Confessions of a (Female) Chauvinist (review)

stages of decompression; better, obeying a law ofmeasured jettisons to move out of a mundane orbit. Shoring up, digging in, laying low. Architecting essences. Becketting. Speaking in contractions to minimize the echoes. Making the darkling plain." It is as if he has overturned a trunk filled with language appropriate to his situation—puns, aUusions, metaphors, synonyms—and is rummaging through them. He is constantly aware of possibility and continuaUy alert to Umitations of language. In "Offerings," an essay which is mostly a segmented musing on death, Saltzman talks about his favorite words and brings the reflection around to his father and his father's language. "To my father, making a career out of literature was comparable to making a working motor out of sticks and rubber bands, but I owe him for putting up with my private (and from his perspective, highly questionable) passions." On the highway his father, a lawyer, teUs him, "Judges love behoove . . . They reaUy perk up when they hear it." Ten miles later he recommends "sabotage." "It sounds subversive. A good, cagey word to use. Have you tried sabotage?" Objects and Empathy is rich with good, cagey words, immersion reporting from the interior of a reflective, observant, highly literate mind. Reviewed by Robert L. Root Jr.