PARTISAN REVIEW
471
stead reading DagwooQ Bumstead o blivio us to a wife who has fea thers instead
of pubic ha ir.
Some o f the fun , however, seems p retty special and labored. T he Hos tess
Cupcakes business keeps coming up, as Ishtar goes abo ut putting her own
special recipe fo r them (Twink ies too) into mass p roduction, and this remains
bafflin g until sh e spells it out to the youthful audience a t a rock show:
"Li sten no t to their ta les o f o riginal sin . The church hangs you up and
shakes you down as they d id me from the T ree o f Life, for I am the apple
and it is I tha t mu st be ea ten for knowledge and joy. But they rip you o ff
too . Sign no thing. P romi se nothing. Don 't sell your soul for their re–
demp tion . You have no sin . Remember the Hos tess. J esus is bad hash.
Partake of me."
T here are too many such tricks in Lerman 's way o f connecting heaven and
ea rth to the detriment o f una ltera ble law, man-s tyle. Ishtar's housewife-self is
married to Robert, a p lastics manufacturer whose secret name, she divi nes, is
Moses, one o f her o ld enemies; and this joke, like o thers, gets p layed ou t in
endless varia tion s, from d riving o n the Robert Moses Power Access Highway
on page one to Ishtar's fa rewe ll
to
"my ex -Chairman of Parks and Paradise" at
the end.
Sometimes one enjoys the ingenuities, as when Ishtar's fond memory of
her recrea tio n o f the world after th e Deluge, coup ling with Noah on Ararat
to
the music of "By the T ime I get to Phoeni x," leads man y pages later to:
Luck, who no t only is a Lady, but is from the same source word as logos,
lucifer and mea ns w isdom , li ght, power, might bring me a Phoenix Rap–
p ing aga in st my Spani sh ceiling beams. Phoen ix, by the way, orig inates
from the same source as Venus, Penis, Phoeni cia, and Phoenicia is the
place where circumcision was first, according
to
your histories, practi ced
in my ho nor.
But there's something ra ther despera te abou t the continua l invoca tion o f the
myt h o f prima l feminine power.
If
Lerman 's h andling of it is mostly p retty
good-na tured and often q ui te funn y, still it keeps p ushing the book up against
a seriousness tha t it ca n 't quite accommoda te.
T he Angel of Dea th , th e Whore of Babylon, the Mo ther o f the World, we
must be a ll these things, C la ire, a ll at once. T ha t woman you have on
your coin s w ith the ba lanced sca les? She is no t Justice. She is woman
bala ncing her ro les. Standing on one foot, blindfo lded . Ha lf q ueen, ha lf
whore, ha lf goddess, ha lf kitchen help . "Cunt, my dear forni ca ting
child ," I tell C la ire as we d rive to Rochester, with Grace and her fri end
behind us in their ap ron s under their pastel m ink -co llared coats and their
Dynel wigs.
"Cun t, my sweet ch ild, is from the Sumerian word cunnus.
It
means
Burden.
It
is not something to be treated lightly.
.. ."
