PARTISAN REVIEW
469
demonstration shortly before his death, as stating that "When I made my theo–
retical model, I could not have guessed that people 'Would try to realize it with
MoloLOV cocktails." Given the myths to which I have pointed, this is not
surprising.
Jay's book is not a critical account of the School's theory or its practice.
It
is, however, a mine of information and a valiant and often successful attempt
to pull LOgether the diverse strands of an often insightful intellectual endeavor.
That the strands don't form a coherent tableau, and that the tension of the
artist is lost, is not his fault. The Frankfurt School's adaptation of Critical
Theory seems LO me, in the last analysis, not at all a "theory" but rather the
aphoristic, humane and often penetrating insight of aesthetica lly sensitive
persons. At its best, it shoo ts directly home to the flesh, opens doors and poses a
challenge. Leafing through my underlines in Jay's book is something I will do
again, often.
Dick Howard
WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN
CALL ME ISHTAR. By Rhoda Lerman. Doubleday.
$6.95.
SMALL CHANGES. By Marge Piercy. Doubleday.
$8.95.
ADVANCING PAUL NEWMAN. By Eleanor Bergstein. Viking.
$7.95.
"Women's fiction" used to mean the soft and sticky fantasies of
love and domestic power out of which Richardson invented the novel and
which Joyce raised to excruciating clarity in the person of poor Gerty
MacDowell. I don't think women should be particularly embarrassed about
this-the dry and lumpy stuff of "men's fiction," with
its
fantasies of love and
power, is certainly no
more
distinguished, and the great novelists, male or
female, are
more
like Gerty MacDowell than James Bond or Tarzan. But the
tradition I'm thinking about obviously reflects a social, political and sexual
subordination of women that's no longer much of a secret, and I don't wonder
that women writers are looking for other ways of doing things.
Yet feminine self-consciousness remains in an undeservedly difficult situa–
tion. Good writing comes out of an engagement with something that one
knows, while trying not LO give the impression that it's
all
one knows. Our
cultura l arrangements, however chal lenged these days, sti ll ensure that most
