on "women" writers (and more)

Dieses Thema wurde unter on "women" writers (and more) part 2 weitergeführt.

ForumFeminist Theory

Melde dich bei LibraryThing an, um Nachrichten zu schreiben.

on "women" writers (and more)

Dieses Thema ruht momentan. Die letzte Nachricht liegt mehr als 90 Tage zurück. Du kannst es wieder aufgreifen, indem du eine neue Antwort schreibst.

1overlycriticalelisa
Dez. 3, 2015, 6:40 pm

just read this (longish) article that i thought was very worth my time, and that you all might like: http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/41314/on-pandering.html#.VlORQ-xsAXU.twitter

2Bookmarque
Dez. 3, 2015, 7:38 pm

I read it a few days ago. It's making quite the stir. How dare them wimmin make art that isn't for the male gaze.

3LolaWalser
Dez. 4, 2015, 12:32 pm

Hey, yes, interesting article, sturlington linked it in the thread on representation the other day.

It may be that the term she uses, "pandering", is a novelty in this connection, but I think the phenomenon has been noticed and described ages ago... I'm a little surprised it took a professional writer--and someone who has women's studies credentials too--that long to realize she was (if I understood correctly) doing that, writing in a "false" voice.

And I don't like the implication that writing about babies is somehow more authentic for a woman than writing about the subjects Watkins used when she was "pandering" to her male mentors.

To me, the problem is never the subject, but opinions, points of view. Iconically "macho" Hemingway composed the most moving one-sentence "novel" about babies ever:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.


Speaking of Hemingway, he comes up in Rebecca Solnit's short critique of The Esquire magazine's "80 books every man should read":

80 BOOKS NO WOMAN SHOULD READ

I think it belongs with the Watkins article because it looks at the same problem from the opposite end, that of the reader. Watkins discovered she was a writer forcing herself to write "FOR" someone in a way that went against her natural grain (by which I mean only her individuality, not "womanhood" or some such), in order to gain prestige that is bestowed on the privileged--in this case, the male.

Lists like the Esquire's co-opt writers in the interest of readers who want a certain point of view reinforced (whatever the writers in question might have thought about such application). There readers impose a reading "FOR" writers.

I doubt Flannery O'Connor intended to write for men as men, but she is the only woman included on the list of "80 books every man should read" because, as the quotation they chose to illustrate her excellence and suitability shows, she could write a character expressing a sentiment of utmost sadism in regard to women--just like men do.

This in itself, quite apart from the fact that only one book out of eighty on the list of books "every man should read" is written by a woman, constitutes yet another misogynistic assault, on O'Connor herself.

OK, rambled enough...

4LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Dez. 4, 2015, 12:41 pm

Um, technical problems. Posts not showing, re-posting etc.

5LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Dez. 4, 2015, 12:41 pm

la la la la la tra laaaa

6LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Dez. 4, 2015, 12:43 pm

7Bookmarque
Dez. 4, 2015, 1:06 pm

Reminds me of yesterday's mammogram. Squish. The girls are alright.

8LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Dez. 4, 2015, 1:23 pm

Oh, good to hear!

That's one of doll-artist Catherine Lubrano's titty cushions--I'd buy ten but they've been long out of production.

http://www.libreobjet.com/fr/boutique.php?boutique-artiste=8-catherine-lubrano

9sparemethecensor
Dez. 4, 2015, 6:55 pm

>3 LolaWalser: I like that Rebecca Solnit straight up won't read Franzen. I thought Freedom was actively misogynistic in addition to being bloated and poorly written. Franzen has inherited the mantle of self-obsessed misogynists from Roth and Updike et al. I wouldn't read any of them again (although I never tried Updike and don't plan to given the company he's associated with by women I respect).

10LolaWalser
Dez. 4, 2015, 7:01 pm

>9 sparemethecensor:

Pity to hear that, I liked The corrections (read many ages ago, though, when it came out), and his essays.

People do get worse with age, eh?

I loved Updike's short stories when I was a teen. I think I still tag "The music school" collection as my favourite but I wonder what I'd think if I were to reread them now.

11sparemethecensor
Dez. 4, 2015, 7:40 pm

12LolaWalser
Dez. 4, 2015, 7:47 pm

Wow, that sounds really stupid--saying it out loud especially.

I do believe millions of children come into the world for reasons as bad as that, or worse.

13southernbooklady
Dez. 5, 2015, 1:11 pm

How many people have children to carry on the family name? For the sake of leaving a legacy? Because they need a younger generation to care for them when they are older? Because they need the labor for the farm? Because they didn't have or didn't want to use birth control? I would think having children is something that happens for a myriad of reasons, emotional and economic and accidental.

I do think it is in the nature of art that it creates out of morass of daily life, which means that the artist uses people in the way he or she uses anything that becomes an inspiration, and ignores as unimportant anything that is not inspiration.

I suspect, though, that as long as people think they are "inspiration" they don't feel used. Unless, of course, they don't like the art.

14LolaWalser
Dez. 5, 2015, 1:16 pm

>13 southernbooklady:

Yes, I agree.

I mean, in no way do I want to defend Franzen--just to make that clear. Assuming those words reflect him accurately and he didn't retract, explain, etc...

15jennybhatt
Feb. 12, 2016, 1:17 pm

Related to Watkins' article above, there's a new essay from a writer of color that I read today and it made a lot of sense to me (as a work-in-progress writer of color myself). Thought I'd share here for all.

http://www.vidaweb.org/on-parsing/

Her basic gist is:

"While Watkins honesty about her discomfort at her own privilege is to be lauded, it also gets to the heart of one of the fundamental problems with the piece and many people’s reaction to it: when a white woman writes about the experiences of people of color especially in relation to her own, acknowledging her privilege, she is usually heralded as courageous and compassionate. However, when a person of color writes about their experiences relative to the mainstream population, it is often viewed solely as a grievance."

16LolaWalser
Feb. 12, 2016, 2:26 pm

>15 jennybhatt:

when a person of color writes about their experiences relative to the mainstream population, it is often viewed solely as a grievance."

I think this is true--yes, it is seen as a grievance most of all, rather than brave or an act of courage.

I'd like to hear more about how writers of colour see the "pandering" that they feel pressured to perform in order to appeal to whites, what does it look like, what it consists in?

17jennybhatt
Feb. 12, 2016, 2:37 pm

>16 LolaWalser:: The writer of that article speaks to some of that pressure to conform.

"Two years ago, I was the only person of color in a nonfiction workshop held by the same magazine that published Watkins’ piece. Although I noticed the lack of cultural diversity, I hoped it wouldn’t be a barrier since I was workshopping a biography about an Indian American woman artist overlooked by history. I was told by fellow white women writers that in order for them to immerse themselves in her narrative, I needed to evoke the smell of cow dung and mangoes, which they thought were emblematic of life in India. I was also told to remove all of her quotes but to leave in a quote by James Joyce. And while I’ve seen and heard all manner of critiques in workshop directed at others and myself, even I was surprised by the lack of cultural sensitivity and wondered why no one else was struck by it, including the white female instructor. After the workshop I forced myself to review their critique once again. I realized that it wasn’t that I needed to remove her quotes, which would only further erase her voice from history, but that I needed to do a better job of curating them. In my attempt to prioritize her voice, I was in danger of losing her story. I wasn’t grateful to my fellow writers for this realization, but I did have gratitude for the experience, though offensive, that led me to this understanding."

Marlon James talked about it and cited a couple of other writers of color who were asked to either bring more known stereotypes into their minority characters or to make them less "ethnic".

18LolaWalser
Feb. 12, 2016, 3:19 pm

>17 jennybhatt:

Yes, I read the article, I noted those examples, I'm curious about what they mean, how to generalize from them. In one instance it's stuffing in more "ethnic" cow dung and mangoes, in the next it seems that quotations from a Great White Male Author lend something incomparably valuable.

(Incidentally--how does one differentiate demands for pandering from editorial input?)

Marlon James talked about it

I read that article before (has it been edited, or is there another? I remember a reference to The New Yorker, that seems gone now). Frankly, I was angered and offended by his singling out of white women as the people who obstructed his career (not very successfully, as one may note), so I may not be capable of considering objectively his arguments.

Here is James' Facebook post, bolding mine:

So I'm still unpacking Claire Vaye Watkins' potentially game changing essay, "On Pandering," going almost a section per day. What I'm thinking so far: that while she recognizes how much she was pandering to the white man, we writers of colour spend way too much of our lives pandering to the white woman. I've mentioned this before, how there is such a thing as "the critically acclaimed story." You see it occasionally in certain highbrow magazines and journals. Astringent, observed, clipped, wallowing in its own middle-style prose and private ennui, porn for certain publications. And I knew from early on how to write the kind of story that would get published. Honestly, had I followed that formula (or style?) if I pandered to a cultural tone set by white women, particular older white female critics, I would have had 10 stories published by now. There's an award that I have been a finalist for, more than once, and in both situations I was the only person who knew that I wouldn't win. I looked at the winner and I look at the judges and both followed exactly the same aesthetic. And looked the same as well. I knew right there, what they were looking for in a book and I knew the winner fulfilled it with flying colours, even if it wasn't that great a book. The last contest I judged, the initial favourite was yet again, "bored suburban white woman in the middle of ennui, experiences keenly observed epiphany." And though we'll never admit it, every writer of colour knows that they stand a higher chance of getting published if they write this kind of story. We just do. Anyway, still reading.


I'm not a critic, a writer or in publishing, so it could be I am merely profoundly ignorant, but I'm not aware of a "older white female critic" cabal or clique that imposes stories about bored suburban housewives on the culture (frankly I can't think of a single white female critic at all, but that really must be just my ignorance--some, I presume, must exist), nor do I think it's accurate to say such a demographic rules the roost and shapes The New Yorker, even today.

Bourgeois sensibility and racism I can very well believe create huge obstacles for writers of colour. But that it's white women more than men that are James' problem... that I can't.

19LolaWalser
Feb. 12, 2016, 3:49 pm

Anyway, I don't want to end on that note--I suspect James and I just aren't meant for each other--I'd like to get back to the point you emphasised about how differently Watkins' article would have been received if it had been a writer of colour talking about pandering to whites.

It connects, I think, to something that's been obsessing me for long, to how any expression of rage coming from writers (or people in general) of colour is to be smothered, punished and belittled as irrational--dismissed, not-allowed. (Only white men rage uninhibitedly and to acclaim in Western literature. Anyone else who dares is just nuts.)

I'd be curious to compare writing "before" and "after" pandering edits--anyone have more examples? Anyone aware of notable books that underwent such a process? I'm under-read in fiction and I expect that's where this process happens most often.

20southernbooklady
Feb. 12, 2016, 3:59 pm

>18 LolaWalser: I'm not aware of a "older white female critic" cabal or clique that imposes stories about bored suburban housewives on the culture

Is it a reference to Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Wiener, do you think? They are on record as faulting the lit crit establishment (ei, the New York Times Book Review) for lauding Franzen but ignoring fiction written by women because it is "domestic.":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-pinter/jodi-picoult-jennifer-weiner-franzen_...

21LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Feb. 12, 2016, 4:18 pm

>20 southernbooklady:

Uh, I'm not the one to ask. I only know Picoult by name and I associate her (right or wrong) with tepid airport fare mainstream, chick lit, that sort of thing, not The New Yorker type literature. Not sure James would? Just from how he phrased the description of that "astringent, keenly observed etc." prose beloved by the suburban white housewife (apparently), he seems to be talking of quality a cut above.

ETA: He writes: ""the critically acclaimed story." You see it occasionally in certain highbrow magazines and journals." I don't have the impression Picoult is considered "highbrow".

22jennybhatt
Feb. 13, 2016, 12:15 am

>19 LolaWalser: and >20 southernbooklady::

I don't agree with everything James says (on this and other issues) but he did have almost 80 rejections before he could get his first book published. I've seen some of his other FB posts where he posted rejection letters from editors who had asked him to change/remove exactly the things that made his book more ethnic.

