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THE MICHIGAN DAILY

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JEREMY has
nothing going for
it-except the
people who love it.


--------------

KORDA'S CONFESSIONS
To be a man: Virility
& other sordid needs

______BOOKS
HOWARD'S TRAVELS
To be a woman: Tales
from across America

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MALE CHAUVINISM! HOW IT
WORKS. By Michael Korda. New
York: Random House, 242 pages,
$6.95.
By PATRICIA F. JACOBSON
THIS BOOK IS an ice-breaker.
SCENE: reviewer is in bus
or restaurant. A male peering
across my elbow says with stud-
ied disinterest, "pretty interest-
ing, huh? Who wrote it?" "Mi-
chael Korda." "A MAN!? Lem-
me see ..." Reviewer is abrupt-
ly deprived of book.
Now is that had happened once,
well, so what? But four times?
And each time, there was a look
of incredulity - or was it per-
haps a sense of betrayal? - in
the man's demeanor. Meanwhile,
the reviewer reflected grimly on
all the woman hours which have
been put into the literature on
this subject, and on the grotesque
implication that in 1973 it takes
a man to bestow seriousness on
this human issue. But, to pro-
ceed,.
Korda sets out to catalogue
the myriad ways in which wom-
en's ambitions are impaled on
the fantasies of men who see wo-
men not as human beings, but
onlyas the Eternal Challengers
to their Virility. We begin with
"A Day in the Office". We see a
group of women ("the girls")
gabbing by the water cooler,
wary of the Boss' approach. Whe-
ther they are discussing weather
or business, at His approach they
scatter like so many quail - and
he may be likening them to a
covey in his mind as he grum-
bles about what the hell he's pay-
ing them for. It is for him a
simple step from that thought
to a justification of their salaries
being one-fifth his.
W E NOW see a group of men
gabbing by the water cooler,
slapping shoulders, discussing the
weather or business. The Boss
nears . . . and joins them, pulled
by the necessity to be "one of the
boys". Being "one of the girls"
is of course a whole other order
of existence. While Korda's por-
trayal occasionally smacks of
Lionel Tiger's male-bonding ideo-
logy, he clearly regards it as
hollow, compulsive and basically
insecure behaviour. While the
men are discussing football
(which only two of them really
enjoy), a secretary walks by
carrying a sheaf of reports which
are headed for an executive in-
basket. Gears shift and a couple
of the men assume what Korda
refers to as the "Pose of Woe";
one man rubs his back as if the
weight of the whole world were
on it, another removes his glass-
es to rub the bridge of his sud-
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denly beleaguered nose; another
makes a quip about how the sec-
retary walks and everyone re-
laxes. The quip has removed the
threat. Although the secretary
would never dare chide them'
about getting back to work, her
busy-ness is perceived as a re-
buke. A joke at her expense-
one that reduces her to the status
of a mannequin - re-establishes
their control.
Coffeemaking is an important
symbol to Korda of the problem
women face in an office: "It is
hard to define your identity as a
working person when you begin
each day with a domestic act,
providing a second breakfast for
someone you're not even married
to or living with, as if anything
to do with food or drink were
by nature part of woman's func-
tions." Women executives do not
escape this mental association
with domesticity and may easily
find their very job definitions
blurred and eroded by such sim-
ple acts as bringing in a batch
of cookies or listening to a col-
league's marital woes.

A man, a woman: On Men & Women
Niimssamasasswammtasessmaasumimaasemssamemssamassnsamasmessmasessmi::rs

with men who continue to de-
lude themselves that women
can't do what they are in fact
doing quite well.
To women, his message seems
to be: here's why the men you
work with act so peculiarly -
YOU ARE INVISIBLE. They
hate or love or fear you because
you are Woman, Siren, Lorelei
or Wife-symbol - not Linda
Jones.
Korda's chapter on the "Re-
volt of Women" uses broader
strokes to outline some feminist
advances and some advice on pit-
falls in the battle against male
chauvinism. However he is at
this point ambivalent about car-

