RIP Ellen Willis

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Longtime Village Voice writer.
Bad day for journalism :(
http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/powerplays/archives/003046.php

― timmy tannin (pompous), Thursday, 9 November 2006 21:30 (nineteen years ago)

RIP

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 9 November 2006 22:10 (nineteen years ago)

Author of one of the very best Velvet Underground essays (currently found in the Stranded anthology).

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 9 November 2006 22:23 (nineteen years ago)

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 9 November 2006 23:11 (nineteen years ago)

RIP

Another classic piece: Her essay on Janis Joplin from the Rolling Stone History of Rock

You can also get that great Velvets essay in The Velvet Underground Companion, which I have just found out is OOP.

― The Dusty Baker Selection (Charles McCain), Thursday, 9 November 2006 23:46 (nineteen years ago)

Willis was one of the very first pop critics, and the first to write about it full-time for The New Yorker. She wrote a number of crucial essays, like her John Wesley Harding review and the aforementioned Velvets chapter. Tremendously thoughtful and very readable writer always. Very sad. R.I.P.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Friday, 10 November 2006 01:13 (nineteen years ago)

― musically (musically), Friday, 10 November 2006 02:11 (nineteen years ago)

OH SHIT

Not only was she a pop/rock writer, but an old school radical feminist (one of the founders of the Redstockings, etc)

RIP

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Friday, 10 November 2006 02:54 (nineteen years ago)

RIP for her and kudos to you!

― Scorpion Tea (Dick Butkus), Friday, 10 November 2006 02:55 (nineteen years ago)

reading her in The New Yorker on Lou Reed, Bowie & Iggy Pop circa 1972 really opened my eyes -- and ears -- to a brave new world.

thank you and RIP.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Friday, 10 November 2006 11:51 (nineteen years ago)

Oh no! She actually named an essay collection (of not just rock stuff) "Beginning to See the Light." I'm so sorry to hear this -- and on the same day I read a "Talk of the Town" piece on a memorial for feminist leaders who'd died during the last year or so.

― From the Moon to Pluto Back Down to Earth (Rrrickey), Friday, 10 November 2006 12:09 (nineteen years ago)

"The white boys" -- that's pretty funny.

― From the Moon to Pluto Back Down to Earth (Rrrickey), Friday, 10 November 2006 12:12 (nineteen years ago)

41 yrs old. :-(((((( FUCK CANCER.

― Nathalie (stevie nixed), Friday, 10 November 2006 12:17 (nineteen years ago)

um, she was in her sixties, no?

― timmy tannin (pompous), Friday, 10 November 2006 15:22 (nineteen years ago)

Yes, born in 1941. RIP.

― nickn (nickn), Friday, 10 November 2006 17:59 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/arts/10willis.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Sunday, 12 November 2006 00:09 (nineteen years ago)

Hmm...the paragraph in that NYT article that starts "Though Ms. Willis liked to describe herself as an anti-authoritarian democratic socialist..." seems to "rhyme" a little with Willis' Wikipedia entry. (Wouldn't call it plagiarism, though.)

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 12 November 2006 02:07 (nineteen years ago)

In any case, this is really sad. It's yet another reminder of how a whole era of radicalism seems to be hurtling further and further away from us.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 12 November 2006 02:11 (nineteen years ago)

I noticed the other day that she did a essay about rock criticism for Commentary back in June 1970, well before it became a home for neocon douchebaggery. I should find it in a microfiche archive somewhere and maybe type it up for everyone.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 12 November 2006 02:15 (nineteen years ago)

ohh man, this bums me out -- i love her writing, the rock stuff and the feminist stuff. shit.

her "beginning" collection is still cheap for anyone who's not read it: http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-See-Light-Rock-Roll/dp/0819562556

don't know what else to say...

― yetimike (McGonigal), Monday, 13 November 2006 00:03 (nineteen years ago)

im ashamed i didnt know of her before

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Monday, 13 November 2006 02:48 (nineteen years ago)

why ashamed? you can't know everything ... and even though she was one of the best first wave rock critics, she was never one of the best known.