I also don't think he's referencing Picoult or Weiner. I think he was continuing a 2012 conversation that Roxane Gay started re. how writers of color are reviewed by critics: http://therumpus.net/2012/06/where-things-stand/. She was involved in a VIDA-like count of books reviewed in mainstream publications. Where VIDA looks at books by women, Gay looked at books by writers of color:

"We looked at 742 books reviewed, across all genres. Of those 742, 655 were written by Caucasian authors (1 transgender writer, 437 men, and 217 women). Thirty-one were written by Africans or African Americans (21 men, 10 women), 9 were written by Hispanic authors (8 men, 1 woman), 33 by Asian, Asian-American or South Asian writers (19 men, 14 women), 8 by Middle Eastern writers (5 men, 3 women) and 6 were books written by writers whose racial background we were simply unable to identify..... Nearly 90% of the books reviewed by The New York Times are written by white writers."

And, possibly, he was also continuing a conversation from this earlier article by Kavita Das: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/11/why-the-literary-world-...

"Not only is it harder for writers of color to get published, but when rejecting our work, publishers tell us that what we’re writing about is too narrow and niche and won’t appeal to mainstream audiences. It’s hard not to perceive this as both a rejection of the relevance of our work as well as ourselves. And for many writers of color who face barriers in other parts of their life due to their identity, the rejection is compounded, forcing some to put down their pen and give up their voice."

The latter article has examples of what publishers/editors have told writers of color when rejecting their work.

To be fair, here's a differing viewpoint that I tend to agree with more: https://ayadeleon.wordpress.com/2015/12/09/on-pandering-white-women-as-scapegoat...

"I don’t disagree with James about the phenomena he observes: a literary industry with white women in gatekeeping roles and with white women set up as the archetypal consumer to be pandered to. I do, however, disagree with the implied notion that white women are the powerful and designing force behind the institution. In reality, the literary industry has been forged by a patriarchal system that decides what would be in its own interest for women to want, tells women that they want it and then sells it to us..... I will always include the impact of male domination when analyzing white women’s behavior, at the same time that I call out the racism. Which is what seemed to be missing from Marlon James’ comments."

As a last related point, it was recently revealed that the US publishing industry is known to be 70%+ comprised of white women: http://blog.leeandlow.com/2016/01/26/where-is-the-diversity-in-publishing-the-20....

Sorry for too many links. It's just fascinating to me that this conversation continues down so many pathways -- all good to increase awareness and understanding.

23barney67
Feb. 13, 2016, 10:46 am

When I was in college, Fred Chappell told our class that he had accepted the fact that his readers were mostly middle to older aged women, many of them single with cats.

You could probably verify my belief that the majority of readers of fiction fall into this group. Chappell did not say that he considered himself a "women's writer," and yet you could argue that he is, because his readers are all women.

Most fiction writers are women, writing for women. Most librarians and bookstore employees are women. Most English teachers are women. When I was in grad school, I had a friend in library science. She told me nearly all the people in the program were women. She had a class that was about 300 women and one man.

I don't see much discrimination here -- unless it's against men.

24southernbooklady
Feb. 13, 2016, 11:18 am

>23 barney67: yet you could argue that he is, because his readers are all women

I think Fred Chappell would actually be surprised to discover only women read his books.

25southernbooklady
Bearbeitet: Feb. 13, 2016, 11:24 am

>22 jennybhatt: I also don't think he's referencing Picoult or Weiner. I think he was continuing a 2012 conversation that Roxane Gay started re. how writers of color are reviewed by critics: http://therumpus.net/2012/06/where-things-stand/.

I remember that piece. But I was under the impression that James was concerned with more than a simple numbers game. His description in his facebook post you quoted: " Astringent, observed, clipped, wallowing in its own middle-style prose and private ennui" sounds pretty specific to me. Of course he is commenting on "tone" and we've had plenty of discussions on this forum on how women get faulted for not using the right "tone" when they speak.

26barney67
Feb. 13, 2016, 11:30 am

24 -- I spent time with him. I didn't say "only women." I said "mostly." Because that's what he said. Please read my post again.

27LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Feb. 13, 2016, 11:41 am

>22 jennybhatt:

Thanks very much! I only had the time to read De Leon's post now (I believe I've read Gay's piece before but will have to refresh...) and it's a relief to see she too found the emphasis on white women at least somewhat and in a certain way, false.

What she says about white women nevertheless not owning the publishing industry (whatever the size and importance of their role as "gatekeepers") is, I think, easily evident from the vast disparity in numbers of books by men and women reviewed (about double or more in all the racial categories). I believe it's also true that until relatively recently (and maybe still?) women were quite under-represented as recipients of literary awards, prizes etc. Hence the Orange prize etc.

It would then follow that, if there is, as James claims, an imposed cultural taste for certain type of stories or themes, specifically something involving suburban white woman's "ennui" etc., this is not something wrought by white women alone, or even dominantly. (De Leon makes this point.) And here we get, I think, to considering the business of marketing and selling books, which is also an area in which not only are women in a minority, but anyone with a non-mercenary, artistic interest in literature.

There are several things that confuse me about James' post and one of them is who does he want or see as his readers? That is, doesn't his complaint, at least in part, become about what bad, egotistical readers white women are? But then... how does one change that? Are they bad readers because the publishers don't offer them books by people who are not suburban white women or write about those, or are they bad readers because they refuse books not, in short, about themselves? And if--as I get the impression--James' own literary ambitions could be described as "highbrow", does he really think the mainstream of white fiction sold to suburban women about suburban women is his niche, that highbrow niche?

What I mean is, the "suburban white woman's taste" seems to designate more properly a genre, not an entire literary culture. And, insofar it may be "mainstream", that is, dominant; it probably isn't "highbrow"?

Another point of confusion, echoed also in the examples that Das wrote about, for, on one hand "cow dung and mangoes" and on the other for quotations from Joyce, is that anything and maybe everything can be seen as demands for pandering. For example, James was under pressure to make his novel "less ethnic"--but, on the other hand, demands for stereotypical ethnic flourishes seem to be common. (From the Atlantic article: the ‘best chance of publication’ for a black, Asian, or minority ethnic (BAME) writer was to write literary fiction conforming to a stereotypical view of their communities, addressing topics such as ‘racism, colonialism or post-colonialism as if these were the primary concerns of all BAME people.’”)

As a reader, I can only say that I am not interested in any writing that is produced to formula, and that I AM intensely interested in precisely that what the demands for pandering would destroy: authentic, original voices.

ETA: also read The Atlantic article and Gay--yes, I saw that one before. The rest still must wait!

28southernbooklady
Bearbeitet: Feb. 13, 2016, 11:56 am

>26 barney67: I not only read your post, I quoted it verbatim. :-)

Fred Chappell is a really interesting guy, not to mention one of the smartest people I've ever met. I've worked with him mostly through his poetry, rather than his fiction. He likes his wine. He'll flirt with women easily and in good sport, and he can take you through the classical forms of poetry like no one else I've ever known. He was an invaluable mentor to me and my own attempts at poetry. The only time I ever saw him consciously addressing a women-only audience was when he was doing his stint as NC Poet Laureate and going to every fundraising event held by any "Friends of the Library" group in any county. Those events were mostly older, well-off women. I think he even wrote a cat poem for them.

But the man is complicated, and so is his work, and thus, so is his readership.

>27 LolaWalser: That is, doesn't his complaint, at least in part, become about what bad, egotistical readers white women are? But then... how does one change that? Are they bad readers because the publishers don't offer them books by people who are not suburban white women or write about those, or are they bad readers because they refuse books not, in short, about themselves?

It's a truism in the book industry, at least in the US, that women buy most of the books. Therefore, publishing houses try to appeal to the women who are doing the buying, and therefore we get tons of books about women concerned with "women's concerns" -- which seems to be centered mostly around who you are when you are no longer a mother or a wife, or when being a mother or a wife does not answer you life's goals the way you thought they would.

29barney67
Feb. 13, 2016, 3:50 pm

"The only time I ever saw him consciously addressing a women-only audience"

I never said he did. I was talking about his readers.

You did not quote my post verbatim.

Anyway. Thank you for your comments about Fred Chappell. He wrote me a couple times many years ago. We had a mutual friend. It's nice that you had a chance to learn from and spend time with such a decent man, learned scholar, and wonderful writer. I am especially fond of his stories, which strike me as textbook lessons in how to write a good story.

North Carolina, for some reason, is or has become fertile cultural soil. Good. Better than NY and LA, two cities I'm tired of hearing about, reading about, and being influenced by. I've spent much time in South Carolina, but not North.

30jennybhatt
Feb. 14, 2016, 12:26 am

>27 LolaWalser:: Thanks for a thoughtful response. Yes, there's just so much to unpack in the various cases and arguments on this issue that those of us who are outside of the industry see things rather differently from those who are in it (and I include published authors in this for now).

I do believe that more women read fiction than men (based on a completely unscientific sampling of my own circle of friends, family, and acquaintances). And, I agree with those who've said that marketing to women is done along certain lines which propagates a state of "more of the same".

A writer friend of mine pointed to to this website called "Manuscript Wish List". You can search by genre/category and see tweets of agents/editors/publishers who are looking for new manuscripts. I looked under "diverse" and it was just not very good. Admittedly, the tweet character limit might not allow for better articulation. But, many added links to their website pages re. what they're looking for with new books and it was still just as depressing because so many actually spelled out their requirements in terms of books "like X, Y, Z".

Oh well. This conversation isn't likely to end anytime soon. In the UK, they're doing a lot more re. BAME authors as well, which is refreshing because they're a bit further ahead in trying to discuss the issues openly. I do have a few links related to that discussion too but will spare everyone. :)

31LolaWalser
Feb. 14, 2016, 12:19 pm

>30 jennybhatt:

so many actually spelled out their requirements in terms of books "like X, Y, Z".

See, this is to me the essence of anti-"highbrow" (anti-literature, in fact, but I may be the odd one here). These are not people looking for new creative talent but for the next bestseller the size and shape of some previous bestseller It could be about the next winning pie filling, for all they care about books.

Clearly this is exactly the mechanism that sets up and perpetuates stereotypes and discrimination!

I do have a few links related to that discussion too but will spare everyone. :)

Please share them, if you care to--I hope the conversation continues.

I've now looked at the last link you posted, the stats breakdown on who works in publishing. As I said, I'm not an insider of any kind, but it doesn't appear surprising; I've known quite a few people working in publishing in New York and yes, they were all white women (generally lesbians, though). Another thing they had in common--as was also true for women I knew with jobs in fashion and curating arts--was that while not necessarily super-rich, they could afford to be paid even less than I was (science postdoc at the time). And that's LOW.

In fact, I heard it said (perhaps invidiously) that that too is a selective mechanism--for social class. Who wants Vogue edited by proles from Alabama?

But the book world, I'd think, would be somewhat different at least in the rarefied regions of high literature. That's one place where it makes no sense to perpetuate clichés, where the search for the new and truly creative by definition allows no barriers. Unfortunately, that is also "the place" with fewest readers.

32jennybhatt
Feb. 15, 2016, 1:27 am

>27 LolaWalser:: I wanted to come back to a couple of points in this earlier comment.

"What I mean is, the "suburban white woman's taste" seems to designate more properly a genre, not an entire literary culture. And, insofar it may be "mainstream", that is, dominant; it probably isn't "highbrow"?"

I can't speak very well to the rest of James' comments but, the more I think about your above summation, it seems to me that the dichotomy between mainstream and highbrow isn't quite a true one. Yes, James probably isn't going after, for example, the readers of Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult with his work. But, he definitely also doesn't want to be boxed into a narrow "highbrow" label -- no writer would, I think, in today's world. Most just want their works to be read more widely, don't they?

What I'm trying to understand: Does the industry have it deliberately wrong re. what the predominant/mainstream white female readership prefers to read or do white women really want simple stereotypes in their reading? Is this a false dichotomy or are there nuances in between that open us up to more than just these 2 options?

"Another point of confusion, echoed also in the examples that Das wrote about, for, on one hand "cow dung and mangoes" and on the other for quotations from Joyce, is that anything and maybe everything can be seen as demands for pandering. For example, James was under pressure to make his novel "less ethnic"--but, on the other hand, demands for stereotypical ethnic flourishes seem to be common. (From the Atlantic article: the ‘best chance of publication’ for a black, Asian, or minority ethnic (BAME) writer was to write literary fiction conforming to a stereotypical view of their communities, addressing topics such as ‘racism, colonialism or post-colonialism as if these were the primary concerns of all BAME people.’”)"

