Journal Entry 1 by caldron from Brisbane, Queensland Australia on Saturday, August 13, 2005

Extract from a study guide of the book, by Rossner herself.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a novel of its times. It was based on an actual event, the 1973 murder of a school teacher named Roseann Quinn by a man she met in a Manhattan singles bar and took back to her apartment. On one level it deals with the modern singles lifestyle and its dangers, a focus picked up by a reviewer in Ms. who called the book "a haunting, compelling thriller, guaranteed to make any woman terrified of the next strange man she meets."

Its relevance is far broader than that, however. When Rossner says the book "struck a nerve," she is referring to its concern with the sexual revolution, the women's movement, the widespread lack of self-esteem, and the difficulties in today's society of getting to know others, resulting in overwhelming loneliness.

Feminists took up the heroine as a victim in the male-oriented world, but the blame is not so easily assigned. The men in the book are victims, too, especially Terry's would-be fiance James and even her murderer, who is only exhausted and kills her out of frustration and then panic. Martha Duffy, in Time, declared Theresa "a giant step forward in the long-term interests of sexual detente." The book deals frankly with sex and with the difficulties of women in learning to like their bodies and admit openly their need for sex.

Through a vignette describing the marriage of one of Terry's casual bed partners, Ali (Eli), a Hassidic Jew, Rossner depicts the tragedy of women conditioned to hate sex and distrust pleasure. Yet sensual satisfaction and a relationship with a man are hardly enough to fulfill a woman. "Why is it that if you ask a woman how she is, the first thing she tells you is about her husband or boyfriend?" one of Theresa's friends from school laments. A major concern in this book is the need for women to have an identity deeper than their relationship to a man, to have "real lives of their own." Yet Theresa is hesitant to join Evelyn's discussion groups, lacking the selfconfidence she needs to become the independent woman she would like to be.

(the edition registered is the Pocket Books circa 1977)