Campbell writes in her preface that, when she told friends she was working on Hite, they shrugged and said they had never heard of her. Without glossing over Hite’s shortcomings, both temperamental and methodological, Campbell’s compact book makes a persuasive case for why they should have.
Campbell is at her best when invoking the countercultural ferment of New York City in the late ’60s and early ’70s ... Often too quick to dismiss criticism of Hite’s haphazard methodology ... Seems more than a little under the spell of her subject.
Neither wholly accurate nor fair. Quite ironically, Campbell erases—'disappears'—the pioneering work of Hite’s feminist predecessors and contemporaries ... A feminist historian should have firmly situated Hite’s work as part of a larger movement and cultural wave, where it belongs. By omitting or downgrading the contributions of Hite’s predecessors, Campbell burnishes Hite’s importance, which has the ancillary consequence of achieving the same result for Campbell herself ... Campbell glamorizes herself, along with her subject ... There is something uncomfortable about this level of infatuation in a serious work of historical recovery. It goes beyond admiration for a subject into a kind of merger fantasy that makes it hard to trust Campbell’s critical judgment.
Campbell goes big with her claims ... According to Campbell, none did as much to bring then-fringy ideas about women’s sexual pleasure—that they should have some—to non-fringy people ... This book is a rescue mission, with the goal of securing for Hite a spot in the feminist pantheon. Except Campbell assumes, perhaps correctly, that membership is restricted to congenial, sensible types. Her tale soldiers along as if there’s no elephant in the room, batting its eyelashes.
The Hite Report delivered feminism and better sex to the suburbs. To 50 million readers worldwide ... If you’re not foaming by the time you finish Rosa Campbell’s brilliant recapture of this feminist warrior, I’ll eat my hat.
