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Germaine Greer’s rudeness is part of the point of her Germaine Greer’s rudeness is part of the point of her
(about 11 hours later)
After a long break since the last contribution to the niche, yet compelling, literary genre that is The Martin Amis I Loved, it is all the more frustrating that a potentially important addition, by Germaine Greer, is due to emerge only in quotes and paraphrase.After a long break since the last contribution to the niche, yet compelling, literary genre that is The Martin Amis I Loved, it is all the more frustrating that a potentially important addition, by Germaine Greer, is due to emerge only in quotes and paraphrase.
Discovered in the archive Greer sold for £1.8m to her alma mater, the University of Melbourne, this 30,000 word document is entitled The Long Letter to a Short Love, or... and was written in 1976, while Greer was on a lecture tour around the US and Canada. Brief extracts suggest that, along with its Amis-related effusions, it is a crafted travelogue, maybe in the line of one of Fanny Burney’s letter-journals, and potentially an even more fascinating communication, direct from that benighted decade, than flashbacks of Amis lounging about in his “velves”. Though since the Greer affair seems to have overlapped with more public relationships, we should presumably feel the absence, in her version, of the table talk that swirled around Amis. “Much hilarity sprung from juvenile word games,” wrote Julie Kavanagh, “substituting ‘sock’ for ‘house’ in well-known titles or phrases, as in Bleak Sock, The Sock of Windsor...”Discovered in the archive Greer sold for £1.8m to her alma mater, the University of Melbourne, this 30,000 word document is entitled The Long Letter to a Short Love, or... and was written in 1976, while Greer was on a lecture tour around the US and Canada. Brief extracts suggest that, along with its Amis-related effusions, it is a crafted travelogue, maybe in the line of one of Fanny Burney’s letter-journals, and potentially an even more fascinating communication, direct from that benighted decade, than flashbacks of Amis lounging about in his “velves”. Though since the Greer affair seems to have overlapped with more public relationships, we should presumably feel the absence, in her version, of the table talk that swirled around Amis. “Much hilarity sprung from juvenile word games,” wrote Julie Kavanagh, “substituting ‘sock’ for ‘house’ in well-known titles or phrases, as in Bleak Sock, The Sock of Windsor...”
Margaret Simons, the academic who uncovered the document, hoped it could be published as a book. “Amis and Greer were at the centre of the changes that the world was going through and it’s an extraordinary window about what it was like to be alive at that time, as one of the most famous people in the world,” she told the Guardian.Margaret Simons, the academic who uncovered the document, hoped it could be published as a book. “Amis and Greer were at the centre of the changes that the world was going through and it’s an extraordinary window about what it was like to be alive at that time, as one of the most famous people in the world,” she told the Guardian.
But Greer reportedly objected, reluctant to “embarrass” others. Amis, who actually helped Kavanagh fact-check her sweet, short memoir of their relationship, is presumably not among them. Given his documented difficulties with feminists – some of them irked to the point of denying him literary prizes – adoring testimony from, notionally, the senior liberator may amount to counter-evidence he would not find objectionable. Then again, Greer’s romantic history features a three-week marriage to a drunken but muscular builder called Paul du Feu, during which, she told a television audience, she was unfaithful seven times. After Feu went on to build a career on Greer’s infatuation, she shared with Telegraph readers some marital highlights, including their final exchange.But Greer reportedly objected, reluctant to “embarrass” others. Amis, who actually helped Kavanagh fact-check her sweet, short memoir of their relationship, is presumably not among them. Given his documented difficulties with feminists – some of them irked to the point of denying him literary prizes – adoring testimony from, notionally, the senior liberator may amount to counter-evidence he would not find objectionable. Then again, Greer’s romantic history features a three-week marriage to a drunken but muscular builder called Paul du Feu, during which, she told a television audience, she was unfaithful seven times. After Feu went on to build a career on Greer’s infatuation, she shared with Telegraph readers some marital highlights, including their final exchange.
“He turned to me and sneered (drunk as usual), ‘I could have any woman in this room.’ ‘Except me,’ I said, and walked away for ever.”“He turned to me and sneered (drunk as usual), ‘I could have any woman in this room.’ ‘Except me,’ I said, and walked away for ever.”