Re. Das' point about "cow dung and mangoes": that, of course, is pandering because it is part of the narrow, stereotypical image that an average Western reader who doesn't know much about India is likely to have. Joycean quotes are also pandering of a sort because they are a nod to the great Western canon. In both cases, it is, to me, about "give us more of what we already know and understand about the East and the West".

James' rejection letters, which he posted on Facebook, actually had one agent or editor telling him that readers will enjoy the Caribbean setting and characters but could he tone down the language, colloquialisms, and so on as Western readers would not get them and would not be able to relate. There's a certain image of Caribbean people that is easier to read about and James was not interested in presenting that same old, same old.

Here's one link from a BAME writer in the UK: Kavita Bhanot. It is the introduction to an anthology of short stories by British Asians that she edited in 2011. http://www.writershub.co.uk/features-piece.php?pc=1257

"Today, twenty-one years after The Buddha of Suburbia, each time another British Asian novel, film or memoir appears we can’t help feeling a sense of déjà vu. We see the same few narratives again and again, stories about generational and cultural conflict which, greatly simplified, go something like this: born or brought up in Britain, we suffer at the hands of oppressive parents. These comical or villainous figures (usually both) continue to hold onto the culture and customs of the place they’re from, a country that should be irrelevant to them since they live in England now. They hold us back from the pleasures and normality of western life: they don’t let us drink alcohol or eat meat; they don’t let us go to pubs and clubs; they force us to wear Indian suits or keep topknots; they’re overly religious; they make us study hard and push us into careers that we don’t want to follow; they don’t allow us to have relationships of our choice and want us to have arranged marriages. When we resist, they resort to emotional blackmail or physical force."

She went on to echo Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 'The Dangers of a Single Story' (https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en) with:

"Implicit in the expectation that we all have the same story to tell, there is an assumption that we’re all the same, ignoring cultural, regional and class differences between us. British Asian is assumed to be a catchall label for everyone of South Asian origin living in Britain, but the category doesn’t speak to us all. It carries certain regional and class associations; most ‘British Asians’ originate from Punjab, Gujarat, Mirpur and Sylhet, and have been part of the working classes here. Those who belong to other classes, who have come to Britain from other places or are more recent immigrants, who have one Asian parent or whose individual experiences simply don’t conform to the dominant narratives, can feel disconnected from this idea of British Asianness."

And, I think that she foreshadowed Watkins' 'On Pandering' with:

"It seemed that, in my writing, I had unconsciously adopted that gaze, white middle class or bourgeois Indian, upon a world that I knew intimately, that I had been a part of. It was a gaze that was not only unsympathetic, but that also allowed me to be lazy. Knowledge, depth, understanding, wisdom were not required; I only needed to present a slice of the ‘reality’ I had access to."

Everything she says here applies, I think, to Asians in the US too -- well, pretty much any immigrant community.

Sorry for the length. Will stop here. :)

33LolaWalser
Feb. 15, 2016, 2:17 pm

>32 jennybhatt:

There's so much to digest and comment on that I'll have to answer in segments, so please don't think I'm ignoring something or other.

I can't speak very well to the rest of James' comments but, the more I think about your above summation, it seems to me that the dichotomy between mainstream and highbrow isn't quite a true one. Yes, James probably isn't going after, for example, the readers of Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult with his work. But, he definitely also doesn't want to be boxed into a narrow "highbrow" label -- no writer would, I think, in today's world. Most just want their works to be read more widely, don't they?

Well, that's one of the confusing things for me about his post--something one could easily hash out in direct conversation, but rather hard to understand on the basis of a few articles (also, being rather empirical-minded, I'd love to know exactly what magazines, prizes, stories, authors etc. James had in mind...)

Anyway, this is what he says: there is such a thing as "the critically acclaimed story." You see it occasionally in certain highbrow magazines and journals. Astringent, observed, clipped, wallowing in its own middle-style prose and private ennui, porn for certain publications. And I knew from early on how to write the kind of story that would get published."

So, he himself invokes critical acclaim and "certain highbrow" magazines and journals, and also prize-winning type of book--all of which to me sounds unlike something "the masses" or even the "mainstream" go for. I don't know what magazine(s) James has in mind, but maybe The New Yorker and McSweeney's qualify (these occur to me as probably most widely-read, in that category, unlike the numerous university press journals)? I can't think of other, I'm not a reader of literary magazines (I did have a sub to The New Yorker for many years when I lived in the US.)

How does this complicate the discussion; well I'm not sure but I feel that somehow, it does (readership, reasons for reading, style of prose, marketing...?)

Weirdly, I wonder whether James and Picoult aren't actually in the same boat, at least (um, there goes the metaphor) partly--she, if I understood correctly, objects to being excluded from consideration by such "highbrows" as the NYRB (or was it the NY Times reviews), which is due, again if I got it right, to her style and general quality of writing more than her subject matter.

James, otoh, calls out a specific subject--suburban white woman's ennui and whatnot--but ALSO seems critical about the style.

Incidentally, when he says "we writers of colour spend way too much of our lives pandering to the white woman" I take it he does not mean this rhetorically, that he actually has in mind specific writers? But maybe not himself? From how he writes about his problems getting published, it would seem he had them because he refused to "pander".

I'm reminded that The New Yorker introduced me to Zadie Smith and Jhumpa Lahiri. Did they and do they pander to whites? How about Junot Diaz? I'm genuinely curious, not rhetorical in my turn.

But, oops, must go have lunch. Sorry about all the rambling, it really reflects both my confusion and ignorance, but I am deeply appreciating this discussion.

34jennybhatt
Feb. 16, 2016, 12:02 am

>33 LolaWalser:: Thanks for the response. Sorry for the length of my earlier response but I tend to get online at weird times and that accounts for a certain frame of mind. :)

Right. James does mean the highbrow lit journals: TNY, Granta, Tin House, Narrative, Zoetrope, McSweeney's The Believer, and so on vs the university journals or other indie lit journals. I read some of these occasionally. I have to admit that he's right that, for the most part, they mostly adhere to a certain style that reads like it's been honed in creative writing workshops and makes a fair number of the stories indistinguishable for me -- that is to say, I couldn't tell the authors apart due to their choice of themes, narrative styles, and so on. TNY is a bit different, yes, thankfully.

Weiner and Picoult have complained about not being reviewed in NYRB or TNY and the like. So, they're saying that these highbrow publications do not care for mainstream fiction. They're not the writers of color that James speaks of, who, to me, are writing immigrant or other-country stories with ethnic characters and flourishes.

Of course, there's a whole spectrum of writing between mainstream and highbrow literary, as we know, but if we were to consider a 2 x 2 graph matrix as follows:



Here's how I see it:

Picoult and Weiner are in box 1 and complaining about not being considered for 2 (or being allowed to straddle 1 and 2, going across that entire X-axis), whether in the form of reviews, awards or publication.

James is talking about being told to conform to box 2 when he'd rather be straddling 2 and 4.

As for 4, this box is sparsely populated with, as you pointed out, the likes of Junot Diaz, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Zadie Smith who also manage to smoothly straddle 2 and 4. All three of them, by the way, have talked/written about the challenges of writing for a Western readership.

For me, Lahiri is more in Box 2 -- in other words, whether she does it consciously or not, her work, to me, panders in sanitized ways that the works of Diaz, Smith, and Adichie do not. I still like and enjoy Lahiri because she's a wonderful writer, though.

Kavita Bhanot, in my earlier comment, also talked about being BAME writers being boxed into 2.

Anyway, the visual helps me a bit.

35southernbooklady
Feb. 16, 2016, 8:37 am

Honestly, I find that graphic self-defeating. Nothing stifles dialogue like the need to categorize and label. If we really want a commitment to diversity, then the first thing we have to do is get rid of the idea that there are "white suburban readers" and "everyone else." Everyone is "someone else" to somebody. The role of art is to let us see and be that somebody else.

I'm finding it ironic that this discussion has been going on while I was finishing Diane Williams's new book, Fine, Fine, Fine. It's exactly the kind of book, and writer, that would be categorized as "highbrow" -- it's published by McSweeneys, even! I don't know if it is "creative writing workshop writing" (a phrase I rarely hear used as something positive) but the stories -- forty of them in less than 140 pages -- really made an impression on me. Immediate, in the present, almost completely without plot and structure, a weird talent for teasing unsettling moments that feel very true out of ordinary, mundane things.

The people I know who prefer straight narrative style might sneer, but I can't help read them with admiration, constantly asking, "how did she do that?"

36jennybhatt
Feb. 16, 2016, 9:18 am

>35 southernbooklady:: I hesitated before creating and sharing the graphic. That said, the categories and labels are already out there. That's how the publishing industry works. Marketing requires it, whether we like it or not. Even indie writers have to understand them to be able to target their particular readership if they want their books to sell. Please don't see it as an attempt to propagate or even support these existing categories/labels. Rather, an attempt to understand them better (as a writer-in-progress myself).

There's actually another chart out there that people keep sharing in my writer's groups (http://carlywatters.com/2015/11/16/infographic-do-you-know-the-difference-between-literary-upmarket-and-commercial-fiction/).

And, if you go to http://mswishlist.com, you see how agents/editors/publishers categorize/label books way more than I have done here.

Again, depressing it is, no doubt. It was to me when I first got serious about sending my writing out into the world. But, before you can break the system or revolt against it, you have to know what the system is -- what are we trying to speak up against exactly? Not understanding it makes it difficult, for me anyway, to articulate my reservations/concerns about it. That's all.

37LolaWalser
Feb. 16, 2016, 12:01 pm

>36 jennybhatt:

Thanks for that "literary; upmarket; commercial fiction" chart, it provided exactly the concepts I was missing (although my basic confusion about James' meaning remains).

Using these terms, I'd say that I felt James, belonging to or aiming at "literary fiction" category, was expressing criticisms more pertinent to the "upmarket" category--where I see "women's fiction" lands. That's as far as what he says about style and theme goes.

Does he see pandering to "the white woman" occurring everywhere, in all categories? I'm guessing yes...

How does the makeup of the general readership figure in all this? Do we assume there's an organic link between the make up of editorial staff (white women) and majority readers (white women)? Get rid of one and you change the other?

Even indie writers have to understand them to be able to target their particular readership if they want their books to sell.

This raises another question I have in regard to what is pandering exactly: couldn't this be labelled as pandering too, couldn't every attempt to "target", to shape what you are doing in a way to appeal to some category or other? (Even beyond writing--wasn't J. K. Rowling of the Harry Potter fame pandering to men/boys when she chose to hide her gender behind initials, and even later on, when she chose a male pseudonym for her crime novels?) Assuming James never wrote to pander to white women, wouldn't he still write to appeal to someone?

All three of them, by the way, have talked/written about the challenges of writing for a Western readership.

I believe I must have seen some of that, but if you have the links at hand and don't mind, please feel free to post, I'd appreciate it a lot. I'd read Adichie's TED talk. It resonates with something I read recently, Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Decolonising the mind, in which he talks about how colonialism stole the language and the imaginary from the colonised. Every request for pandering can be seen in this key, as something that steals away native imagination.

>35 southernbooklady:

the first thing we have to do is get rid of the idea that there are "white suburban readers" and "everyone else."

I share your unease with labelling but as Jenny said, it seems the book industry already operates in labels and boxes. Where I'm getting stumped is connecting that sort of operation--which I rightly or wrongly always associated with mass, commercial fare--to the problems of artists like James.

There's an intersecting of problems of marketing and racism here that I'm not able to comprehend.

>32 jennybhatt:

I like what Bhanot says here:

Writing our stories from the inside can be one way to avoid clichés.

I can't comment on "British Asian" as a "brand". Presumably that is another marketing device, but what's confusing about marketing devices is that some embrace them as identifiers while others deplore them. I don't know whether this can ever be resolved. I recall the example of "gay fiction" and "gay author"--some were fervently defending them as means of exposure, others fervently attacking them as means of marginalization.

Kazuo Ishiguro seems to be an example of "just a British author who happens to be of non-European extraction". I've only read one of his books and don't know whether he ever told a "culture clash" tale involving his own origins.

