IYouThem wrote:"For Rabbit, With Love and Squalor (An American Read)" by Anne Roiphe.
I happened to pick this up by chance at a used bookstore and I am fascinated and repulsed with it at the same time. The premise of the book is that Roiphe reminisces about the possibility of falling in love with fictional male main characters from Salinger, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Updike, etc. She uses this as a set-up to get into her own ended (youthful) relationships with hard-drinking, hard-thinking and (financially, artistically, personally) failed writers/artists; yet equally problematically, she champions her settling for a prosperous and staid psychoanalyst type that has measured and infrequent bursts of personality - but takes care of her. She's no dummy and and she's been around - which makes it worth the read.
She explained some things about (some) women that I never considered. She explains why a young, virginal 20-something girly-woman likes "artists", then she pays her dues and renounces/denounces her youthful indiscretions/failings, by ultimately writing as an analyzed "mature" woman.
An examined life exposed. Thus, a compelling read if you like this sort of thing.
But it reminds me of the women who(m) I once held in high regard, only to watch them devolve into embracing security, convention and the way things have always been between bring-home-the-bacon-men and the women who encourage them ....
I must say, that sounds like a good read to me. It's a topic I've often wondered about, and it would be interesting to read a novel on that theme written by a female writer.
