Letter to the Editor of the New York Times Book Review, 1978 July 15
Title
Letter to the Editor of the New York Times Book Review, 1978 July 15
Description
This is a letter from Gloria Kaufman to the Editor of the New York Times Book Review. Kaufman defends Marge Piercy's book, Woman on the Edge of Time, that received a negative review.
Creator
Kaufman, Gloria
Source
Gloria Kaufman Papers, Indiana University South Bend Archives and Special Collections
Date
1976-07-15
Rights
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Identifier
Kaufman_Box1_Folder1_K028
Text
INDIANA UNIVERSITY at SOUTH BEND 1825 NORTH SIDE BOULEVARD SOUTH BEND, INDIANA 46615
DIVISION OF ARTS AND SCIENCES TEL. 192-237-4290
July 15, 1976
Editor THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 229 W. 43rd St. New York, N.Y. 10036
To the Editor:
I was sorry to see MarGe Piercy's new novel WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME receive so frivolous a review on your pages. Roger Sale objects that Piercy has "nothing to add" about mental hospitals (as if she were writing a psychiatric monograph), and later he approvingly indicates that Lessing and Kesey have already told the same story. How is it that Lessing and Kesey, following Dorothea Dix and Nikolai Gogol by a century, don't merit the same criticism? Of course writers of fiction are not judged for discovering (or not discovering) materials they use, and Kesey is as blameless as Piercy. By Mr. Sale's illogic, Conrad, following Homer, should not have written of the sea. Mr. Sale's principle is not only critically unsound, but he applies it unequally to select writers. (Nor is Piercy's story equivalent to, or even similar to Lessing's.) When Mr. Sale writes that Piercy's "vision of possible future societies" is "neither frightening nor inventive enough to match Doris Lessing or Ursula LeGuin or a number of others...," he assumes that Piercy is trying to be frightening and fails. It seems to me she is far more interested in articulating truths than she is in frightening readers. Her sections set in the future afford a profundity and a richness of statement about human personality. We come away from those passages with a fuller sense of our own being and our own meaning. Surely Piercy should not be judged by what Mr. Sale (unaccountably) wanted her to do. As for inventiveness, I found the novel highly inventive and exciting for that quality, but I do not quarrel with Mr. Sale for finding the opposite. That is a valid kind of criticism to make, and one of us is wrong .
Mr. Sale nowhere got around to stating what the novel was all about, and I wonder if he knows. Rather than deal with the large philosophical and ethical concerns of the book, he narrowed in on polemical elements (without, however, saying what or where they were--all very vague). In fact many great works of literature are in some ways polemical (CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, THE DIVINE COMEDY, "The Death of Ivan Ilych"), but in discussing them, we also address their other aspects. To do justice to WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME, surely a reviewer should mention the central moral dilemma that the heroine faces, that she finally acts upon, and that remains to trouble us (even to terrify us with its truth) after we have finished the novel. (Might Mr. Sale have said, had he seen the moral dimension, 'But other writers have already dealt with good and evil'?)
As for Piercy's abilities as a poet, Mr. Sale need not have mentioned them at all. At least, since he chose to do so, his stance should have been critically sound. Marge Piercy's second volume of poetry in 1969 confirmed the power of her metaphors: "His laugh breaks in his throat to pieces of sun," and "What enemy do I race white breathed/ who blast my eyes with a blizzard of wish and gravel," and--of loneliness--"Blindness loud as hunger hollows me" (the last, a line of extraordinary power). Piercy's epigrammatic tightness was also confirmed by 1969 (I don't refer to her two later volumes of poems, which a reviewer of fiction might be excused for not knowing): "Tenderness is a mosquito on your arm," and "Love is arthritic. Mistrust swells like a prune," and "Man eats man with sauces of newsprint." In the context of Piercy's achievement (no secret to the reading public), Mr. Sale's cavalier dismissal, "her poetry has always seemed to me mostly effortful," is deeply irritating. (Again, he gives no examples: four volumes of distinguished poetry dismissed with a single non-critical flourish.) Were Mr. Sale Samuel Johnson or T. S. Eliot, his comment might inspire interest. It can only bewilder those who know Piercy's poems. In fact, Piercy's skill as a poet is put to good use in WOMAN ..• , where she frequently conveys a mood, a scene, a characterization with a single metaphorical stroke. E.g., "Nervousness ticked in her throat like a bomb," a mourner's "hands lay abandoned on his thighs like a pair of old kid gloves," and the confined heroine feels "time sticking to her like cold grease."
There are many other of Mr. Sale's statements with which one might
easily take issue. Even his description of Piercy's language for future time (which he likes) is inaccurate--a point in itself not worth making, except that (alas) it generally reflects the carelessness of his review. It is regrettable that a writer of such importance did not receive the serious review that her novel so clearly merits.
