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The Power Notebooks
Katie Roiphe, culture writer and author of The Morning After, shares a timely blend of memoir, feminist investigation, and exploration of famous female writers’ lives, in a bold, essential discussion of how strong women experience their power.
Told in a series of notebook entries, Roiphe weaves her often fraught personal experiences with divorce, single motherhood, and relationships with insights into the lives and loves of famous writers such as Sylvia Plath and Simone de Beauvoir. She dissects the way she and other ordinary, powerful women have subjugated their own power time and time again, and she probes brilliantly at the tricky, uncomfortable question of why.
In these informal musings and notes, Roiphe delves into treacherous, largely untalked about, contradictions of contemporary womanhood, going where few writers dare. The Power Notebooks is Roiphe’s most vital, thought provoking, and emotionally intimate work yet.
Told in a series of notebook entries, Roiphe weaves her often fraught personal experiences with divorce, single motherhood, and relationships with insights into the lives and loves of famous writers such as Sylvia Plath and Simone de Beauvoir. She dissects the way she and other ordinary, powerful women have subjugated their own power time and time again, and she probes brilliantly at the tricky, uncomfortable question of why.
In these informal musings and notes, Roiphe delves into treacherous, largely untalked about, contradictions of contemporary womanhood, going where few writers dare. The Power Notebooks is Roiphe’s most vital, thought provoking, and emotionally intimate work yet.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2020
40 people are currently reading
887 people want to read
About the author
Katie Roiphe
22 books127 followersKatie Roiphe is the author of the non-fiction works The Morning After: Fear, Sex and Feminism (1994) and Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End (1997). Her novel Still She Haunts Me is an empathetic imagining of the relationship between Charles Dodgson (known as Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell, the real-life model for Dodgson's Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She holds a Ph.D in English Literature from Princeton University, and is presently teaching at New York University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
November 4, 2020
I have to confess that I really enjoyed this book. For starters, Katie's writing is well-paced. She leaves you with your thoughts very quickly after saying what she has to.
Yet, this becomes troubling when she engages with subjects such as abuse and sexual harassment. The implications of her explorations can often feel dangerous if you don't inspect them for the biases and confusion she keeps admitting to.
One may also wonder how much of the book's credibility washes away if you take out the sprinkles about Sylvia Plath, Simon de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, etc.. what does that offer Katie in the claims she wants to make about women seeking some kind of vulnerability? What will it take for our society to reimagine our relationships with money, romance and care work? What does it mean for us to use a label to skim through a complex experience?
One doesn't have to agree with Katie wholely to read and enjoy this book. The writing is good, and the interspaced research from lives of relevant women offers the book a fascination it wouldn't have otherwise. I don't imagine I will read any of Katie's other work but am grateful that I stumbled upon this one.
Yet, this becomes troubling when she engages with subjects such as abuse and sexual harassment. The implications of her explorations can often feel dangerous if you don't inspect them for the biases and confusion she keeps admitting to.
One may also wonder how much of the book's credibility washes away if you take out the sprinkles about Sylvia Plath, Simon de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, etc.. what does that offer Katie in the claims she wants to make about women seeking some kind of vulnerability? What will it take for our society to reimagine our relationships with money, romance and care work? What does it mean for us to use a label to skim through a complex experience?
One doesn't have to agree with Katie wholely to read and enjoy this book. The writing is good, and the interspaced research from lives of relevant women offers the book a fascination it wouldn't have otherwise. I don't imagine I will read any of Katie's other work but am grateful that I stumbled upon this one.
March 5, 2020
There are things straight women don’t get about straight guys—like old guys’ penchant for younger girls, a puzzlement that gets a workout in this book. But there are things straight guys don’t get about straight women—in particular, the addiction to a certain kind of vain, obviously weak, insecurity-fueling-anger kind of guy. Think of Fredo Corleone in Vegas, think of James Woods In CASINO, think of Eric Roberts in STAR 80 (well...dial down his youthful good looks a notch). These mama’s boys and strutters are obviously feral weasel; but show me a girl who wouldn’t walk over six Brad Pitts to get at Vincent Gallo! It’s a mystery the rest of the penis-holding race will never get over; or get.
There are similar such conundrums in THE POWER NOTEBOOKS. The narrator falls for a rich toff whom she describes as projecting the works of Venice, CA artists in a Venice, Italy castle with FELLINI’S CASANOVA playing outside. If this were not enough to get you running out of Bluebeard’s Castle, I don’t know what would; but when this dictionary-definition dilettante is handcrafting a Minecraft universe for her son, even the son is a little ooged out. So what happens next? Reader, she marries him (which leads to some chapters set in AlAnon—which she refers to as “the rooms”...never thought I’d hear that awful phrase from this writer.)
There are many Didionesque sentences and there are lists and there are things she does as a single mother with her children where some obscure dishes of food are namedropped Didionesquely; also some picturesque and posh locations, also Joanlike. And yet the Joanisms lack that prairie mama sitting atop the stagecoach with a shotgun authority that gives Didion’s sentences their ice-castle majesty.