Is there anything a multi-cultural or multi-racial or immigrant author could do that couldn't be interpreted as pandering? In the end, I suppose the only thing that matters is how they see it.

38jennybhatt
Feb. 16, 2016, 12:31 pm

>37 LolaWalser:: I will come back to your latest response after thinking it through a bit.

Just quickly on Ishiguro. He does have a few books that involve more of his Sino-Japanese origins: A Pale View of the Hills, An Artist of the Floating World and When We Were Orphans. Oddly, both of these got rather mixed reviews, particularly the latter, and haven't done as well as The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go. Critics like James Wood and Michiko Kakutani have gone so far as to say that his Japan-oriented novels lack color, believe it or not.

39southernbooklady
Feb. 16, 2016, 12:38 pm

>36 jennybhatt: That said, the categories and labels are already out there. That's how the publishing industry works. Marketing requires it, whether we like it or not. Even indie writers have to understand them to be able to target their particular readership if they want their books to sell.

The advice I give writers is not to write for a market, but write whatever it is they are driven to say. The only obligation a writer owes a reader is to write the very best book they can.

In so far as this is a critique of "the market" though, it is really a critique of readers. Publishers are opportunistic, they are more likely to respond to demand than try to create it. They "pander" to the apparent taste of the people who buy books, so it follows that if you want that to change, it has to be at the level of the reader. Which is one reason I'm fond of "highbrow" (a word that does not have a negative connotation for me) literary magazines -- which I would posit are just as diverse as their own readership.

But I don't think the situation is beyond hope. People read for all sorts of reasons -- to learn, to escape, to experience something familiar, to experience something new -- but every book still makes its way through the world primarily on what we in the industry call "word of mouth buzz" -- the "you've got to read this!" impulse that has a reader shoving a book into the hands of their friends because they loved it and have to share it.

All of publisher marketing is an attempt to harness that reader enthusiasm. All of it. Attempts to circumvent it or get around it tend to fail because if the book doesn't speak to the reader, they put it down and the momentum is lost.

I think the real "gatekeeper" in the United States, anyway, is our own cultural myopia, our tendency to only want to read books that feel familiar and reinforce what we already think we know about life, the world, and everything. But the fact that Marlon James has been on the bestseller lists for extended periods for his last couple books suggests that gate is not completely slammed shut.

40LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Feb. 16, 2016, 1:24 pm

>39 southernbooklady:

In so far as this is a critique of "the market" though, it is really a critique of readers.

Yes, I noticed that too.

Reminds me of Brecht's sarcatic quip about elections in the GDR--if only one could elect a new people!

I think that's why James' remark is so offensive--he isn't only imputing bias and/or racism to the industry but to white women in general.

41LolaWalser
Feb. 16, 2016, 1:23 pm

>38 jennybhatt:

Thanks, I should have checked. The one I read was Never let me go, which left me with impressions of great literary talent and, frustratingly, ideas (regarding plot, central premiss, characters) that were ALL WRONG. I'm not attracted to reading Remains of the day, but I could be interested in reading other of his work.

I can't tell what Wood and/or Kakutani had in mind with "lack of color", so I can believe anything. ;)

Come to think of it, I suppose NLMG could be described as colourless in several ways. One, there's the lack of "diverse" characters, if memory serves. I think all the main characters in particular were explicitly described as white. Two, Ishiguro's style isn't particularly colourful--it's subdued, understated. Three, colour as such makes little appearance in his descriptions--but my memory could be at fault, this is what it seems like when I try to reconstruct the visual impact of the story.

42jennybhatt
Feb. 16, 2016, 1:24 pm

>39 southernbooklady:: "The advice I give writers is not to write for a market, but write whatever it is they are driven to say. The only obligation a writer owes a reader is to write the very best book they can."

I completely agree that, when writing, one shouldn't think of any market or target reader. When done with the work of writing and starting to send it out into the world, one has to think through who to send it to. That's what I was referring to. When I write, I'm way too busy thinking about what I'm writing to think about anything else. But, once I've finished and I need to send it to literary journals or presses, that's when I do have to think of their particular submission preferences and readership.

"In so far as this is a critique of "the market" though, it is really a critique of readers. Publishers are opportunistic, they are more likely to respond to demand than try to create it. They "pander" to the apparent taste of the people who buy books, so it follows that if you want that to change, it has to be at the level of the reader."

I don't put everything on the reader. As a lifelong reader, I am often surprised about my own choices after I've stumbled onto and fallen in love with them. A recent example is Lydia Davis and her short stories. A few years ago, I would not have gone near her kind of writing. Now, I can't get enough.

Here's the way I see it. The entire industry value-chain (if you don't mind me going into marketing stuff again -- hazard of a past life) in a very simplified form is as follows for the traditional publishing route:

writer -> agent -> editor -> publisher & marketer -> distributor or dealer -> retailer or seller - > reviewer & critic -> reader

It's not always as linear as this, I know, and often, roles are combined. But, for the sake of this point, it will suffice. My thinking is that there are so many links in this chain before a book can get from the writer to the reader. Some carry more of the responsibility than others for how the book is packaged, presented, and sold to the reader. So, given that so many brains are involved in the process, how much control does the average reader really have on being able to truly comprehend and articulate his/her tastes? Yes, there are exceptions but they are not the majority. So, I don't know that we can say that change has to be more at the level of the reader, any more than it's fair to say that change has to be at the level of the writer (i.e. pandering). It is the entire industry that has to change -- every link within that value-chain. And, the ones that carry the most weight need to evolve first. Easier said than done, I know.

And, though I am really in no position to speak for James or any of the other writers involved in this ongoing public debate, I don't know that they are pointing the finger at the readers. Here's an example of where various people in the UK from across the above value-chain are offering their thoughts on encouraging diversity in publishing (which, to me, is another way of saying, don't make writers of color have to pander to a certain kind of reader stereotype): http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/11/how-do-we-stop-uk-publishing-being-.... NOTE: In the UK, the publishing industry is more white male at the decision-making levels. The earlier link I had shared was the US publishing industry being more white female.

I still need to think on >37 LolaWalser: before I respond. It's almost midnight where I am, though, so must get to bed. :)

43sturlington
Bearbeitet: Feb. 16, 2016, 1:33 pm

We all read for different reasons. Even individual readers read for different reasons at different times. There is a tendency among some to imbue literature with artistic pretensions and to look down on those books that don't measure up, or those readers who would read them. But sometimes you just want to be entertained. As with movies, sometimes you want something that will enlighten or educate you, and sometimes you just want to stuff yourself with popcorn for a couple of hours.

It's certainly true that "popcorn" books are more popular, especially if you're going to insist on lumping all genre fiction in there as well, but that doesn't make them "bad." They're serving a purpose, even so-called white suburban women's fiction, whatever that might be. It's kind of like saying that people should never have potato chips, only kale. You should only read/eat what's good for you, not what tastes good. And you can lecture people all you want, they're still going to buy and eat potato chips.

I'm not saying that writers should pander to readers' tastes--well, unless their goal in writing is to just sell a ton of books. But if they want to create Great Literature, if that's the goal, then they have to forget about the readers and the publishers and what is going to get bought, and just write the book. If it really is Great Literature, it will get published (eventually), it will find its readership (eventually), it may even get assigned to college students (eventually). It will likely not make you a ton of money, certainly not until you've been toiling in the trenches for a while. These are the tradeoffs between art and commercialism, and I'd be surprised if any writer weren't aware of this.

Publishers are businesses. It's their job to define a market and try to serve that. Why aren't more publishers serving the cause of Great Literature? Well, obviously because that's not going to make them as much money. So it's a much smaller niche. This is reality, and it sounds like sour grapes to act as if it is the fault of women editors.

James did eventually make it. His book won a major award. He did his time and he's now being recognized. I think this is how it's supposed to work.

OK, I wrote a lot when really what I wanted to respond to was my surprise at >38 jennybhatt:. I have read all of those books and I thought they were really good, especially A Pale View of Hills. I have never thought of Kazuo Ishiguro as a Japanese writer, though, even when he writes about Japan. He seems to look at Japan as a foreigner would, and it's always a Japan of the past. He doesn't seem to have cultural ties to that country, at least not that he expresses in his fiction.

Another thought in response to >42 jennybhatt:: As with the movie industry, I would believe that the publishing industry gets myopic, that they think they know what readers want but are actually ignoring the evidence before them that readers truly do want more diversity in the types of stories that get told. That's why I think promoting diversity in publishing is a good thing. But I don't think publishers should have to promote diversity at the expense of how they've defined their business. For instance, a publisher that churns out YA books might do well to publish more YA books with different types of characters written by different types of writers rather than just assume that everyone wants to read Harry Potter over and over again. But that still doesn't obligate them to publish Marlon James if that doesn't fit their market.

44southernbooklady
Feb. 16, 2016, 1:56 pm

>42 jennybhatt: writer -> agent -> editor -> publisher & marketer -> distributor or dealer -> retailer or seller - > reviewer & critic -> reader

It's not always as linear as this, I know, and often, roles are combined. But, for the sake of this point, it will suffice. My thinking is that there are so many links in this chain before a book can get from the writer to the reader.


In fact all those links are part of the process that creates the book the reader eventually buys. You can skip steps in the process but every time you do there are consequences. Ask any bookseller who has to deal with an author of a book that has been "edited" by their writer's group and "published" by uploading their ms to a print on demand outfit.

Logistical supply chains, though, don't really differentiate between literary genres -- they are essentially the same whether you are trying to sell a YA vampire novel or a book of poetry. They are entirely egalitarian in the sense that the only thing that matters is the end demand.

So the complaint that all books don't get the same access to that supply chain is, again, ultimately a complaint that readers aren't creating the demand.

I'd say that the book industry -- which by the way is an industry with a ridiculously low profit margin no matter what step of the process you are looking at -- is not what inclined to take big risks. As a rule it doesn't have the capital to take big risks. It wants to see evidence of demand before it tries to meet it. Which, as far as I can tell, is how capitalism works.

I think the only way to address our risk-averse reading habits is to cultivate what in some other thread I called "a spirit of openness" towards every book we pick up. I don't know how to explain it any better than that -- to start, as a reader, with an assumption that the writer has something to say, that may be worth hearing.

But that kind of attitude has to come from within, from the reader. It can't be imposed on readers by a publisher, or a critic, or even an author. And yet, unexpectedly wonderful books do make it through into the wider reading public. A writer friend of mine says that every book "has its own strange karma," which I thought was a nice way to describe the serendipitous process by which books find their readers.

45LolaWalser
Feb. 16, 2016, 1:58 pm

>43 sturlington:

James did eventually make it. His book won a major award. He did his time and he's now being recognized. I think this is how it's supposed to work.

I think James is saying that he'd have it much easier and faster if he'd been white/pandered to white women.

In short, it's hard to get published no matter what you are writing, harder to get awards/become a "Great", and it's all even harder if you're a writer of colour.

Plus there are other problems then too--how does a writer position themselves when most of the readership is dissimilar in race, ethnicity, gender etc? How do they remain true to themselves and yet appeal widely?

It's a new kind of problem. Austen probably didn't have it. White male authors didn't have it--what did they care, they wrote for others exactly like themselves, and any Others could lump it and imbibe the precious wisdom from their superiors.

46LolaWalser
Feb. 16, 2016, 2:02 pm

>44 southernbooklady:

But that kind of attitude has to come from within, from the reader. It can't be imposed on readers by a publisher, or a critic, or even an author.

I think it can be taught.

But, still, we have to contend with the scarcity of books to be "open" to if so few writers of colour (or writers not conforming to some generic standard) manage to get published.

It's a circular problem of sorts.

47jennybhatt
Feb. 16, 2016, 2:23 pm

>37 LolaWalser:: (can't sleep)

“Using these terms, I'd say that I felt James, belonging to or aiming at "literary fiction" category, was expressing criticisms more pertinent to the "upmarket" category--where I see "women's fiction" lands. That's as far as what he says about style and theme goes.”

See, for me, James is still talking about literary fiction. Weiner and Picoult are upmarket and women’s fiction. And, then, there’s all the rest — commercial fiction.

“Does he see pandering to "the white woman" occurring everywhere, in all categories? I'm guessing yes…”

Don’t know but I kinda think not. Commercial/genre fiction has a lot of male readers with sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. And, clearly, he’s not including these. Nor are any of the other writers involved in this debate that I’ve read so far.