Yours,
Gloria Kaufman
Associate Professor
Department of English
GK/sm
DIVISION OF ARTS AND SCIENCES TEL. 192-237-4290
July 15, 1976
Editor THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 229 W. 43rd St. New York, N.Y. 10036
To the Editor:
I was sorry to see MarGe Piercy's new novel WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME receive so frivolous a review on your pages. Roger Sale objects that Piercy has "nothing to add" about mental hospitals (as if she were writing a psychiatric monograph), and later he approvingly indicates that Lessing and Kesey have already told the same story. How is it that Lessing and Kesey, following Dorothea Dix and Nikolai Gogol by a century, don't merit the same criticism? Of course writers of fiction are not judged for discovering (or not discovering) materials they use, and Kesey is as blameless as Piercy. By Mr. Sale's illogic, Conrad, following Homer, should not have written of the sea. Mr. Sale's principle is not only critically unsound, but he applies it unequally to select writers. (Nor is Piercy's story equivalent to, or even similar to Lessing's.) When Mr. Sale writes that Piercy's "vision of possible future societies" is "neither frightening nor inventive enough to match Doris Lessing or Ursula LeGuin or a number of others...," he assumes that Piercy is trying to be frightening and fails. It seems to me she is far more interested in articulating truths than she is in frightening readers. Her sections set in the future afford a profundity and a richness of statement about human personality. We come away from those passages with a fuller sense of our own being and our own meaning. Surely Piercy should not be judged by what Mr. Sale (unaccountably) wanted her to do. As for inventiveness, I found the novel highly inventive and exciting for that quality, but I do not quarrel with Mr. Sale for finding the opposite. That is a valid kind of criticism to make, and one of us is wrong .
Mr. Sale nowhere got around to stating what the novel was all about, and I wonder if he knows. Rather than deal with the large philosophical and ethical concerns of the book, he narrowed in on polemical elements (without, however, saying what or where they were--all very vague). In fact many great works of literature are in some ways polemical (CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, THE DIVINE COMEDY, "The Death of Ivan Ilych"), but in discussing them, we also address their other aspects. To do justice to WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME, surely a reviewer should mention the central moral dilemma that the heroine faces, that she finally acts upon, and that remains to trouble us (even to terrify us with its truth) after we have finished the novel. (Might Mr. Sale have said, had he seen the moral dimension, 'But other writers have already dealt with good and evil'?)
As for Piercy's abilities as a poet, Mr. Sale need not have mentioned them at all. At least, since he chose to do so, his stance should have been critically sound. Marge Piercy's second volume of poetry in 1969 confirmed the power of her metaphors: "His laugh breaks in his throat to pieces of sun," and "What enemy do I race white breathed/ who blast my eyes with a blizzard of wish and gravel," and--of loneliness--"Blindness loud as hunger hollows me" (the last, a line of extraordinary power). Piercy's epigrammatic tightness was also confirmed by 1969 (I don't refer to her two later volumes of poems, which a reviewer of fiction might be excused for not knowing): "Tenderness is a mosquito on your arm," and "Love is arthritic. Mistrust swells like a prune," and "Man eats man with sauces of newsprint." In the context of Piercy's achievement (no secret to the reading public), Mr. Sale's cavalier dismissal, "her poetry has always seemed to me mostly effortful," is deeply irritating. (Again, he gives no examples: four volumes of distinguished poetry dismissed with a single non-critical flourish.) Were Mr. Sale Samuel Johnson or T. S. Eliot, his comment might inspire interest. It can only bewilder those who know Piercy's poems. In fact, Piercy's skill as a poet is put to good use in WOMAN ..• , where she frequently conveys a mood, a scene, a characterization with a single metaphorical stroke. E.g., "Nervousness ticked in her throat like a bomb," a mourner's "hands lay abandoned on his thighs like a pair of old kid gloves," and the confined heroine feels "time sticking to her like cold grease."
There are many other of Mr. Sale's statements with which one might
easily take issue. Even his description of Piercy's language for future time (which he likes) is inaccurate--a point in itself not worth making, except that (alas) it generally reflects the carelessness of his review. It is regrettable that a writer of such importance did not receive the serious review that her novel so clearly merits.
Yours,
Gloria Kaufman
Associate Professor
Department of English
GK/sm
Collection
Citation
Kaufman, Gloria, “Letter to the Editor of the New York Times Book Review, 1978 July 15,” IU South Bend Archives Digital Collections, accessed May 2, 2024, https://iusbarchives.omeka.net/items/show/163.