The End of The Novel of Love

This series of essays reads like wonderful short stories, each about a writer's life and work, as it hones in on the central insight that compelled each one. While its final thesis may prematurely sound the death knell of the genre, it is gently and intelligently argued, and every page is full of insight and delight, conveyed in compact, amusing, speedy sentences. Great beach reading.

The essays in this small book on literature, women, and writing are short and simply written, and yet full of the excitement of thought and the importance of literature to our psyches. Gornick made me want (and plan) to read or re-read the books she talks about. This is simply one of the best books of essays I've encountered in years. Thank you, Vivian Gornick.

After finishing Gornick's excellent book, I could not help feeling something grating against my sensibilities. The analysis was flawless, the insight superb, even profound. I spent several hours working the thing through my skull and writing things down to put in order what it was that made me uneasy with Gornick's final proclamation that love (romantic, traditional marriage, etc.) no longer serves as a viable metaphor for the making of literature. And even then, after hours of this, I still could not put my finger on it. Reading the Kirkus Review, I found myself even further perplexed. Kirkus says: "Her governing idea is this: Love, sexual fulfillment, and marriage are now exhausted as the metaphorical expressions of success and happiness." Herein lies, I think, part of the problem: I have no trouble agreeing with Gornick that romantic love, marriage, and sexual fulfillment hold little or no true source of success and happiness in and of themselves, both in our time and, I would say, in any time. In this sense, they no longer serve us well as "metaphors" of happiness, as Kirkus notes. However, this is not the extent of Gornick's conclusion, and a somewhat misleading way of describing it. Kirkus fails to continue on to the final idea that not only are these things (romantic love, marriage, sexual fulfillment) not viable metaphors for success and happiness in our lives--they are no longer viable metaphors for the creation of literature as well. In this, I find myself disagreeing with Gornick. In my mind, this is akin to declaring ANY subject an unviable metaphor for the creation of literature. Are we to cease writing of marriage and romantic love simply because the rules have changed and the meanings of these things have shifted with cultural and societal changes? I think the very fact that this marvelous book exists--a book of powerful, insightful literature dealing with our perception and understanding of romantic love, marriage, etc. (both real and literary)--threatens to undermine its whole premise. With dazzling skill and analysis, Gornick proves (perhaps despite herself) that there IS something left to say about love, and that great literature can still arise from an examination of love, and from the metaphor of love. Her love affair with words, her love affair with love, with literature--we see it, we feel it, even if Gornick makes the choice to ignore it and allow the intellectual discourse to play itself out to its solid, logical, somewhat "cold" conlusion (love as mere "necessity?" Eating, sleeping, defecating--these are necessity; surely love is something more than simple necessity...). In the end, Gornick's style, form, language, insight--these become the elements of that great, constant love affair which will always define and drive and sustain literature: the love affair between author and audience.

Vivian Gornick is like the best English professor you ever had--or never had. Her short, cogent essays on women writers and female literary characters will send you back to a rereading of Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Jean Rhys and others. Vivian Gornick explores the lack of options and choices for women in the past--what was there beyond love and marriage?--and the failure of this thinking for women in the present day, both in life and in literature. She is a feminist who writes without jargon or any academic pretentiousness. I recommend this as literary criticism of the highest order.