For those of you that haven't or couldn't attend book club lately, we'll be publishing the previous months' discussion questions here. I hope eventually to post discussion questions for all of the books we've covered since I took over a couple of years ago and beyond, all the way to the beginning over a decade and a half ago. It will take a while. Until then, we will be posting discussion questions on a weekly basis. Here are the questions from a 2019 title, Sharp. We hope these questions spark discussions of your own.
Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion
by Michelle Dean
Summary:
The ten brilliant women who are the focus of Sharp came from different backgrounds and had vastly divergent political and artistic opinions. But they all made a significant contribution to the cultural and intellectual history of America and ultimately changed the course of the twentieth century, in spite of the men who often undervalued or dismissed their work.
These ten women―Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler, and Janet Malcolm―are united by what Dean calls “sharpness,” the ability to cut to the quick with precision of thought and wit. Sharp is a vibrant depiction of the intellectual beau monde of twentieth-century New York, where gossip-filled parties at night gave out to literary slugging-matches in the pages of the Partisan Review or the New York Review of Books. It is also a passionate portrayal of how these women asserted themselves through their writing in a climate where women were treated with extreme condescension by the male-dominated cultural establishment.
Mixing biography, literary criticism, and cultural history, Sharp is a celebration of this group of extraordinary women, an engaging introduction to their works, and a testament to how anyone who feels powerless can claim the mantle of writer, and, perhaps, change the world.
Discussion Questions
What does Michelle Dean mean by referring to the women in her book as “sharp?”
Do you believe it means something different between genders? Is this a good or a bad thing?
The women in Sharp defied female expectations in the 20th century and indeed refused to be defined by their gender. How much, if at all, do you think cultural expectations for female behavior have changed in the early 21st century? How much stock do you think people place in those expectations?
Of the 10 writers, are there any you are more familiar with or whose works you’ve read?
Which profile did you find most engaging? Are there any that you would have liked to meet? Have you met any of them?
What are some of the issues that brought some of these women together? What drove them apart?
Are there any writers you believe should have been included but weren’t? Any you believe didn’t fit in with the others?
Some writers were mentioned only in passing such as Virginia Woolf, Camille Paglia, or the cameo appearance of Zora Neale Hurston. Would the book have been more fulfilling if these authors had been given a more starring role?
Several of the authors (esp. Joan Didion and Hannah Arendt) in the book have stated that they did not support feminism. Why do you think that is?
Do you think their interpretation of what feminism is or was was accurate? Why or why not?
How does Dean describe the milieu of the 20th century intellectual life with its cocktail parties and political and literary warfare? Do we have anything similar today?
All of the authors listed were, at least at some point in their carrier, movie and/or book critics. I think it is our turn to be critics. What was good? What was bad? And, foremost, how would you rate this book?