cover image Life So Far: A Memoir

Life So Far: A Memoir

Betty Friedan. Simon & Schuster, $26 (400pp) ISBN 978-0-684-80789-8

Sisterhood may be powerful, but it's always nice to have the last word--or at least to try. Viewed by many as the logical leader of the women's movement ushered in by the publication of her bestseller The Feminine Mystique, Friedan became a controversial figure as her often conservative positions led to clashes with other feminists. Her impetus for penning her memoirs is to ""correct"" the ""mistakes"" of two biographies that were published last year (Judith Hennessee's Betty Friedan: Her Life and Daniel Horowitz's Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique). Writing in a chatty style that rambles all over the place (she is apt to detail room decor in less focused moments), she is sometimes insightful, as when explaining her early attraction to Marxism in Freudian and Jewish theological terms. Unfortunately, Friedan is fighting old battles in much of the memoir, occasionally sounding bitter or paranoid: in her view, the discussions of lesbianism at the 1977 NOW conference in Houston were promoted and funded by ""enemies of the women's movement""; La Leche is a fringe group that makes a ""fetish of breast-feeding""; the FBI and CIA may have been behind moves to replace Friedan as president of NOW; and Kate Millett's feminist classic Sexual Politics ""has a lot of warped stuff"" in it. Friedan also minimizes or ignores her biographers' criticisms of her personal life or style, including criticism of her views on race, her drinking habit and what some contend is a tendency toward character assassination of other feminists. While it's important to hear Friedan's version of her history, readers will be well aware that hers is a one-sided view of the women's movement. (May)