I would be suspicious of anyone whose ideas do not evolve or move through time and experience. To be honest, I am not very interested in the “record” in the sense that you mean it. What can you tell me about changing your mind or finding a new mindset different from that which you penned in the past… do you look forward to setting a new record straight? To present where you are now? I ask questions about elements of changed opinions and a reconsidering of your past, because that is part of “The Power Notebooks.” I’m thinking of your youthful relationship with an older rabbi that you discuss in the book, as one example. I wanted to measure the real effects of sexual politics on one person’s daily experience, if I could (the only person offering up her life for this kind of rigorous and sometimes disturbing examination being me.) Rather than make generalizations which feel increasingly false or irrelevant to me, I wanted to look at how women’s ambivalence toward power, and the resentment of powerful women plays out on an ordinary Tuesday in someone’s life. In “The Power Notebooks,” I wasn’t interested in making arguments I wanted to delve into complexities, doubts, confusions. That said, I wrote that book when I was 24 and it contains the certainties and fire of a very young person. I remain the same person who is suspicious of the simplifications and collapsing of nuance inherent in political language, who is wary of rhetoric that infantilizes women, however well meant.

And how do you feel about “The Morning After” now -has your outlook or opinion changed?

How has its criticism changed in your mind since the start of the #MeToo moment-a movement you called on more than one occasion. You caught a lot of flak for 1993’s “The Morning After,” and its view of feminist preoccupations with college campuses.

Katie roiphe the power notebooks