There are other men, coyly named with a single letter. There is something in back of the stories of all these men, which is that they are rich, and seem “eligible” to the author, seem “ungettable,” seem a real catch because no one else can quite nail him...All seem narcissistic, remote in a way that makes you wonder if girls are their first choice. One poor chap is introduced with the detail that he has multiple colors of seersucker suits in his closet—to me, a laugh-out-loud horror-movie stinger. They don’t stay; but frankly—and here is one of the kickers of which Ms. Roiphe is unaware—one senses that if they did, she would grow bored, and quickly contemptuous of them. It’s live in fear or live in loathing—all good, but, self-contemplative memoirist, please learn a few things about yourself, first and foremost the role that class plays not just in the dudes you have in your queue but in the highly aristocratic-seeming writing life you have designed for yourself!
A polemicist who is always driving easily wounded post-me-too Millennial white girls (grads, let us say, of Bennington and above) to madness, Roiphe is also a superb writer generally—her book on the deaths of great authors, THE VIOLET HOUR, is magnificent. And there are great moments here—particularly about her mother and about the outpouring of hate that fell down on her after her Harper’s article on the “Shitty Men In Media” list. Were I her shrink, might I say that these matters cut closer to her bone than those dumbass seersucker’d men?
There are similar such conundrums in THE POWER NOTEBOOKS. The narrator falls for a rich toff whom she describes as projecting the works of Venice, CA artists in a Venice, Italy castle with FELLINI’S CASANOVA playing outside. If this were not enough to get you running out of Bluebeard’s Castle, I don’t know what would; but when this dictionary-definition dilettante is handcrafting a Minecraft universe for her son, even the son is a little ooged out. So what happens next? Reader, she marries him (which leads to some chapters set in AlAnon—which she refers to as “the rooms”...never thought I’d hear that awful phrase from this writer.)
There are many Didionesque sentences and there are lists and there are things she does as a single mother with her children where some obscure dishes of food are namedropped Didionesquely; also some picturesque and posh locations, also Joanlike. And yet the Joanisms lack that prairie mama sitting atop the stagecoach with a shotgun authority that gives Didion’s sentences their ice-castle majesty.
There are other men, coyly named with a single letter. There is something in back of the stories of all these men, which is that they are rich, and seem “eligible” to the author, seem “ungettable,” seem a real catch because no one else can quite nail him...All seem narcissistic, remote in a way that makes you wonder if girls are their first choice. One poor chap is introduced with the detail that he has multiple colors of seersucker suits in his closet—to me, a laugh-out-loud horror-movie stinger. They don’t stay; but frankly—and here is one of the kickers of which Ms. Roiphe is unaware—one senses that if they did, she would grow bored, and quickly contemptuous of them. It’s live in fear or live in loathing—all good, but, self-contemplative memoirist, please learn a few things about yourself, first and foremost the role that class plays not just in the dudes you have in your queue but in the highly aristocratic-seeming writing life you have designed for yourself!
A polemicist who is always driving easily wounded post-me-too Millennial white girls (grads, let us say, of Bennington and above) to madness, Roiphe is also a superb writer generally—her book on the deaths of great authors, THE VIOLET HOUR, is magnificent. And there are great moments here—particularly about her mother and about the outpouring of hate that fell down on her after her Harper’s article on the “Shitty Men In Media” list. Were I her shrink, might I say that these matters cut closer to her bone than those dumbass seersucker’d men?
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March 10, 2022A memoir about love, divorce, marriage, family, and historical figures told in very short essays. Compelling.
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April 17, 2021Mensen schijnen erg kwaad te worden om de dingen die Katie Roiphe zegt, maar hier raken ze zaken waar ik zelf ook graag geregeld over nadenk: (seksuele) macht, ongelijkwaardige relaties. Ze komt tot die gedachten door het werk en het leven van grote (veelal vrouwelijke) schrijvers en door haar eigen relaties. Het zijn echt notities, dat maakt de stukken soms wat springerig, er een echte essaybundel van maken had mij beter bevallen denk ik, maar alsnog zeer de moeite waard.
March 21, 2020
This is a great collection of vignettes on women and power - the need to seem relatable, the differences in how we show up publicly and privately. Roiphe looks at it from the lens of women writers who showed up powerfully in public and in their writing, but sometimes seemed to prefer the opposite in their love lives. She also takes a personal turn, even as she decries the seeming imperative for women writers to show vulnerability and weakness. It's like she took her last book "In Praise of Messy Lives" (which was uneven) and developed the thesis a whole lot more.
A cliche, but I felt the book was written for me. I was familiar with the writers she references (Simone de Beauvior, Jean Rhys, etc). I also found the content relatable to me specifically as someone who self-deprecates and worries about being likeable even though I'm pretty tough and am often incensed by the double standard. Also I've followed Roiphe since I read "The Morning After" in high school (I credit her and Paglia with instilling in me a more skeptical and critical attitude towards political and social agendas), and I see her evolution as a person mirroring mine - even though she's a famous academic and I'm a middle manager. I once leaned towards being a provocateur, and I mellowed out but you can never kill that contrarian instinct. Avoid if you want feminist platitudes in the vein of last year's popular and idiotic "Trick Mirror." I recommend if you like to be challenged.
