I've been rereading John Fowles's 1977 novel Daniel Martin, and have been reminded, again, how much I admire his work and how much he aggravates me. In certain ways he is an English Protestant version of American Jewish Philip Roth: a complex and canny constructor of themes, histories, characters, allusions, with a giant repetitive blind spot about women.

I wonder why I go back to these novelists, who repeatedly misread and misconstrue the female temperaments they so skillfully create? But can I even say "misread and misconstrue"? I mean, writers purposefully create what they create, so what right do I have to claim they have seen their characters in the wrong way? Perhaps I am the one who is misreading female motivation, reaction, need, anger, revenge? Perhaps the issue is that I don't understand men.

I am a relentless second-guesser of my own motivations and reactions, and that habit, no doubt, lies behind my persistent rereading of these novelists. In so many ways, these men are masterful, even universal, writers--Tolstoyan, almost, in their thematic and emotional reach. And I do recognize unlikable behaviors in myself and other women--manipulations instigated by insecurity, or need, or ignorance, or sheer selfishness. Neither of these novelists is kind to men either, and Fowles especially can be quite forgiving of female imperfections. It's just that his explications of the motivations behind those feminine errors seem to be rippled, foxed, flawed--as if he and I are looking at the same subject as she is reflected in two different but equally unreliable mirrors.

I ought to be quoting long passages to prove my point, but I've reread both of these novelists for so many years that I've stopped thinking of their authorial personalities as specifically related to the text. For me, they have become a familiar fragrance in the air of the narrative. This is why I am not a scholar. Close reading bores me: why spend so much time spent proving a solid, logical point about a work of art that is compelling because it is flexible, fluctuating, ambivalent, spectral?

What is clear is that I am a woman reader and writer who is drawn to male poets and novelists who are mystified by women and who struggle, with imperfect success, but through complicated and eloquent means, to delineate those mysteries.