I was terribly saddened to learn on Friday of the death of the great writer and thinker Ellen Willis. Back in the Dark Ages when I was an impressionable preteen and early teen and already beginning to compose entire record reviews in my head in rock-crit-ese, there were precious few women writing about rock. And of the few who were around, none could touch the lucidity and originality of Ellen Willis. It would be hard for me to overstate the impact she had on me back then, and throughout my teens and twenties. When she moved on from rock criticism to general essays (most of the obits referred to her as a feminist writer, but that ghettoizes her unnecessarily, and inaccurately), I continued to read her avidly, and I believe I’m a better writer and thinker for having done so. It had been a long time since I’ve read her regularly, but looking at some of her recent work, it’s easy to see that she never lost her sharp eye or her fluency.
I never met her, but I’ll never forget her. May she rest in peace.
I was up in Maine when I heard about this (and Ed Bradley, too, RIP). I was truly saddend & shaken, and there was no one in the little coffee house I could explain it too. I’m glad someone else felt it. Thank you.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, should read her last book, “Don’t Think, Smile” which is as clear and bullshit-free take on the 90s as there is. Also of course, “Beginning To See The Light” is a classic compilation of Willis’s 60s/70s essays, often about music, but often using music as a jumping off point, a lens from which she took on much larger issues. Obits called her a “feminist” and a “radical” but she was one of the few writers whose work completely transcended such easy or confining labels. She just described the world as she saw, trying o make honest sense of a dishonest mess.