The Ballad Of The Nineties "Bad Girl." Lucinda Rosenfeld On Inappropriate Relationships, Literary Theory, And The Sublimity Of Cigarettes

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of five novels and has published essays and short stories in outlets such as The New Yorker, N+1, and The New York Times Book Review. She visits The Unspeakable this week to talk about "My Adventures In Deconstruction," her essay in the June 9, 2023 edition of The New Yorker. On the surface, the essay recounts a romantic relationship with a college professor 15 years her senior, back in 1990. But the essay goes much deeper than that, mapping the main story onto the landscape of the deconstructive criticism movement in literature, which posited that an author's intent doesn't matter and meaning itself is subjective. In this conversation, Lucinda talks about her the process of writing the essay, the 1990s-era trope of the "bad girl," and the complexity of power dynamics in relationships between very young women and older men. She and Meghan also wander into a surprising conversation about the role that cigarette smoking played in both of their lives when they were in their twenties. Speaking of which, Lucinda stays overtime for paying subscribers to talk about how she feels about being the age that she is, which happens to be the age that Meghan is!

To hear the bonus content, become a paying subscriber at meghandaum.substack.com.

Guest Bio:

Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of five novels, including What She Saw and, most recently, Class, which was named a Best Book of 2017 by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her fiction and essays have appeared in N+1, Harper's, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review.

Transcript

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0:00.0	There was a celebration of like, remember like the Madonna sex book and everything?
0:08.2	Like there was this idea that you could like have these fantasy, act out fantasies and have these performative relationships.
0:16.7	And that it was like the women were conquering too.
0:20.5	You know, that we were, it was our conquests as well,
0:23.0	and that we could have, it's not, you know, what I learned in life is that it's not very
0:29.4	realistic. I mean, I don't know who invented this idea.
0:35.4	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dow. Hope you had a good Fourth of July
0:41.5	holiday. I am back from the unspeak easy retreat in Austin, as well as an event in Dallas.
0:49.1	So before I introduce my guest, Lucinda Rosenfeld, I'm going to talk to you about a couple of things.
0:54.9	The first is that the event in Dallas, which took place on June 22nd, as part of the
1:01.5	forbidden courses session at the new University of Austin, that's the heterodox university,
1:08.3	that is not the University of Texas at Austin and was a panel discussion
1:13.0	with Sarah Heppola and Nancy Rommelman of the Smokam If You Got Em podcast is available for you
1:18.7	to listen to. It was moderated by Alana Redstone, who's been a guest on this podcast,
1:24.2	and you can hear it as an episode of Sm Em if you got him. That episode was released
1:29.7	on June 27th. This was a private event for students and it took place in Dallas, even though
1:35.8	it's the University of Austin, but it was recorded and you can check it out on Sarah and
1:41.2	Nancy's podcast if you haven't already. Let's see. What else? The second
1:46.1	thing is I am hereby announcing that I will be teaching a personal essay and memoir class on Zoom
1:53.6	this fall. You ask for it. You've kept asking for it, and I am giving it to you. It will be six
2:00.0	weeks long, starting on September 6th,
2:03.0	every Wednesday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time, 12 to 2 p.m. Pacific time. It will run September 6
	...

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