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The Mind-Body Problem
When Renee Feuer goes to college, one of the first lessons she tries to learn is how to liberate herself from the restrictions of her orthodox Jewish background. As she discovers the pleasures of the body, Renee also learns about the excitements of the mind.
She enrolls as a philosophy graduate student, then marries Noam Himmel, the world-renowned mathematician. But Renee discovers that being married to a genius is a less elevating experience than expected.
The story of her quest for a solution to the mind-body problem involves the prickly contemporary dilemmas of sex and love, of doubt and belief.
She enrolls as a philosophy graduate student, then marries Noam Himmel, the world-renowned mathematician. But Renee discovers that being married to a genius is a less elevating experience than expected.
The story of her quest for a solution to the mind-body problem involves the prickly contemporary dilemmas of sex and love, of doubt and belief.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
About the author
Rebecca Goldstein
24 books392 followersRebecca Newberger Goldstein grew up in White Plains, New York, and graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College, receiving the Montague Prize for Excellence in Philosophy, and immediately went on to graduate work at Princeton University, receiving her Ph.D. in philosophy. While in graduate school she was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship and a Whiting Foundation Fellowship.
After earning her Ph.D. she returned to her alma mater, where she taught courses in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, the rationalists, the empiricists, and the ancient Greeks. It was some time during her tenure at Barnard that, quite to her own surprise, she used a summer vacation to write her first novel, The Mind-Body Problem. As she described it,
"To me the process is still mysterious. I had just come through a very emotional time, having not only become a mother but having also lost my father, whom I adored. In the course of grieving for my father and glorying in my daughter, I found that the very formal, very precise questions I had been trained to analyze weren’t gripping me the way they once had. Suddenly, I was asking the most `unprofessional’ sorts of questions (I would have snickered at them as a graduate student), such as how does all this philosophy I’ve studied help me to deal with the brute contingencies of life? How does it relate to life as it’s really lived? I wanted to confront such questions in my writing, and I wanted to confront them in a way that would insert `real life’ intimately into the intellectual struggle. In short I wanted to write a philosophically motivated novel."
The Mind-Body Problem was published by Random House and went on to become a critical and popular success.
More novels followed: The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind; The Dark Sister, which received the Whiting Writer’s Award, Mazel, which received the 1995 National Jewish Book Award and the 1995 Edward Lewis Wallant Award; and Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal, and Quantum Physics. Her book of short stories, Strange Attractors, received a National Jewish Book Honor Award. Her 2005 book Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, was featured in articles in The New Yorker and The New York Times, received numerous favorable reviews, and was named one of the best books of the year by Discover magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Sun. Goldstein’s most recent published book is, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us Modernity, published in May 2006, and winner of the 2006 Koret International Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought. Her new novel, Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, will be published by Pantheon Books.
In 1996 Goldstein became a MacArthur Fellow, receiving the prize which is popularly known as the “Genius Award.” In awarding her the prize, the MacArthur Foundation described her work in the following words:
"Rebecca Goldstein is a writer whose novels and short stories dramatize the concerns of philosophy without sacrificing the demands of imaginative storytelling. Her books tell a compelling story as they describe with wit, compassion and originality the interaction of mind and heart. In her fiction her characters confront problems of faith: religious faith and faith in an ability to comprehend the mysteries of the physical world as complementary to moral and emotional states of being. Goldstein’s writings emerge as brilliant arguments for the belief that fiction in our time may be the best vehicle for involving readers in questions of morality and existence."
Goldstein is married to linguist and author Steven Pinker. She lives in Boston and in Truro, Massachusetts.
After earning her Ph.D. she returned to her alma mater, where she taught courses in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, the rationalists, the empiricists, and the ancient Greeks. It was some time during her tenure at Barnard that, quite to her own surprise, she used a summer vacation to write her first novel, The Mind-Body Problem. As she described it,
"To me the process is still mysterious. I had just come through a very emotional time, having not only become a mother but having also lost my father, whom I adored. In the course of grieving for my father and glorying in my daughter, I found that the very formal, very precise questions I had been trained to analyze weren’t gripping me the way they once had. Suddenly, I was asking the most `unprofessional’ sorts of questions (I would have snickered at them as a graduate student), such as how does all this philosophy I’ve studied help me to deal with the brute contingencies of life? How does it relate to life as it’s really lived? I wanted to confront such questions in my writing, and I wanted to confront them in a way that would insert `real life’ intimately into the intellectual struggle. In short I wanted to write a philosophically motivated novel."
The Mind-Body Problem was published by Random House and went on to become a critical and popular success.
More novels followed: The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind; The Dark Sister, which received the Whiting Writer’s Award, Mazel, which received the 1995 National Jewish Book Award and the 1995 Edward Lewis Wallant Award; and Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal, and Quantum Physics. Her book of short stories, Strange Attractors, received a National Jewish Book Honor Award. Her 2005 book Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, was featured in articles in The New Yorker and The New York Times, received numerous favorable reviews, and was named one of the best books of the year by Discover magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Sun. Goldstein’s most recent published book is, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us Modernity, published in May 2006, and winner of the 2006 Koret International Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought. Her new novel, Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, will be published by Pantheon Books.
In 1996 Goldstein became a MacArthur Fellow, receiving the prize which is popularly known as the “Genius Award.” In awarding her the prize, the MacArthur Foundation described her work in the following words:
"Rebecca Goldstein is a writer whose novels and short stories dramatize the concerns of philosophy without sacrificing the demands of imaginative storytelling. Her books tell a compelling story as they describe with wit, compassion and originality the interaction of mind and heart. In her fiction her characters confront problems of faith: religious faith and faith in an ability to comprehend the mysteries of the physical world as complementary to moral and emotional states of being. Goldstein’s writings emerge as brilliant arguments for the belief that fiction in our time may be the best vehicle for involving readers in questions of morality and existence."
Goldstein is married to linguist and author Steven Pinker. She lives in Boston and in Truro, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 136 reviews
October 28, 2018
All on its own, this book has forced me to reconsider the merits of the chicklit genre, as hilariously dislikable heroine Renee Feuer seduces and marries the intellectual prince, gets bored, sleeps around and badmouths everyone while alternating boasts about her firm tits and peachy ass with extended quotations from L'Être et le Néant and weird bits of Talmudic trivia. It's the best subversive rewriting of Cinderella ever; I couldn't put it down and finished it in a day. Please God, let me sit next to Rebecca Goldstein next time I'm invited to a highbrow dinner party.