“How does the makeup of the general readership figure in all this? Do we assume there's an organic link between the make up of editorial staff (white women) and majority readers (white women)? Get rid of one and you change the other?”

I don’t see it as clear-cut as that. See my post #42 for how I see the industry value-chain overall. It’s not just the editorial staff, though they tend to be mostly on the payroll of the publishers.

“couldn't this be labelled as pandering too, couldn't every attempt to "target", to shape what you are doing in a way to appeal to some category or other? (Even beyond writing--wasn't J. K. Rowling of the Harry Potter fame pandering to men/boys when she chose to hide her gender behind initials, and even later on, when she chose a male pseudonym for her crime novels?) Assuming James never wrote to pander to white women, wouldn't he still write to appeal to someone?”

Most of my favorite writers never think of shaping their writing (while they’re writing) to appeal to any category or reader. For myself, there’s so much going on with thinking of story, themes, technicalities, etc., that I cannot even think of a target reader. Rowling has said that she did not intend HP for men/boys only. And, there are many women/girls who enjoy HP. As for that male pseudonym for the crime novels, I have to confess that I did not follow the news/analysis/interviews on that one, so I don’t know why she chose to do so. James, from his FB posts and other interviews/podcasts, sounded like he was not writing to appeal to anyone particular — not the Caribbean community where he based his story and definitely not the white woman. But, again, I can’t speak for him, just relate what I’ve read.

Thanks for that link to Ngugi wa Thiong'o's book. I will look into it. For links to stuff said by Zadie Smith, Junot Diaz, Adichie, I’ll have to dig deeper because most of what I’ve heard them say has been mostly in the many books-related podcasts I listen to. Diaz did have a very good article in TNY on MFA vs POC, which does touch on the pandering/diversity problem from a slightly different angle. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/mfa-vs-poc.

“There's an intersecting of problems of marketing and racism here that I'm not able to comprehend.”

Exactly. This is what I’m trying to understand as well. Not whether it exists because I’m pretty sure that it does (though I’d say it’s more coded racism rather than out-and-out hatred).

“what's confusing about marketing devices is that some embrace them as identifiers while others deplore them. I don't know whether this can ever be resolved.”

I agree with you here. That’s why labels and categories are so tricky.

“Is there anything a multi-cultural or multi-racial or immigrant author could do that couldn't be interpreted as pandering? In the end, I suppose the only thing that matters is how they see it.”

The only thing that multi-cultural / immigrant authors can do is not adopt that particular white gaze that publishers would prefer, as Bhanot, Watkins, and James have said. And, publishers/editors/agents can try to understand the dangers of always trying to go for the single story, as Adichie and Smith have said. And, readers can continue seeking out the new, bold, different, and, yes, uncomfortable narratives that show them different worlds and perspectives. It will take all of these to make things better. Easier said than done.

48jennybhatt
Feb. 16, 2016, 2:24 pm

>43 sturlington::

“Publishers are businesses. It's their job to define a market and try to serve that. Why aren't more publishers serving the cause of Great Literature? Well, obviously because that's not going to make them as much money. So it's a much smaller niche. This is reality, and it sounds like sour grapes to act as if it is the fault of women editors.”

I think that all these authors are in agreement that publishing is a money-making business. Clearly, they want to make a living off their books too otherwise they wouldn’t bother making a fuss and just put their books online for free. The debate is more that the niche isn’t quite as small as the Big Five publishers would have the world believe. And, no, I don’t agree that anyone who complains about this is suffering from sour grapes. The women editors/agents are, after all, deeply-linked into the system and, in a lot of cases, on the payroll of these publishers.

“James did eventually make it. His book won a major award. He did his time and he's now being recognized. I think this is how it's supposed to work. “

Yes, but a) it took him much longer than if he’d given in to the pandering requirements and b) he’s nowhere near to being able to make a living simply from his writing. So, no, I don’t think this is how it should work. But, I sincerely respect your right to your opinion.

“I have read all of those books and I thought they were really good”

I haven’t read all of them but I enjoy Ishiguro overall. I can’t speak to the depth of his cultural ties to Japan. But, yes, he did leave at an early age and has only gone back infrequently, per his interviews. But, that’s fine. As long as he feels he’s writing without feeling pressured to conform in uncomfortable ways, that’s what matters.

“But I don't think publishers should have to promote diversity at the expense of how they've defined their business. For instance, a publisher that churns out YA books might do well to publish more YA books with different types of characters written by different types of writers rather than just assume that everyone wants to read Harry Potter over and over again. But that still doesn't obligate them to publish Marlon James if that doesn't fit their market.”

Completely agree with you here. The issue is more, to use your example, if/when a YA author with diverse characters comes along, and that YA publisher says, “Let’s tone this down a bit.”

49jennybhatt
Feb. 16, 2016, 2:40 pm

>44 southernbooklady::

“Logistical supply chains, though, don't really differentiate between literary genres -- they are essentially the same whether you are trying to sell a YA vampire novel or a book of poetry. They are entirely egalitarian in the sense that the only thing that matters is the end demand.

So the complaint that all books don't get the same access to that supply chain is, again, ultimately a complaint that readers aren't creating the demand.”

Ah. My bad. I didn’t mean to imply that certain books aren’t getting the same access to the supply chain as others. My point was more that there are gatekeepers and decision-makers all along that supply chain, at each link, and that’s what makes it difficult for a book to eventually make it into a reader’s hands. I don’t think that the demand-supply continuum works as we might expect/hope here.

“I'd say that the book industry -- which by the way is an industry with a ridiculously low profit margin no matter what step of the process you are looking at -- is not what inclined to take big risks. As a rule it doesn't have the capital to take big risks. It wants to see evidence of demand before it tries to meet it. Which, as far as I can tell, is how capitalism works.”

I do agree with you, in part, here. Profit margins aren’t as great as they used to be. But, I don’t think it’s perfect capitalism. Many other businesses, if run like the publishing industry, would be or have to shut down. Publishers keep saying to authors that the pie is shrinking when they have to justify why the author is getting a much smaller piece of the pie. Just 5 days ago, there was an article about the unevenness of capital distribution: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/feb/11/publishers-should-pay-aut....

But, this is a slightly different debate for another time — how authors get paid — though it is somewhat related.

“I think the only way to address our risk-averse reading habits is to cultivate what in some other thread I called "a spirit of openness" towards every book we pick up. I don't know how to explain it any better than that -- to start, as a reader, with an assumption that the writer has something to say, that may be worth hearing. “

I don’t disagree that this will help. But, I don’t think it will solve the industry problem by itself. I don’t have the magic bullet either. Except to say, as I said before, everyone in that value-chain needs to evolve. This article has some very good ideas on how: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/11/how-do-we-stop-uk-publishing-being-....

50sturlington
Bearbeitet: Feb. 16, 2016, 3:15 pm

>48 jennybhatt: But would James have produced A Brief History of Seven Killings if he had "pandered"? Would he have won the Booker? It's not a given, and I'm not sure he would. Yes, it took longer, and it was harder, but that is why his work was eventually rewarded. I am not convinced that pandering would have produced the same result.

When I say that this is how it is supposed to work, I'm saying that James is getting recognition and awards, he is getting reviewed by the NYT, he is selling books. He is not being ignored. Writing is a difficult choice of profession, very few people really make it to the level James already has. But excellent work does seem to eventually break out and get recognized. It takes time, though, and it takes struggle. Perhaps these elements are critical for development as a writer. Most literary writers do not earn a living by their writing. That's why they teach and give talks and lead writer workshops. If the issue is that writers cannot make a living, I think that's a different discussion.

WRT Ishiguro, I am surprised--but maybe I shouldn't be?--that anyone would expect him to represent Japanese culture in his writing when he seems to have no real ties to it, other than his interest in WWII Japan.

ETA I guess where I'm getting confused is with the assumption that pandering would have gotten James to the same point faster since pandering by definition would have resulted in different, less authentic work. Or maybe I'm misreading, a hazard of coming into a conversation in the middle.

51sturlington
Bearbeitet: Feb. 16, 2016, 4:07 pm

>22 jennybhatt: To go back to those distressing statistics you quoted earlier and also the supply chain discussion, I think there are two areas in the chain where a real difference could be made. As I said before, I think publishers can be very myopic and risk averse, and should make a real effort to build diversity into their catalogs. I think the market will reward them.

Also reviewers, especially highly influential outlets like the New York Times, should make it part of their mission to review more diverse writers, and hire similarly diverse reviewers to do so. I can think of no good reason why they shouldn't. Recently, I got excited because the NYT book review had a new column by N.K. Jemison, but I've only seen it appear once. I wonder what happened to it.

52LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Feb. 17, 2016, 10:43 am

>47 jennybhatt:

I feel I should get off the topic of James, which I expanded way more than you may have intended to begin with, so to finish:

James, from his FB posts and other interviews/podcasts, sounded like he was not writing to appeal to anyone particular — not the Caribbean community where he based his story and definitely not the white woman.

If only he had phrased what he wrote more carefully, if only he had said something like "let's stop pandering to the stereotypical white woman"--i.e. the stereotype which I don't doubt publishers use to focus their marketing--it would all have gone down differently.

Of course, I say this hoping that he didn't mean it exactly the way it sounds. The way it sounds, he is stereotyping white women as "THE white woman", and that as someone who kept him from getting the recognition etc. (although one might logically ask did he finally succeed then through some anti-white-woman conspiracy? Or could it be that here and there some white woman too helped to push things along?)

Ironically, so far on LT I've noticed most glowing reviews of his book coming from--white women.

It stands to reason that if general readership is white female by some vast margin, that demographic probably makes a significant chunk if not the majority of readers of anyone writing general fiction. I'm not suggesting James should be "wiser" and hide his opinions (I prefer to know one's sincere opinions, especially if they express categorical disdain for people like me), only that it's a point he seems to neglect totally.

As for whether he's pandering to his Caribbean community, I don't know. I will admit--and this is, I recognise, probably me stereotyping in turn--that it crossed my mind that a middle-class gay man from a virulently misogynistic and homophobic culture probably had/has a lot to prove to the macho homeboys--and publicly hitting out at white women like this may be just the gesture to do it. I don't expect it's a question of something this crude, overt and direct, of course. But I wonder. It's so common with men after all, to prove their strength on women's hides.

I wish I had the opportunity to ask James about this--he's reading on Thursday in Toronto but tickets for the event have long gone.

Yes, that excellent article by Diaz was linked here before (I mean LT, but in a different group--not sure but think it was Pro & Con, one of the threads about racism), I don't remember much about the discussion. I'll see if I can find it, tomorrow if possible, the search in Talk doesn't function well.

That is yet another context I know little about, MFA programmes, someone else may be able to tie it up better with publishing and awards--I suppose it belongs, at least, to the problem of educating, raising, developing readers.

Not whether it exists because I’m pretty sure that it does (though I’d say it’s more coded racism rather than out-and-out hatred).

Right, I use "racism" when "racial discrimination" or something of that kind might be less stark, less shocking to sensibilities, but in the end--there's no difference, is there? In whichever way racial bias arises, it ends up disadvantaging people of colour, and that's the important thing, not whether there are any "real" haters around (but check out the super-idiotic "Is Trump a racist" thread in Pro & Con for a differing view... ;))

53jennybhatt
Feb. 17, 2016, 12:06 am

>50 sturlington::

"I guess where I'm getting confused is with the assumption that pandering would have gotten James to the same point faster since pandering by definition would have resulted in different, less authentic work. Or maybe I'm misreading, a hazard of coming into a conversation in the middle."

No, my bad if I'm not being clear enough. It was past midnight when I sent my last batch of comments. :)

I didn't mean that pandering, per the editor's or agent's requests in their letters to him, would have got James to the same point faster. What I meant was that he shouldn't have had to pander, of course, and it shouldn't have taken that long. Clearly, the fact that he got there eventually means that his work was good enough. Just that so many gatekeepers in the industry didn't think so for a long while and kept pressuring him to conform to what they perceived as acceptability or relatability.

