Obscene Gestures for Women

by Janet Kauffman

Fifteen short stories chronicle the struggles of proud, indomitable women to preserve their humanity and dignity in the face of ceaseless erosion of moral stability

Genres: Short Stories, Feminism, Fiction

109 pages, Hardcover

First published September 9, 1989

About the author

Janet Kauffman was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and raised on a tobacco farm. She teaches at Eastern Michigan University.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fifteen stories, some extremely short, combined to clock-in at less than 100 pages. The writing is beautiful - Kauffman clips sentences together like the furrowed rows in the rural places the stories are set. Some pieces are too short to ever take hold; others are glorious in their understated terse language.

My copy of this book is an advanced copy, uncorrected proof purchased from John Barth's estate sale last year. It has that sun-damaged, long shelf wear that I love, the cover is bespeckled like the freckles that come from too much UVA exposure. The page numbers are hand written - did Barth do those? - but the cover and spine feel fresh and unsullied. I might be the first person to read this copy. I hope I am not the last person to read this collection - Kauffman has proven to me that she has the goods, an author with the skill of Jane Smiley for telling the stories of the American farm belt.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure why I bought OBSCENE GESTURES FOR WOMEN. Maybe it’s the title, which is great, but more likely it’s the cover. It’s one of the later in the Vintage Contemporary line. That imprint's designs capture the graphic and literary style of the 1980s, nothing I love, but when I find one of their distinctive covers in a used book store, I buy it. I usually like it too, if I read it.

I read Janet Kauffman’s second collection of short stories because it was short, just over 100 pages, and I wasn’t ready for a long commitment. Each piece is a gem, polished and hard, at least for me. It was like reading poetry, again for me (and for the writing, too, I think, as she’s also a poet), as I give up trying to “get it” and allow the myself to experience it.

That’s sort of a cop out, right? I’ll admit it. Sometimes I read before bed and the words swim off the page and settle in my semi-consciousness, where they're highly edited by encroaching dreams. Not necessarily a bad way to approach literature, but not really giving the work its due.

Even if I was sometimes lost in my own laziness, I never felt abandoned by the author, whose talent sews a tapestry of words with meaning that met me on an inarticulate plane. My problem is the moment I start something, I want to finish it and move on to the next thing. But with Kaufmann, or any writing worth the effort, it’s best to take my time.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like other reviewers, I agree that this collection is imperfect, yet I insist that there are enough gems here that merit a thoughtful careful read. The opening story, "Women Over Bay City" is a flash piece that emulates Daphne du Maurier's "The Birds" but transforms the narrative into a more implicitly feminist story where women flock as birds and terrify a singular male figure. The subsequent stories, "Machinery" and "Obscene Gestures for Women," while not necessarily slipstream stories (both could be read as realism, though I personally read "Machinery" as slipstream), these stories center on female characters with stories that challenge the quotidian of late 20th century Midwestern life. The POV in "Machinery" relays a story that reflects on the role of machinery in human lives and how this role comes into conflict with the humanities whereas "Obscene Gestures for Women" satirizes the impact patriarchal expectations of gender have on women by leading up to the ultimate obscene gesture in the story's context- a woman's closed fist. The stories that follow these three may oscillate in quality, yet for anyone interested in rural fiction and late 20th-century feminist fiction, this collection is worth reading for its high points.

[Riley Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked some of the short stories, others didn’t do it for me. I have mixed feelings about short story collections in general, so that’s part of it. I found this book in my house with a bunch of books that my mom read in high school and college. It seems so obvious that we grew up in different waves of feminism. That is fascinating to me, but the stories themselves weren’t necessarily awe-inspiring.

[Thomas McDade · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Inventive, deft, and well-aimed. Kauffman is a skilled and perceptive storyteller."
-- Washington Post Book World

Title story and "How Sunlight Figures In" best for me.

[Jessie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars as a whole since some stories come through too chiseled for me, too spare, but several individual stories get 5 stars; I learn from the spareness here, all the things JK can leave unsaid; the stories are lyrically muscular, the characters (mostly women) strange and wonderful; JK lives in Michigan and gives real life to the machinery of the Midwest farmer, the language of tractors and combines and velvetleaf (esp in the story “Machinery”).

Here’s a good sampling of her prose, so windy & devilish, from “In the Discorruption of Flesh”:

“Brethren in church washed feet, he says, in the discorruption, devotion of disciples. Men took off their socks. Women took off anklets. It was plain from the start that stockings and then later, so much later, panty hose, white in the spring and smoke in the fall, would not slip easily into the ritual, would not contribute to discorruption, until much later, in autumn, someone would wind them off, they would be smoke, and wash the feet carefully, even between the toes, and then hold the toes, still wet, to his mouth.” (108)

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult to review a short story collection, because not every story in here's a gem, so my rating's splitting the difference. Some just didn't hold my attention (like "Anton's Album"--loved the structure and idea behind it, but the pieces didn't add up to compelling writing for me). I did really enjoy a lot of these, though, especially "Machinery," "Obscene Gestures for Women," and "The Easter we Lived in Detroit" ("The dark, which is like a shelter around each person, is a lovely thing to see, once you see it.").

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

fifteen short (sometimes very short) stories about... well... women.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Struck me like Noy Holland, Amy Hempel, Lorrie Moore all together, but with more tendency toward the technical. Lovely.