Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World

Exhaustively researched and knowledgeably sifted, Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World is an incisively engaging work that exhilarates the mind while also extending beyound the mere bland categorization of 'biography' and 'women's studies,' for it stretches quite easily into other academic dimensions: sociology, psychology, history and economics; it is a work that is more than what it is promoted to be. Pierpont's succinct yet smooth academic prose is honed and streamlined; excess language and descriptive clutter is cast aside, and only the germane pith, the be-all and end-all, is critically dissected. Writing is a soul-searching craft-that more often than not-offers an intellectual and spiritual cartharsis. It is a powerful talent (one of many) by which many positive changes can be enacted, for when asked why they do what they do, writers, broadly speaking, would never hesitate to say, "The pen is mightier than the sword." The twelve writers, authors in Passionate Minds would have used the above-in varying degrees-as a life philosophy. From Hannah Arendt and Ayn Rand to Olive Schreiner and Marina Tsvetaeva, the lives profiled were not of simple women who 'slothfully' mused over global issues and then did nothing about them. The concerns, though mostly relegated to a specific gender, nonetheless, addressed all of humanity. Economic equality and intellectual stimulation, rather than artistic expression, would be at the top of the pyramid in this case. The broader essence of the book is how a person or persons broaches a subject that is of pressing concern to him or herself. What tools could and can be used to rectify specific areas that have long ago been ignored or deemed too weighty in intensity to even approach? In Ayn Rand's case, could it be done through collectivism or individualism? For Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy especially, collectivism would tower, the two probably being the modernized propellant of the literati activist, now being emulated. But the one thing that linked all these women was the printed word, printed utterances that came in the form of essays, novels, plays, journalism, poetry. These were the weapons of transformation (see Mae West, Doris Lessing, Anais Nin), racial exploration (see Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Mitchell) and onward. What is remarkable about these lives is that they either rose from abject poverty and anguish or dived headlong into it in order to write, to do something that had a greater and profound good that was not yet visible to the masses: "I write for thee/I suffer privately/ And glory comes when I am gone..." These writers had battle scars from sacrifice. And the improvement is so little.

Thank God for collections----I missed some of these pieces upon their first appearence in The New Yorker, and they're all fascinating and well written. Pierpont combines the skills of essayist, biographer/profiler, and critic with assurance and wit. It's hard to praise this book too highly. Here's hoping she comes out with another collection in this vein before too long.

I read all these pieces when they first appeared, and couldn't wait to read them all again. All are revised, and several are expanded significantly. Pierpont has a way of combining "life," "works" and "social context" so that they all speak effortlessly of one another. If all critics had her perceptiveness, sympathy and wit, arguments would never have sprung up about what is and isn't relevant to the appreciation of a writer; she makes it all completely natural, while at the same time telling you things you never thought of for yourself.

What a pleasure to read essays of such distinction! C. R. Pierpont deftly weaves history and biography into her literary judgments and the results are always fascinating and fresh. I couldn't put this book down; more importantly, it sent me running to the authors she studies. (Well, most of the authors; nothing could ever make me slog through Ayn Rand.) Each essay is a jewel of taste, style, and balance. I can't recommend this book highly enough and am sending copies to all my friends!

Rivals Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae in breadth and ambition, and surpasses it in elegance. A book that will be read and re-read. Six stars out of five.