________________
On further reflection, it seems to me that there may be a more sophisticated way to interpret this book. Be warned that the following contains major spoilers:
________________
On further reflection, it seems to me that there may be a more sophisticated way to interpret this book. Be warned that the following contains major spoilers:
December 26, 2019
I'd call this book anti-frum, except that the protagonist, a grown woman off the derech, has such an empty life, it's just as much an indictment of the secular world as it is the world she left behind. The title comes from the classic problem of philosophy: are humans just the sum of their biological processes or does the mind have a metaphysical existence? The protagonist, a graduate student in Philosophy, grapples with a derivative of the question in her own life and marriage: is it only about my body? Since the answer seems to be yes, she looks at her frum relatives with envy, understanding at least that they live with real meaning.
I'm upping this book to 4 because it's well-written, well-characterized, and has stuck in my memory even though I read it years ago. It was formerly a 2 because I couldn't get past my prejudice against the protagonist and her (im)moral choices, but I'm older now and more inclined to be forgiving.
I'm upping this book to 4 because it's well-written, well-characterized, and has stuck in my memory even though I read it years ago. It was formerly a 2 because I couldn't get past my prejudice against the protagonist and her (im)moral choices, but I'm older now and more inclined to be forgiving.
January 1, 2020
This a novel that I had wanted to read for years and never got to do so until now. Not being a fan of satire, I was not sure at first whether this was a book I would enjoy. However, Goldstein is much more than a satirist. Not only is her writing is sharp and witty, but there is profundity beneath the observations that makes the book worth savouring at many points along the way. I'm now itching to read more of her novels!
March 26, 2008
What I like most about this book is really a matter of personal preference. It's the inside look into the characters--the socially awkward, yet celebrated intellegensia. This is probably becuase I'm a socially awkward, wanna-be intellectual. I imagine most goodreads members fit the same profile, so likely as not, you can take this as an endorsemnt.
February 26, 2021
Rebecca Goldstein é uma académica da área da Filosofia, tendo começado a sua carreira no domínio da Física, acabaria por mudar-se para a Filosofia e seguir o ramo da Filosofia da Ciência. Isto é importante, porque este seu primeiro romance contém enormes traços autobiográficos. Um dos seu livros posteriores — "Incompletude: A Demonstração e o Paradoxo de Kurt Gödel" (2005) — dá conta da relação entre Godel e Einstein em Princeton, tendo-o lido antes, serviu-me aqui para compreender em muito maior detalhe o mundo e a cultura da autora. Mas, para primeira obra, o que verdadeiramente impressiona, não é o caráter conceptual, é a audácia. A capacidade de criar uma voz familiar que não se acanha, que se expõe sem constrangimentos.
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Continua, com links e excertos, no blog Virtual Illusion:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
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Continua, com links e excertos, no blog Virtual Illusion:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
November 10, 2015
Finished Rebecca Goldstein's 'The Mind-Body Problem' today. It's really one of the best novels I've read; unabashedly Jewish, philosophical, and sexy. Truly, this is a meta-study of the mind-body problem in a way I'd somewhat pondered but never seen put into words. Highly recommended.
One of the ideas the author brings is that of the 'mattering map'. At the most basic, it is as if we plot points on a grid of all the things that matter to us. As we mature, we notice clusters of points, some light grey (less points there), some very dark indeed (large numbers of things that matter in those regions). I was quite taken by this idea, because it made such sense to me. Also, things can shift over time, and the darkness becomes lighter and sometimes the light darker as our morals, attractions, values change. I know for me, a huge shift happened late this summer. While I'll leave the details out, I will say that it was quite monumental and really changed how I go about in the world, for the better. Some lessons take a completely heartwrenching jolt to learn, but once we do, we find ourselves intrinsically different. A point of my map where a lot of dots were clustered has less now and my guess is that as I go on discovering things about myself and others I'll notice that more points are clustered in places I wouldn't have expected.
Toward the end of the book, the main character is pondering the map and her husband and says this, "I don't know if it's possible to get him to change his perspective, not to relocate on the mattering map, but to turn from it altogether. I've been trying hard to do so myself, to see the map for what it really is, a description of our subjectivity and nothing more. From what region does God look out on us? From none, of course. Not because people don't matter objectively, but because they do. They simply do. Any view that confers degrees of mattering, that distinguishes between those who matter and those who don't, has no objective validity. We all count in precisely the same way. That's the view from nowhere inside, the view from out yonder."
Yes.
One of the ideas the author brings is that of the 'mattering map'. At the most basic, it is as if we plot points on a grid of all the things that matter to us. As we mature, we notice clusters of points, some light grey (less points there), some very dark indeed (large numbers of things that matter in those regions). I was quite taken by this idea, because it made such sense to me. Also, things can shift over time, and the darkness becomes lighter and sometimes the light darker as our morals, attractions, values change. I know for me, a huge shift happened late this summer. While I'll leave the details out, I will say that it was quite monumental and really changed how I go about in the world, for the better. Some lessons take a completely heartwrenching jolt to learn, but once we do, we find ourselves intrinsically different. A point of my map where a lot of dots were clustered has less now and my guess is that as I go on discovering things about myself and others I'll notice that more points are clustered in places I wouldn't have expected.
Toward the end of the book, the main character is pondering the map and her husband and says this, "I don't know if it's possible to get him to change his perspective, not to relocate on the mattering map, but to turn from it altogether. I've been trying hard to do so myself, to see the map for what it really is, a description of our subjectivity and nothing more. From what region does God look out on us? From none, of course. Not because people don't matter objectively, but because they do. They simply do. Any view that confers degrees of mattering, that distinguishes between those who matter and those who don't, has no objective validity. We all count in precisely the same way. That's the view from nowhere inside, the view from out yonder."
Yes.
August 13, 2016
I remain fond of the novel, and I probably even enjoyed it a little more than I did when I read it twenty years ago. (Why? Not sure) I liked the Princeton milieu, the description of the Institute for Advanced Study, and I enjoyed Goldstein's expository asides. But Noam, the "genius" husband, is unattractive enough to defy belief (Renee is a victim of verbal abuse, actually), and I didn't understand the protagonist's obsession with her looks and her aging - she's 28 years old or something like that? The novel is the thing that hasn't aged particularly well.