Even allowing for the fact that Greer was stung into that disclosure by yet another du Feu kiss’n’tell, she has shared enough personal information, notably the memoir Daddy We Hardly Knew You, for there to be a strong argument for the University of Melbourne being allowed to cast this further light on her interior life, while she can respond to its reception. By the time of The Long Letter, she had already mined private experience in her hugely influential polemic, The Female Eunuch. “At various stages of my life,” she reassures readers, in the final chapter, Revolution, “I have lived with men of known violence, two of whom had convictions for grievous bodily harm and in no case was I ever offered any physical aggression, because it was abundantly clear from my attitude that I was not impressed by it.”Even allowing for the fact that Greer was stung into that disclosure by yet another du Feu kiss’n’tell, she has shared enough personal information, notably the memoir Daddy We Hardly Knew You, for there to be a strong argument for the University of Melbourne being allowed to cast this further light on her interior life, while she can respond to its reception. By the time of The Long Letter, she had already mined private experience in her hugely influential polemic, The Female Eunuch. “At various stages of my life,” she reassures readers, in the final chapter, Revolution, “I have lived with men of known violence, two of whom had convictions for grievous bodily harm and in no case was I ever offered any physical aggression, because it was abundantly clear from my attitude that I was not impressed by it.”
That Greer subsequently became an unwilling, in one case unsuspecting, supplier of copy to other biographers could well account for a determination to prevent further exploitation of her words, her talent, her adventures. She called Christine Wallace, author of a curiously obs & gynae-focused biography, Untamed Shrew, “a dung beetle” and “intestinal flora” and warned her: “If you go near my mother, you’ll have your kneecaps broken.” Wallace went near her mother. The novelist David Plante, a former friend, did not even let on – as Greer confided freely about her sexual past – that she would shortly be featuring in his book, Difficult Women, along with a couple of fabulous, sad drunks, Jean Rhys and Sonia Orwell. “He had no idea how deeply I would resent being made to utter namby-pamby Plante-speak,” was Greer’s objection.That Greer subsequently became an unwilling, in one case unsuspecting, supplier of copy to other biographers could well account for a determination to prevent further exploitation of her words, her talent, her adventures. She called Christine Wallace, author of a curiously obs & gynae-focused biography, Untamed Shrew, “a dung beetle” and “intestinal flora” and warned her: “If you go near my mother, you’ll have your kneecaps broken.” Wallace went near her mother. The novelist David Plante, a former friend, did not even let on – as Greer confided freely about her sexual past – that she would shortly be featuring in his book, Difficult Women, along with a couple of fabulous, sad drunks, Jean Rhys and Sonia Orwell. “He had no idea how deeply I would resent being made to utter namby-pamby Plante-speak,” was Greer’s objection.
But The Long Letter is her words, part of an archive that is not exclusively academic. It includes diaries, exchanges with Warren Beatty (“Can we go on like this?”, WB). Caveat Venditor. And if Greer’s concern is genuinely for embarrassable peers, can’t identities be disguised?But The Long Letter is her words, part of an archive that is not exclusively academic. It includes diaries, exchanges with Warren Beatty (“Can we go on like this?”, WB). Caveat Venditor. And if Greer’s concern is genuinely for embarrassable peers, can’t identities be disguised?
Should the University of Melbourne require any further excuse for publication, it is surely time that some opponents of Greer’s right to speak in public were reminded why people ever wanted her to do so. To judge by the sniggers that greeted the Amis news – 76-year-old-woman once had sex shock! – it is not universally understood that there is anything more to Greer than her refusals, expressed in dependably provocative terms, to agree that trans women are as much women as she is. Questioned on this theme by a student audience, after a threatened speech on women and power did, after all, take place, she duly outraged them with: “I don’t believe a woman is a man without a cock.”Should the University of Melbourne require any further excuse for publication, it is surely time that some opponents of Greer’s right to speak in public were reminded why people ever wanted her to do so. To judge by the sniggers that greeted the Amis news – 76-year-old-woman once had sex shock! – it is not universally understood that there is anything more to Greer than her refusals, expressed in dependably provocative terms, to agree that trans women are as much women as she is. Questioned on this theme by a student audience, after a threatened speech on women and power did, after all, take place, she duly outraged them with: “I don’t believe a woman is a man without a cock.”
