Henry Miller, Genet, Sade, Bataille are really important…
““Henry Miller, Genet, Sade, Bataille are really important writers for me and I love them, but I feel often they don’t love me, you know? I feel I always have to wrap my head around the way the girl is treated in the works, and the way the woman writer has been treated within their philosophies. I think of Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School, where Janey Smith is in an S&M relationship with Jean Genet, who she follows around the deserts of Algeria, and he’s horrible to her, and that’s what I think of when I think of my relationship to those writers. I think you have to read the text, obviously, despite that. You seem to be subverting Sade and Bataille’s ideas of the whore, and Henry Miller – all of his cunt portraits, all of his horrors that he writes about – you’re writing about it from an interiority and a subjectivity that we don’t typically get with the ‘whore’ or the ‘slut’ or the sexual girl.””
About This Quote
This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation.
She feels marginalized by male writers and reinterprets their erotic narratives from a female perspective.
In simple terms: She rewrites male‑dominated texts as a woman.
Key Takeaway
Reclaim narrative voice.
Themes
gender
literature
revisionism
Mood
reflective
critical
Type
literary
theoretical
When to use this quote
- academic analysis
- creative writing
- literary criticism
Key Concepts
feminist critique
subjectivity
intertextuality
Questions to Reflect On
- How does gender shape literary authority?
- Can subversion change canonical meanings?
A Different Perspective
Reinterpretation may be seen as hostile.