Still, I keep coming back to the relative impunity with which the men in This Is How You Lose Her get to behave badly, and to the tone of the critical reception to these stories, which are not only stories but confessions, lamentations of misdeeds. We have all been influenced by a culture where women are considered inferior to men, and I would have loved to see what a writer of Diaz's caliber might do if he allowed his character to step out of the constraints of the environment he grew up in, one to which readers are all subjected. In