There are people who enter a room prepared to converse. Others arrive prepared to explain.
At a party in Aspen in 2003, a man asked the writer Rebecca Solnit what her books were about.
She began telling him about her recent book on the photographer Eadweard Muybridge. He interrupted. Had she heard, he asked, about the very important new Muybridge book?
He had not read it himself. He had read a review. The book was River of Shadows. Her book.
Solnit tried to tell him. Her friend tried to tell him, repeating, “That’s her book,” several times. When he finally understood, he went ashen. Then he continued talking.
A great deal can be learned about power from a man recommending your own book to you. Even more from the fact that learning it is yours does not stop him.
Five years later, the encounter became the opening of Solnit’s essay Men Explain Things to Me. She did not coin the word “mansplaining.” The man in Aspen had simply supplied its perfect illustration before it had a name.
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