Women and Men (1987)

Women and Men is Joseph McElroy's sixth novel. Published in 1987 (with a 1986 copyright), it is 1192 pages long. Somewhat notably, because of its size, the uncorrected proof was issued in two volumes.

The size and complexity of the novel have led it to be compared with Ulysses, The Recognitions, and Gravity's Rainbow.

Editions

There were two first editions—neither dates itself before the other. In April 1987, the first trade edition was published by Knopf. Ultramarine Press published a limited, numbered, signed edition, consisting of the Knopf edition (including its copyright and title page) rebound in leather. One month later, Knopf issued a second printing, with an expanded copyright/acknowledgements page.

In 1993, a paperback edition was published by Dalkey Archive Press. Contrary to their usual policy, they let this edition go out of print.

Dzanc Books published a third edition in 2018 in both paperback and ebook. Dzanc also prepared a fourth limited special printing as a two-volume clothbound hardcover, released in 2021.

As of December 2025, the only existing translation of the novel is an Italian version by Andrew Tanzi, published by Il Saggiatore in 2021.

Organization

The novel is divided into three kinds of chapters. The chapters with all lowercase titles are, in essence, independent short stories about characters in the novel, so can be read and appreciated separately from the rest of the novel. Most were published as short stories, with two of them being anthologized in "best of the year" short story collections. Stylistically, they are some of the most accessible fictions McElroy has written.

Sections with titles in all-caps that include the word "BREATHER" in the title are narrated in a first-person plural, by a collective of so-called "angels". They are speaking in the second-person to their interrogator/torturer, whose identity changes, as if the interrogators/torturers were clocking in and out for their job. They tell of a future time when a certain naturally found alloy turns out to have special teleportation powers, and is used to send two people out to the Earth-Moon libration points, where they become merged (without prior knowledge) into one. Stylistically, they are quite difficult, with tense and point of view and topic not always clear. In the words of Frederick Karl, the breathers "are attempts to break away from historical narrative into simultaneity."

Sections in all-caps that do not include the word "BREATHER" and those with titles in normal title-case are mostly straightforward narrations, but they are intricately plotted and intimately related to the more difficult portions.

Plot summary

The novel, nominally set in 1976–77, but with long passages set in 1893–4, 1945, 1960–2, and 1973, centers around the life, the partly mythic ancestry, and the partly science fictional future of James Mayn, a business and technology journalist. He lives in the same Murray Hill building as one Grace Kimball. Grace has numerous close ties with just about everyone Jim knows in the novel. These ties include the ordinary, day-to-day interactions with people who know Jim and Grace, and the extraordinary, as Grace's dreams closely parallel the mythic version of Jim's grandmother's life. Jim and Grace "never quite meet", although Jim goes so far as to knock on Grace's door but then changes his mind.

There is a MacGuffin in the guise of a never-performed opera Hamletin based on Hamlet by a Chilean woman, the mother of the zoologist Mena. The opera apparently has magical powers, anathema to fascists and dictators. A production in a former warehouse on the Upper West Side is in rehearsals.

What follows is a version of the events in the novel arranged in a timeline. Large portions of the story are told in a "spiral" style, with a little bit told at first, then repeated with a little bit more, and so on. Often, multiple plotlines are advanced nearly simultaneously, in long rushing sentences that refer to minor details across the decades and centuries. As an example, some important characters go without a name until very late in the novel.

1834–1837

Marion Hugh Mayne founds the Windrow Democrat as an advocacy newspaper for Andrew Jackson, and writes a diary. He knows Morgan, an Alsatian mathematician.

Samuel Colt opens his first factory in Paterson. The factory fails.

1846–1848

Inspired by the Mexican War, Samuel Colt opens his second factory in Hartford. One of the pistols has a (double) life of its own.

1885

The Statue of Liberty arrives in the U.S. at Bedloe's Island and the pieces are uncrated. Margaret, aged 12, is on the island, looking at the inside of the face, when the Hermit-Inventor tells her to go west.

1893–1894

During the 1880s and the early 1890s the "double Moon" was visible in the Four Corners region, especially after a green flash. After one such flash, the last Anasazi sees the Moon double. A pistol that traces back to Colt's original factory casts two shadows, and the Anasazi admitted to uncertainty of which of two stories is the correct one regarding the pistol's provenance.

The American Marcus Jones, studying locoweed, meets the Chilean Mena, studying the javelina (also called "peccary" or "wild pig") migrating up from the Southern Hemisphere. She sees him casting a doubled shadow from the Moon as he gets off his bicycle. Jones publishes his first article on locoweed classification "Guide to Western Biology"

Margaret goes west with Florence, fellow Windrow girl, to the Chicago World's Fair, reporting for the family newspaper. After the Fair, they traveled together, but when visiting a slaughterhouse, Florence got sick and returned home, while Margaret continued to tour the West, including Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

Margaret returns, partly with Coxey's Army, with Alexander (not yet engaged to her) looking for her in the Army.

1914

Margaret spends three nights in jail for Mary Richardson.

1925

Sarah is in France.

1930–1933

Jim is born, 1930. Sarah has an affair with Bob Yard. Brad is born, 1933, presumed to be the son of Yard.