― yetimike (McGonigal), Monday, 13 November 2006 04:05 (nineteen years ago)

some of the pieces in beginning to see the light are great--aside from some of the music stuff, I think my favourite is her piece on Tom Wolfe, but I also liked the Chicago '68 piece, even if the prose isn't as elegant as it would later become--it's the way she constantly thinks every angle through that's so compelling (her stuff about cops, for instance--she's very probing into other people's attitudes about cops--radicals, especially--as well as her own). (I also get the feeling that pieces like this had a big impact on Christgau's writing, though I guess they were working in tandem, so it was probably a 2-way influence.)

The title piece from the book is interesting also, though it actually depressed me a little. In it, she starts to come to grips with punk, and that's all interesting, but then she finds more solace in a coffeehouse feminist singer named Ms. Clawdy--that's sort of interesting, too, but she leaves her feelings about punk kind of dangling at the end, and you can sense that she's losing interest in pop music entirely (not that she really says it in such a way). Anyway, that was my impression from the piece, and I think (though I don't know for sure) that from that point forward she only covered music intermittently, and when doing so it was to review something new by a '60s person (John Fogerty and Dylan are the two I'm aware of).

― s w00ds (sw00ds), Friday, 17 November 2006 14:34 (nineteen years ago)

anyway, I'd LOVE to see her New Yorker pieces compiled.

― s w00ds (sw00ds), Friday, 17 November 2006 14:35 (nineteen years ago)

funny you should say that -- after our luc sante essay collection is published in the spring, i intend to check in with her husband and see if he's into having yeti pubs do just such a book. of course, if someone else beats us to it, i'll be happy with that; the main thing is that such a book clearly needs to exist...

we're working on a number of projects where a third of the profits to to us, a third to the artist, and a third to a non-profit (otherwise we're punk rock split of course -- was thinking that might make sense here.)

― yetimike (McGonigal), Saturday, 18 November 2006 06:58 (nineteen years ago)

that sounds great--a potential book of Willis's new yorker reviews and an actual luc sante collection. excellent! (when's the sante coming out?)

― s w00ds (sw00ds), Sunday, 19 November 2006 20:54 (nineteen years ago)

sante book is spring '07 -- got delayed a bit but it's really really good stuff. i can't believe our first book is by him (!), but no one else had ever asked him to do such a thing before, or so i gather. greil's written a nice intro., and the cover keeps changing but the latest is a tasteful little clemente painting. i guess that's "classy"?

― yetimike (McGonigal), Thursday, 23 November 2006 08:41 (nineteen years ago)

four years pass...

anyone got the new collection of her music writing yet? looks good
http://www.upress.umn.edu/images/S11/9780816672837.big.gif

― tylerw, Tuesday, 10 May 2011 18:02 (fourteen years ago)

I will probably buy this--I always bow down to the first-generation folks. Weirdly enough, the one phrase I associate with Ellen Willis--more even than her Velvets Stranded essay--is a photo caption (which I assume she wrote) from her Janis Joplin piece in the big RS history: something about "infinite sadness."

― clemenza, Tuesday, 10 May 2011 18:24 (fourteen years ago)

four months pass...

Don't Think, Smile! is so prescient. I've been reading and making copious notes. I might allude to it in the politics thread soon.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 15 September 2011 12:02 (fourteen years ago)

She's been a big influence on me this last year. I'm working through No More Nice Girls this fall.

― Euler, Thursday, 15 September 2011 14:29 (fourteen years ago)

If you didn't see it, rockcritics.com had an interview with Willis's daughter a couple of months ago:

http://rockcritics.com/2011/07/05/rockcritics-podcast-interview-with-nona-willis-aronowitz/

― clemenza, Thursday, 15 September 2011 14:31 (fourteen years ago)

I posted a long essay on how Willis' ideas help us make sense of the problem confronting progressivism now. I'm struck by the congruence between Willis and Louis Brandeis, the great Supreme Court justice whom liberals don't discuss often enough. If anyone can direct me to anything Willis might have written about Brandeis, much obliged.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 15 September 2011 23:59 (fourteen years ago)

two years pass...

https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/irritated-critics

ouch

― j., Monday, 12 May 2014 22:57 (eleven years ago)

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