So a literary giant, one of the best American writers of the twentieth century, died last week. So did Norman Mailer, but I'm talking about Ira Levin.
Ira Levin wrote A Kiss Before Dying, which is a top-notch mystery, and The Boys From Brazil, which is a top-notch espionage/science fiction/thriller. Both books are still great reads and still worth picking up. And those are his lesser works. (Well, there are others that are lesser still--Sliver is horrible.) (He also wrote Deathtrap, which I'm not really familiar with except that they made a movie of it and Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve kiss, and everybody was all atwitter about that when it came out.)
His major works--and I'm talking major in terms of quality here, not heft--one of the things I really admire about Ira Levin is that he wrote short, readable novels instead of pretentious doorstops--are The Stepford Wives and Rosemary's Baby. Both are masterpieces of paranoia and suspense, and both are among the sharpest, most powerful feminist novels ever.
I came to Levin's work in college, and let me tell you I was not in the best frame of mind to receive any feminism at that point in my life. I actually had somewhat of a chip on my shoulder about it, having already endured a couple of years of wealthy young women berating my broke, in-debt-up-to-my-eyes ass about how I ran the country and was ruining the world. (As I've mentioned before, the guys who went along with the "men are evil" party line got tons of play, but I was more interested in arguing. Idiot!) And yet both these books provided me with both rip-roaring entertainment and challenging ideas that probably changed the way I thought about the role of women.
The Stepford Wives is the more obvious of the two in its feminist message-- the men in a small Connecticut town are replacing their wives with obedient, homebound, always sexually available robots. This, Levin suggested, is what men really want from their wives--not pains in the ass who are going to think for themselves, but unthinking drones. It's an incredibly damning indictment: the men in this book would rather sleep with machines than deal with the complications of women having their own minds. Ouch. Coming from a woman, this would have pissed me off incredibly. Coming from a man, it made me think.
And then there's the masterpiece, Rosemary's Baby. If you have not already read this, go buy a copy and read it--you can whip through it in a few hours, and you will. It is completely unputdownable. Come back when you're done--I'll still be here!
Okay, did you read it? Good! Kick ass book, huh? I read it in an afternoon when I was supposed to be doing about three other things, but I couldn't bear to leave the book until it was done. So it's got the conspiracy, the paranoia, the almost unbearable suspense, and one of the best endings of any book ever. When Rosemary finally sees the baby, the horrible half-human product of her rape by Satan, she doesn't smother it in its crib--she picks it up and cares for it, though she knows it means the destruction of the world. Why does she do this? Not because she has some overriding maternal instinct for the abomination in the crib, but because it is her only path to power. Throughout the novel she is a pawn in everyone else's game. Her husband trades her womb for a good apartment and a good job, she is raped by Satan and forced to bear the child against her will. She's been nothing but a walking uterus to everyone else in the book, but now, holding the devil child, she becomes the anti-Mary (The Rose-Mary? The red Mary to oppose the old blue and white one?), holding the Anti-Christ, and she is revered by the satanists because of her role as the mother of the un-savior. Finally, finally, after enduring incredible abuse, she's got power and prestige. Why would she give that up just to save the world?
It's an incredibly challenging idea, and the fact that it comes wrapped in a lights-on page-turning thriller just makes it that much more effective.
I haven't seen much in the way of appreciations for Ira Levin since he died, which kind of surprises me. I think the professional feminists should be tripping over themselves praising him, because few minds are ever changed by polemics, but many can be changed by entertainment.
I'm always thrilled if I find a book that is fun to read and a good story and doesn't make me hate myself for enjoying it. (I'm currently reading and enjoying Richard Laymon's The Beast House, and hating myself for it because some elements are almost unbearably cheesy). Ira Levin wrote four fantastic books that are both compelling and smart, and, what's more, he planted a lot of pretty subversive ideas in a lot of brains while he was at it.
He's one of the writers I most admire, and I'm sorry he's dead.
