Heartbreak and Intercourse arrived today. I missed the first when it came out, and it’s been a decade since I read the second. It’s immediately clear, though, on reading the first chapter that Cold World owes a great deal to Dworkin, in terms of both its style and its procedure. I had forgotten how well she could write.

This edition of Intercourse comes with an introduction by Ariel Levy. It’s refreshing to read an intelligent, critical, mostly fair appraisal of the book and its author. For years I thought I was the only one around who didn’t think she was a deranged, fanatical, morbid loony. I seized on the admissions of male writers like Will Self and Michael Moorcock that they admired her; John Berger’s praise for her “music” stands out for me as particularly juste.

I will try to say more on Intercourse over the next few days. It’s a ferocious book, a work of passionate intelligence, and also a whole heap of trouble: Dworkin says in Heartbreak (which I read on the train home) that she intended her work as “a purposeful series of provocations”, and Intercourse is perhaps the most provoking of all her writings: a cold, sustained act of disloyalty towards men and towards sex as the destiny of women. I admire the hell out of it, and still aspire one day to write something like it.

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