While Robert Heinlein was absolutely central to the development and prominence of science fiction as a literary genre and cultural phenomenon – and certainly a more than a skilled writer, as such – he’s never been among my favorite authors in the field, specifically in terms of the themes and ideologies that were the foundation of his latter works. Regardless, the literature he produced was highly significant, the impact of some of his stories extending into realms political and philosophical. Such as, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, which was featured in Worlds of If from late 1965 through early 1966. Gray morrow did both the cover art and interior illustrations.
I’m a general specialist. Could relieve a cook and keep orders coming or field-repair your suit and get you back to airlock still breathing. Machines like me and I have something specialists don’t have: my left arm.
You see, from elbow down I don’t have one. So I have a dozen left arms, each specialized, plus one that feels and looks like flesh. With proper left arm (number-three) and stereo loupe spectacles I could make ultramicrominiature repairs that would save unhooking something and sending it Earthside to factory – for number-three has micromanipulators as fine as those used by neurosurgeons.(page 12)
Ballantine’s 1961 imprint of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex has a truly lovely cover.
Though at first glance I assumed this image was a painting, perhaps enhanced and accentuated with an airbrush – due to the visual “softness” (for lack of a better word) of the woman, the rock upon which she’s sitting, the plant over which she’s bending, and the “rays” in the background – this was not so. As revealed in the book, this image is actually a photograph by famed photographer Elliott Erwitt (Elio Romano Erwitz).
The soft and diffuse appearance of the cover, then, is probably attributable to the use of a filter that created a foggy, slightly out-of-focus effect, while I suppose the intense yellowish cast is from dyeing the finished photographic (paper) print, or, printing the black and white image on color photographic paper, with a yellow filter interposed between negative and print.
Regardless of the technology, the image powerfully connotes subtle and passive (almost unconscious) eroticism, detachment from the world in a moment of self-absorption and contemplation. And self-absorption. (I already said that?!) This is enhanced by Erwitt having posed the model such that her face is almost completely obscured. She’s anonymous, in he own world, and not ours…
(Back Cover)
…and with that, a caveat!…
Whether for “this” post in particular or really most any of my posts “in general”, the appearance of a book at WordsEnvisioned by no means implies my endorsement of it eitheras a literary work in terms of its plot, premise, and literary quality, or especially – for works of non-fiction – my acceptance of and agreement with its intellectual or philosophical basis.
In other words, the book’s cover is simply interesting in and of itself as an example of illustration.
That’s why it’s “here”:
Not only do I not judge a book by its cover, I never judge a cover by the book.
This is emphatically so for The Second Sex, for “Feminism” is by now in the year 2025 (and I think has always been, even in the days of Mary Shelley), a politicized form of gender-based Manicheanism that is entirely unrelated to the many-faceted and parallel worlds … it’s really the same world … of women and men as complimentary human beings, who must navigate the complexity of life and human relationships as they are actually lived.
In this regard, for an insightful take on Simone De Beauvoir, I highly recommend Janice Fiamengo’s YouTube video – at Studio B – Probing Western Culture – “The Monstrous Lies of Simone De Beauvoir”, from September, 2022. Here it is:
For another take on the irrevocably (?!) fraught topic of “Feminism”, I highly recommend Dr. Martin Van Creveld’s The Privileged Sex, published by DLVC Enterprises, Mevasseret Zion, Israel, in 2013. To quote: “This book argues that the idea women are the oppressed gender is largely a myth, and that women, and not men, are the privileged gender.” You can download the book at Archive.org. I believe its contents were reflected in the following series of posts some few years ago (they’re now unavailable) at Dr. Van Creveld’s blog, under the heading “The Gender Dialogues”. Namely:
Dialogue No. I: First Things First – October 15, 2020 Dialogue No. II: The Privileged Sex – October 22, 2020 Dialogue No. III: Similar but Different – October 29, 2020 Dialogue No. IV: Who Has It Better? – November 5, 2020 Dialogue No. V: Feminism… – November 12, 2020 Dialogue No. VI: … and Its Discontents – November 19, 2020 Dialogue No. VII: How about Sex? – November 26, 2020 Dialogue No. VIII: In Search of a Solution – December 3, 2020 Dialogue No. IX: Marching towards Segregation? – December 10, 2020 Dialogue No. X: Concerning Prostitution – December 17, 2020 Dialogue No. XI: The Future – December 24, 2020 Dialogue No. XII: The Feminist Planet – December 31, 2020 Dialogue No. XIII: Making It Personal – January 7, 2021 Dialogue No. XIV: Concluding Thoughts – January 14, 2021
Another relevant book by Dr. Van Creveld, Men Women & War, published by Cassell & Co., London, England, 2001, is also available at Archive.org, albeit for virtual “borrowing” rather than download. To say that the book’s conclusions stand at variance with the political and social ethos of the contemporary “West” is an understatement. Specifically, “Throughout history, women have been shielded from the heat of battle, their role limited to supporting the men who do the actual fighting. Now all that has changed, and for the first time females have taken their place on the front lines. But, do they actually belong there? A distinguished military historian answers the question with a vehement no, arguing women are less physically capable, more injury-prone, given more lenient conditions, and disastrous for morale and military preparedness.”
