Dorothy Allison

Let me just preface this by saying that I don't usually care for the philosophical musings of militant lesbians.

Rosie O'Donnell can take a flying leap as far as I'm concerned.

But, I happened to catch a taped interview with the author Dorothy Allison this evening.

You know, she's the feminista who wrote, "Bastard out of Carolina."

Love that title, and that's about all I can say nice about the book.

Anyway, Mr. . . er . . . uh . . . I mean Ms. Allison did make an interesting statement about family tales. In her opinion, they spring from three primary motivations: to explain, to shame, or to comfort.

Interesting.

I'd like to add "to inspire" to that list. But, maybe that's just because I have more inspirational characters in my family's background than Allison does.

Or, maybe, she's just a Negative Nelly.

Ah, well, fodder for more musing, I suppose. We writers are much given to such . . .