Double Fault — Judith Chernaik

Compared in the high noon of optimism to Mary McCarthy and Doris Lessing, while the putative author/bored faculty wife also knows she has a greater endowment than her husband Charles--someone seems to have outsmarted him-or-herself. Ah Leah, she should be teaching or writing a book "for self-exposure or revenge"--she even defines it for you even though she's asked at times whether she has a plot and she certainly doesn't-about anything beyond the irritability of their marriage. Charles is a basket case of sinus, bursitis, fungus, not to mention impotence--with her. Each of them has an affair of qualified sorts: Leah with the gross department head who will fire Charles, Charles with her floating friend Perdita. Leah never gets around to putting anything down on paper although she does hope "the critics will say [her book] is wise, funny, and humane." They will also find it autoanalytical to the point of tedium and decide that these faineant intellectuals have much too much time to think. . . about themselves.