Emily Gould (l.) and Ruth Curry (r.) recently started a boutique online bookstore, Emily Books, with a single title, an electronic edition of Ellen Willis's 1992 essay collection No More Nice Girls. Last Saturday night, they commemorated their launch with the first in a series of book club meetings that will be held at WORD in Brooklyn, N.Y. Using a battered paperback in lieu of a "talking stick," nearly 20 participants spent an hour and a half enthusiastically debating the ongoing relevance of Willis's blend of autobiographical confession and cultural criticism to the contemporary feminist movement.
"This woman had it down," said Tiger Beatdown blogger Sady Doyle (center). "She was speaking about things that would influence the ways women spoke about their lives for generations." Doyle cited "Escape from New York," one of the essays in the collection, as a particularly strong example of how Willis could shift from "achingly human" personal experiences to larger political and cultural points without ever falling into the trap of conflating the two or pretending to offer a universal theory of feminism.
After the discussion, Gould announced that the next Emily Books offering would be revealed at the beginning of November, with additional books to follow on a monthly basis. She added that about 60 to 70 customers had already signed up for a one-year subscription for whatever titles she and Curry selected. --Ron Hogan