tinyluckygenius

Before I encountered Joan Didion, I only ever envied the talents of tortured male writers, since that was the canon I was had been presented with, and at 22, I could at least identify with that tortured part. My young-years triumvirate was Tosches, Bangs, and Ginsberg, and I wanted nothing more than to be able to tear the world apart the way they did. Reading them made the world dissolve, but it also made me feel envious of their talents, their ability to articulate their deep lust for life. But those men—authors, poets, essayist, critics—lost me with their angry libidos, boyish neuroses, and forever-drunken hazes, and most of all with the ways they misunderstood women.