vestibulite vulvaire et littérature: les "intellectuels" n'aiment pas!

Réflexions acerbes, machistes, misogynes et insensées du critique littéraire Dan Schneider sur l'oeuvre de Susanna Kaysen "The camera my mother gave me".

Over the course of a few years, as she is menopausing, Kaysen finds that her vagina is constantly in pain from vestibulitis, as if ‘a little dentist drilling a little hole’, and she is forced by circumstance and her own stupidity, to go to series of incompetent doctors, herbalists, and biofeedbackists, that can do nothing to ease her pain. She refuses the treatment with the highest chance of success- an operation to remove the scar tissue, because she puts her faith in Internet claims, rather than her admittedly stolid doctor. (...)

(...) That Kaysen is so wise in describing these things after the fact but so stupid while living them- her choices in men, doctors, and refusing the obvious choice 99% of women would have made- is part of what makes for a good, light read, if not a mature life.

The book ends on this note:

‘Disease is one of our languages. Doctors understand what disease has to say about itself. It’s up to the person with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her.
My vagina keeps trying to get my attention. It has something important to say to me. I'm listening.
I’m still listening.’

It’s a bizarre ending, as well, because even though she’s written the whole book, she hasn’t learned a damn thing. It’s not about her vagina, or since passed sex life, it’s about how she can cope with herself, and understanding that the hysterical nature of her emotional ills, and over-emphasis on sex and her sexuality, were what probably first brought about her vaginal woes, in rebellion against her poor sexual choices in partners. In short, she spent far too much time listening to her vagina, and that’s why she has led such an unhappy life.

Ce n'est pas de la critique littéraire, mais la démolition systématique de sentis et d'émotions liés à une problématique de douleur inexplicable. Il ne commente pas l'oeuvre, mais il condamne les choix de l'auteur en invalidant sa souffrance. Je trouve ses commentaires injustifiés et déplorables, indignes d'un homme de qualité.

Que ce genre de bonhomme "lettré" ne traverse jamais mon chemin!