Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions by Regina Barreca Read Free Book Online

shaped by skewed informationas Jon Savage says, "the question of authorship bedevils the whole story of punk" (p. 12). Malcolm McLaren, punk's patriarch, himself performed, Savage suggests, a "shifting, constant parade of mythologizing, selective perception and acute self analysis" (p. 12). History was, it seems, constantly rewritten "according to the demands of [the] current project'' (p. 12). The distinction between "fact" and "fiction" collapses for the punk since, says Andrew Loog Oldham, "If you lie enough ... it becomes a reality" (Savage, p. 12).
In Weldon's performance of her self, there is a similar delight in "skew-

 

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ing." As Giles Gordon, her agent, suggests, the biographical facts "do not add up" ( Bookshelf ). Problems in addition are caused, largely, by Weldon herself, who says, on the one hand, that her "age is printed for all to see on the birthday list," and then, on the other, that ''it varies depending on who I talk to" (Briscoe). In a blink, Weldon will shift from one identity to the nextwhen asked if she is really as calm and confident as she appears, she says, "Well, yes. I amuntil I'm not" (Bovey). Perhaps the most striking and biographically-boggling example of Weldon's reshaping comes when she talks about filling up the boxes that constitute her "archives" and which have already been purchased by an American university. "I cheat," she says in "Outing the Dead." In the boxes, she puts "letters to and from the great and possibly famous, and assignations with themsome of them are real and some are forgeries and some of them I just make up to entertain myself." Of course, this information about disinformation may also be "made up"all that is certain is that nothing is certain. We must, it seems, be like "Mad Doll" in Female Friends and simply cease "to trust information" (p. 96).
Expertise: "Be Terrible Too"
Also characteristic of the punk is his/her rejection of "expertise" and the reverence accorded the "expert." For Guy Debord, the expert only serves to guarantee that the spectacle continues unabated"when individuals lose the ability to see things for themselves," he says, "the expert is there to offer absolute reassurance" (p. 62). In the punk band itself, there is often an absolute and clearly audible antiprofessionalism. After seeing the Sex Pistols in 1975, Bernard Sumner of Joy Division evidently heard the callhe says that he "wanted to get up and be terrible too" (Marcus, p. 7). Punk seems to be a public access identityas Greil Marcus says, "A nobody like Johnny Rotten could be heard because the voice was available to anyone with the nerve to use it" (p. 2). The "voice" is available because it requires no trainingthe period between deciding to play an instrument and "having the nerve and confidence to form a group and play in public," is, according to Simon Frith, "remarkably short" (p. 175).
It is Weldon's ability to "play in public" without expertise that, in part, identifies her with the punk. Her rejection of expertise takes several forms. Most obviously, she challenges the monopoly of experts when it comes to stating expert opinions; she takes it upon herself to make "inexpert" pronouncementsshe realizes that her "opinions are just as good as anyone else's" ( Bookshelf ). One of her delights in writing novels, she claims, is that she can write what she wants "without having to do research" (Mile).

 

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And despite not "doing research," Weldon does not hesitate in giving opinions on science"Science, in fact, renders us mortal, unimportant, and helpless" ( Bookshelf )the education system"it teaches us" to merely "reproduce what is in the teacher's mind'' (Mile)linguistics"the response to language is without gender"and feminist academics"they're the only philosophers we have left" (Mile).
As well as promoting a model of "every woman her own expert" and so despecializing "specialized" knowledge, Weldon also refuses, perhaps perversely, to be set up as an "expert" by others.