What revolution? revolution?
From Mr Greg Richey Philip Hensher (Books, 26 April) labours under the rather startling delusion that Margaret Atwood is a novelist of remarkable foresight, offering her sophomoric diatribe The Handmaid's Tale as his exhibit A. The undeniable evidence for Mr Hensher's urgent need for supervised and heavily medicated rest and relaxation begins with his conceit that the juvenile feminist nightmare envisioned by the fevered Ms Atwood has 'grown steadily in plausibility and authority'. Apparently, to his overwrought mind, an America where 'racial and social minorities will be expelled or executed' and 'women will be prevented from working or owning property' is now 'quite plausible'. America, he says, now 'fulfils almost every one of the classic features of pre-revolutionary France or Russia'.
I think, as an American. I can fairly state that there does not exist in this country the remotest. faintest, slightest possible chance of a 'violent' revolution intended to impose a 'giant theocracy'. Does Mr Hensher believe that a massive hidden groundswell of armed religious fundamentalism is festering under the American body politic, awaiting only its Spartacus to ignite armed revolt? Can anyone not on the waiting-list for a straitjacket and modern drug therapy actually believe such drivel?
Gregory L. Richey USA
Previous page