A cliche, but I felt the book was written for me. I was familiar with the writers she references (Simone de Beauvior, Jean Rhys, etc). I also found the content relatable to me specifically as someone who self-deprecates and worries about being likeable even though I'm pretty tough and am often incensed by the double standard. Also I've followed Roiphe since I read "The Morning After" in high school (I credit her and Paglia with instilling in me a more skeptical and critical attitude towards political and social agendas), and I see her evolution as a person mirroring mine - even though she's a famous academic and I'm a middle manager. I once leaned towards being a provocateur, and I mellowed out but you can never kill that contrarian instinct. Avoid if you want feminist platitudes in the vein of last year's popular and idiotic "Trick Mirror." I recommend if you like to be challenged.
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August 14, 2021More and more unbearable with every page. Roiphe was fascinating when parsing vulnerabilities, often the self-annihilating kind, in relationships. Or, she parses hers, and gets documentary support from some choice women writers I can imagine she finds solace in: e.g., Simone de Beauvoir was garbage at love, despite her being Simone de Beauvoir—but, still, she's Simone de Beauvoir. Roiphe gets to her points clumsily, but the wandering nature of the notebooks made space for that gracelessness, so that was fine. We also hardly ever agreed—a different flavor vs. "it is painful to agree with her," as with Jamison or Taddeo or Zambreno (the kinds of writers she deliberately sets herself apart from, by the way)—but it was still fascinating.
What grew more and more off-putting was Roiphe's insistence on building a defense and offense against her critics, often preemptively, and how she did so. "I'm not like other girls" runs through these notebooks—and she's absolutely not like other women essayists, especially those who choose to be vulnerable in writing. She's always been different. She doesn't care much about being likeable, and especially not about being relatable. She doesn't even smile in photographs, oh no. And on and on it went, her fixating on her notoriety, and always with that air of painful casualness, the kind that means to elevate her, and my irritation gave way to just being embarrassed for her. And you can't even call her out on this, or on anything, because she also has a defense and offense about that, too, and I am so tired right now.
This was incredibly fatiguing. It feels such a loss, because I was truly drawn to the premise of these notebooks: the faces we assume for private love and public polemics about love. If I overthink this, I might even say it was a bit sad, how this writing about vulnerabilities within different spheres only brought up awkward and overwrought defense mechanisms for her, defense mechanisms that just took over the book. But I think I'm done thinking about Katie Roiphe.
(Katie, if you read this, and you might, given the Internet-trawling habits you've shared, please note that I am very small and I have no money, so you can imagine the kind of stress that I am under.)
What grew more and more off-putting was Roiphe's insistence on building a defense and offense against her critics, often preemptively, and how she did so. "I'm not like other girls" runs through these notebooks—and she's absolutely not like other women essayists, especially those who choose to be vulnerable in writing. She's always been different. She doesn't care much about being likeable, and especially not about being relatable. She doesn't even smile in photographs, oh no. And on and on it went, her fixating on her notoriety, and always with that air of painful casualness, the kind that means to elevate her, and my irritation gave way to just being embarrassed for her. And you can't even call her out on this, or on anything, because she also has a defense and offense about that, too, and I am so tired right now.
This was incredibly fatiguing. It feels such a loss, because I was truly drawn to the premise of these notebooks: the faces we assume for private love and public polemics about love. If I overthink this, I might even say it was a bit sad, how this writing about vulnerabilities within different spheres only brought up awkward and overwrought defense mechanisms for her, defense mechanisms that just took over the book. But I think I'm done thinking about Katie Roiphe.
(Katie, if you read this, and you might, given the Internet-trawling habits you've shared, please note that I am very small and I have no money, so you can imagine the kind of stress that I am under.)
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June 11, 2023So much fun! Roiphe writes mostly to this question that has been haunting me for fucking ever:
Why is it that the women who are the most intelligent, sharp, and original, those one-of-a-kind, dazzling women, are the ones so willing to debase themselves to the lowest level for a man?
This quote from Roiphe's sister Emily made me laugh:
“There is no man anywhere so psychotic, so drunk, so helpless, so brutal, so indifferent, even just so annoying, that some woman somewhere isn’t dying to take care of him.”
So sure, women around the world lower themselves for men regardless of class or background.
What most disturbs me, though, is that the woman that I described above: the one with complexities and nuance, knows precisely what it is she’s doing.
Wharton wrote this in the midst of a tortuous love affair:
“I, who dominated life, stood aside from it so, how I am humbled, absorbed, without a shred of will or identity left; I am a little humbled, a little ashamed, to find how poor a thing I am, how the personality I had molded into such strong firm lines has crumbled to a pinch of ashes in this flame.”
Despite how much these women thrash against the conventions of their time, are their convictions, passions, and career simply a half-entertaining way to pass the time until the man comes along and gives them a reason to give it all up?
Why is it that the women who are the most intelligent, sharp, and original, those one-of-a-kind, dazzling women, are the ones so willing to debase themselves to the lowest level for a man?
This quote from Roiphe's sister Emily made me laugh:
“There is no man anywhere so psychotic, so drunk, so helpless, so brutal, so indifferent, even just so annoying, that some woman somewhere isn’t dying to take care of him.”
So sure, women around the world lower themselves for men regardless of class or background.
What most disturbs me, though, is that the woman that I described above: the one with complexities and nuance, knows precisely what it is she’s doing.
Wharton wrote this in the midst of a tortuous love affair:
“I, who dominated life, stood aside from it so, how I am humbled, absorbed, without a shred of will or identity left; I am a little humbled, a little ashamed, to find how poor a thing I am, how the personality I had molded into such strong firm lines has crumbled to a pinch of ashes in this flame.”
