James Romberger's response to Bloom

[Anonymous]

#554

As opposed to Malinowitz’s self-absorbed piece, I find Lynn Z. Bloom’s outwardly encompassing essay to be largely magnificent; her writing voice manages to be both accessably chatty and beautifully written at once. As a man, I’m greatly struck by her account of what goes on in a world I am not usually privy to: female private places, the pools, baths and showers where women socialize and communicate, excercise and share bodily cleansing rituals—places where she feels so safe that as she says, she will “tell people whose names I do not know things I have never told my own sister, fears, frustrations, secrets bubbling to the surface.” Within quite a short writing, Bloom imbeds a range of personal narratives and a wealth of information and insight.
However, for so much of the text, men are only rarely present and in supportive roles, as partners and caregivers. So it comes as a genuine shock to the reader when the author, who feels so assured and comfortable in these females-only pools and bathhouses, is abruptly, unexpectedly attacked and beaten by a male psychopath who has violated her world, and then it is greatly distressing that although the perp is caught, he is not prosecuted; there is no closure, no resolution. It is where the piece falls apart, because she attempts to go past this event and return to her previous tone, but I could barely read the remaining page and a half. While it may reflect her genuine experience of trying to return to as close to a normal state as possible, what I as a reader expect and perhaps need is for her to try to come to grips with that violence in some sort of analytical or cathartic way, if only for her to then logically be able to move on, more convincingly than she presents.

[Anonymous]

#566

Hi James – I experienced a similar break in the spell of reading Bloom’s piece. I wondered what her structural plan was when inserting that bead of experience amongst the others. How she introduces the jarring experience so calmly, “The locker room in the Stockholm hostel during another vacation was, however, of a different order,” and, like you said, how she moves past it, seems unconvincing in tone. I wonder if it was added afterwards, as if she thought her homogenous positive experiences in the private spaces of female locker rooms lacked variety or fullness of experience. Perhaps it’s an attempt to give further testament to what she wants to prove true about the locker room space, that “when any one of us arrives, we join in the dialogue; no matter who stays or goes, the conversation carries on” – as if even the contrast of a negative experience can’t detract from the welcoming feeling of the locker room for her. Still, I agree with you that my willingness to believe her voice is broken by then, and what follows feels a bit too forced and flowery to me.

[Author]

Posts