At the risk of sounding harsh, I was a little disturbed by Harriet Malinowitz’s essay, because she seemed to verge on stalking. First she sets herself up as an outsider in school who uses writing as a means of achieving social goals—all fine, good and understandable, although unfortunately her use of her talents to create more personalized card signings didn’t work as effectively as she hoped.
Then she expresses how she “internalized” Adrienne Rich, and then somehow miraculously came to be that author’s neighbor. Okay, that set off a few warning bells, as it smacks a little of sociopathy to want to “be” someone else and I begin to wonder if perhaps Rich sensed any of this; after all, she reserved judgment about Harriet except to say that she was “out there.”
But it was Harriet’s account of her online seduction of Kerryn that made for the most pointed discomfort—her strange and impersonal infidelity via email as she deliberately plans to abandon her current girlfriend Sara for someone she has not met in person, who she has no tangible idea of. Someone’s writing voice can be a calculated mask of sorts—quite different from their actual physical presence. A single book, a group of emails and a few phone calls can be deceptive in terms of judging someone’s totality. And so, one wonders what would have happened if at any step of the way Kerryn had tweaked to her true agenda, or if Sara had ever sussed out what Harriet was up to, typing as she was, so passionately, for so long.
