the professor was somebody namedhorse gregory who was a pose -- horace gregory who was a poet, and it was an all girls' school at that time. we sat around a table, and we read our pape ors. and -- papers. and some girl, woman, had gone to reno to get a divorce, and you had to live there for six weeks. and she came back with a detailed report on everything that had happened during her six weeks many in reno. and i was spellbound by this report. i mean, it was, you know, the whole -- the world she was describing, the way she felt, rivetted. she gets to the end of it, and horace gregory turns to her and says what makes you think anybody would be interested in your divorce? and there was this silence, you know? because i couldn't have been the only one who was rivetted by this story. [laughter] but there was also the possibility women can't write because we don't have subjects. what would my subject be? what would i do? i wasn't in a war. i can't write a book like hemingway. you know, the sense that we were pushed aside -- and, yes, there was doris lessing and, yes, i must have read her 1