Claire Vaye Watkins puts a different perspective on “Pandering”.

My blog about pandering could be titled with the same name as that popular song, “Lie To Me”. That seems to be what a lot of Americans want today. But while I was researching for that blog, I discovered a writer with a unique perspective on pandering. Back in 2015, she wrote an essay “On Pandering” that was published in a tiny art-literature quarterly. In that essay, she stomps all over herself by accusing herself of only pandering to men in her writing career. Well … that, and a whole lotta other ranting. In my previous blog, I made the claim that pandering works in America today. It worked for Watkins! From a tiny liberal arts college in the middle of Pennsylvania, according to Wikipedia …

Watkins is currently a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, where she teaches creative writing. She is also on faculty at Bennington Writing Seminars, the M.F.A. program at Bennington College. Previously, she has taught as a visiting assistant professor at Princeton University, an assistant professor at Bucknell University, and an assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program.

Pretty good for a girl from Pahrump, Nevada! And, trust me, outstanding scholarship is not what Pahrump is known for.

In one section, Watkins describes an incident where she plays host to another writer who is in town for a literary reading. (Male. … In stories like this, that needs to be specified.) He wants to sleep with her. She said no. Even that event from On Pandering is memorialized in Wikipedia. Oh, that all of our decade old unsuccessful attempts at debauchery could be so celebrated!

But the main thing I got out of On Pandering was confusion. Watkins zings and zangs, name dropping literary luminaries like Goldilocks scattering bread crumbs and reversing herself like a wild mouse. I became convinced that she must be a member of my religion: The Church of I Don’t Know.

Her article, On Pandering, is a mess of recriminations, accusations, and revelations. And, I gotta tell ya, it’s a great read. Watkins knows which words to use and where to use them. It’s magnificent. I said to myself, “Why can’t I write like that?”