The gender politics are so 1983. They are not remote enough to evoke nostalgia for a more innocent and backward-past, and they don't show prescience for what the slight-more-enlightened future will hold. Renee is so subservient to Noam; Renee's ideas about marriage and career are pitiable; at the party of academic mathematicians in which a given that all the mathematicians are male and all the wives are in the kitchen (Goldstein doesn't even intend it as satirical commentary). I had to laugh (ruefully) when Goldstein has her protagonist and gender-neutered physicist-friend explain that they could never imagine a female physicist who is both successful in her career and physically attractive (to men). (Lisa Randall?!)
The scientific and philosophical debates are also old: Ava and Noam's argument over quantum mechanics seems quaint and Renee's research on the mind-body problem is passé. And are philosophy departments filled with "positivists" anymore? I don't think so. But that's all okay. I admire Goldstein for writing such an ambitious first novel of ideas.
The gender politics are so 1983. They are not remote enough to evoke nostalgia for a more innocent and backward-past, and they don't show prescience for what the slight-more-enlightened future will hold. Renee is so subservient to Noam; Renee's ideas about marriage and career are pitiable; at the party of academic mathematicians in which a given that all the mathematicians are male and all the wives are in the kitchen (Goldstein doesn't even intend it as satirical commentary). I had to laugh (ruefully) when Goldstein has her protagonist and gender-neutered physicist-friend explain that they could never imagine a female physicist who is both successful in her career and physically attractive (to men). (Lisa Randall?!)
The scientific and philosophical debates are also old: Ava and Noam's argument over quantum mechanics seems quaint and Renee's research on the mind-body problem is passé. And are philosophy departments filled with "positivists" anymore? I don't think so. But that's all okay. I admire Goldstein for writing such an ambitious first novel of ideas.
October 17, 2013
"There are two kinds of smokers, heroic and unheroic. Unheroic smokers are worried about the health hazards of smoking, which is weakness one, and would like to quit but can't, which is is weakness two.
"Heroic smokers don't worry...Fear for the body should never govern one's actions. Heroic smokers disdain death. They laugh at death with every inhaling breath."
"So you disdain death?"
"I disdain death."
"What else do you do besides smoke to thumb your nose at the way of all flesh?"
"I drive."
"Heroic smokers don't worry...Fear for the body should never govern one's actions. Heroic smokers disdain death. They laugh at death with every inhaling breath."
"So you disdain death?"
"I disdain death."
"What else do you do besides smoke to thumb your nose at the way of all flesh?"
"I drive."
May 2, 2019
I must admit that I hated the book when I first started to read it. It was an amazingly slow read but I think I can also blame the slowness of my reading on watching 7 seasons of Game of Thrones while doing it. So, yeah, I read a 290 page book in 1.5 months. And now I’m reading a 350 in less than a week. Anyway, enough with my ranting.
The book was interesting. There were parts that I absolutely hated because I could not understand them (too much philosophy for my taste) and I found them as a constant and unending rant. But there were other parts that I liked. I liked when she talked about her family and I even laughed because her mother had these crazy ideas.
In the end I found the book to be quite sad and I actually felt sorry for Renee even though in the beginning I didn’t like her at all.
The book was interesting. There were parts that I absolutely hated because I could not understand them (too much philosophy for my taste) and I found them as a constant and unending rant. But there were other parts that I liked. I liked when she talked about her family and I even laughed because her mother had these crazy ideas.
In the end I found the book to be quite sad and I actually felt sorry for Renee even though in the beginning I didn’t like her at all.
November 27, 2019
I read this first in my 20's, fresh off a broken engagement and about to enter grad school. I'm not sure there was a much better book for me at the time. Now, past 50, it still delights. This tale of a woman who perceives herself as beautiful for a brainy woman, brainy for a beautiful one, but objectively neither, still has enough intellectual and sexual juice to spin out romance and the search for identity as the messy and creative processes they are.
May 28, 2021
This book made me coin the term "aspirational crush," which is to like someone with the hope that you were more like them. The book describes the existential condition of the woman whose only aspiration is to be WITH someone who matters so precisely. Goldstein writes with the self-awareness that seems to come from hindsight, and while Renee is a character I pitied, I can also remember all the times I relate to her.
This story could be read as a fable, warning against the danger of building a life to be absorbed by someone or something greater, of deriving all life's value from one trait, of shaky beliefs ready to be abandoned at the sight of anything newer or more exciting, of thinking that other people defines our worth. Yet it also makes living in danger so appealing!
Renee's constant awareness of this "mattering map" (which is a cute concept to describe socially enforced values) makes her constantly other-aware. The saddest thing in this book may be that despite being preoccupied with the Mind-Body Problem, she never fully inhabits mind or body, only the her own imagination of what other people are. It takes a lot of courage to write something that exposes yourself like this! There are also some unexplored remarks about what makes us us - is it our past (so Renee's religious upbringing and slew of daddy issues), our present, or where we wish we could be? Renee constantly tries to outrun her past, yet eventually speculates that it may be the truest part of herself.
Goldstein is a master at quotables; I averaged an underline every other page.
This story could be read as a fable, warning against the danger of building a life to be absorbed by someone or something greater, of deriving all life's value from one trait, of shaky beliefs ready to be abandoned at the sight of anything newer or more exciting, of thinking that other people defines our worth. Yet it also makes living in danger so appealing!
Renee's constant awareness of this "mattering map" (which is a cute concept to describe socially enforced values) makes her constantly other-aware. The saddest thing in this book may be that despite being preoccupied with the Mind-Body Problem, she never fully inhabits mind or body, only the her own imagination of what other people are. It takes a lot of courage to write something that exposes yourself like this! There are also some unexplored remarks about what makes us us - is it our past (so Renee's religious upbringing and slew of daddy issues), our present, or where we wish we could be? Renee constantly tries to outrun her past, yet eventually speculates that it may be the truest part of herself.
Goldstein is a master at quotables; I averaged an underline every other page.
