Reviews for The life and work of Mary O'Hara

The average rating for The life and work of Mary O'Hara based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-08-22 00:00:00 Kari Nord I found this really uneven. Some of Carolyn Heilbrun's writing resonates with me and makes me think. Some of it seems decades out of touch with the times, which might just reflect the difference in our ages. And, some of it isn't Heilbrun's writing. She relies heavily here on quotes and passages from others, and after a point it seems like padding. She hasn't quite shed the habits of an academic, either. She comes off as pedantic and disengaged, not a good dynamic in a memoir. "I entered into a period of freedom, and only past sixty learned in what freedom consists: to live without a constant, unnoticed stream of anger and resentment, without the daily contemplation of power always in the hands of the least worthy, the least imaginative, the least generous." "I found that habit, even beautiful and generous habit, even professional or marital habit, could become a killing monster, and could be defeated, after careful analysis, by the daring of abandonment." "What one remembers is, I think, a clue to what one wants to be." "This revelation is mostly due to my not caring anymore what most men think. I started to stop caring once I had turned fifty, but it took me into my sixties to get this new faculty under my belt. ... The revelation that all the troubles women found themselves in with regard to men were part of the general tendencies of men everywhere, and in all cultures had escaped me until now. ... And so in my sixties I realized that I might just as well admit that pleasing oneself is the best way: suit yourself -- then at least one person will be happy." "The only possible defense I can offer is that the patriarchy, millenniums old, has endowed males with a sense of entitlement, of being the preferred sex, of having been promised at birth opportunities for dominance, aggression and patronage, which they are able to change, even as individuals, far more slowly than those who have never been at the top of every known social hierarchy." "My sixties covered a period of pronounced meanness in the United States and in the world, meanness arising from a sense of righteousness and the need to punish, preferable with violence, those who do not share one's beliefs. For the first time in my life I became fearful of institutionalized religion. ... The constant pelting of my consciousness by institutionalized arrogance, revenge, intolerance and unkindness has often reduced me to a sense of helplessness which leads, in turn, to sadness."

Review # 2 was written on 2012-08-03 00:00:00 Trevor Bates I finally finished this -- a book I started probably 7 years ago -- before the author suicided at age 77. That fact makes an interesting backdrop to the book, because she talks about her initial decision to suicide at 70, and that she postponed that when she got to that age. I love the way she talks about the work we need to address as we get older and are "retired." It's a challenge to the way I've been dawdling. She's pretty cranky at times, and I was disturbed a bit by her portrait of her good friend, Mae Sarton (already deceased). It seemed like a betrayal to me, like she was working out the anger she felt during their relationship. A committed feminist, she was also committed to positive relationships with men and refused to stereotype them. Except, she did come up with one observation that she found to be true of pretty much every man she knew. They didn't believe they had an unconscious. LOL!