HE BOOK takes on the quali-
ty of an expose as Korda lays
bare the "game plans" which
men devise to avoid giving wo-
men more responsibility or ac-
cess to the Board Room. If they
can't avoid promoting her, they
may create a committee for her
to be answerable to, where one
did not exist before. Where a
man would receive the profes-
sional courtesies of trust and ac-
colades with his promotion, a wo-
man is more likely to receive
warnings of "we'll be watch-
ing you - it's a pretty high po-
sition, you know."
. Then comes the deadly and
pivotal area of "Sex and Sex-
ism". A woman (secretary or
executive) cannot be a colleague
to a man says Korda, because
she's "just like" one's mother,,
wife or daughter. Woe to the
young woman who has to do busi-
ness with a man who is experi-
encing a bout of impotence at
home. It would be irrelevant
with a businessman, but a busi-
nesswoman is, after all, a wo-
man-a reminder of sexual mat-
ters.
Korda gives example after ex-
ample of men's inability to come
to terms with women on a ser-
ides level. One such caricature is
the businessman who mastur-
bated under his desk every time
a woman came into his office
with a report, suggestion or
whatever.
AS uDA xwarms up to his
subject, he begins to name
names, case-studies of how suc-
cessful women pay dearly for
their success. And he gets tough

rying his argument through to
the conclusion he himself had
earlier hinted at - the neces-
sity for a radical transformation
of our society. And therein lies a
serious weakness of the book.
AND YET, and yet . . . the
final chapter is truly a block-
buster. I arrived there not quite
satisfied with the book - in spite
of its direct and excoriating wit,
something was lacking, even un-
convincing. Then Korda turns his
acid pen frankly on himself. As
he takes himself apart through
the eyes of women friends, it be-
very readable first salvo from a
veryreadable first salvo from a
man on the re-humanization of all
of us.
Pat Jacobson, a graduate of the
university, lives in Ann Arbor.

"Jews with their talk of 'tsurus'
and 'yentas.' " And here she
hung around The Daily and
learned that "not everybody
thanked Joe McCarthy for root-
ing out the commies." But, she
never wallows in nostalgia. She
abandoned Ann Arbor on the
night train to New York City,
and now she uses memories
mostly to illuminate her present.
Ms. Howard became a staff
writer for Life magazine and the
author of a book on the human
potential movement, P i e a s e
Touch. Now she is a very funny,
36 year old woman. She is reveal-
ing when she says, "I guess I like
to laugh as much as I like any-
thing." The book overflows with
humor, and Jane Howard is best
when she is poking fun at her-
self or delivering witty, ironic

A DIFFERENT WOMAN By
Jane Howard. New York: E. P.
Dutton and Co., 396 pages, $7.95.
By GAYLE BENDEROFF
What is it to be a woman?
To be contained, to be a
vessel?
To prefer a window to a door?
... To gaze at a face with
the fixed eyes of a spaniel?
THOSE LINES were written by
Theodore Roethke in his poem,
"Fourth Mediatation," yet they
evoke the quintessence of Jane
Howard's newly released book,
A Different Woman. Howard's
book concerns the author's com-
ing of age with regard to the
feminist movement. A trite sub-
ject certainly, but nonetheless
the book succeeds-refreshingly,
honestly, even poignantly.
I think Jane Howard might be
interested in reading this re-
view. She graduated from Mich-
igan which "even in the apathe-
tic fifties was a vast and rich
cafeteria of a place." She allots
Ann Arbor two paragraphs. Here

she met not only "rural elemen-
tary ed majors" but also exotic
insights into painful dilemnas.
She effervesces with anecdotal
deails that we compulsively want
to scribble down in little note-
books; making lists of the Forty
Most Important Qualities in the
Opposite Sex; the man who al-
ways knows he's going to score
when a girl unlocks his car door
for him (she did, he didn't); a
friend who hangs quotations by
Chekhov and Pater on his refrig-
erator; a compliment - hungry
mother who says "Thank you"
when someone remarks on the
beauty of a sunset. The list is
endless and we laugh because it
is all so unexaggeratedly true.
YET THE book is more than
amusing. A woman poet once
wrote, "What would happen if
one woman told the truth about
herself? The world would split
open." Multiply the impact of
"one woman" by countless tales
extracted from Howard's two
years of traveling and talking
w i t h displaced grandmothers,
former roommates, I a s a g n a
makers, lesbians, female law-
yers, celibates, bookworms, the
fecund, and the furious and you
have A Different Woman. In
fact, I thought the book was too
long until I finished it and real-
ized that its message lies in its
sheer numbers.
The book, despite all those
who appear in it, is extremely
personal. Jane Howard's world
does split open, but not without
pain and wonderings, wondering
if love will cease to be a series
of interludes, wondering if she
will ever bear a child, wonder-
ing if her frantic pace is actually
an escape.
Jane Howard grew up because
she became half an orphan.
"Dying was one of the few con-
troversial things" her mother
ever did-it made her "feel like
a deck of cards being shuffled

