Books: Lady with a Lance

THE SECOND SEX (732 pp.)—Simone de Beauvoir—Knopf ($ 10).

Numberless are the world's wonders, but none

More wonderful than man; the storm-grey sea

Yields to his prows, the huge crests bear him high . . .

Were Sophocles to croon this chorus (from Antigone*) below the boudoir of Existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, she would very likely fling wide her French window and bomb him with The Second Sex (weight: 2¾ Ibs.). For Sophocles' measures stand for just about everything that Author de Beauvoir considers most hateful in human life. As she sees it, the...

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