Re: JCO: We were the Mulvaneys

Dear Rick, Randy and Steve

Thank you for your thoughts, I'm still digesting them. As you say Steve the 'coming of age story' now is more about the possibilty of being raped - something which poor Marianne wouldn't necessarily have been made aware of in the 1970's, when there was not such a consciousness about date rape etc and certainly wouldn't have been talked about by Corinne.

I thought it really interesting that as a sign of how sympathetically Oates had dealt with the rape, on the RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) website the Mulvaneys was in the top 3 novels suggested by 'survivors.'

Rick you said (which I agree with) that a reader can go to great lengths to defend a point of view if they think a writer is politically incorrect - 'even responses by the writer dont help.' Do you know if Oates has specifically responded to Atkins 'Rape as Rite of Passage?'

Julie

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