About the Author:
Louise DeSalvo is professor of English at Hunter College in New York City.
From Booklist:
DeSalvo examines the tantalizing theory that many great works of literature have revenge as their motive. Like her other innovative work, Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work (1990), this book reveals the baser instincts behind some of the greatest and most powerful writing. For instance, DeSalvo shows how Leonard Woolf savaged his wife's reputation by basing a sexually dysfunctional and slightly crazy character in his novel, The Wise Virgins, on her. D. H. Lawrence does the same to his patron, Ottoline Morrell, portraying her (in an instantly recognizable character) as vapid and perverse. Both authors were fully aware that all of their mutual friends would recognize these portraits. Perhaps the saddest story is that of writer Djuna Barnes, whose powerhouse of a play, The Antiphon, won her worldwide acclaim. DeSalvo shows that Barnes' personal life closely resembles the play, which is an appalling story of incest and sexual abuse. DeSalvo also examines the writing of Henry Miller, whose lifelong anger and obsession with his terminally unfaithful wife, June, is the inspiration for his entire life's work. This is a fascinating book packed full of seductive gossip and anecdotes. Obviously, DeSalvo has exhaustively researched her subjects, and the result is a knowledgeable, perhaps controversial, analysis of literature. Kathleen Hughes
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