PARTISAN REVIEW
15
the divisions have broken down, there is formlessness with the end of
fragmentation - the triumph of the second theme, which is that of
unity. Anna and Saul Green, the American, "break down." They are
crazy, lunatic, mad - what you will. They "break down" into each
other, into other people, break through the false patterns they have
made of their pasts; the patterns and formulas they have made to
shore up themselves and each other, dissolve. They hear each other's
thoughts, recognize each other in themselves. Saul Green, the man
who has been envious and destructive of Anna, now supports her,
advises her, gives her the theme for her next book,
Free Women
-
an
ironical title, which begins: "The two women were alone in the
London flat." And Anna, who has been jealous of Saul to the point
of insanity, possessive and demanding, gives Saul the pretty new
notebook,
The Golden Notebook,
which she has previously refused
to do, gives him the theme for his next book, writing in it the
first sentence: "On a dry hillside in Algeria a soldier watched the
moonlight glinting on his rifle." In the inner "Golden Notebook,"
which is written by both of them, you can no longer distinguish be–
tween what is Saul and what is Anna, and between them and the other
people in the book.
This theme of "break down" - that sometimes when people
"crack up" it is a way of self-healing - of the inner self's dismissing
false dichotomies and divisions, has of course been written about by
other people, as well as by me, since then. But this
is
where, apart
from the odd short story, I first wrote about it. Here it is rougher, more
close to experience, before experience has shaped itself into thought
and pattern - more valuable perhaps because it is rawer material.
But nobody so much as noticed this central theme, because the
book was instantly belittled, by friendly reviewers as well as by hostile
ones, as being about the sex war, or was claimed by women as a
useful weapon in the sex war.
I have been in a false position ever since, for the last thing I.have
wanted to do was to refuse to support women.
To get the subject of Women's Liberation over with - I support
it, of course, because women are second-class citizens, as they are say–
ing energetically and competently in many countries. It can be said that
they are succeeding, if only to the extent they are being seriously
listened to. All kinds of people previously hostile or indifferent
