Digest urth.v028.n135

another writer often accused of misogyny is Kingsley Amis, and I read his novel The Russian Girl at about the same time I read "The Ziggurat". It struck me that the portrayal of the wives in the two stories was striking: both are portrayed as quite thoroughly vicious. (The Amis thing is complicated by reading about Amis' feelings about his second wife, writer Elizabeth Jane Howard, though.)

Ah, but it's always been my opinion (and I'm fairly sure I've read somewhere an essay by someone agreeing with it) that Amis, while falsely accused of "sexism," could be quite rightly accused of misogyny. Amis didn't think women were -inferior-, he just didn't seem to much like them (not in the sense of being homosexual, just in the sense of actively disliking the way he thought women saw the world and acted in it). I don't think this is true of Wolfe (who seems to have gotten on with the women in his life somewhat better than Amis, as well), but both share the sometimes controversial perception that women and men, in general, have some very different ways of seeing and doing things--and not in a trite, "Mars and Venus," sense of this either. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32