Comments on: Missing the Meat: a review of A Future for Tomorrow by Haley Hatch Freeman

By: Laura Craner

Laura Craner — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:04:05 +0000

Harlow–Thanks for the recommendation. Your story sounds interesting. . . I haven’t read a lot from the anorexic male’s point of view. Can’t wait to see it!

By: Harlow

Harlow — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:52:13 +0000

Laura,
If you haven’t already read it, you might find Susie Orbach’s Hunger Strike interesting. She’s a puh-see-a-key-a-trust (lo, the effect of watching Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethel so much in my childhood) who wrote a bestseller called Fat is a Feminist Issue. I picked Hunger Strike up once in the library and a passage about working through the rhythms of taking things in and out with her patients caught my eye, so when I saw a copy at DI or somewhere, I bought it. I haven’t read it yet and I’m not sure where my copy is.

I’ve been thinking a lot for several years about writing a novel or story about a male anorexic (we can’t let the poor Hunger Kunstler starve by himself). Orbach sees anorexia as a means of exercising control, striking back or out, or maybe out on your own.

For the character I’m mulling over hunger is a means of striking back at himself for not being a good provider. In a way he’s caught between competing images–Liz Taylor at the end of Taming of the Shrew lecturing Bianca about how her husband commits his body to painful labor for her, and that phrase, “I always wanted you to admire my fasting.”

They’re competing images because his ex-wife will never acknowledge his painful labor, partly because it never earned him enough to feed her children, and he can’t tell his now-wife that he wants her to admire his fasting.

And of course, my wife just said get to bed. Our son got home from the Homecoming dance an hour ago, so gud knyghte.

By: Karen Gowen

Karen Gowen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:38:42 +0000

Thanks for doing that Wm, I wanted to help but didn’t quite know how.

By: Wm Morris

Wm Morris — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:33:45 +0000

Here is the correct link for the 2010 Marilyn Brown Novel Award (link is to a downloadable PDF file)

By: Karen Gowen

Karen Gowen — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 06:10:17 +0000

I checked Marilyn’s link and is it my computer or did it go to my Vox blog spot?? I’m talking about what happened when I clicked on her name, very odd results when I saw my own name show up!

On the other topic, I am currently reading Freeman’s book and am finding the time changes not at all disconcerting. In fact, I see it as snapshots tossed together, not in any particular sequence, but all dealing with the same subject. So far it is working for me.

By: nosurfgirl

nosurfgirl — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:13:32 +0000

no, not selfish at all!

Just saying, it might not even be something conscious to her, pieces of her recovery process… maybe not something she could quite aknowledge.

I would want to know, too. And I would find it a little bit frustrating to read something like that and not have the “back issues” be a huge part of the recovery description.

By: Laura Craner

Laura Craner — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:34:19 +0000

Lisa–I’m so glad you commented! Next time I’LL have to write something that inspires you :)

By: Lisa Torcasso Downing

Lisa Torcasso Downing — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:44:17 +0000

And here is my first ever post on Motley vision.

I actually got a chuckle out of Marilyn’s drive-by.

By: Th.

Th. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:23:41 +0000

(Not to mention that the link’s bad.)

By: Luisa Perkins

Luisa Perkins — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:22:51 +0000

Th. and Laura, you’re kind to ask. My book is called Shannon’s Mirror. It has been out of print for many years, but used copies still show up sometimes on Amazon.

Laura, I’ll get back to you after I read the Freeman.