Madeline Miller's fans want more. Here it is: A very short story. - Santa Fe New Mexican

Madeline Miller’s Galatea, a short story first published in 2013 and now available in a slim 60-page stand-alone edition, begins with an intriguing question: What if Ovid’s Pygmalion was the first “incel”? It’s a provocative premise. Definitionally, the term “incel” — a portmanteau of the words “involuntary” and “celibate” — doesn’t include Pygmalion, whose celibacy is self-imposed out of disgust for “the myriad faults that nature gave women’s minds.”

In Ovid’s telling, Pygmalion is a gifted sculptor whose encounters with sex workers leave him so disgusted that he forgoes female companionship all together. Instead, he carves a woman out of ivory and quickly falls in love with it, ultimately praying to the goddess Aphrodite to bring his sculpture to life. The goddess hears his plea, the statue comes to life, and the two marry and have a child for whom the city Paphos is named. They presumably all live happily ever after.

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