Behind the Lace Curtain: How Feminists Control What America Reads

From 1990 but still on target. Essay here. Excerpt:

'In 1984, the veteran novelist Kingsley Amis came out with a new book, Stanley and the Women, which was uncharacteristically rejected by several New York City publishers. At length it was accepted by Ileene Smith, a young editor at Summit Books. To Ileene Smith’s astonishment, she received a series of phone calls from irate feminist editors, denouncing Amis’s book and criticizing her for bringing it into print. It was, she says, “as if there were some kind of tacit understanding that one should never endorse something that didn’t conform to standard feminist principles.”

The treatment was repeated at social gatherings, as other feminists went out of their way to criticize her role in publishing the book. Ileene Smith’s sin? To have published Kingsley Amis (despite his considerable critical reputation and commercial success). Kingsley Amis’s sin? To have allowed his characters to criticize feminism. Ileene Smith thought she had just been exercising her profession. She had reckoned without the Lace Curtain.'