Volume 17, Number 1 · July 22, 1971
In Another Country
By Gore Vidal
Patriarchal Attitudes
by Eva Figes
Stein & Day, 192 pp., $.95 (paper)
Every schoolboy has a pretty good idea of what the situation was down at Sodom but what went on in Gomorrah is as mysterious to us as the name Achilles took when he went among women. Or was. Thanks to Eva Figes, author of Patriarchal Attitudes, we now know what Gomorrheans are up to. Miss Figes quotes from an eighth-century Palestinian midrash which tries to explain the real reason for the Flood (one of the better jokes in the Old Testament). Apparently passage on the Ark was highly restricted. 'Some authorities say that according to God's orders, if the male lorded it over the female of his own kind, both were admitted but not otherwise.'
Review, 4875 words
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