August 20, 2018
After I finished The Mind-Body Problem, I realized how I had enjoyed every single sentence of it. The reason was that every single sentence was a meditation on philosophy, life, and emotions that are so complex, yet so elegantly put forward by the author. I can say the theme of the book is "mattering" (at least through that perspective the author tries to philosophize about everyday emotions and decisions we make), and the things we do as humans to matter. But mattering itself is a complex phenomenon. The main character, who is a graduate student in philosophy, tries to do so by marrying with someone who is a genius hoping that this marriage will also make her happier and will make her matter in people's eyes. Her hopes for mattering (I sensed) also go back to her childhood and her Jewish background as the readers are presented some memories related to the character's relationship with her mother and other family members (and also a hint of Jewish culture and beliefs are introduced through the characters). As her marriage becomes more and more routine, she searches for pleasure in others, as a part of her desire for mattering. This is a well-written book on the interplay between our minds and bodies with philosophical thoughts scattered all across the pages.
November 4, 2010
Maybe I missed something (but i don't think so!) I found this (a book club recommendation) tedious, self-centered and self-referential, and - worst of all - overwhelmingly boring. Read the author's bio, imagine a protagonist, and you've got the book. Any time an author has to put half the book in parenthesis to explain a) philosophical concepts or b) aspects of Orthodox Jewish life, she's not writing a novel, for Pete's sake!
April 27, 2011
Usually when a book is this bad, I'll just put it down after I lose interest. Which happened immediately. But I had so enjoyed 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, and this was so well reviewed (except by Katie, who was right), that I kept thinking something would happen to make me detest Renee less. Sadly, no. All I can say is that I guess people had a different expectation of feminist novels back in the day. Or just terrible taste.
January 22, 2012
Fiction that is autobiography (how much isn't?) can have the magic of story, or the plod of bio-plot. This author is superb at explaining what she knows, but this novel is filled with explaining, too many philosophical discussions between his & her geniuses, endless classroom lectures poorly disguised as dialog. Although some scenes were mildly amusing, most were worth skipping.
December 1, 2008
Half of it is a survey of the history of philsophy, but I related to the character so much, and I liked the writing so much, that I didn't mind all those references I didn't get and explanations I hadn't asked for.
April 17, 2024
I am changed. I am never the same. My favorite book of all time truly. This book is my brain on paper. My hopes. My fears. My unconscious. My mind, my mind, my mind. Words truly are an inadequate vehicle of expression to tell you how much this book means to me its FRUSTRATING ME like ACTUALLY. I love this book and I’ll never be able to explain why enough. I never knew I suffered with the mind body problem till I read this book and truly fell in love with Renee who is so closely similar to me and her struggle with being perceived and needing the affirmation of others knowing she’s intelligent and sexy and multifaceted through relationships for her to prove she’s a certain way. Being young and 20 and knowing it all and knowing nothing and drowning yourself in sex and re-assurance and transactional relationships is all about what this book is about. The connection I have to all these problems is beyond words and this book was a comfort and positive omen that I’m not alone in my fears and desires. This book is Siddartha, meets The Little Prince, meets Being and Nothingness by Jean Paul Sartre in the best way possible. A beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, amazing book with so much brevity and conciseness in regards to such deep, all consuming problems and philosophies. Ugh I can’t emphasize enough how frustrated I am writing this review because I just need the world to know how much I love this book. If you are in college and struggling with identity, and matter, and your self assurance READ THIS. Too many good quotes I don’t know where to start but I’m gonna copy and paste a discussion post I did for this book for my class so you can get a taste if that helps.
Throughout The Mind Body Problem, Renne struggles with being perceived, or more specifically "The Mind Body Problem." Due to this, she falls back on other's perceptions of her in an act of self actualization. In her own words on being perceived Renee proclaims, "What tied me to my body was not so much its desires as the desires it aroused in others-the more (both desire and others), the better. Through it (my matter, so to speak) I mattered to others, and thus mattered." (Pg. 87) This quote perfectly encapsulates Renee's internal struggle with her insecurities as an individual and how if one believes you are a certain way or possesses a certain quality, then you are in fact that way or possess that quality. With this quote in mind it's interesting how Renee desperately wants to be perceived a certain way by others but ends up merely only being perceived as a type of an idea of who she actually is. She's insecure in her marriage admitting, "And how long could Noam be hoodwinked" as well as the fact that in regards to Noam she had "captured the prize: the love of the genius. The trick was to keep it." (Pg. 146) This quote reveals the fact that Renee thinks she acquired Noam's affection and love through deceit and putting on some type of front. She feels disconnected from Noam feeling as though she "tricked" or "hoodwinked" him and he couldn't possibly love the person she actually is.
Later on after having a conversation with Sarah, Renee's close friend, they delve into the "feminine mystique" while analyzing the story of Cinderella in relation to their own lives. (Pg. 146) Renee relates to Cinderella paralleling it to her own life and marrying Noam stating, "And of course I believed in it, too, and more importantly, believed I was living it. I had been forlorn among cruel insensitive step-relatives (the Princeton philosophers), abused and unappreciated; I had been saved by the unconquerable superhuman hero." (The superhuman hero being Noam taking interest in Renee after feeling like a small fish in a big pond at Princeton.)
After this conversation she elaborates and reflects more on the mind-body problem and what it means to her and also in relation to her stance in the world after being married to Noam. Elaborating more on the issue she adds questions to the problem, "What is the world? What am I?"...For Goddsakes am I, who carries an entire world within me, a body?" Renee knows she experiences the world in a unique and unreplicable way that she's proud of, however she is frustrated with the fact that no one else can see that. She's not satisfied with the fact that only she is able to know this and doesn't feel like Noam, the closest person in her life sees this. From these frustrating quotes, Renee's young marriage embodies the mind-body problem because Renee feels known by Noam, but doesn't feel like he knows her in her entirety or sees the "entire world" within her.
Throughout The Mind Body Problem, Renne struggles with being perceived, or more specifically "The Mind Body Problem." Due to this, she falls back on other's perceptions of her in an act of self actualization. In her own words on being perceived Renee proclaims, "What tied me to my body was not so much its desires as the desires it aroused in others-the more (both desire and others), the better. Through it (my matter, so to speak) I mattered to others, and thus mattered." (Pg. 87) This quote perfectly encapsulates Renee's internal struggle with her insecurities as an individual and how if one believes you are a certain way or possesses a certain quality, then you are in fact that way or possess that quality. With this quote in mind it's interesting how Renee desperately wants to be perceived a certain way by others but ends up merely only being perceived as a type of an idea of who she actually is. She's insecure in her marriage admitting, "And how long could Noam be hoodwinked" as well as the fact that in regards to Noam she had "captured the prize: the love of the genius. The trick was to keep it." (Pg. 146) This quote reveals the fact that Renee thinks she acquired Noam's affection and love through deceit and putting on some type of front. She feels disconnected from Noam feeling as though she "tricked" or "hoodwinked" him and he couldn't possibly love the person she actually is.