And, James' case is symptomatic because it reflects what a lot of writers of color go through. I have a couple of writer friends facing this even as I write. I'm too close to them to say whether they're as good as James and whether what they're being asked to change is pandering or just good editing. But, they're losing heart, I know that much.

54jennybhatt
Feb. 17, 2016, 12:08 am

>51 sturlington:: Yes, I completely agree with your points here. Those two groups of industry gatekeepers could make a significant difference, for sure. :) And, to be honest, I am hopeful that the changes will happen over time. How long, I don't know. But, all these public conversations will make a difference.

55jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Feb. 17, 2016, 7:08 am

>52 LolaWalser::

:) Yes, I think the James discussion went way deeper than I had expected as well. I have found that in interviews/podcasts that he did subsequent to that article, he explained himself a little better. Like there was the NPR segment: http://www.npr.org/2015/12/11/459234225/whom-do-you-write-for-pandering-essay-sp...

"What I was saying, "When all of you think I was actually attacking the white reader, or the white woman reader," I said, "no, I'm attacking the expectations that are put upon her." There are too many books, including my own, that prove that argument ridiculous. And I'm not sure why it still holds. But we do have that — there is this sort of "white woman reader who wants a sort of sugarcoating on all her pills."

So, I was seeing James' comments as less of an attack on this mythical or stereotypical white woman reader and more of an attack on what others think she'd like to read. Hence all my earlier responses re. James. :)

You make a good point re. the homophobic culture in Jamaica. And, James has said often how he refused to pander to it as well (I heard him read an excerpt from his Booker winner on the CBC podcast with Eleanor Wachtel and, well, oh my). He talked about it with Jeannette Winterson too: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/28/conversation-jeanette-winterson-mar...

Winterson actually thought that he wrote women very well as she says in the above article. I can't say because I haven't read the book. But, it makes me think, again, that he wasn't just into bashing white women overall. I just don't get that. Yes, he's an openly proud, gay, black, middle-class man and he often rants on FB about things that most of us would rather just turn away from or not deal with (recently, he pissed off a lot of Indians by complaining about conditions during his trip to the Jaipur Literary Festival).

OK. Sorry for more on James. I'm not defending him, honest. But, I just see this whole "writing for white women" issue a bit differently. Maybe it's because I, too, am a writer of color (in progress, anyway) and I, too, have had to work to de-internalize the white gaze with my own work. So, what he and Watkins have said resonates. And, what Kavita Das has said recently (both the VIDA article and the Atlantic article) resonates even more. That's where I started when I jumped in on this thread, I think. :)

Side-note: James teaches creative writing and he talked about that in the talk with Winterson linked above.

56sturlington
Feb. 17, 2016, 6:41 am

>55 jennybhatt: Okay, thanks for clarifying, it helps us not talk past each other. :-) I'm not familiar enough with James' body of work to really judge, but you're right that he obviously had the chops.

It sounds like what he was complaining about then was the same myopia of publishers that decides what readers want without really looking at the evidence. I can get behind that, although I think it's a mistake to genderize it, if that's a word. Another excellent piece you linked to points out, rightly, I think, that even if white women are the majority working in publishing now, the system itself is still very much one of white men. It would be interesting to take a look at the power structure. Might the white women editors also feel they have to do their own pandering, even if they aren't consciously aware?

There is no question in my mind that writers of color face significant barriers in getting published, particularly outside the genres that have been assigned to them. I can see this as a reader. In the past few years I've been trying to diversify my reading, and its proved extraordinarily difficult, particularly in the genres I like to read. Whereas I can walk into any bookstore and be surrounded by a sea of white.

57jennybhatt
Feb. 17, 2016, 7:15 am

>56 sturlington::

"It sounds like what he was complaining about then was the same myopia of publishers that decides what readers want without really looking at the evidence. I can get behind that, although I think it's a mistake to genderize it, if that's a word."

Yes, I agree with you here. Particularly as, for Watkins, it's the white male gaze she was trying to de-internalize. While, for James, it is, oddly, the alleged white female gaze. I think, let's just leave it to "white gaze". That, we all know to be true.

"In the past few years I've been trying to diversify my reading, and its proved extraordinarily difficult, particularly in the genres I like to read. Whereas I can walk into any bookstore and be surrounded by a sea of white."

Oh, I'm so with you on that. As a person of color myself, my literary Feedly news is daily filled with 95%+ white authors. In the pre-internet days, when I subscribed to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and Granta in print, they rarely featured women writers, never mind writers of color. And, I'm talking about the late-90s, so about 20-odd years ago. Even now, I look at my own reading lists cataloged here on LibraryThing and I see that I need more diversity in my own reading -- and, again, I'm a "person of color". I am happy, though, that I do now read more women than I did before.

Thanks for a great discussion, all. I've enjoyed understanding different POVs and being able to share my own.

58southernbooklady
Feb. 17, 2016, 8:39 am

>56 sturlington: In the past few years I've been trying to diversify my reading, and its proved extraordinarily difficult, particularly in the genres I like to read.

My own experience with the book industry has been more fortunate.

When I was in college in the mid 80s, one of my degrees was in "Middle Eastern Studies" -- which meant, among other things, reading a lot of fiction translated from the Arabic. I still remember the lengths I had to go to -- basically the University bookstore had us all fill out order forms from Three Continents Press and then it was 6 weeks for our books to arrive! I remember, too, a couple years later when Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel, and I was the only one on staff at my bookstore who had read, or even heard of him. Of course the meager stock at Three Continents sold out within minutes, and then there was nothing--nothing--available for years until the Cairo Trilogy was finally released by Doubleday. Then it was like publishing discovered Egypt and India, in the same way they realized people in Latin America wrote books after they woke up to the fact that people liked Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Isabelle Allende. It wasn't unusual to see writers from China, Mexico, Argentina, Egypt on their lists.

I could cite a similar story for LGBT publishing -- the dedication we had to Alyson Publications, Firebrand Publishing, Crossing Press, Kitchen Table Press, South End Press, was born of a desperation to see gay stories, feminist literature, black voices, anarchist voices in print. But it was also the era that saw mainstream publishers wake up to the realities of the gay market. They started creating imprints with names like "Stonewall Editions" and courting LGBT readers.

So on the whole I've always felt that "mainstream" publishing are rarely trailblazers, but neither are they resistant when they do finally perceive there is a market for a certain voice or kind of book. Still, this is an era of micropresses with specific missions that do amazing, high quality work. And while they rarely show up in the New York Times, I have to admit, compared to those days of filling out paper "STOP" orders for obscure titles, mailing in checks to mail order departments of backroom presses, and digging through back issues of "The Feminist Bookstore News" for information about books ... well "finding diversity" now, where almost anything is a Google search away, is really just a matter of how far my enthusiasm (and budget!) will take me.

59sturlington
Feb. 17, 2016, 8:51 am

>58 southernbooklady: What I am mainly referring to is the experience of walking into a bookstore and browsing the shelves. Diverse books are difficult to discover in that happy serendipitous way that we book browsers so love, particularly in genre fiction, which is what I like to read. So discovery is hard, unless you set out on the Internet to research, as you say. I have a long list of diverse authors I want to read that I've picked up by researching and reading on LT and blogs, but if my local library doesn't carry the books, I'll have to order them from Amazon. I'm fortunate in that our local public library seems to making an effort, at least when it comes to the African and Caribbean writers I'm becoming interested in. We have a terrific local indie bookstore that I try hard to support, but I think they could make more of an effort in this department.

60southernbooklady
Feb. 17, 2016, 9:05 am

My mother has this saying "every revolution happens from the ground up." Bookstores will stock what will sell, so convincing them to stock diversely means showing them there is a demand.

I sometimes wonder if there isn't a lesson to be learned from the "Local Foods" movement. Small scale growers have always been there, but it took high-profile restaurateurs like Alice Waters to reach a broader audience, turn it into a kind of lifestyle choice. Now even my discount supermarket makes a point of stocking locally grown produce -- their apple selection in the fall is crazy!

61jennybhatt
Feb. 17, 2016, 11:22 am

In mid-2015, Kamila Shamsie issued a "provocation" to publishers to have a year of only publishing women (she was citing stats of how women writers don't get as many reviews/awards as their male counterparts). The comments section, as you can imagine blew up. I too jumped in with this response below. I share it here because, in hindsight, I believe some of these points also apply to encouraging across-the-board diversity in publishing. Substitute "women writers" with "writers of color". Sorry for the length. And, if this is getting a bit dragged-out, we don't have to carry on discussing. :) I just thought I'd share.

Publishers decide which writers to publish, how much to market them and whether to submit their books for award nominations. So, clearly, the onus to level the playing field is on them. Shamsie is pointing us in their direction, albeit with a highly provocative suggestion. She's smart enough to know that if she puts that extreme milestone marker out there, people aren't going to run towards it immediately BUT the dialogue will, at least, start drifting into that direction and away from sidebar debates like: "are men better writers than women?" or "are awards truly representative of talent?” or “why aren’t there more talented women writers?” and so on. The latter types of questions simply keep placing the burden of proof on women writers. And, when that keeps happening, the problem will never even get close to resolution. So, again, I think Shamsie’s provocation is an attempt to point the arrow at the appropriate link in the overall value-chain rather than letting it keep spinning wildly with every new debate or rehashed argument.

All talented writers, male or female, manage to catch the pulse of the zeitgeist and portray it innovatively and effectively through their works. If publishers believe that male writers do this better than female writers, then either the publishers themselves are not in tune with the changing zeitgeist or, sadly, their assessment that male writers do, indeed, write and sell better is accurate. In both cases, it is the publishers who need to make the necessary changes. Either they should get a grip on what the reading public really wants/needs and provide it. Or, they should step forward and make the explicit and overt fact-based case, contentious though it will be, that male writers are, indeed, more talented and/or commercially viable.

Now, most publishers will, of course, shy away from the latter as that is just going to land them into more trouble. And, speaking for myself, I don't agree that women's books don't sell as well as those by men because there are certainly cases of women’s books, fewer though they may be in number, selling very well indeed -- whether they’re about men, women, babies, teens or primates. So, let’s focus on the option of how to strengthen / grow the pipeline of women writers. How would I do that if I was at a big publishing house?

1) I’d market the heck out of my few existing successful women writers so that other budding women writers see them as role models and are encouraged. An active, ongoing, innovative marketing campaign, mind you. That there are fewer opportunities for women to develop strong voices and viewpoints from an early age is still a reality in most cultures today and being exposed early to role models can only help. This is the case with any male-dominated profession -- from astronauts to zoologists.

2) Writing has never been a financially-viable profession for most writers — male or female. And, women writers in many cultures still do not have “a room of one’s own” or, if they do, they’re likely also raising children and managing their households. So, just like certain decent corporations have created support mechanisms for women in the workplace, publishing houses could create support mechanisms for their selected women writers. Offer subsidized child care, cleaning services, etc.? Provide subsidized writing retreats?

3) Some publishing houses do this already: sponsor contests, fellowships, grants, and so on to encourage more writers to come forward on their own merits. Yes, more of these would have to be targeted towards women writers and could be accused of being exclusionary. But, let me use a business analogy again: in the corporate world, if you have an under-utilized or under-performing business unit that you know could give you good returns through new and innovative products, wouldn’t you invest more into it at the expense of another? If you believed in the viability of a new technology, wouldn’t you put more time/effort/money into its development?

I will admit that I do not understand the entire publishing value-chain well enough to know where the finances will come from. But, maybe:

a) Endowments or donations like those received by educational institutions

b) Government support through favorable tax arrangements

c) Profits from one business unit subsidizing another

This is a solvable problem. Humankind has solved many more serious life-and-death problems through the ages. Surely, a few brainy industry folks could get together and solve this one.

One last thought.... What if Steve Jobs had said: nope, people will never want to listen to music on their phones so we're not going there. Or: nah, we're great and successful at making computers and phones will never sell as well or more than computers, so let's not go there. My point is: every industry has its visionary risk-taker who leads the paradigm shift. Let's hope that the publishing industry has a few of those too.

62LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Feb. 17, 2016, 11:51 am

>55 jennybhatt:

Thanks for that NPR link, it sounds exactly what I would hope is the case. I do wish James added something, links or comments, to that original Facebook post of his, as it's clear it's generating lots of grief and same questions and protests keep hounding him. If it doesn't express well enough what he meant, I don't see why let it stand unchanged.

