July Books 45) The Female Man

[nwhyte]

45) The Female Man, by Joanna Russ

Of my recent run of sf classics, this has been the most challenging and satisfying read. (And it's likely to stay that way; the ones I have left are Grey Lensman, Dhalgren and Again, Dangerous Visions.) Russ's ideas of parallel worlds with utterly different relations between the sexes are of course partly

Comments

[blue_condition]

Best of luck with Dhalgren. I bounced off it three times before finishing it on holiday when I had nothing else to read.

Delany I divide into Before Dhalgren (unmissable) and Dhalgren and After (mostly unreadable). The odd bit of the Neveryon stories are ok... and his autobiography was good... but he got far, far too hung up in structuralism and I for one don't miss the sequel to Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand...

[drasecretcampus]

Funnily enough I've just done the (hopefully final) edit tonight on a chapter on Russ's work and the ideas of Helene Cixous. I think that any new hierarchy to replace an old hierarchy is a Bad Thing - but when FM was drafted, in about 1969/1970 turnabout probably seemed fair play.

I hope you find Dhalgren satisfying - I'm pretty sure you'll find it challenging. I need to reread it this year or over the next two as it's clearly a baggy beast of the 1970s.

Keep meaning to write about your recent visit - tomorrow, I hope.

[sammywol]

I teach some of the Associated short stories and it is always fun to watch the women in the class sternly deny any sort of affinity with Whileaway in "A few Things I know About Whileaway" but cannot help feel empathy with the sense of menace and threat in "The Day It Changed" (sic) where men come to Whileaway from Earth.

[andrewducker]

Are you going to read Galactic Patrol before Grey Lensman? You can skip Triplanetary/First Lensman, but Galactic Patrol really does lead into Grey.

[pnh]

By "New Age," surely you mean "New Wave", yes?