Later on after having a conversation with Sarah, Renee's close friend, they delve into the "feminine mystique" while analyzing the story of Cinderella in relation to their own lives. (Pg. 146) Renee relates to Cinderella paralleling it to her own life and marrying Noam stating, "And of course I believed in it, too, and more importantly, believed I was living it. I had been forlorn among cruel insensitive step-relatives (the Princeton philosophers), abused and unappreciated; I had been saved by the unconquerable superhuman hero." (The superhuman hero being Noam taking interest in Renee after feeling like a small fish in a big pond at Princeton.)
After this conversation she elaborates and reflects more on the mind-body problem and what it means to her and also in relation to her stance in the world after being married to Noam. Elaborating more on the issue she adds questions to the problem, "What is the world? What am I?"...For Goddsakes am I, who carries an entire world within me, a body?" Renee knows she experiences the world in a unique and unreplicable way that she's proud of, however she is frustrated with the fact that no one else can see that. She's not satisfied with the fact that only she is able to know this and doesn't feel like Noam, the closest person in her life sees this. From these frustrating quotes, Renee's young marriage embodies the mind-body problem because Renee feels known by Noam, but doesn't feel like he knows her in her entirety or sees the "entire world" within her.
June 6, 2021
I liked this book for the sole reason that its protagonist Renee Feuer was in some aspects relatable to me. I can understand, only too keenly, that pressure to prove your intelligence, feeling like you are not enough, having self doubt, sensing a lack of direction.
Although Renee is not meant to be a likable character, I ended up liking her and at times sympathizing with her.
Sure, some ideas may appear dated like the male dominated elite Princeton intelligentsia, the pressure women feel to prove their worth by repressing their femininity, but again, is it that dated. Haven't we all faced work situations where we felt we were not taken seriously because of the way we looked or dressed.
What I liked about this book was the acuity with which the author captured the loneliness of living with a genius. The emptiness of a marriage based solely on adoration of the mental faculties of a person. The interspersed philosophy was sometimes revelatory and sometimes a hindrance in the actual story. I am not completely against it but again, maybe a little less of it would not have hurt anyone.
The sadness of an existence where you put your worth based on the validation of your existence by the others is point on. I loved the humor, the friendship of Renee and Ava and the mad conversations of Renee with her orthodox Jewish mother. It was all too relatable and enjoyable. Generally, I dislike heroines who are so full of themselves but somehow when Renee spoke about her beauty, her attractiveness, and how it elicited reactions from the other sex, I didn't find it annoying. The tone mercifully lacked the smug, self-satisfaction that I find so irksome. I liked the progressions of the philosophical mind-body problem with Renee's marital life.
Although Renee is not meant to be a likable character, I ended up liking her and at times sympathizing with her.
Sure, some ideas may appear dated like the male dominated elite Princeton intelligentsia, the pressure women feel to prove their worth by repressing their femininity, but again, is it that dated. Haven't we all faced work situations where we felt we were not taken seriously because of the way we looked or dressed.
What I liked about this book was the acuity with which the author captured the loneliness of living with a genius. The emptiness of a marriage based solely on adoration of the mental faculties of a person. The interspersed philosophy was sometimes revelatory and sometimes a hindrance in the actual story. I am not completely against it but again, maybe a little less of it would not have hurt anyone.
The sadness of an existence where you put your worth based on the validation of your existence by the others is point on. I loved the humor, the friendship of Renee and Ava and the mad conversations of Renee with her orthodox Jewish mother. It was all too relatable and enjoyable. Generally, I dislike heroines who are so full of themselves but somehow when Renee spoke about her beauty, her attractiveness, and how it elicited reactions from the other sex, I didn't find it annoying. The tone mercifully lacked the smug, self-satisfaction that I find so irksome. I liked the progressions of the philosophical mind-body problem with Renee's marital life.
April 13, 2017
This book was a part of my math book club with National Museum of Mathematics, and I have no idea why it was chosen. There is very little interesting mathematics, the math professors are portrayed as men with intelligence but with no personality, thoughtfulness, or consideration of others, and the main female character is an unlikable, weak woman who gathers value from relationships with men with acclaimed intelligence.
Not my cup of tea at all.
Not my cup of tea at all.
November 4, 2023
a book I will continue to thinking about and one that at times was hard to read. exposed my lack of philosophy knowledge and brought up many existential questions about life. all questions framed by a jewish young academic woman who had left orthodoxy and was navigating her worth through the mattering maps of mind (intelligence) and body, and all of their complexities, hence the title.
thank you julia for the recommendation! would never have found this book otherwise :)
thank you julia for the recommendation! would never have found this book otherwise :)
December 10, 2023
If anyone has books in a similar style as this - please recommend! I’ve recommended this to three friends after it was recommended to me!
This book satisfies everything I look for in a great read.
This book satisfies everything I look for in a great read.
February 19, 2024
One of the best things I’ve read in ages! Incredibly sharp & funny.
December 19, 2023
soooo Princeton, so pretentious, & often very funny. really excellent structure intertwining philosophy and narrative. Clear that Goldstein is a genius and excellent writer. 4 stars because there were just a few too many technical philosophical terms for me to enjoy/comprehend as a layperson. of particular interest to me were the sections on purchasing real estate and her relationship with Dan. makes me want to write a book about gay Ivy League experiences through the lens of sociological theory (must use my degree for something…)
October 11, 2021
A smart, funny book about a young Jewish woman who is studying philosophy and who marries an older man, a math prodigy who is a bit ‘slow’ socially. The question asked at the outset of the book is “what is it like to live with a genius”? The book sets off to describe just that (and it turns out he’s a bit of a jerk), along the way giving insights into the life of the intelligentsia at Princeton, Jewish culture, and a woman’s view of sex and sexual attractiveness.
