In the name of science – and also, perhaps, in the name of giving the lie to such criticisms of Lady Critics as Norman Mailer’s (“The sniffs I get from the ink of the women are always fey, old-hat, Quaintsy Goysy, tiny, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque, maquillé in mannequin’s whimsy, or else bright and stillborn.”), I am about to embark on a little experiment, inspired in part by your spirited objections to my approach to literary taste: I am going to read a burly man author all the way through. The book I have chosen, at Max’s suggestion, is Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
I hypothesize, as the readers of our last Millions Quiz already know, that I will be disappointed: that I will not be taken in by either style or substance. My slight (and, as some thought, insufficient) acquaintance with the virile titans of the last century of literature has led me to believe this. But – I am willing to concede – perhaps these are just fellows who give a lady a bad first impression (like the character of Al Swerengen on HBO’s Deadwood), fellows whom a girl might grow begrudgingly (or is it self-hatingly?) fond of upon better acquaintance?
I shall see! And you shall see too, when I am done.
