My heroine and heroes

I am not among those who cite their mothers as their greatest heroes. Mothers are a dime a dozen, some good, some shit. Even the greatest of mothers can produce murderous little lads and lasses and it's just not their fault. I like to be able to trace etiology a bit more reliably. Thoreau is a great hero of mine. He was stubborn, decent, peevish, poetic and did not hesitate to take up a minority position. Balzac, because of the great intensity of his commitment, I admire. He handled his money and his love affairs foolishly; he was unstinting in the labor needed to create a simulacrum of the real world; he understood women as well as he did men. Pablo Picasso, Anthony Caro and David Smith, who enabled us to enjoy the world in very new ways. Virginia Woolf, whose voice is unthinkable, wrote an essay so beautiful, so strong, so marvelously angry, relying on a cat without a tail, an imaginary sister, and an ear for language few have matched.