![]() At the core of her humor is the perception of incongruity, absurdity. ![]() Her short piece "Useful Phrases for the Tourist" is a stand-up comic routine. The Female Man, is studded with jokes, vaudeville routines, addresses to the reader, instructive vignettes, catalogues. This is not to suggest that the novels are, in fact, improvisations, for they are put together intricately in all their parts.Īnother characteristic of Russ's style is the combination of serious, even dark concerns with wit. Sometimes she uses a jazzy style that gives a feeling of clever and controlled improvisation. She has the habit of starting in medias res and in a place and time the reader will simply have to deduce, whether we are on earth or elsewhere and what essentially is going on among all these articulate people. She is a master of pacing and often eliminates intermediate steps and decisions. Russ gives a sense of speed in her narration. She has started frequent controversies with her criticism, partly because of her habit of saying what others may think but will not dare publish. Her critical essays are often witty and savage. Appreciating the quality of outraged, clear-sighted pained intelligence at once incandescent and exacerbated, is one of the major experiences in reading her work. If she resembles another writer, it is Swift: she is as angry, as disgusted, as playful, as often didactic, as airy at times and at times as crude, as intellectual. One advantage of working in a genre is that the plot must move along, and that discipline keeps Russ's springy intelligence anchored. Other concerns that run through the body of her work include survival, alienation, loneliness, community, violence, sex roles, the nature of oppression both external and internal, the necessity and the nature of further civilization and what is gained and what is lost by its progress. Russ's underlying theme in all these works is empowerment: empowerment and powerlessness aggression and negation. She has written in the genre of thematically related tales along the lines of Mary McCarthy's The Company She Keeps and John Horne Burns's The Gallery (Extra People) she has written a fantasy, verging on lush fairy tale ( Kittatinny: A Tale of Magic) she has written a closely reasoned and scholarly book, How to Suppress Women's Writing, and the very personal, peppery, and opinionated essays of Magical Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays. She has written a number of novels that fall under the rubric of speculative fiction she has written brilliant short stories she has written what is called mainstream fiction ( On Strike Against God). The work of Joanna Russ is thematically unified and formally, generically, and stylistically diverse. Agent: Ellen Levine Literary Agency, 432 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10016. Henry award, 1977 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, 1974 Hugo award, 1983 Locus award, 1983 Science Fiction Chronicle award, 1983. Also essayist for Science-Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, The Village Voice, Ms., and others. Occasional book reviewer, Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1966-79, The Village Voice, The Washington Post Book World, The Feminist Review of Books, and others. Associate professor, 1977-84, and professor of English, 1984-94, University of Washington, Seattle. Career: Lecturer in Speech, Queensborough Community College, New York, 1966-67 instructor, 1967-70, and assistant professor of English, 1970-72, Cornell University assistant professor of English, State University of New York, Binghamton, 1972-73, 1974-75, and University of Colorado, Boulder, 1975-77. ![]() 1957 Yale University School of Drama, New Haven, Connecticut, M.F.A. ![]() Education: Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, B.A. ![]()
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