I had to realize that the male idea of successful love is to get a woman into a state of secure dependency which the male can renew by a touch or pat or gesture now and then while he reserves his major attention for his work in the world or the contemplation of the various forms of surrogate combat men find so transfixing. I had to realize that female-style love is servile and petitionary and moves in the direction of greater and greater displays of servility whose object is to elicit from the male partner a surplus—the word was emphasized in some way—of face-to-face attention. So on the distaff side the object is to reduce the quantity of servile display needed to keep the pacified state between the mates in being. Equilibrium or perfect mating will come when the male is convinced he is giving less than he feels is really required to maintain dependency and the woman feels she is getting more from him than her servile displays should merit. In the dream this seemed to me like a burning insight and I concentrated fiercely to hold on to it when I woke up: I should remember this inescapable dyad at the heart of mating because it was not what I had come this far to get.”

Joshua Pashman (Fall 2010). "Norman Rush, The Art of Fiction No. 205". Paris Review. Fall 2010 (194). This novel first appeared in 1991, but still seems extraordinary, innovative, sui generis. (...) I hope I’m not making the whole thing sound like a mere display of braininess. This is a story with blood in its veins. And the narrator is the best female character created by a male author I have ever come across." - Brandon Robshaw, Independent on Sunday In 2003, Rush published an even longer novel set in Botswana, Mortals, but the wizardry was gone. Mating’s intimate first-person narration was jettisoned in favor of a leaden third-person account of Ray Finch, a CIA agent and Milton specialist, who has a tempestuous relationship with his wife. The narrator of Mating makes a brief appearance and is finally named: Karen Ann Hoyt. Her future, and Tsau’s fate, are revealed. At the end of the novel, after she has returned to the states, the narrator argues that the major affliction of our age is “corporatism unbound.” She goes on to say “What is becoming sovereign in the world is not the people but the limited liability corporation . . . that’s what’s concentrating sovereign power to rape the world and overenrich the top minions who run these entities”; and, finally she asserts that the “true holocaust in the world is the thing we call development . . . the superimposition of market economies on traditional and unprepared third world cultures” [p. 471]. Have events in the past decade, in the United States and around the world, confirmed or refuted these arguments?Mating is narrated in the voice of a woman, a graduate student in nutritional anthropology. Why might Norman Rush have made this particular narrative choice? How convincing is his depiction of a woman’s consciousness and point of view? Why is it important that the story be told by a woman? By an anthropologist? If such a book were published today, it’s likely that its narrator would invite more scrutiny. Ann Close, Rush’s editor at Knopf, said she had no problem with it.

The narrator had hoped to show in her Stanford doctoral thesis that fertility among “remote dwellers” varies from season to season depending on what the gatherers can find, but she has learned that there are no gatherers in Botswana; people everywhere are eating canned food and breakfast cereal or handouts from the World Food Program. As a result, she retreats to the capital, Gabarone, where she socializes with the local expatriates and works her way through affairs with several men who offer her nothing permanently satisfying. From the last of these, Z, a spy for the British High Commission, she learns of Sekopololo (“The Key”), a project to create an entire new village in the north-central Kalahari Desert. What especially excites her about this project is that it is run by Nelson Denoon, a legendary social scientist. Oh, yes, when it comes to a combination of intellect and good looks, Nar tells us flatly, "My preference is always for hanging out with the finalists." Among the finalists she recounts there was burly Brit photographer Giles but, alas, similar to the other men in her life, gentleman Giles turned out to possess way too many flaws. Kakutani, Michiko (September 16, 2013). "Gazing Into Their Past Through Their Bellybuttons". The New York Times . Retrieved April 10, 2021. An extremely sophisticated dramatic monologue... a serious romance refracted comically through the mind of a startlingly individual narrator... Rush has ingenuity to burn Mason, Wyatt (August 29, 2013). "Norman Rush's Brilliantly Broken Promise". The New York Times Magazine . Retrieved April 10, 2021.Witty, raunchy…prodigiously aspiring…a remarkable book…His protagonist is a memorable female character: a continually shifting prism that revolves from dashing to needy, from witty to morose…wonderfully varied and pungent.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review That would be comically overstating it. I was active in the pacifist movement—demonstrations, marches, the usual. I was for years on the boards of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors and the War Resisters League, and was active in CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality.