What a lot of fuss about rape. Poor old Ken was just trying to point out that a teenage girl of fifteen was the victim of rape even if she and her eighteen year old lover were just both having a good time. On this basis Romeo raped the thirteen year old Juliet. And what shame has fallen on the French nation who admire the technique of a skilled seducer like Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, but deplore the act of a man who can jump naked from the bathroom of his hotel suite and pounce on a chambermaid. But what fun for the Press.
Arising from all this we now hear that Ms Callil the founder of Virago publishers resigned from the Man Booker prize judges because she declared that the winner, Philip Roth, is a misogynist who can't write for toffee. Nobody has taken much notice of her recently so this is clearly her bid for notoriety. I gave a copy of American Pastoral to an erudite friend who admitted that it was a powerful novel but disliked it because he said it was like listening to an old testament prophet on a cracked gramophone record. (Some of you may have to explain to your offspring what a gramophone was. It derives from the Greek: gramos, I speak ; phono, through a tin tube.)
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