The erased questioner — silenced-feminine and the interrogated-male form
echoes
From: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (the title-story cycle)
- Early text:
[quote|scene] The form itself: the interviewer appears
only as "Q." — never quoted, her questions inferable only from the men's
replies; she is coded female and is what the men gaze at, resent, and abuse
("Judge me, you chilly cunt."; "You’ll turn this into Narcissistic Male
Wants Woman’s Gaze On Him At Climax, I know."). And the Granola Cruncher
herself: her rape-survival and focus theology reach the reader only through
the man's narration — the woman with the most extraordinary story never
speaks in her own voice.
- IJ echo: IJ's
silenced-feminine material — Joelle behind the veil,
Avril rendered largely through others' anxious accounts, the women narrated
by men. The BI cycle formalizes the silencing: the woman is literally
reduced to a typographic "Q." or to a man's paraphrase. It is the
structural exaggeration of the thing the IJ crux names.
- Weight: primary-exhibit (oeuvre-scoped)