Robin Romm: The Unsparing Gaze (January 2013)

Romm’s lecture discusses two authors who use “the unsparing gaze” toward very different ends.  Edward St. Aubyn’s tragic and autobiographical “Patrick Melrose Novels” explore how childhood incest wreaks havoc on a psyche. Alison Lurie’s comic social satire “The War Between the Tates” skewers gender roles and marriage.  Both authors, Romm observes, “make the most of discomfort, an excellent aim for any artist.”