WALDMAN: "I WANT A GAY SON"
Monday, March 28, 2005, 6:30 PM ET
Source: Salon

In her newest Salon column, out today, Ayelet Waldman tackles gay rights and says she wouldn't mind a gay son; in fact, she says, "I want a gay son."

Still, even as things change, I worry that tolerance is not as inevitable as we hope and as they fear. Zeke is already embarrassed about the photographs I took of him as a toddler in the little pink nightie-and-peignoir set we bought him because he was jealous of his older sister's. Despite his easy acceptance of gay people and even the possibility of being gay, he would sooner be caught naked in the classroom than be seen playing with one of his little sister's baby dolls. And even our most broad-minded relatives and friends would get a little uncomfortable when they saw him decked out in full Divine regalia. It is worse when I explain that I hope Zeke is gay. Think about it, I say. How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not.

I insist just as adamantly that I do not care if one or both of my daughters are gay. But in thinking about this issue, in writing about it, I have discovered something about myself, something that embarrasses me and makes me wonder about the pervasiveness of intolerance. I would support a gay daughter, I would embrace her, but even though I went through my own senior-year-of-college lesbian phase (I went to Wesleyan University; it was a graduation requirement), I have some discomfort with the prospect. Again, it's easy to joke about it. Would a lesbian daughter give me grief about shaving my legs? Would her girlfriend the Gestalt therapist bring bulgur salad to family potlucks? Both these jokes and the ones I make about my gay son redecorating my family room have as their core a kind of stereotyping. A prejudice. The stereotypical gay man is someone whose company I enjoy, someone who makes me laugh, someone I'd want my kid to be. The stereotypical gay woman makes me insecure, conscious of my failings as a feminist. I make less money than my husband; I rely on him for simple home repairs; I care too much about what I look like; I once got a Brazilian bikini wax.

WALDMAN WRITES ON BAD MOTHERHOOD
Saturday, March 26, 2005, 6:45 PM ET
Source: New York Times

Sunday's New York Times carries an essay by Ayelet Waldman where she debates openly whether she is a good or bad mother.

WHEN my first daughter was born, my husband held her in his hands and said, "My God, she's so beautiful."

I unwrapped the baby from her blankets. She was average size, with long thin fingers and a random assortment of toes. Her eyes were close set, and she had her father's hooked nose. It looked better on him.

She looked like a newborn baby, red and scrawny, blotchy faced and mewling. I don't remember what I said to my husband. Actually I remember very little of my Percocet- and Vicodin-fogged first few days of motherhood except for someone calling and squealing, "Aren't you just completely in love?" And of course I was. Just not with my baby.

I do love her. But I'm not in love with her. Nor with her two brothers or sister. Yes, I have four children. Four children with whom I spend a good part of every day: bathing them, combing their hair, sitting with them while they do their homework, holding them while they weep their tragic tears. But I'm not in love with any of them. I am in love with my husband.

It is his face that inspires in me paroxysms of infatuated devotion. If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.

I have to admit, I'm really getting into this new phase Waldman seems to have entered lately in her writing. Although I'm not always compfortable with her blog or column topics, it's quite refreshing to read something by someone who has no problem with laying everything on the table.

WALDMAN "CONSUMED" BY WRITING ABOUT MOTHERHOOD
Friday, March 25, 2005, 3:15 PM ET
Source: Blogging Baby

In an interview Thursday with Blogging Baby, a blog about parenting, Ayelet Waldman said she is "consumed" with writing about motherhood, whether in fiction, columns or blogs.

"Selling the mommy track books was very easy," Waldman said. "They sold right away. But I’ve definitely been put in a category of mommy writer since then."

"But to be fair, I put myself in that category," she continued. "All I EVER write about is parenting . . . I’m consumed with this subject."

While her writing has been improving, she said, while improving, "I’m still a rank amateur." But Waldman said what's "a little maddening sometimes" is that her start as a genre writer and her focus on mother-issues means she’ll "never be taken seriously."

"What pisses me off is that this subject is somehow dismissed as less serious than others," she said. "If you write about women and women’s issues, especially mothering, then you’re necessarily a less serious writer. If you write about having a weak prostate and getting a blow job, your literary credentials are secure."

Waldman also told the blog she took up writing her Mommy Track Mystery series out of "desperation."

"I had quit my job, and I was bored out of my mind staying home with children," she said. "I had no faith that I could write a novel, but I’d read so many crappy murder mysteries in my life that that seemed an easier thing to attempt. Little did I know that writing a mystery is actually harder in many ways than writing straight fiction."

She also explained why she quit blogging a month ago to take up a column at Salon.

"As I wrote in my first column, the blog wasn’t good for my fiction. It was sucking up all my material," she said. "I’ll just have to keep in touch with readers through the column, or email. Or through my books, I guess."

To read the article in its entirety, follow the white rabbit.

CHABON ADMIRES CANSECO
Wednesday, March 23, 2005, 12:15 AM ET
Source: The New York Times

My apologies for missing this one until today. I saw blog mentionings and thought they were refering to an older piece. My bad.

Anyhow, Michael Chabon wrote an op-ed for Friday's New York Times defending Jose Canseco for his career and coming out about the alleged steroid abuse in baseball.

Canseco has been described as a charmer, and a clown, but in fact he is a rogue, a genuine one, and genuine rogues are rare, inside baseball and out. To be a rogue, it's not enough to flout the law, break promises, shirk responsibilities, cheat. You must also, at least some of the time, and with the same abandon, do your best, play by the rules, keep faith with your creditors and dependents, obey orders, throw out the runner at home plate with a dead strike from deep right field.

That's great, Mike. But what I and my fellow escape artist wannabes everywhere really want to know is this: What did you think of the book?

If lying would have paid better than telling the truth, then Canseco would have lied (and, indeed, some have suggested that he is). Canseco is greedy, faithless, selfish, embittered, scornful and everlastingly a showboat. He is a bad man, and that makes him, retrospectively (except among those who claim always to have felt this way) a bad ballplayer. Not to mention a bad writer.

Ouch.

Juiced, Canseco's tell-all book, is No. 5 on the New York Times hardcover non-fiction best-seller list and has been on the list for four weeks.

YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION DATE CHANGE AGAIN?
Sunday, March 20, 2005, 9:30 PM ET
Source: Amazon (Germany)

The German version of Amazon has the publication date for Michael Chabon's next novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, as March 6, 2006. The site previously listed the date as October 3, 2005.

Many thanks to Frank from Germany for the heads-up.

"LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS" DISCUSSION ONLINE
Sunday, March 20, 2005, 9:30 PM ET
Source: Literary Friendships

Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman were recently interviewed on-stage for Garrison Keillor's "Literary Friendships" series, an on-going series at Minnesota's Fitzgerald Theater where American authors discuss their friendships and their work. The interview has been posted online and can be heard in streaming audio by clicking here.