Katha Pollitt Gets Personal

Though she is a self-proclaimed feminist, Katha Pollitt’s latest work defies easy stereotype. The biographical essays in “Learning to Drive” touch on a variety of unexpected subjects, including the melodramatics of break-ups and cheating boyfriends.

“The book is pieces of my life, my thoughts. As with everything I write, I hope to make a connection,” says Pollitt, who appeared at the Harvard Book Store on Monday. Pollitt hopes to reach out not only to her female readers, but also to men who might be less familiar with her work.

But Pollitt also accepts that her outspoken feminism has caused some, including The New York Times, to respond less than enthusiastically.

“The discussion about the book is more about me, not about the book. I think people are responding to who wrote the book. That is not how you read a book. You read a book by looking at the words on the page, how they fit together, and what they mean,” she says. “It is shocking to me that it is controversial. My intention was to write about my own experience, that being both comical and sad.”

Particularly sad—and particularly difficult for Pollitt to write—was an essay on her mother and her father. For Pollitt, forcing people to realize that she has a sometimes-difficult inner life has proved to be the most interesting aspect of this book’s publication.

Despite her status as a well-known feminist, Pollitt refrained from conveying a message about the current state of feminism through the book. “Learning to Drive,” she says, is about sharing her life experience openly.

“We think that because we live in an age of comparative sexual frankness, we live in an age of openness,” she says. “It is not true. When it comes to living our lives, we are not open at all. There is contradiction and division.”

Pollitt believes that modern pop culture contributes to this reticence.

“We are living in a visual culture, a commercialized, sexual culture,” she says. “We are living at a time where people feel like they have to put their best face forward.”

One part of that culture—the push for physical perfection through artificial means such as tanning and plastic surgery—is, Pollitt says, a waste of time.

“You might as well be smoking and getting some pleasure out of it,” she says.

For Pollitt, the movement towards physical perfection is connected to our current capitalist moment. “The pressure to be 24/7 hot is very intense and very stressful,” she says. “There is a premium for perfection and no one is perfect.” Even though feminism isn’t an explicit theme of “Learning to Drive,” Pollitt defends the word.

“If you ask a non-feminist what they stand for, it will turn out that they believe all the things a feminist believes in. And yet, this word has been successfully demonized,” Pollitt says.

“I think people should not be afraid of the word. It is not a bad word.”