by giant, unseen hands. Parents
. . . as long as they are around
. . . shield us from a sense of
doom." After realizing that she
had missed her chance to ask
The Most Significant Woman in
her life important, intimate ques-
tions, she turned to others. And
by the end of the book, she has
been enlightened.
I like A Different Woman be-
cause it made me like Jane
Howard. She is adept at noticing
what usually goes unnoticed and
her ability to say "I'm vulner-
able" made me identify with her.
I also t h i n k, in its honey
way, that the book is important.
"You know what I think the
three of us would do if my
mother came back," she writes.
"We would talk about how things
really were, how we really felt,
and what we really, were afraid
of. And while we were at it, we
would laugh." The book encour-
ages us to laugh and confess, not
only with our peers, but also
with our mothers and grand-
mothers.
STILL, DON'T classify A Dif-
ferent Woman in the "for wo-
men only" category. Ms. Howard
thinks that men and women are
equally irrational "meshugas."
We need each other and, for
starters, we need to read each
other's books. Jane Howard, Girl
Writer, is a Smart Broad.
Gayle Benderoff, the same
feisty woman who read Joy of
Cooking cover-to-cover twice,
also enjoys medical journals and
books full of information.

WORTH IT?
Pain and survival: Beyond football heroics

NORTH DALLAS FORTY By
Peter Gent. New York: William
Morrow Co., 314 pages, $7.95.
By DAN BORUS
IT WAS ONLY a matter of time
before a whole slew of football
novels glutted the nation's book
market. After all, with the help
of Monday night's. national ex-
travaganza, pro ball is fast re-
placingeotherhood assa source
of reverence in males, not to
mention replacing baseball as the
national sport.

If you've watched television on
Sunday and have reached the
age of puberty, then one book is'
about all you need to understand
the football industry. The best
candidate for that one book is
Peter Gent's North Dallas Forty.
North Dallas Forty is a thinly
disguised autobiography of Gent,
a former split end for the Dallas
Cowboys. Half the fun of this
lively, sometimes well written
book is guessing which fictional
Dallas player is which Dallas
Cowboy star, which fascist gen-
eral manager is which fascist
general manager.
HE OTHER half of the fun is
the rather cliched life and
times of a sensitive young pass
catcher in the spiritual homeland

of Southwestern gauche. Follow-
ing Phil Elliot, the good white
split end, through eight days of
fly patterns, grass, and beauti-
ful, self-actualizing females, the
book has all the elements of a
good Steve McQueen action flick.
But that's not what North Dallas
Forty is all about.
About 1967 or so, when the St.
Louis Cardinals still had a de-
fense, the Cardinals and Gent's
Cowboys had one of those classic
watershed games on one of the
chilliest St. Louis Sundays in re-
cent memory. In the closing mo-
ments of that affair, with the
high - powered, offense 'minded
Cowboys trailing, Don Meridith,
now host of Monday night's na-
tional exercise in aggression,


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English Translation by Ruth & Thomas Martin
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AUDITIONS-University Players
"EDWARD l"
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Sunday, Nov. 18: 8 p.m.
Monday, Nov. 19: 3-5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.1
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faded back and lofted the ball
Gent's way. Gent leapt oetweea
two Cardinal defenders and re-
mained there for what seemed
an eternity. Gracefully and ef-
fortlessly he scooped up the ball
at the Cardinal 12 and the Cow-
boys went on to tie the game.
It was a flawless play and
looked so simple, so easy. In
this book, Gent explains it wasn't
as effortlessly as thisadolescent
fan thought. No, the .point of
North Dallas Forty, that places
it above the sex and dope cheap
thrills of its competitors, is that
this is a world of pain and de-
pends on pain's promotion, not
it's prevention. And this percep-
tion saves Gent from the pitfalls
of dumb jockdom.
Gent's protagonist, Elliot, is a
lost man-confused by the stu-
pidities of the competitive sys-
tem, but vaguely dependent upon
the rewards to gain an under-
standing of himself. Throughout
the eight days of this diary,
which ends in Elliot's eventual
dismissal from the squad for us-
ing highly illegal substances,
Gent never lets the reader for-
get that competition for survival
means the absence of friendship,
that separation means pain.
THE WORLD, read America,
that Gent recreates for the
reader is not the attractive one
of fame and glory. Rather it is
sordid, driven by motivations
which will never see fruition.
Even Seth Maxwell, read Don
Meridith, the quarterback on top
of the world and many a Texas
belle, lives in a world driven by
this fear of pain and the am-
bivalent need to compete, which
means to destroy.
Gent's book is a modern Jun-
gle, a sociological novel that :e-
acquaints the readerwith the
notion that novel means news.
Gent includes all the elements
of pro football conveniently not
telecast during the autumn and
winter season: the authoritarian
coach, the racism inherent in
running the team, the sexually
starved male groupies of the
squad, the deception necessary in
keeping players in their place.
Yet the novel suffers from styl-
istic weaknesses. Framing every
episode with either rock music,
dope or sex gets. to be a little

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