There are interesting musings on the “mind-body problem” but occasionally philoso-babble gets in the way; I found more interest in a couple of other areas of duality: (1) the woman’s desire to embrace her culture and her father’s faith, while at the same time being a skeptic and rejecting orthodoxy, and (2) her worship for her husband the genius, while at the same time not being satisfied in a marriage that quickly dries up.
The writing is honest, is in a “voice” that’s a pleasure to read, and delivers on intellectual, physical, and emotional levels.
Quotes:
On marriage:
“Eliot gives us a picture of the inside of a marriage but without divulging any sexual details. Her Victorian readers were meant to infer the hidden reality from such facts as Dorothea’s pathetic pallor and the desolate loneliness of that wedding trip. But I am no George Eliot (my misfortune) and you are probably not content to infer (your misfortune). And so I must take you back with me, from the piazza to the apartment, into Signora Trotti’s oversize antique bed.
I had had thoughts, early on, of educating Noam in the bedroom, of teaching him the detours and the backways off the main straight road. But he was an unwilling student, when not altogether truant. It was not even possible to speak with him on the subject. He showed such distaste – not for the act itself, but for all reference to it.”
On mid-life crises:
“But the affair that followed brought little joy. I was but a part of Isaac’s miserable midlife crisis, the symptom known as the infatuation with the younger woman. He was forty-six years old and coming around to the realization that his life had led to this: to the cold, resentful wife; to the son and daughter pursuing their adolescent rebellion with the same uninspired conformity to the norm as their father was demonstrating in his response to his own life change; and, most painfully, to the unbrilliant career. The conclusion was waiting to be drawn, even if he shrank from its final acknowledgment. The promise of his youth would not be fulfilled, the spark had never caught, the moment for it was over. There would be no fire, and now even the feeble glow of hope was giving out.”
On men:
“I would have liked, at least, to be able to walk these foreign streets inconspicuously; the Roman men would not allow it. Their demonstrativeness surpassed anything I’d encountered (with the possible exception perhaps of the time I almost caused a riot walking down the Upper West Side’s Broadway in a pair of yellow shorts on an airless August afternoon). Here in Rome men would walk beside me for blocks, declaiming. One jumped out of his car and fell before me on his knees. I didn’t enjoy any of it.”
“This resentment had historical associations. It had been suffered throughout my childhood, when, as the girl in the family, I was expected to help wait on The Men – a class which included that little twerp, my brother. ‘Hurry up, dish it out. You’ll keep The Men waiting.’ God forbid! The women – even guests – always got the last and the worst, the dried and the burnt. God forbid The Men shouldn’t be satisfied. Any shmuck with a shmuck was a power before us.”
On mothers:
“All mothers worry, Jewish mothers worry more. But my mother can find something to worry about in anything. No topic is innocent. In some way, indirect or Talmudically indirect, some danger to her family might be lurking. ‘It’s her way of loving. Try to understand,’ my father would tell me when I’d come complaining about something I’d been forbidden to join my friends in doing: going to the beach (the undertow); tennis (sunstroke); hiking in the woods (sex maniacs). Her worrying is, like all the best thinking, vigorous but subtle. Every possibility is followed through and analyzed. And she is knowledgeable, too, admirably informed on current events: local, state, national, international – for all could adversely affect her family. … If the phone rings at eight I know who is calling, to tell me to get rid of my house plants (a four-year-old has died from nibbling on a castor oil plant), not to answer the door (a man-and-son team has raped three women in northern New Jersey), not to make any plans to visit Seattle (a geologist has predicted that Mt. Rainier could go off sometime in the next twenty-five years).”
On religion:
“Can you imagine, then, what it was like to turn from the spirit of religion to the spirit of philosophy, or, as I liked to call it in those days, the spirit of rationality? … If truth is our end (and what else should be?) we must reason our way there. The leap of faith is not heroic but cowardly, has all the virtues, Russell said, of theft over hard labor.”
On sex:
“There’s been so much serious discussion devoted to the profound question of the vaginal vs. the clitoral orgasm. Why doesn’t anyone speak about the mental orgasm? It’s what’s going on in your head that can make the difference, not which and how many of your nerve endings are being rubbed. Judged on the quantitative scale, our lovemaking wasn’t memorable. It’s other details I remember…
…
And I remember too the intensity of my pleasure, which wasn’t at all physical, as he shuddered within me while inside my head sang the triumphant thought: I am making love to this man … to Noam Himmel … the genius.”
“Haven’t you failed to consider that the object of sexual desire is not a sensation … but a person? If you overlook that, then all sex is a kind of masturbation, rather an awkward kind at that, when you do it with someone else. Only that’s all wrong. Masturbation isn’t even sex, not really. It’s the form of sex without the content; even when attaining the sensations (often more successfully than in the real thing), it’s still missing the point. Because the point lies, somehow or other, in the other person, in the reciprocal desiring. No, no, Noam, you are wrong. Sex is a personal relation, and that’s what makes it so deep and complex and interesting.”
“(Who was it who said bad sex is better than no sex at all? What a blessed sexual existence he must have enjoyed.) Sex that’s gone dry and tasteless, that one call swallow only with effort, is one of the more unpalatable experiences life offers. Especially when one is remembering or imagining the cognac-soaked flambé possibilities.”
On solitude:
“How can any of us expect others to share our world, particular as each of ours is? Ours is alone, alone, alone, alone. Alone in one’s own world.”
On values:
“Never mind that the dull can’t help themselves, that they would, granted the sense to do so, have chosen to be otherwise. Their very existence is felt as a moral affront by those of us who dwell where the genius is hero. The color of our zone is only just discernably lighter than the true black of those who perceive people according to their acceptance of some moral or religious or political code.”
On virtue:
“It was a rare treat when my father spoke about himself. There were so many things I had always wanted to know about him. I wondered if he had struggled to arrive at his moral level or had been born there. I spent a lot of time puzzling over the question of which – the struggle or lack of it – would make him the better man. Many ethicists, following Kant, opt for the struggle: those who are naturally good aren’t really good. Yet the striving after moral perfection requires a concern for one’s self: one has to want one’s self to be good.”
On women; I found these insights brutally honest and provocative:
“What tied me to my body was not so much its desires as the desires it aroused in others – the more (both desire and others), the better. Through it (my matter, so to speak) I mattered to others, and thus mattered. Through it I had mattered to Noam, who himself mattered so much, at least from where I stood.”