If there’s one thing Greer still has in common with Amis, it’s a huge talent to increase concern for their rhetorical victims. And like his remarks on Muslims, hers on transgender women have served, you could argue, mainly to isolate Greer, to anoint her the face of the past. As one of her young no-platformers demanded recently – in the Daily Telegraph – couldn’t this “Establishment fogey”, this “coward”, this bullying, 20th-century “dinosaur” start to learn from her juniors, “you know, basic politeness”? Or what the once awe-inspiring Greer might call namby-pamby Plante-speak? How could she ever have written anti-establishment articles such as I Am a Whore (1971) in that?If there’s one thing Greer still has in common with Amis, it’s a huge talent to increase concern for their rhetorical victims. And like his remarks on Muslims, hers on transgender women have served, you could argue, mainly to isolate Greer, to anoint her the face of the past. As one of her young no-platformers demanded recently – in the Daily Telegraph – couldn’t this “Establishment fogey”, this “coward”, this bullying, 20th-century “dinosaur” start to learn from her juniors, “you know, basic politeness”? Or what the once awe-inspiring Greer might call namby-pamby Plante-speak? How could she ever have written anti-establishment articles such as I Am a Whore (1971) in that?
Another extraordinary woman, the late Professor Lisa Jardine, recalled encountering Greer in 1966, at a university dinner where the latter talked over the speeches. Greer was denouncing bras, to an audience “astonished at the very idea that a woman could speak so loudly and out of turn, and that words such as ‘bra’ and ‘breasts’ (or maybe she said ‘tits’) could be uttered amid the pseudo-masculine solemnity of a college dinner”.Another extraordinary woman, the late Professor Lisa Jardine, recalled encountering Greer in 1966, at a university dinner where the latter talked over the speeches. Greer was denouncing bras, to an audience “astonished at the very idea that a woman could speak so loudly and out of turn, and that words such as ‘bra’ and ‘breasts’ (or maybe she said ‘tits’) could be uttered amid the pseudo-masculine solemnity of a college dinner”.
If Greer won’t talk nicely, perhaps it’s because insults, ungenteel coarseness and breathtaking truculence were, before and after The Female Eunuch (1970), indivisible from her theoretical rejection of the submissive feminine ideal. As well as being rude to trans women, Greer has been dreadfully, sometimes preposterously rude to other women over a prolific half century, not just to prying intestinal flora and “hobbit-footed” interviewers, but to fat women, thin women, older women, younger women, including the Guardian colleague arraigned for “fuck-me shoes” and Julia Gillard, Australian prime minister: “big arse”, “organ grinder’s monkey”.If Greer won’t talk nicely, perhaps it’s because insults, ungenteel coarseness and breathtaking truculence were, before and after The Female Eunuch (1970), indivisible from her theoretical rejection of the submissive feminine ideal. As well as being rude to trans women, Greer has been dreadfully, sometimes preposterously rude to other women over a prolific half century, not just to prying intestinal flora and “hobbit-footed” interviewers, but to fat women, thin women, older women, younger women, including the Guardian colleague arraigned for “fuck-me shoes” and Julia Gillard, Australian prime minister: “big arse”, “organ grinder’s monkey”.
Asked, on Newsnight, if she wasn’t hurtful to trans women, Greer said: “Try being an old woman. For goodness sake, people get hurt all the time. I’m not about to walk on eggshells.” The same, superb indifference should obviously apply to the shy players of The Long Letter. Melbourne University Press should publish and be kneecapped.Asked, on Newsnight, if she wasn’t hurtful to trans women, Greer said: “Try being an old woman. For goodness sake, people get hurt all the time. I’m not about to walk on eggshells.” The same, superb indifference should obviously apply to the shy players of The Long Letter. Melbourne University Press should publish and be kneecapped.
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