It’s always a fun exercise figuring out what Andrea Long Chu’s next subject will be. She tends to write about artists who have a particular set of fascinations they return to again and again, enough to justify a longform piece of criticism. She couldn’t have found a better subject than Rachel Cusk, on the occasion of her latest novel, Parade. Over the years, the author has repeatedly asked the same question: Can women make art? This is, in Andrea’s view, a false question, but Cusk seems haunted by it, returning to it in an attempt to define what a truly “female” art might look like — one that is rooted in what she views as “eternal and unvarying.” Or in other words, motherhood. This obsession has made her “the paranoid custodian of an idiosyncratic gender fundamentalism,” Andrea writes. “Men must be men; women must be women.” |
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