Despite how much these women thrash against the conventions of their time, are their convictions, passions, and career simply a half-entertaining way to pass the time until the man comes along and gives them a reason to give it all up?
July 22, 2022
The sort of feminist text I'm addicted to, women talking honestly about their abjection and desire. Though it never seems to land on a distinct conclusion, a lot of very compelling reflections on the power dynamics that can exist between two people, particularly between coupled men and women. Reads like a mix of I Love Dick by Chris Kraus and Why Did I Ever by Mary Robinson, both favs of mine. Often feels very astute and thorough, with a lot of insights into the paradoxical appeals and advantages of powerlessness and why we can yearn for it, the subtle forces and feelings that can push us (women, but I identify with abject women) into coupledom.
October 5, 2022
I’ve been riding the Roiphe train for the past month. It began with my discovery of Katie’s mother, Anne Roiphe, one of the early defenders of feminism--not the men-must-cease-to-exist type, but rather a more moderate variety, where men are at least permitted in the picture. Katie seems to have shadowed her mother, though with her own flavor.
The Power Notebooks can be seen as a book on feminism, in many respects. But it has a much broader applications: the idea of power itself; more specifically, the display of power between individuals. She does recall many literary heavy weights such as Simon de Beauvoir, Jean Rhys, Sylvia Plath, Mary McCarthy, and how they display this ferocity in public life, defending their ideas with a white-knuckled fury, yet in private, behind closed doors with their men, they show their soft underbellies. And Katie is no exception. We see throughout how Katie groups herself among these literary viragos. She opens herself up to the same public that had excoriated her when her first, and subsequent, books were unveiled to the public. She lays bare her vulnerabilities, her weaknesses, her capitulations at the feet of men. She confesses her one-night stands, her teenage sexual relationship with a rabbi, her hopping from one man’s bed to the next. In doing so, she becomes more “relatable” to the public; no longer the stern professor and public figure who budges not a whit; no, she is human, after all, subject to making mistakes, going in the wrong direction, playing “haunter” and “haunted,” sometimes simultaneously.
The writing is succinct, not a word wasted. And for those whose attentions spans lack longevity (myself included), the short paragraphs and chapters are bite-sized and wholly digestible. When I picked up The Power Notebooks, I was half-expecting a bland, erudite treatment of power, perhaps the intercontinental type involving dictators and their subordinates. I was wrong. Instead, I got part memoir, part personal essay, written in a conversational style. I became reacquainted with a host of literary stars who I had always brushed over. But this time I looked them up; I set the book down and found videos of Mary McCarthy in interviews answering her interlocutors with a quick, incisive wit; found a biography of Simon de Beauvoir; gave Proust another chance.
I truly enjoyed this book and give it 5 stars. I will continue riding the Roiphe train, at least for now.
The Power Notebooks can be seen as a book on feminism, in many respects. But it has a much broader applications: the idea of power itself; more specifically, the display of power between individuals. She does recall many literary heavy weights such as Simon de Beauvoir, Jean Rhys, Sylvia Plath, Mary McCarthy, and how they display this ferocity in public life, defending their ideas with a white-knuckled fury, yet in private, behind closed doors with their men, they show their soft underbellies. And Katie is no exception. We see throughout how Katie groups herself among these literary viragos. She opens herself up to the same public that had excoriated her when her first, and subsequent, books were unveiled to the public. She lays bare her vulnerabilities, her weaknesses, her capitulations at the feet of men. She confesses her one-night stands, her teenage sexual relationship with a rabbi, her hopping from one man’s bed to the next. In doing so, she becomes more “relatable” to the public; no longer the stern professor and public figure who budges not a whit; no, she is human, after all, subject to making mistakes, going in the wrong direction, playing “haunter” and “haunted,” sometimes simultaneously.
The writing is succinct, not a word wasted. And for those whose attentions spans lack longevity (myself included), the short paragraphs and chapters are bite-sized and wholly digestible. When I picked up The Power Notebooks, I was half-expecting a bland, erudite treatment of power, perhaps the intercontinental type involving dictators and their subordinates. I was wrong. Instead, I got part memoir, part personal essay, written in a conversational style. I became reacquainted with a host of literary stars who I had always brushed over. But this time I looked them up; I set the book down and found videos of Mary McCarthy in interviews answering her interlocutors with a quick, incisive wit; found a biography of Simon de Beauvoir; gave Proust another chance.
I truly enjoyed this book and give it 5 stars. I will continue riding the Roiphe train, at least for now.
April 12, 2021
Een soort 'dagboekboek' met als insteek eigen zorgen, bedenkingen over die zorgen, het leven, de rol van de vrouw, de positie van de vrouw, de tegenstrijdigheden in wat men lijkt te zijn en het gedrag dat men stelt, over macht, gepercipieerde macht en over literatuur
fijn om lezen, af en toe heldere inzichten, tegelijk ook soms niet kritisch genoeg, anderzijds ook te kritisch
wel een aanrader, eentje waarna je wat wezenloos blijft zitten kijken
https://www.trouw.nl/recensies/in-the...
fijn om lezen, af en toe heldere inzichten, tegelijk ook soms niet kritisch genoeg, anderzijds ook te kritisch
wel een aanrader, eentje waarna je wat wezenloos blijft zitten kijken
https://www.trouw.nl/recensies/in-the...