But, I just see this whole "writing for white women" issue a bit differently. Maybe it's because I, too, am a writer of color (in progress, anyway) and I, too, have had to work to de-internalize the white gaze with my own work.

Thanks, this is something I meant to come back to before, regarding "British Asians", Ishiguro etc. and harking back to cow dung and Joyce. One thing that bothers me about flinging around accusations of "pandering" is that, as I mentioned before, it seems anything can be interpreted as pandering--the choice to be "ethnic" as well as the choice to ignore the ethnic; the choice of high style, themes etc. derived from Western culture (although we should note: some Western culture of traditional yesteryear, not contemporary increasingly multicultural one), as well as wilful suppression of any signs of Western heritage, in order to appear more "authentic".

I don't know whether we can agree on a definition of pandering, but for my part, I would propose that pandering is anything done to please/appeal to some other person that goes against the grain of an author's natural bent and intention.

With that said (I don't mean anyone else has to adopt it, just that this is what I have in mind as I write), I want to look at the "white gaze". For simplicity's sake, let's assume that in Britain, despite it's regional differences (locally historically important as much as those in the Balkans although people like to ignore that because Westerners aren't supposed to be like those savages), there is a dominant "white gaze" acquired through development and education in a traditionally "white" Western culture.

How foreign can this gaze--this point of view, set of attitudes, cultural assumptions etc.--be to anyone born and raised within that culture? Wholly, partly, mostly, somewhat, not at all...?

What happens with people who grow up between or in two (or any number) different cultures--what is their "natural" gaze like?

I would expect that there would be many different cases--that some people would be entirely assimilated to the larger culture (or what was the larger culture), others in varying degrees and perhaps ways, down to those who would feel completely foreign to it.

Can such a group of people, if they are writers, be all expected to pander or pander in the same way, if they are expressing the white gaze?

It seems to me there's a danger that indiscriminate accusations of pandering can also be used to stereotype. Not everyone regards their ethnic roots in the same way. To be Chinese-American isn't necessarily (or maybe ever) the same as being Chinese. Of course, it also isn't being white--but is it always 100% not white? What colour philosophy, poetry, style?

For people who are not "visible minorities" the situation may be even more complicated (witness the problem of "passing" in African-American literature and culture, of colourism etc.)

Yes, engaging with these problems in any way is already a mark of someone who is set apart from the "larger" culture or traditional models, already "the gaze" is complex, not monotonous.

But, from the point of view of human liberty, infinite possibility at least, I can't not believe that a person, visible minority or not, can adopt any values and point of views that fit them, that suit them.

To put it in example, must we think of Kazuo Ishiguro as of someone who has "internalized the white gaze" and therefore betrayed some debt to his roots, or can we allow it's possible that he sounds the way he sounds and writes the books he writes because that manner and those books express him the best? It doesn't matter if he's the only one , or one of five or five hundred--I'm just wondering whether there is a continuum of possibilities, or does everyone get boxed away from everyone else on the basis of even "one drop of blood".

63jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Feb. 18, 2016, 9:56 am

>62 LolaWalser::

“I don't know whether we can agree on a definition of pandering, but for my part, I would propose that pandering is anything done to please/appeal to some other person that goes against the grain of an author's natural bent and intention.”

It’s a slippery slope if we say it’s anything done to please/appeal to some other person. It’s also tricky to know whether something that goes against the grain of an author’s natural bent/intention is pandering because it may just be the author not being more imaginative/creative. I edited an online magazine for 1.5 years. For the most part, when I suggested editorial changes, the writers were receptive. Those who weren't receptive didn't seem to or want to understand why I was suggesting they remove expected, common tropes and predictable plot twists.

For me, pandering is more about when a writer tries to conform to the dominant narrative for any (not just his/her own) community he/she is writing about through well-known, expected tropes and predictable storylines — whether the writer is doing this consciously or voluntarily or unconsciously or under pressure. Generally, we all know what the dominant narrative is or what these popular, stereotypical tropes are because we see them hashed out in popular media daily. So, to me, when a writer also does more of the same, that’s a red flag. And, this definition should apply to all writing really, if you think about it — from white and non-white writers. The best writing is the kind that highlights or gives visibility to what lies in the margins, what society would rather not look at or would rather walk on by without paying much attention.

Angela Flournoy said, in a recent Rumpus interview: “I don’t want to write books that explain black people to non-black people. I want to write books that pick apart aspects of black life and talk about it. And that’s it.”

That is how it should be. Side-note: She does go on to say that there’s both explanation and exploration in her book, but it’s not to do the above.

I agree with your points re. the “white” gaze being different based on how the writer was raised and the milieu he/she lives in now. I, myself, am a different writer now, having lived in the West for 25+ years, than I would have been if I’d stayed in India my entire life. So, yes, there’s a “continuum of possibilities”, as you say. And, this is why it is difficult for many writers to even know how much of the white gaze they’ve internalized. It’s difficult for those involved in this ongoing public debate to agree on whether this gaze exists, is it “white male” (as for Watkins), or “white female” (as for James), or just “white” (as for several others). This is why I think the discussion is more productive if we focus on understanding and avoiding pandering (which, for me, is as defined above).

Ishiguro thinks of himself, probably, as more British than Japanese. That’s how he writes. Speaking only for myself, I have no issues with it because he does not appear to pander per my personal definition above. With 'The Remains of the Day', he could have given us stereotypical characters as in the classic 'Upstairs, Downstairs' or, more recently, 'Downton Abbey'. Instead, he gave us thought-provoking characters that made us (me, anyway) see that entire world in a different way.

64southernbooklady
Feb. 18, 2016, 9:48 am

>62 LolaWalser: it seems anything can be interpreted as pandering--the choice to be "ethnic" as well as the choice to ignore the ethnic; the choice of high style, themes etc. derived from Western culture (although we should note: some Western culture of traditional yesteryear, not contemporary increasingly multicultural one), as well as wilful suppression of any signs of Western heritage, in order to appear more "authentic".

I'm reminded of my punk rock musician friends who end up accusing each other of "selling out" when they do something more commercial. :)

I don't know whether we can agree on a definition of pandering, but for my part, I would propose that pandering is anything done to please/appeal to some other person that goes against the grain of an author's natural bent and intention.

I like this approach, with the caveat that artistic creation is often a dialogue, that whatever vision the artist has at the beginning that starts him or her off, as it is exposed to the gaze of others, it is informed by that exposure. There is always some two way communication going on, the writer is never in a vacuum. I suppose for me "pandering" implies that the author was willing to change the story--change the vision, really, for the sake of getting published. Maybe that is what you meant by "intention."

must we think of Kazuo Ishiguro as of someone who has "internalized the white gaze" and therefore betrayed some debt to his roots, or can we allow it's possible that he sounds the way he sounds and writes the books he writes because that manner and those books express him the best?

Okay, this is going to sound a little muddled, but, perhaps, instead of trying to suss out how "authentic" a book is, how accurate a mirror it is of whatever it is supposed to be reflecting, we should be asking ourselves of every work, "how true is this?" We like to talk about what makes a book worthy of inclusion in "the canon" (always a white, western-oriented canon) is that it "explores universal themes." I've come to think that this is a mistaken approach, the demand for universality is an enemy of understanding diversity.

Instead, I think we as readers we need to learn to see and hear truth when it is front of us -- great books are always "true" in some way. And truth comes in all sorts of unexpected, unlooked-for ways. If we value it, then we are always rewarded when we find it -- in stories about Iowa farm women, or second-generation children of Holocaust survivors, or in the dialects of Cajun communities. (One of the more interesting books I'm reading right now is Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake -- which is written in an kind of invented version of Middle English).

Sadly, the human race seems to gravitate towards fantasies and lies. It's why Ta-Nehisi Coates calls Americans "the Dreamers". So maybe I think "pandering" is when we collude in the lie. When we are willing to squelch the truth in a work to preserve the fantasy that people want to wallow in.

65LolaWalser
Feb. 18, 2016, 10:21 am

>63 jennybhatt:

What I said about pandering combined trying to please ("conforming" works too, I think) in a way that goes against what the author wants, thinks, would do, if they were truly free to create in whichever way they liked. Just trying to please doesn't have to be pandering.

Your definition seems to apply to a much more specific procedure and context than mine.

It’s difficult for those involved in this ongoing public debate to agree on whether this gaze exists, is it “white male” (as for Watkins), or “white female” (as for James), or just “white” (as for several others).

For my part, I don't doubt it exists--I'm wondering whether we can assume it exists for all "non-white" authors in the same way, degree etc.

Ngugi describes in the book I touchstoned above his shock when he realised he had been brought up to assume the white man's perspective on Africa, Kenya, colonialism, literature, etc. That's an example of a stark intervention to adopt the white gaze, in a place and among people wholly outside the "native" white world.

But someone whose parents were immigrants to Britain isn't going to be in exactly the same situation.

I completely agree no one should be forced to tell one type of story. However, I wonder whether the frequency of such stories doesn't also reflect (at least in part) an authentic interest on the part of immigrant authors; some, of course.

Foreigness and outsider-ism are eternal themes, and practically obvious for immigrants. And if people tend to write about what they know or what affects them most deeply, well, I'm not entirely surprised it would be taken up again and again by those who live through those experiences.

66LolaWalser
Feb. 18, 2016, 10:28 am

>64 southernbooklady:

great books are always "true" in some way.

Yes, or "authentic"--I'm not sure I understand what the difference between "true" and "authentic" would be here.

I think we are muddling things constantly because we're mixing commercialism, commercial interest, and artistic aspiration. Commercialism would impose spice and guru stories, cow dung with some Joyce, on "obvious" authors to create such stories--immigrants, children of immigrants.

Those same authors may want to write (artistic aspiration) about something entirely different, or take up "cow dung and Joyce" but in some different way to what is expected/requested.

I can only say I wish all authors were free to write what they want to write how they want to write it--and then, what you call "truth" will have the chance to win over readers.

67jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Feb. 18, 2016, 10:54 am

>65 LolaWalser::

"Just trying to please doesn't have to be pandering."

I agree with this. I do want to be more specific with my definition because I'm trying to work through how to approach my own writing. :) I understand that it may not work for everyone. Edited to add: Additionally, I believe that there are writers who, sometimes, don't know they're pandering. It's like a cognitive bias, you don't know you have it till it's pointed out. That was the case with Watkins as she described in her essay.

"For my part, I don't doubt it exists--I'm wondering whether we can assume it exists for all "non-white" authors in the same way, degree etc. "

Oh, it exists for me too, which is why a lot of the articles I shared have resonated with me. My statement was just my summation of the different viewpoints that I'm reading about -- all the articles, tweets, posts out there. And, as I mentioned before, I do agree with your points re. the “white” gaze being different based on how the writer was raised and the milieu he/she lives in now. So, because it is difficult to gauge the rightness or wrongness of the "white gaze" across that continuum of possibilities, as you've said, what I'm focusing on is that rather more specific definition of pandering.

Within the South Asian writer community in the US, there are some who say that Jhumpa Lahiri's stories are really not that representative or enlightening about them; that you could switch out the characters for white ones or immigrants from another ethnic group and tweak a couple of things and it would all still work. Sorry, don't have links as this was a debate at a South Asian literary event. In other words, though her work has universal themes about immigration and assimilation, they are not specific enough about the community she's actually writing about. But, how do you gauge that she's pandering? She's said that she's writing about a specific segment of the South Asian community: the educated, middle-to-upper-class Bengalis who live on the East Coast (in other words, people like her). So, when I read her work, I know that I cannot "separate" out how much of the writing is due to the "white gaze" that she and that particular segment of the South Asian community has internalized because it is different from my South Asian world in the US. But, I can certainly gauge whether she's giving me more of the dominant narrative about South Asians, with the stereotypical tropes (just like Kavita Bhanot described for the British Asian).

Well. I've really enjoyed this discussion -- learned a lot and even refined/modified some of my own thoughts. But, I'm getting to a kind of fatigue on this topic. I hope it's not rude if I take a bit of a break from here and go discuss some of my current reading in other threads. But, I'll keep checking back in here and jump in if I have something new to contribute.

Thanks so much again for all your patience and time to discuss a topic that is so close to my heart too. Thanks to the person who started this thread too.

