AN American young man, a novelist, settles in London in the early 70's and pursues the friendship of much older women, who are either themselves literary or have entree to the literary life. It is a given that these women will be complicated, stubborn, strong-willed, and that the relationship between each of them and the novelist will be tricky, even suspect. If this were the 1870's, the circumstances would provide a Jamesian subtext fulfilling, only very slowly, some psychologically unforeseen purpose; but as it is the 1970's, the entire matter is at once laid self-consciously before us, and we are free to decide how much or how little it all means.
By Vivian Gornick