“I am only attracted to men who I believe to be more intelligent than I am. A detected mistake in logic considerably cools my desire. They can be shorter, they can be weaker, they can be poorer, they can be meaner, but they must be smarter. For the smart are the masters in my mattering region. And if you gain control over them, then through the transitivity of power you too are powerful.
And how is it given to a woman to dominate but through sex? Through sex a woman gains control over a man’s body that he himself lacks; she can move him in ways he cannot move himself. And she invades and takes over his consciousness…”
And lastly, on Jewish women:
“He was worshipful, offering me again and again the highest praise of which the Jewish male is capable: You don’t look at all Jewish. Our brothers always expect us to thrill at the words, because of course in their scheme of things there’s nothing so desirable as a shiksa. I’ve never understood it. Jewish women seem to me so much juicier and more betampte (tasty). It’s like the difference between a Saltine cracker and a piece of Sacher cake.”
There are interesting musings on the “mind-body problem” but occasionally philoso-babble gets in the way; I found more interest in a couple of other areas of duality: (1) the woman’s desire to embrace her culture and her father’s faith, while at the same time being a skeptic and rejecting orthodoxy, and (2) her worship for her husband the genius, while at the same time not being satisfied in a marriage that quickly dries up.
The writing is honest, is in a “voice” that’s a pleasure to read, and delivers on intellectual, physical, and emotional levels.
Quotes:
On marriage:
“Eliot gives us a picture of the inside of a marriage but without divulging any sexual details. Her Victorian readers were meant to infer the hidden reality from such facts as Dorothea’s pathetic pallor and the desolate loneliness of that wedding trip. But I am no George Eliot (my misfortune) and you are probably not content to infer (your misfortune). And so I must take you back with me, from the piazza to the apartment, into Signora Trotti’s oversize antique bed.
I had had thoughts, early on, of educating Noam in the bedroom, of teaching him the detours and the backways off the main straight road. But he was an unwilling student, when not altogether truant. It was not even possible to speak with him on the subject. He showed such distaste – not for the act itself, but for all reference to it.”
On mid-life crises:
“But the affair that followed brought little joy. I was but a part of Isaac’s miserable midlife crisis, the symptom known as the infatuation with the younger woman. He was forty-six years old and coming around to the realization that his life had led to this: to the cold, resentful wife; to the son and daughter pursuing their adolescent rebellion with the same uninspired conformity to the norm as their father was demonstrating in his response to his own life change; and, most painfully, to the unbrilliant career. The conclusion was waiting to be drawn, even if he shrank from its final acknowledgment. The promise of his youth would not be fulfilled, the spark had never caught, the moment for it was over. There would be no fire, and now even the feeble glow of hope was giving out.”
On men:
“I would have liked, at least, to be able to walk these foreign streets inconspicuously; the Roman men would not allow it. Their demonstrativeness surpassed anything I’d encountered (with the possible exception perhaps of the time I almost caused a riot walking down the Upper West Side’s Broadway in a pair of yellow shorts on an airless August afternoon). Here in Rome men would walk beside me for blocks, declaiming. One jumped out of his car and fell before me on his knees. I didn’t enjoy any of it.”
“This resentment had historical associations. It had been suffered throughout my childhood, when, as the girl in the family, I was expected to help wait on The Men – a class which included that little twerp, my brother. ‘Hurry up, dish it out. You’ll keep The Men waiting.’ God forbid! The women – even guests – always got the last and the worst, the dried and the burnt. God forbid The Men shouldn’t be satisfied. Any shmuck with a shmuck was a power before us.”
On mothers:
“All mothers worry, Jewish mothers worry more. But my mother can find something to worry about in anything. No topic is innocent. In some way, indirect or Talmudically indirect, some danger to her family might be lurking. ‘It’s her way of loving. Try to understand,’ my father would tell me when I’d come complaining about something I’d been forbidden to join my friends in doing: going to the beach (the undertow); tennis (sunstroke); hiking in the woods (sex maniacs). Her worrying is, like all the best thinking, vigorous but subtle. Every possibility is followed through and analyzed. And she is knowledgeable, too, admirably informed on current events: local, state, national, international – for all could adversely affect her family. … If the phone rings at eight I know who is calling, to tell me to get rid of my house plants (a four-year-old has died from nibbling on a castor oil plant), not to answer the door (a man-and-son team has raped three women in northern New Jersey), not to make any plans to visit Seattle (a geologist has predicted that Mt. Rainier could go off sometime in the next twenty-five years).”
On religion:
“Can you imagine, then, what it was like to turn from the spirit of religion to the spirit of philosophy, or, as I liked to call it in those days, the spirit of rationality? … If truth is our end (and what else should be?) we must reason our way there. The leap of faith is not heroic but cowardly, has all the virtues, Russell said, of theft over hard labor.”
On sex:
“There’s been so much serious discussion devoted to the profound question of the vaginal vs. the clitoral orgasm. Why doesn’t anyone speak about the mental orgasm? It’s what’s going on in your head that can make the difference, not which and how many of your nerve endings are being rubbed. Judged on the quantitative scale, our lovemaking wasn’t memorable. It’s other details I remember…
…
And I remember too the intensity of my pleasure, which wasn’t at all physical, as he shuddered within me while inside my head sang the triumphant thought: I am making love to this man … to Noam Himmel … the genius.”
“Haven’t you failed to consider that the object of sexual desire is not a sensation … but a person? If you overlook that, then all sex is a kind of masturbation, rather an awkward kind at that, when you do it with someone else. Only that’s all wrong. Masturbation isn’t even sex, not really. It’s the form of sex without the content; even when attaining the sensations (often more successfully than in the real thing), it’s still missing the point. Because the point lies, somehow or other, in the other person, in the reciprocal desiring. No, no, Noam, you are wrong. Sex is a personal relation, and that’s what makes it so deep and complex and interesting.”
“(Who was it who said bad sex is better than no sex at all? What a blessed sexual existence he must have enjoyed.) Sex that’s gone dry and tasteless, that one call swallow only with effort, is one of the more unpalatable experiences life offers. Especially when one is remembering or imagining the cognac-soaked flambé possibilities.”
