Oh yeah, the last paragraph will bring out all the “JOOOOOOO!!!!”-haters…
While I never acquired Gurley Brown’s nigh-on industrious sexual fluency (she was a veritable Whore-atio Alger), I recognize other striving proles at a great distance, and reflexively cheer them on.
Ozark-born and acned, flat-chested and fatherless, Brown never stopped calling herself a “mouseburger” and a “hillbilly.” Ambitious individuals of limited means often use such exaggerations to spur themselves to success, the way athletes use steroids. In HGB’s case, the plain-Jane “bole” wasn’t that “hyper”: One biography is bluntly titled Not Pretty Enough
; another, Enter Helen
—my husband glanced at the cover and said, “No, thanks.”