February 29, 2024
The way Roiphe writes about her life is incredible. Her storytelling has satisfying imagery, a sense of untraditional rawness that captivated my attention. I finished this book in two days. If this was purely a memoir, it would have gotten five stars easily.
I didn’t particularly enjoy the comparison to other famous authors’ relationships. I found myself impatiently flying through those sections to get back to Roiphe’s relationships.
This is my best book of 2024 so far.
I didn’t particularly enjoy the comparison to other famous authors’ relationships. I found myself impatiently flying through those sections to get back to Roiphe’s relationships.
This is my best book of 2024 so far.
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March 27, 2022Controversieel. Soms zet het erg aan het denken, soms voelt het te simpel en vanuit patriarchisch oogpunt beredeneerd.
September 10, 2024
Ik heb hier heel erg van genoten. Ik wist eigenlijk niks over Katie Roiphe, behalve dat ze tijdens de MeToo-beweging een kritisch essay over MeToo heeft geschreven in Harper's Magazine.
Ik moet dat essay zelf nog lezen, maar ik vind dat ze hier heel begrijpelijk overkomt. Deze notebooks zijn aantekeningen over haar eigen leven. Het overkoepelende thema is het contrast tussen haar feminisme aan de ene kant en aan de andere kant hoe ze in haar eigen leven mannen macht over haar lijkt te "geven". Maar ik weet niet of dat echt zo werkt, of dat mannen dat gewoon sneller hebben. In ieder geval denk ik dat het heel verfrissend is hoe ze daar eerlijk over is. En ik genoot er heel erg van om over verschillende scenario's in haar leven te lezen en haar gedachtes daarover.
Ik moet dat essay zelf nog lezen, maar ik vind dat ze hier heel begrijpelijk overkomt. Deze notebooks zijn aantekeningen over haar eigen leven. Het overkoepelende thema is het contrast tussen haar feminisme aan de ene kant en aan de andere kant hoe ze in haar eigen leven mannen macht over haar lijkt te "geven". Maar ik weet niet of dat echt zo werkt, of dat mannen dat gewoon sneller hebben. In ieder geval denk ik dat het heel verfrissend is hoe ze daar eerlijk over is. En ik genoot er heel erg van om over verschillende scenario's in haar leven te lezen en haar gedachtes daarover.
August 15, 2020
Although I read about this author’s controversial stance, I had not read her books or any of her other articles. I read the reviews and was intrigued by the polarizing comments.
I really enjoyed it. She is a raw and authentic writer who I found vulnerable and confident at the same time. She weaves somewhat random thoughts, through very personal stories and self reflection. I found myself questioning my own relationships and the dichotomy of power in my own life.
I did not agree with some of her conclusions but each made me think and forced me to think differently. I identified with some stories (notably the accident pushing the stroller in high heels) and found my friends actions in other stories. She calls us out without judgement but with introspection. She accepts that life is messy and addresses the inconsistencies.
This is a must read for all women. Not because of her opinions but because of her recognition and perspective. I know that I will come back to the ideas in this book often.
I intent on gifting this book to my closest girlfriend.
I really enjoyed it. She is a raw and authentic writer who I found vulnerable and confident at the same time. She weaves somewhat random thoughts, through very personal stories and self reflection. I found myself questioning my own relationships and the dichotomy of power in my own life.
I did not agree with some of her conclusions but each made me think and forced me to think differently. I identified with some stories (notably the accident pushing the stroller in high heels) and found my friends actions in other stories. She calls us out without judgement but with introspection. She accepts that life is messy and addresses the inconsistencies.
This is a must read for all women. Not because of her opinions but because of her recognition and perspective. I know that I will come back to the ideas in this book often.
I intent on gifting this book to my closest girlfriend.
November 26, 2020
The author gave me an ARC of this a while ago. In reading past books by Roiphe, one may not agree with her some of the time, or even all of the time, but she is irrefutably a brilliant essayist. In this book, which is a deeper look into some of her personal struggles, I found an intimacy and a relatability that brought me closer to her as a person and as a writer. In the past, Roiphe's guard was up, now she has let it down, and I admire her courage. Essays focus on episodes from Roiphe's life, on the lives of Mary McCarthy and Simone de Beauvoir, writers who lived one life in public, another in private. In this new book, Katie has given us all the gift of a glimpse into the vulnerabilities of her life in private. A brave book.
August 21, 2021
Male power and privilege, and how it's been abused is very much in the spotlight now. The #metoo movement has highlighted how powerful men such as Harvey Weinstein has preyed on more vulnerable women. While an important topic, do we need another personal reflection on how power shapes the relationship between the genders? Reading this book, the answer is a resounding yes.