On solitude:
“How can any of us expect others to share our world, particular as each of ours is? Ours is alone, alone, alone, alone. Alone in one’s own world.”
On values:
“Never mind that the dull can’t help themselves, that they would, granted the sense to do so, have chosen to be otherwise. Their very existence is felt as a moral affront by those of us who dwell where the genius is hero. The color of our zone is only just discernably lighter than the true black of those who perceive people according to their acceptance of some moral or religious or political code.”
On virtue:
“It was a rare treat when my father spoke about himself. There were so many things I had always wanted to know about him. I wondered if he had struggled to arrive at his moral level or had been born there. I spent a lot of time puzzling over the question of which – the struggle or lack of it – would make him the better man. Many ethicists, following Kant, opt for the struggle: those who are naturally good aren’t really good. Yet the striving after moral perfection requires a concern for one’s self: one has to want one’s self to be good.”
On women; I found these insights brutally honest and provocative:
“What tied me to my body was not so much its desires as the desires it aroused in others – the more (both desire and others), the better. Through it (my matter, so to speak) I mattered to others, and thus mattered. Through it I had mattered to Noam, who himself mattered so much, at least from where I stood.”
“I am only attracted to men who I believe to be more intelligent than I am. A detected mistake in logic considerably cools my desire. They can be shorter, they can be weaker, they can be poorer, they can be meaner, but they must be smarter. For the smart are the masters in my mattering region. And if you gain control over them, then through the transitivity of power you too are powerful.
And how is it given to a woman to dominate but through sex? Through sex a woman gains control over a man’s body that he himself lacks; she can move him in ways he cannot move himself. And she invades and takes over his consciousness…”
And lastly, on Jewish women:
“He was worshipful, offering me again and again the highest praise of which the Jewish male is capable: You don’t look at all Jewish. Our brothers always expect us to thrill at the words, because of course in their scheme of things there’s nothing so desirable as a shiksa. I’ve never understood it. Jewish women seem to me so much juicier and more betampte (tasty). It’s like the difference between a Saltine cracker and a piece of Sacher cake.”
October 24, 2023
This is a brilliant book and I don’t know why I’d never heard of it. It’s probably the truest description of womanhood I’ve ever read.
April 22, 2014
Even without having known much about the author before I started reading this, it was clear that it was both a first novel and based heavily on her own personal life. Goldstein is often quite funny at describing all the nuances of her "unequally yoked" relationship with a genius mathematician, and her chosen metaphor of the infamous Cartesian mind-body problem of the title is well-used and thematically satisfying in how it represents both her chosen philosophical field of study, and her chronic worries over whether men love her for her brain or her ass. Speaking as a guy, since this feels like one of those books that men and women tend to respond to in different ways, I thought she tended to ramble on about herself for a little bit too much of the book, as well as beat herself up to an often absurd degree, but when she started describing other characters, especially her husband, she had a very sharp eye for detail and was very perceptive about what made other people attractive to her. I didn't have much of a reaction to all the Jewish stuff, since it didn't seem to add much to the main "conflict" of the book, but I guess you can't really expect a relationship novel to avoid discussing the main character's background; that would be like expecting Mario Puzo to de-Italianize all his books. It's notable that she ended up staying with her husband in the book; that mirrors the chronology of Goldstein's real life, but check Wikipedia to see how that story ended.
Recommended if you enjoy reading an occasionally insightful, usually relatable book about a woman overanalyzing her marriage and affairs, with enough philosophy to keep your attention. Her renditions of philosophical debates at parties are spot-on.
Recommended if you enjoy reading an occasionally insightful, usually relatable book about a woman overanalyzing her marriage and affairs, with enough philosophy to keep your attention. Her renditions of philosophical debates at parties are spot-on.
December 15, 2007
Renee Feuer is a spirited but floundering Princeton graduate student when she first catches the eye of living math legend Noam Himmel. Their courtship is an intellectual one, spiced with heady discussions on philosophy and math with an occasional dash of physics thrown in. Once the blush of new romance wears off, however, Renee finds intellectual theory wanting as she struggles to come to terms with orthodox Jewish upbringing, her own sexuality, and the husband who is physically present but mentally absent as he works on his next great theory.
In addition to being an unusually thoughtful, coming-of-age story, the book paints a fascinating insider portrait of the highs and lows of life in the insular world of academia. While there were a few moments where I found Renee a little too self-absorbed to be wholly sympathetic, her smart, witty voice keeps the narrative moving towards and ending that is surprisingly satisfying on both an intellectual and emotional level.
In addition to being an unusually thoughtful, coming-of-age story, the book paints a fascinating insider portrait of the highs and lows of life in the insular world of academia. While there were a few moments where I found Renee a little too self-absorbed to be wholly sympathetic, her smart, witty voice keeps the narrative moving towards and ending that is surprisingly satisfying on both an intellectual and emotional level.
Read
September 14, 2023120 pages into 306 and I can't finish it.
Goldstein has an annoying need to explain everything. She can’t not give parenthetical remarks defining some philosopher or philosophy or Yiddish word. She has no trust in the reader’s intelligence, no trust in the reader’s ability to understand undefined and possibly unknown things, or to look up information they’re interested in learning more about.
She includes so many details, like things about the main character’s parents. These things’ presence strikes me more as, “look what I worked out!” instead of “this is important for the story.”
Goldstein has an annoying need to explain everything. She can’t not give parenthetical remarks defining some philosopher or philosophy or Yiddish word. She has no trust in the reader’s intelligence, no trust in the reader’s ability to understand undefined and possibly unknown things, or to look up information they’re interested in learning more about.
She includes so many details, like things about the main character’s parents. These things’ presence strikes me more as, “look what I worked out!” instead of “this is important for the story.”
April 1, 2009
Intellectual with a lot of fluff--I don't think I've ever read anything like it before. Presented some thought-provoking questions about identity. I really enjoyed this book and Goldstein's writing style; it probably doesn't hurt that the main character and I share the same ethnic background and religious history, so I got a real kick out of all the references I recognized and could relate to.
May 22, 2008
I found this to be a bit creepy and weird, and I don't love the motif of woman as succubus. Or of finding your identity in someone else.
Also, I'm a little tender about the whole "Barnard women are sluts" thing, but it was definitely an interesting read.
Also, I'm a little tender about the whole "Barnard women are sluts" thing, but it was definitely an interesting read.
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