310
PARTISAN REVIEW
nut, her head. From behind her, the animal of herself jumps her, and
clamps her waist, simian. A woman in rut evolves the history of
primates, every time-with appropriate flora added. Yet the theory of
evo lution had to wait to be phrased by a long-celibate don . And the
word " rut" comes from the stag.
If
there's no word direct for woman
in this state must I invent one? A word takes its own time. Best to
brood on it-on the state of me moving with my burden , into dock.
Best not to brood on it, rea lly. (Several passages in
The High Cost
of Living
and
I Hardly Knew You
display the same teeth-gritting
anxiety to explore the female sexual response-surely by now a tourist
resort rather than an uncharted hinterla nd.) The inappropriate stylistic
flora with which Ms. Calisher embellishes something the Wife of Bath
knew all about, point to the pervasive connection between overreach–
ing and overwriting in this novel. She flogs to dea th the trick of the
clinching dangl er- " thorns a nd a ll ," " her head," "simian," " into
dock. " (The last words of the book are " that sad jewel, joy," which
repea ts the construction of "that simpleton coconut," etc.) Her far–
fetched images and conceits ("pot of roses," "coconut, " "the animal of
herself jumps her") try to look cas ual but shriek for applause. By the
time Lexie finall y rises from the riverbank, the rot or rut has gone far.
Now earth-goddess, Magna Mater, Eve, she broods :
Ah. Ahhhhhhhhh. ( g ive birth to them. The women. Him.
Awareness-it's the unnatural, natural act. And now-I bigger. I
recover, from confinement. But-how to tell the story? of how people
stammer in and ou t of the dark. (n the fi ery g lades of the families.
Obvious points ca n speak for themselves; but " the fiery glades of the
families" is a phrase whose linguisti c melodrama puts out of court its
own, and the novel's, pretensions to acquaintance wi th the night.
It
plays with fire.
Marge Piercy's drabber style comes as a relief, but only as tha t.
It
is
in fact a shabby raincoat draping an equally naked romamicism :
Les lie relaxed. he was ridiculous sometimes. May be it was the four
months of working on the rape hot line right after she had come to
Detroit. Black women, white women, o ld lad ies, kids, all bleeding.
Never aga in, she could no t take it. She could no t live with tha t
knowledge of pain. Just to mind her own business and survive,
somehow intact.
The off-the-peg cliches ("she could no t take it," "survive, somehow
intact") might seem to endorse Ms. Piercy'S documentary earnes tness
