One night in the moonlit desert ofnArizona, Stephanie looks into emptiness:n”Nothing. The key word is ‘nothing’ . . .nNothing . . . Disintegration of matter.nAnarchy. Peace.” Lovers and Tyrantsnshould have ended here. The inner logic ofnStephanie’s career, her liberation, leads tondisintegration. This is too grimly honest fornGray, however; better to blink the truthnthan defect from the ranks of “liberation.”nShe goes on to conclude with a very differentnimage, one that is as artistically andnintellectually implausible as it is grotesque.nStephanie sits alone, isolated from Elijah,nin a “gigantic all-night boite called CircusnCircus.” Looking up at the ceiling, she sees,nhigh above her on a tightrope, an androgynousncreature with “long light-brownnhair to below its shoulders, slender hairynlegs, pointed, girlish buttocks.” This incrediblenfigure performs with “infinitengrace” and looks down at Stephanie with “answeet, sad smile.” “She blows him a kiss.nMetamorphosis. Transfiguration. No morenNihil. My son the aerial artist. The angel ofnthe imagination . . . I am much better offnnow … I am total, complete .. . In the nextnmonths I shall caress only images, bathenthem, feed them, give them life . . . I’venexorcised myself of one hell of a bunch ofnoppressors … Here at last, is a beginning.”nNo doubt the image of the tightropenwalker could have been more carefullynbathed before being sent out into the world.nBut even a good bath could not cleanse thenwoolliness of this rhapsody. Stephanie’snanguish, which was credible and worthy ofnexamination, has been transformed into anfashionable pose, a trite appeal for approvalnby the gurus of liberal culture who dominatenour intellectual life. At the end. Lovers andnTyrants tries to assure us that Stephanienhas found a way to have it all, to have.mennand yet be autonomous, to have a son andnremain alone, to be complete in herselfnwithout being more or less than human. Shenwill do this by living in a world of imagesnwhich are created to correspond to hernwishes, in other words —by escape. Imagesnthat indulge and caress our desire tonescape, however, are not the stuff of greatnart; great art is faithful to life. Gray doesnnot understand that the oppressor Stephanienmost needs to exorcise is not a lover, anhusband, a child, or a parent, but the falsenconcept of liberation that has cut her offnfrom all that is normal in life, and has madenit impossible for her to find satisfactionnoutside the fantasy world of “Circus Circus.”nRead the writers who have created toughnand honest images. Read Flaubert. ReadnDostpevsky.nr-Dain A, TraftonnDr. Trafton chairs the English Department atnRockford College and views the current literarynmatters with a Yankee precision.nThe Liberal Viewn”Lovers and Tyrants shows a writing power superbly able to recreate familial and privatenexperience, especially religious experience, over four decades.”—America.n”Sensual, glowing, altogether extraordinary. The stages of her heroine’s journey are renderednwith a richness unequaled in contemporary fiction.” ^—Cosmopolitan.n”Marvelous. Many might be quite content to write and publish a novel as fascinating as thisnone.” — Washington Post Book World.n”Lovers and Tyrants is the story of a brilliant and sensitive woman.” — TTfte Progressive.n”There is an age that has learned any grievance must be accepted as both genuine andnsignificant if the public weeping and wailing are long and loud enough. It would therefore benwise to take seriously Mrs. Gray’s passionate meditation on the tyranny of love . ^ .” -^ Time.n”… Mrs. Gray almost always writes with fierce intelligence and perspicacity.” — The NewnYork Times.n”Erotic, poignant, tender and wonderfully exuberant, it is a masterly work that establishes itsnauthor as one of the most brilliant writers of fiction in our time.” —Publishers Weekly.nChronicles of Culturennn