A must read. The best literary criticism I’ve read in a long time. “American Male Novelists: The New Deal” by Elaine Blair in the July 12 issue of The New York Review of Books. Fascinating insights on Updike and Roth (my heroes) from a woman. Kinda puts me in my place, but I’m OK with that. Available online only to subscribers. Worth a one-time newsstand purchase. She makes many points and pulls together some interesting quotations, including this from a 1997 New Yorker piece by Jonathan Franzen :
“In fact, we’re simply experiencing the anxiety of a free market. Contraception and the ease of divorce have removed the fetters from the economy of sex, and, like the citizens of present-day Dresden and Leipzig, we all want to believe we’re better off under a regime in which even the poorest man can dream of wealth. But as the old walls of repression tumble down, many Americans – discarded first wives, who are like the workers displaced from a Trabant factory; or sexually inept men, who are the equivalent of command-economy bureaucrats – have grown nostalgic for the old state monopolies.”
The piece was reprinted in Franzen's essay collection “How To Be Alone”. I’d read the collection years ago, but it makes a much greater impact on me now. Read the NYRB piece if you enjoy Updike and Roth. It gave me some perspective on what it is I find so comfortable about their take on life. I’ve always considered them to be somewhat guilty pleasures, and have also been troubled about my total inability to share my pleasure with female readers. Given Blair’s insights, it’s no wonder at all that I’m troubled.
Well, I’m still glad to have Updike and Roth on my shelf. Women: Your loss if you choose not to at least attempt to get over the inevitable gender barriers that these authors present to you.
Maybe I’ll go read some Colette. Hmmmm.
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