She was a misfit all her life. Throughout the years she saw herself standing on the street with her nose pressed against the bakery window: hungry and shut out. No matter what happened, she felt marginal. Not belonging became her identity, and then her subject. After she began to write, it was her necessity. In Red Ribbon on a White Horse the relief she feels at finding herself poor again in the Thirties is palpable. She had this in common with other talented neurotics-Jack Kerouac, George Gissing, Jean Rhys-who also managed to keep themselves poverty-stricken and socially outcast, for very much the same reason...She is one of the great refuse-niks of the world. She refuses to accept life's meanness and littleness. She refuses to accommodate herself to loneliness of the spirit. She refuses to curb emotional ambition. She's an immigrant? She's a woman? Her hunger is voracious? intrusive? exhausting? Still she refuses. And on a big scale. We cannot turn away from her. Obsessing as grandly as the Ancient Mariner, her words continue, even now seventy years after they were written, to grab us by the collar. They shake and demand, compel, and remind. Attention must be paid. "I want to make from myself a person!" The performance is astonishing.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "She was a misfit all her life. Throughout the years she saw herself standing on the street with her nose pressed against the bakery window: hungry and shut out. No matter what happened, she felt marginal. Not belonging became her identity, and then her subject. After she began to write, it was her necessity. In Red Ribbon on a White Horse the relief she feels at finding herself poor again in the Thirties is palpable. She had this in common with other talented neurotics-Jack Kerouac, George Gissing, Jean Rhys-who also managed to keep themselves poverty-stricken and socially outcast, for very much the same reason...She is one of the great refuse-niks of the world. She refuses to accept life's meanness and littleness. She refuses to accommodate herself to loneliness of the spirit. She refuses to curb emotional ambition. She's an immigrant? She's a woman? Her hunger is voracious? intrusive? exhausting? Still she refuses. And on a big scale. We cannot turn away from her. Obsessing as grandly as the Ancient Mariner, her words continue, even now seventy years after they were written, to grab us by the collar. They shake and demand, compel, and remind. Attention must be paid. "I want to make from myself a person!" The performance is astonishing." in the context of "Vivian Gornick Introduction to How I found America (1991)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.