Roiphe's book is urgent, essential and quite devastating. It may seem puzzling at first, part memoir, part essay, part analysis of other women's lives (and their relationships with men). As Roiphe recounts her own past failed relationships (a failed marriage, a second child born to a man who wouldn't commit) and her experiences as a writer and academic
[To be completed]
Roiphe's book is urgent, essential and quite devastating. It may seem puzzling at first, part memoir, part essay, part analysis of other women's lives (and their relationships with men). As Roiphe recounts her own past failed relationships (a failed marriage, a second child born to a man who wouldn't commit) and her experiences as a writer and academic
[To be completed]
January 8, 2023
I picked this up because I ran across an aside in which someone said Katie Roiphe's few pages in this about her relationship with an older man contain more insight than My Dark Vanessa. I don't agree; I thought it was actually the least insightful piece in the book, interestingly; she didn't seem to me to inhabit that former identity enough in order to really say something new about it. But I did leave highlights scattered throughout the other pieces; she delves into gendered interpersonal power in thoughtful ways, some of which were revelatory, some of which are aspects I've noticed myself. A good book to nod along to.
February 8, 2025
I spent several hours simultaneously cringing and nodding my way through this collection of essays written by Katie Roiphe—just one of oh-so-many writers that critics love to hate, threaten and chastize, not only for her conscious choices but sometimes for the life experiences thrust upon her, and sometimes, on an especially slow day, simply for being born female.
That being said, several of these essays were physically difficult to get through—both Abusive and The Rabbi, for instance, necessitated a few breaks in reading—and trigger warnings abound. On page 131, she writes, “The wrongness was a feeling of towering taboo, not exciting but sickening, adjacent to incest.” Not adjacent, reader; I warn you—not adjacent.
When you’ve dealt with incest, domestic abuse, bullying, and living with someone who has a substance use disorder, you will likely devise some interesting ways of coming to terms with the trauma, as Roiphe did. While I might disagree with what she has to say, it’s important to give credit to how she says it—she doesn’t cover the reader’s eyes during the potentially upsetting bits (the entire book, really). She is honest and real and somehow comes across as relatable despite the things she says.
Ironically, she directly addresses the term “relatable”: “My students love to talk about a writer being ‘relatable’. Can’t something be good or fascinating without your identifying with the writer? I ask them. They can appreciate a piece of writing if it’s not ‘relatable,’ I notice, but they can’t love it.”
The problem is that she also doesn’t use her own words much of the time, relying on others to give her life experiences…well, life. But the people whose words she so heavily relies upon are not known for their level-headedness. The distinguished Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Virginia Woolf, Susan Sontag, and Sylvia Plath are discussed at some length throughout the book, but unfortunately, it seems almost like a means of excusing untreated codependency and battered woman syndrome, among other maladies.
“Maybe we are all brilliant and broken in the same way,” seems to be the convoluted thought process at play. Both things can be true, but they don't have to be.
Of Susan Sontag, Roiphe writes, “How to connect the intellectual bravura, the almost grandiose sense of self, the astonishing will, with the role she played with some of her lovers?”
How indeed…but this type of behavior is not romantic, and it’s not poetic. It likely necessitates treatment of some sort.
She also focuses on Mary McCarthy, who wrote brilliantly of women’s liberation while being regularly beaten, even when about to give birth, by her much older husband, Edmund Wilson. Of course, Roiphe focuses on the emotionality and passion of the whole damn torrid mess—never discussing the punches or kicks. Mary remained married for nearly a decade.
In our romanticized stories, we don’t talk about the part with the head in the oven or the fatal “fall” down the stairs very often. We gloss over the burning mental hospital, yes?
Instead, we get this from Roiphe: “What we both need is an old-fashioned sanatorium in the Alps with wicker chaise lounges and nurses serving us iced team and cold mountain air. What we have is each other.”
Yes, much nicer. Completely delusional but nicer.
When Francoise Gilot’s friend warned her that she was heading for a catastrophe because of her love affair with Picasso, perhaps she should have done some soul searching instead of replying that it “was the kind of catastrophe she didn’t want to avoid.” When telling this story, Roiphe leaves out the fact that Francoise eventually fled the cruel, abusive relationship with their two children in tow. Later in life, she said that Picasso had a “Bluebeard complex.”
Roiphe set out to answer questions that have plagued her and others for a long time, namely:
“Why did Mary McCarthy have to ask her husband for a nickel to make a phone call? Why did Sylvia Plath fall in love with, as she put it, the only man who could boss her around? Why did Edith Wharton, at the height of her success, write to her faithless lover, ‘I don’t want to win—I want to lose everything to you!’ “? The question is so broad that it’s hard to keep in mind as the book swoops and swirls around it, off-track and unfocused.
With so many truly inspiring, strong modern women and relationships to draw upon, why does Roiphe continually travel back in time to the era of bathtub gin? Probably because there are not as many like-minded people nowadays. Written in 2020, this book somehow feels like a throwback because it would be difficult to stomach the behavior of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Rhys today.
The real question Roiphe sets out to answer seems much simpler: “If I’m so f’ing smart, why am I acting so f’ng dumb?” A jolly good query, to be sure. But in all of history, no person, real or fictional, regardless of IQ or age, has succinctly answered it. Not Carrie Parker nor Bridget Jones, not Catherine the Great nor Elizabeth Taylor. And Roiphe, it turns out (spoiler alert), doesn’t have the answers either. Boredom, inebriation, untreated mental health disorders, limerence, lead poisoning, perhaps? It’s hard to say.
She writes, "My sister Emily once said to me, 'There is no man anywhere so psychotic, so drunk, so helpless, so brutal, so indifferent, even just so annoying, that some woman somewhere isn’t dying to take care of him.' "
Instead of continuing to romanticize and dissect the idea (and beat it to death only to revive it and beat it into submission yet again), maybe it’s time we start a different conversation. After all, at the same time that Roiphe observes, “The writer had to telegraph, ‘I am a mess’ to mitigate an otherwise arrogant or chafing presumption,” she is doing just that.
