Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

FOREWORDLike most writers, Andrea Dworkin thought her work wasunderappreciated in her lifetime. Like very few of them, shewas right. Dworkin the persona— the mythical figure, the invertedsex symbol— eclipsed Dworkin the writer in the publicimagination. There are many more people who have strongfeelings about her than there are people who have actuallyread her work.If this is the first book of hers you’ve encountered, braceyourself— she had a voice like no other. Perhaps the mostprominent quality of Dworkin’s writing is its ferocity: its relentlessintellectual and ideological confidence, its refusal tocollapse into what Dworkin called “ the quintessential femininepose. ” Though she bragged she used “language without its everbecoming decorative or pretty, ” there is elegance as well as aggressionin Dworkin’s sentences. She had a particular gift forconveying abstract concepts through acute, unusual metaphors.“ It’s not as if there’s an empty patch that one can see and so onecan say, ‘There’s my ignorance; it’s about ten by ten and adozen feet high and someday someone will fill in the emptypatch, ” ’ she wrote in her memoir, Heartbreak. (She was talkingabout male writers. ) She could be lyrical in her descriptions;