This edition first published in 2014 by Conari Press,
an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
With offices at:
665 Third Street, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA 94107
Copyright © 1993, 1996 by Autumn Stephens
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.
ISBN: 978-1-57324-638-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available on request.
Interior by Kathryn Sky-Peck
Typeset in Caxton
Interior illustrations © 2014 iStock.com
Printed in the United States of America.
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Contents
Political Animas & Public Enemies
Libidinous Lingo & Tart Retorts
Conjugal Confessions & Solitary Digressions
Can We Talk?
Once we loved Barbie, the dishy doll with the missile-shaped bosoms and the pouty, slightly parted plastic lips. Unfortunately, little Miss Implant didn't have much to say for herself: she was too busy trying on all those cunning size ½ costumes (though I think she did occasionally emit a coy giggle when Ken tried to get cuddly).
Then came Chatty Cathy, flagrantly flat-chested and corporeally quite charmless—but oh, how that baby could babble! We pulled her string and pulled her string, until one sad day her motor-mouth simply sputtered and died, never again to blurt out those startling, solipsistic demands for juice or a journey to the zoo.
Finally, we fell for Madonna, a self-proclaimed boy-toy (though obviously she liked girls just fine too) who proved that you could have mammary glands and a jaw that opens all the way. “Listen,” she said, “everyone is entitled to my opinion.” And just in case we didn't think her smile was smug enough already, she wrapped it around a Coke bottle to prove her point.
This book is for Andrea's daughter, and Margaret's, and all the other little Madonna-ettes who will, I hope, grow up knowing how to do more with their breasts than beat them, and more with their mouths than paint them stop-sign red.
Garrulous Goddesses
I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.
I can throw a fit, I'm a master at it.
—Madonna, chameleonesque queen of chutzpah.
The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.
The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.
Success didn't spoil me; I've always been insufferable.
—Satirist Fran Lebowitz, an inspiration to every sarcastic smart-ass who ever got herself booted out of high school.
Besides Shakespeare and me, who do you think there is?
It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
The Jews have produced only three originative geniuses: Christ, Spinoza, and myself.
—Writer Gertrude Stein, who loomed large in the avant-garde circles of her day, and larger still in the privacy of her own mind.
Just being in a room with myself is almost more stimulation than I can bear.
—Kate Braverman, agitated author of the cult classic Lithium for Medea.
I would live in a communist country providing I was the Queen.
—Stella Adler, Methodic mentor to big screen kings Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty, and Robert De Niro.
(“If she were a character in a Greek play,” one interviewer concluded, “her flaw would be hubris.”)
I have a horror of death; the dead are so soon forgotten. But when I die, they'll have to remember me.
—Emily Dickinson, a poet far too singular to slip anybody's mind.
I now know all the people worth knowing in America and I find no intellect comparable to my own.
—Margaret Fuller. The brilliant Bostonian who wrote Woman in the Nineteenth Century was a shocking exhibitionist when it came to her brain.
The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.
—Prolific poet/prosaist May Sarton, a major menace to society.
I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.
If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
—Alice Roosevelt Longworth, one of America's nastiest national institutions.