That being said, several of these essays were physically difficult to get through—both Abusive and The Rabbi, for instance, necessitated a few breaks in reading—and trigger warnings abound. On page 131, she writes, “The wrongness was a feeling of towering taboo, not exciting but sickening, adjacent to incest.” Not adjacent, reader; I warn you—not adjacent.
When you’ve dealt with incest, domestic abuse, bullying, and living with someone who has a substance use disorder, you will likely devise some interesting ways of coming to terms with the trauma, as Roiphe did. While I might disagree with what she has to say, it’s important to give credit to how she says it—she doesn’t cover the reader’s eyes during the potentially upsetting bits (the entire book, really). She is honest and real and somehow comes across as relatable despite the things she says.
Ironically, she directly addresses the term “relatable”: “My students love to talk about a writer being ‘relatable’. Can’t something be good or fascinating without your identifying with the writer? I ask them. They can appreciate a piece of writing if it’s not ‘relatable,’ I notice, but they can’t love it.”
The problem is that she also doesn’t use her own words much of the time, relying on others to give her life experiences…well, life. But the people whose words she so heavily relies upon are not known for their level-headedness. The distinguished Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Virginia Woolf, Susan Sontag, and Sylvia Plath are discussed at some length throughout the book, but unfortunately, it seems almost like a means of excusing untreated codependency and battered woman syndrome, among other maladies.
“Maybe we are all brilliant and broken in the same way,” seems to be the convoluted thought process at play. Both things can be true, but they don't have to be.
Of Susan Sontag, Roiphe writes, “How to connect the intellectual bravura, the almost grandiose sense of self, the astonishing will, with the role she played with some of her lovers?”
How indeed…but this type of behavior is not romantic, and it’s not poetic. It likely necessitates treatment of some sort.
She also focuses on Mary McCarthy, who wrote brilliantly of women’s liberation while being regularly beaten, even when about to give birth, by her much older husband, Edmund Wilson. Of course, Roiphe focuses on the emotionality and passion of the whole damn torrid mess—never discussing the punches or kicks. Mary remained married for nearly a decade.
In our romanticized stories, we don’t talk about the part with the head in the oven or the fatal “fall” down the stairs very often. We gloss over the burning mental hospital, yes?
Instead, we get this from Roiphe: “What we both need is an old-fashioned sanatorium in the Alps with wicker chaise lounges and nurses serving us iced team and cold mountain air. What we have is each other.”
Yes, much nicer. Completely delusional but nicer.
When Francoise Gilot’s friend warned her that she was heading for a catastrophe because of her love affair with Picasso, perhaps she should have done some soul searching instead of replying that it “was the kind of catastrophe she didn’t want to avoid.” When telling this story, Roiphe leaves out the fact that Francoise eventually fled the cruel, abusive relationship with their two children in tow. Later in life, she said that Picasso had a “Bluebeard complex.”
Roiphe set out to answer questions that have plagued her and others for a long time, namely:
“Why did Mary McCarthy have to ask her husband for a nickel to make a phone call? Why did Sylvia Plath fall in love with, as she put it, the only man who could boss her around? Why did Edith Wharton, at the height of her success, write to her faithless lover, ‘I don’t want to win—I want to lose everything to you!’ “? The question is so broad that it’s hard to keep in mind as the book swoops and swirls around it, off-track and unfocused.
With so many truly inspiring, strong modern women and relationships to draw upon, why does Roiphe continually travel back in time to the era of bathtub gin? Probably because there are not as many like-minded people nowadays. Written in 2020, this book somehow feels like a throwback because it would be difficult to stomach the behavior of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Rhys today.
The real question Roiphe sets out to answer seems much simpler: “If I’m so f’ing smart, why am I acting so f’ng dumb?” A jolly good query, to be sure. But in all of history, no person, real or fictional, regardless of IQ or age, has succinctly answered it. Not Carrie Parker nor Bridget Jones, not Catherine the Great nor Elizabeth Taylor. And Roiphe, it turns out (spoiler alert), doesn’t have the answers either. Boredom, inebriation, untreated mental health disorders, limerence, lead poisoning, perhaps? It’s hard to say.
She writes, "My sister Emily once said to me, 'There is no man anywhere so psychotic, so drunk, so helpless, so brutal, so indifferent, even just so annoying, that some woman somewhere isn’t dying to take care of him.' "
Instead of continuing to romanticize and dissect the idea (and beat it to death only to revive it and beat it into submission yet again), maybe it’s time we start a different conversation. After all, at the same time that Roiphe observes, “The writer had to telegraph, ‘I am a mess’ to mitigate an otherwise arrogant or chafing presumption,” she is doing just that.
January 8, 2023
Most of the book was unrelatable to me - motherhood, divorce, sifting through how to choose better partners, etc. (The idea of unrelatable is something the author speaks to often in the book in an almost resentful tone, but that's truly how it felt). Only towards the latter 4/5 of the book did I begin to gleam something, regarding wage gaps, careers, what others think of women pursuing careers and larger lives, etc. In the end I am glad I read it, but I don't think I'd recommend it to others that I know, unless you're just really wanting something to read.
