I’m not sure whether this book is brilliant or reactionary. Towards the end Kipnis asks, about Andrea Dworkin, “Is she making a political argument, or describing the eternal female condition?” The same question could be posed about her. It’s hard to tell which statements are meant as statements of eternal truths and which are meant to mock the conventional wisdom. When you think it’s meant one way, she’ll turn around and tell you it’s the other. Sometimes the mocking tone works, other times it comes off as watered-down David Foster Wallace.