Book Overview

Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this brilliant, insightful, controversial, and courageous book contains the best of Pollitt's pieces, which have galvanized readers of The Nation,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 039457060X
• ISBN13: 9780394570600
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 186 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

a very fine book

So I'm reading through the other reader reviews posted here, and what strikes me is that the people who don't like it have the same critique, delivered over and over, generally in about 2 lines. "She doesn't talk about race and class," they whine. "She's white and middle class, so she doesn't speak for ALL women EVERYWHERE." Ok, she's white and middle class. But first off, she actually does address race and class at various points in the book. Maybe not on every page. But is that the duty of every feminist essayist on earth? Can we not specialize? If she were a working class woman of color writing about working class women of color, would we be complaining so vociferously? And why do these people not have anything better to propose? I mean, I'm all for studying race and class, but my goodness, I learned to expand on that standard complaint after about one semester at Wesleyan. What I mean is, anyone can complain that those things are missing. Tell me where you'd put them in. Tell me, specifically, what's missing here.So let's take the book for what it does. Has someone ever said something perfectly stupid and offensive to you and 4 hours later you came up with the perfect comeback, having had little to say at the time? This is a book of those perfect comebacks. To address another complaint I saw in some reviews, yeah, it's basically liberal feminism -- a fairly left version of liberal feminism, but not truly radical in any way -- but here's the thing. We have to acknowledge that there's a use for that. You can love Judith Butler's work, but it's not very often going to help you have discussions (or win arguments) with people who aren't kind of on your page already. Katha Pollitt will help you get people on that page. You can take arguments from her work and actually use them in discussions with people you know. You can learn from the critical eye she turns on events in the news and eventually develop an ability to turn a similarly critical eye of your own on the news as it happens. There's a non-negligible value in that.

A great thinker and essayist

Those who have any intelligence and discernment realize that this woman is a first-class thinker and a clear, concise and witty essayist. Conservatives just wish they had somebody this smart and talented on their side. She puts the simplistic and smug Katie Rophie to shame in her incredible essay "Not Just Bad Sex""It may be that Roiphe's friends have nothing to tell her. Or it may be that they have nothing to tell *her*. With her adolescent certainty that bad things don't happen, or that they happen only to weaklings, she is not likely to be on the receiving end of many painful, intimate confessions. The one time a fellow student tells her about being raped (at knifepoint, so it counts), Roiphe cringes like a high-school vegetarian dissecting her first frog: 'I was startled... I felt terrible for her, I felt like there was nothing I could say.' Confronted with someone whose testimony she can't dismiss or satirize, Roiphe goes blank." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~Katha Pollitt's work will be read and valued long after mental midgets like Roiphe have cashed in their 15 minutes of fame.

An Incredible Introduction to Feminism

This book was my introduction to feminism several years ago, and over the years I have re-read it many times. The poor reviews clearly come from people who were threatened by Pollitt's intelligence and wit. I did not agree with all of her stands on the wide variety of issues she covers, but regardless of her opinion, the presentation is with great intelligence and wit. I was often rolling on the floor in laughter. The Smurfette Principle and On the Merits are among my favorites.

Loved it! Made me subscribe to The Nation !

Editor and columnist Katha Pollit may be the sanest person on earth. She also has some ninja-like ability to cut through all the garbage and get to the crux of things while never letting go of the big picture. God I admire her. Anyway, to quit gushing for a moment, even though the essays in here are by now a couple years old, the issues are (sadly) still relevant and so are most of the people and policy-makers. And talking heads (hi Camille). Her awesomely intelligent response to Katie Roiphe's _The Morning After_ is worth the price of the book. If watching idiotic "post-feminists" and conservative pundits and activists makes you want to smoke crack after you break your television, sit back and let Ms. Pollitt reassure you the population has not completely gone to pot. I was educated, I was inspired, I think my young life was saved.