September 14, 2021
It's been a while since I finished a book with the feeling of loving it this much. I picked it up hoping to understand a little better women in bad relationships, and it accomplished that and much more. It's a very human book, very literate, and has one of those scattered pages formats that work so well in this genre.
March 16, 2021
Katie Roiphe is polarizing. I don't care. Beautiful, insightful writing on her personal relation to power in her own life, relationships, family, workplace, and in the lives of some favorite female authors.
A really good book, on many levels.
A really good book, on many levels.
October 4, 2021
Roiphe’s latest book is provocative and unsettling. In it she examines a contradiction in the lives of women – her own as a mother of two and tenured NYU professor, as well as those of famous literary figures past and present, including Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath and Mary McCarthy. All are powerful, competitive women with strong views, who want to express their opinions and be heard in the public sphere. Yet at the same time, they often find themselves powerless in their personal relationships and can’t help but question why: How, on the one hand, can I be a feminist, a serious scholar, a successful author, and on the other hand, submit to my partner or passively take his abuse – which is precisely what Roiphe does when her husband throws her out of the car one day and she carries her baby home without putting up a fight? Isn’t she being hypocritical? Why doesn’t she rebel the same way she does on the page or at the lectern? In a similar vein, Roiphe points to Plath’s devastation when her husband threatens to leave her – “I am aware of a certain cowardice in myself, a wanting to give up” – this from the author of those famous lines of poetry: “Out of the ash/ I rise with my red hair/ and I eat men like air.”
November 15, 2020
Katie Roiphe decided to do something different in this book from what she did in her other published writings: instead of arguing and taking stands, she has published an account of her "uncertainties, doubts, shifts," mostly in relationships with men, she jotted down in a notebook. She also includes accounts of the love lives of other women writers, including Simone de Beauvoir, Mary McCarthy, Sylvia Plath, and Edith Wharton. This testimony is painful to read as brilliant women submit again and again to the mistreatment by husbands and lovers. The "power" Roiphe dissects is of an intimate nature as she searches and struggles for her own personal power in her affairs and marriages. As befitting a journal, the style of the book is a form of stream-of-consciousness--without a narrative-- and it comes to a tenuous conclusion about the exercise of her own womanly power.
May 18, 2020
I like being difficult and contrary. So, I identified with her. I have thought some of those thoughts and never imagined other thoughts. That people can so thoroughly shit on another woman attempting feminism (and indeed, even you are only attempting and changing and bettering feminism, if you are) leaves a bad taste in my mouth, it just doesn't feel very good to watch, and also, I'm enjoying being difficult right now. The best part about this book was the few moments where I felt seen in a way I have never before, a validation that does not pull me back to that worse version of myself but gives me just a little clarity and pushes me forward. If you hate being in the swamp of emotions and contradictions and confusion this is not a book for you, you're allowed to hate it, but not because it's a bad book.
June 22, 2020
Female identity defined in relation to men = me saying “no” out loud repeatedly while sprawled on my couch
A failure to recognize women as victims of oppressive power structures - including herself - because she can’t move past her own desire to judge those women or to somehow romanticize women as wanting to exist within those structures = me performing the same act as described above
Going on the stoop
A failure to recognize women as victims of oppressive power structures - including herself - because she can’t move past her own desire to judge those women or to somehow romanticize women as wanting to exist within those structures = me performing the same act as described above
Going on the stoop
March 20, 2026
The Power Notebooks
A small "notebook" collection of pieces on power dynamics, including some reflections on famous couples and power dynamics or Roiphe's own relationships.
I think this a byproduct of her infamous work The Morning After, that she became known for, with Roiphe wanting to look at the things that interest her about this space of cultural commentary years on.
Easy reading; though it felt quite surface level throughout.
A small "notebook" collection of pieces on power dynamics, including some reflections on famous couples and power dynamics or Roiphe's own relationships.
I think this a byproduct of her infamous work The Morning After, that she became known for, with Roiphe wanting to look at the things that interest her about this space of cultural commentary years on.
Easy reading; though it felt quite surface level throughout.
March 23, 2020
Through a layering of quotes from famous writers who have famously loved, Roiphe delves into the ways we women surrender and harness identity as she tips everything on its head and impossibly tries to untangle the complex and contradictory tendrils of power-play in amatory relationships. So much food for thought.
Read
August 12, 2021Jammer genoeg dit boek gestopt rond 75 pagina's. Ik keek er echt naar uit om meer te leren over vrouwelijke schrijfsters, zeker na Mia Kankimakis geweldige boek (De vrouwen aan wie ik ' s nachts denk). Maar dit lijkt eerder een persoonlijk dagboek over relaties en het dagelijks leven met af en toe een verwijzing er in gegooid. En daar ben ik niet in geintereseerd.
July 23, 2022
Interesting philosophical explorations of personal feminist power dynamics in close relationships. Partners, children, parents, close friends and frienemies are all explored. Not really narrative, but tracks Roiphe's life, each chapter makes a small little point or raises a question that is explored but usually not answered.
March 26, 2023
I thought this was a great introspective read. It explores the many ways that women take and give away their power. Why we are powerful and wield power in public, but give away and subrogate ourselves in our private lives (with men). It gave me lots to think about and I look at my own behavior a bit closer, now.
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