This recent essay in the Times Book Review has been sparking a lot of lively arguments:
“The Naked and the Conflicted”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/books/review/Roiphe-t.html?scp=1&sq=roiphe&st=cse
The following blog offers an alternative account “Sex, Seriously”
http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/sex-seriously-james-salter-trumps-the-great-male-novelists.html
I’m fascinated that Roiphe and many responders—sexistly– see the generational divide Rophie laments as a matter of “virility” where I see a less gendered carnality–Erica Jong, some of Grace Paley’s Little Disturbances stories, even Cynthia Ozick’s “Virility,” maybe Francine du Plessix Gray’s Lovers and Tyrants on the goyische side. At least this is how I came at these questions the “revolt of the horny” chapter in Gravity Fails way back in the aughts. The focus needs to aim in a less gendered way on representations of carnality both sexes.
I take up the displacement of “carnality” by “virility in “After Mulvey,” an article coming out in a month or so in a journal called College Hill Review.
James D. Bloom
Professor of English & American Studies
