Hil, that is MARVELLOUS. Really. I'm not sure there are 11 words you could take out.

God, I *love* it.

Thanks, Steph.

(The essay I mentioned was "You Take Lilith, I'll Take Eve: A Closer Look at the World's Second Feminist" by Yiskah (Jessica) Rosenfeld. I feel I ought to mention it, since almost all of that came from the ideas in that essay bouncing around in my head.)

That's cool, Hil.

Hil,

That reads as an excellent opener to a short story I'd love to read. I couldn't help but read this line as sinister at first:

He had the power to name, to define, to say, "This is all that needs to be known."

Which made this turnaround especially intriguing.

A fall from definition; a fall into possibility.

Susan: I see how flip-flopping could be a cop-out ie, why have the characters learn anything about themselves or what others think of them when you can easily answer that by switching perspectives. Dangerous indeed. Could breed laziness. I guess I have a more idealized view of what it could yield... Like such diverging character interpretations of an event that the basics of what occurred get blurred. I see this less as a novel and more of an idea for a sequence in a short story where characters argue about an event. A cute plot point, maybe.

It's true; she cannot be struck speechless.

I particularly loved that bit too, Erika. And Hil, that's lovely.

Hil, that's a beautiful, beautiful piece of work, there.

I'll like something, and someone Smarter Than Me will sneer at it, and explain all the reasons it was awful, and I'll feel dumb and unsophisticated and defensive.

Zenkitty, it doesn't make me feel remotely dumb. Part of my intense loathing for it, however, is that I suspect a lot of the practitioners out there of desperately wanting their interlocutors to feel dumb, which in turn makes me want to point at them and say rude things. It's not a pretty impulse, but it's there, so I just try and push the entire subject as far away from me as possible.

The other part of that is that, with my seventh novel coming out in 2005 and one of them sniffed at for a major award, I'm not quite so easy to dis (or disregard) on the issue. I also honestly don't care if people have problems with my wine tastes, or my reading tastes, or my art tastes or food tastes or any other form of taste.

I just don't have a lot of time for the sacred cow of culture (sorry, P-C, it's the old phrase), is all. People create things, or they don't create things. Other people react to the created things. The majority of people seem to enjoy doing that second option; I do it differently, and don't think my way is any less valid than anyone else's. Yes, I know, frighteningly arrogant. Such is life. But this is an old, old conversation, and I'm an idiot for jumping back into it.

And me out the door. Happy New Years, all.

Hil, I loved that.

leaving only the shadow tracings of her presence on the word.

Should that be world? (I honestly don't know, since both kind of work)

Thanks, everyone.

Should that be world? (I honestly don't know, since both kind of work)

No, I meant word. Lilith is only mentioned in Midrash and later commentaries; she's just kind of vaguely refered to in the written Torah.

erika, yours is extremely tight and powerful, with edgy humor and your unique voice, but for a wider audience than you usually write for. Extremely well done. And it looks great in print, too!

Hil, I loved yours. It does make me want to know more--and it could be about any two women and a man, at any point in history (okay, just typed hitstory--erika's rubbing off on me).

ita, yours, as always, is visceral and poky. As in, it pokes at me long after I've read it.

Ginger, yours--ow. Oh, ouch. Um. I remember your telling me about this. Somehow reading about it is worse.

The new websites are exciting. I can't wait to see more, of both.

Kristin is reading two of my early short stories. One was written when Jo was a newborn, the other in 1988 or thereabouts.

Share, please?

Thanks, Beverly. It'd have to be a wider audience, cause y'all are usually my audience. But that particular piece started with an audience of one.