68southernbooklady
Feb. 18, 2016, 10:52 am

>66 LolaWalser: I'm not sure I understand what the difference between "true" and "authentic" would be here.

I'm not sure I know either! Except that in the context of this conversation "authentic" seems to be a quality defined according to someone else's criteria: someone looks a Lahiri novel and decides that the voice is not "authentic" -- she's "too white."

69LolaWalser
Feb. 18, 2016, 11:16 am

>67 jennybhatt:

Please feel free to post any way/any time you like, I can understand about fatigue.

I'm not a writer but being a multiple type of outsider pretty much everywhere, the problems of culture clash, communication, point of view, integration etc. interest me deeply.

Just a comment (no pressure to reply) on this:

In other words, though her work has universal themes about immigration and assimilation, they are not specific enough about the community she's actually writing about. But, how do you gauge that she's pandering? She's said that she's writing about a specific segment of the South Asian community: the educated, middle-to-upper-class Bengalis who live on the East Coast (in other words, people like her). So, when I read her work, I know that I cannot "separate" out how much of the writing is due to the "white gaze" that she and that particular segment of the South Asian community has internalized because it is different from my South Asian world in the US. But, I can certainly gauge whether she's giving me more of the dominant narrative about South Asians, with the stereotypical tropes (just like Kavita Bhanot described for the British Asian).

I can't be specific because I don't recall Lahiri's work I've read (the collection The interpreter of maladies), and also as an outsider to that community I'm not in position to judge her representation of that community (I suppose I could determine whether it strikes me as "generic immigrant"--if I recalled it better!) and I take your word for stereotypical tropes etc.

But on the point of universality--and perhaps I'm just misunderstanding the thrust of your argument--I would think that it's a quality to look for, precisely the thing that connects diverse people, that in fact allows us to communicate at all.

But this is probably really hard to gauge from one individual to the other--how foreign X or Y are to A or B, how remote or close, incomprehensible or recognisable.

How can I put it--specificity is, certainly, a quality that an authentic representation of difference should have. But I don't want to feel I'm indulging in anthropology or surfing Nat. Geo. when I read literary stories about people. I also don't want some trite message how we are all the same (although we are, basically, biologically, the same.) I don't have to be hit over the head with that (incidentally, again this reminds me of Ngugi--he describes how they were encouraged to look for Jane Austen's character counterparts among the people in his village), but I also don't want what is foreign to be represented as alien beyond recognition, because this is opposite to my experience of life, to my truth.

70LolaWalser
Feb. 18, 2016, 11:19 am

>68 southernbooklady:

Oh, I see. Funny, I just used "truth" (in #69) apparently how you meant it.

71jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Feb. 18, 2016, 11:43 am

>69 LolaWalser::

"But on the point of universality--and perhaps I'm just misunderstanding the thrust of your argument--I would think that it's a quality to look for, precisely the thing that connects diverse people, that in fact allows us to communicate at all."

To clarify: I have no issues with the universal narrative themes of immigration and assimilation, as I mentioned earlier. America is a country of immigrants from all over the world. It's when the tropes and characters become too universal that I start to worry. My litmus test is simply this: could I substitute, say, Bosnian immigrants into the same story by just tweaking a few cultural markers? If yes, then either there's some pandering going on OR the writer is being lazy in the sense that Kavita Bhanot described:

""It seemed that, in my writing, I had unconsciously adopted that gaze, white middle class or bourgeois Indian, upon a world that I knew intimately, that I had been a part of. It was a gaze that was not only unsympathetic, but that also allowed me to be lazy. Knowledge, depth, understanding, wisdom were not required; I only needed to present a slice of the ‘reality’ I had access to."

For me, Lahiri sometimes presents only a slice of the reality that she has access to. And, I've read all her books so far (except for the new memoir). Again, she's a terrific writer stylistically, so I still enjoy reading her. But, would I say that she's managed to highlight or give visibility to what lies in the margins of South Asian culture, what society would rather not look at or would rather walk on by without paying much attention? No. I am not able to say that. Not to suggest that this is easy to do, of course.

72LolaWalser
Feb. 18, 2016, 11:51 am

>71 jennybhatt:

OK, I think I understand, and I think we are largely in agreement, but maybe it's hard to tell exactly with such complex themes.

I should like to add, though, that there isn't necessarily one immigrant experience, including one Bosnian and--presumably--one South Asian.

I'm afraid there's a danger of suppressing the individual in the name of "community" if this is not kept in mind; one might end up with a stereotypical stand-in nevertheless!

73jennybhatt
Feb. 18, 2016, 12:09 pm

>72 LolaWalser::

"I'm afraid there's a danger of suppressing the individual in the name of "community" if this is not kept in mind...."

You are absolutely right and I was aware of this even as I typed my last response. :) No, there isn't a single Bosnian experience, to stay with my example. But, let's say "A" Bosnian experience rather than "A" South Asian experience. :)

74southernbooklady
Feb. 19, 2016, 11:04 am

Here's an article on how children's booksellers in the US are trying to push diversity, centered around the "We Need Diverse Books" movement:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/ar...

It's been a real dilemma in my part of the country, the South, because stores have to find ways to talk about diversity but rely on books that are invested in a myth of the south that is in direct opposition. Even if they want people to be reading Jacqueline Woodson, Tayari Jones, Crystal Wilkinson and Jessamyn Ward, what they get are women customers who want books about former southern belles and debutantes and white women reconnecting with all their sorority friends and coming to terms with their own failed marriages.

75jennybhatt
Feb. 19, 2016, 9:38 pm

>74 southernbooklady:: What a terrific article. Thanks for sharing. I shared on my FB page with my friends too.

76LolaWalser
Feb. 20, 2016, 11:44 am

Hey, I found the previous thread (in Pro & Con, be warned, you who avoid it) about Junot Diaz' article:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/174899

77southernbooklady
Feb. 20, 2016, 2:43 pm

>61 jennybhatt: In mid-2015, Kamila Shamsie issued a "provocation" to publishers to have a year of only publishing women

It would be interesting to see a publication like the NYTBR or The New Yorker make an internal decision to only publish work by and about women, or at least flip the current ratio, for some period of time - a month? a season? -- and not announce it. I wonder how long it would take people to notice, if they would notice, or if they would start to complain.

>74 southernbooklady:, >75 jennybhatt: In the same vein, I have a kind of daydream that all the books that get celebrated under the heading of "diverse" would be treated as just normal fiction, mystery, children's, etc, but all the current popular stuff would be classed under sections like "Fiction about white people," Children's books about white kids, " etc.

I really resent the kind of knee-jerk resistance to the commitment to diversity in literature that assumes it comes with some kind of sacrifice of quality.

78jennybhatt
Feb. 20, 2016, 10:31 pm

>76 LolaWalser:: I just took some time to look through that thread. Thanks. Wow. Such a tangled, complex issue, really. Some of the strands there were tricky to follow as I think they moved a bit further away from what Diaz was highlighting. But, I also need to re-read his essay again shortly.

>77 southernbooklady:: I agree that the resistance to commitment to diversity isn't necessarily a sacrifice of quality. It's the same gatekeepers, right? Their aesthetic sense of quality isn't going to change just because they're going to be looking at works from writers of color.

A recent essay by a writer I haven't read yet also speaks to all that we've been discussing. She's written a very different debut novel as she describes. Refreshing.

https://catapult.co/stories/writing-the-canon-of-now

These new writers of color are saying, we're creating the "canon of now" because we've never seen people like us in the official canon(s) other than as footnotes or bit-part players. And that we're still trying to get past the deeply-internalized colonization that our stories are unimportant when considered alongside the dominant narratives of our times. I love her last lines:

"All writers retell the same myths about love, family, betrayal, secrets, death, sex and war and revolution. Retelling is the work we’ve taken on. Yet, in the canon of now, writers of color continue to rewrite a legacy of invisibility, work braved by many writers before us. We’re writing our existence out of the sidelines of literature to the forefront. We’re writing and rewriting our stories, for they are infinite."

79jennybhatt
Feb. 20, 2016, 11:21 pm

>77 southernbooklady:: I was just going through my email inbox and this article re. The New Yorker showed up in one of my latest newsletters. These are 2015 numbers for how women were represented on the cover, cartoons, spots, etc. Clearly, a long way to go. Fiction fares better on gender equality due to Deborah Treisman, Fiction Editor.

http://www.genderavenger.com/blog/new-yorker-jessica-esch-counting-on-change

80southernbooklady
Feb. 23, 2016, 2:35 pm

Banned Books Week to focus on diversity

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/69...

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom estimates that over half of all banned books are by authors of color, or contain events and issues concerning diverse communities. Banned Books Week 2016 will explore why diverse books are being disproportionately singled out.


I'm not sure what that means in practice, but I think the question "why are diverse books so often challenged" is something we should be asking ourselves constantly.

81LolaWalser
Feb. 23, 2016, 2:55 pm

>80 southernbooklady:

over half of all banned books are by authors of color, or contain events and issues concerning diverse communities.

Shocking!!

I hope there's a follow up, I can't begin to imagine what arguments there could be to justify something like that.

82southernbooklady
Feb. 23, 2016, 3:05 pm

A classic recent example occurred here in North Carolina a couple years ago when, a week before "Banned Books Week" started, the Randolph County School Board voted to take Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man off the shelves:

The Randolph County School Board in North Carolina got a jump on Banned Books Week, which was last week, when earlier this month it banished Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel “Invisible Man” from its public schools. According to news reports, the book’s removal resulted from one protesting parent – one – who felt the book was “too much for teenagers.”

“You must respect all religions and point of views when it comes to the parents and what they feel is age appropriate for their young children to read, without their knowledge,” parent Kimiyutta Parson wrote to the board, which voted 5-2 on Sept. 16 to ban the book, one of three options on Randleman High School juniors’ summer reading list.


http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/get-schooled/2013/sep/30/banned-book-back-shelves-nor...

My sense is that the vast majority of all such calls come from that kind of a justification: that the books are not "age appropriate." The vast majority of calls to remove books also arise from parents, not schools, librarians, or other officials.

83jennybhatt
Feb. 23, 2016, 9:41 pm

>80 southernbooklady:: Shocking indeed.

When you consider that people don't then have access or awareness or exposure to those books that have been banned, it makes you realize why emerging writers then feel very uncomfortable writing about those themes/topics/stories.

That's why the debut writer who wrote a story about Bangladeshi-American Muslim queer women characters is to be commended for taking on something she hasn't come across in literature before and giving voice to those marginalized people who do exist in our society today. I don't know if she identifies with her characters (not that it really matters) or if her book is any good. But I appreciate that she took on something like this, even though most Bangladeshi-American parents will, likely, ban it from their homes and kids' schools.

85LolaWalser
Feb. 24, 2016, 1:23 pm

>84 jennybhatt:

It's funny--it's like Watkins created the argument about pandering only to give other people under pressure to pander something to flog her with. I didn't much care for her argument myself (at least the way it was put), and I understand that writers of colour face special/additional types of discrimination. I'm on board with every effort to destroy this discrimination.

But what exactly should Watkins have done to escape that criticism? Apparently her argument is rubbish because she's white and doesn't suffer what writers of colour do--presumably, she failed because she didn't talk about racism. But wait--she did acknowledge her white privilege--why can't that be accepted at face value, as a sign that she is actually aware of what she says she is aware of? Should she have written MORE about that? About racism--which is not HER personal experience?

Maybe; except, if she HAD written more about that, she'd presumably be under even more fire, as what Kavita Das writes indicates:

While Watkins honesty about her discomfort at her own privilege is to be lauded, it also gets to the heart of one of the fundamental problems with the piece and many people’s reaction to it: when a white woman writes about the experiences of people of color especially in relation to her own, acknowledging her privilege, she is usually heralded as courageous and compassionate. However, when a person of color writes about their experiences relative to the mainstream population, it is often viewed solely as a grievance.


Damned that she didn't (but she did, actually--at least acknowledged her privilege)--but also damned because she did. As if Watkins were personally responsible she's getting "lauded" (who's lauding anyway, where?) for "writing about the experiences of people of colour". Except she didn't "write about experiences of people of colour", she wrote about recognising something about her own experience.

What exactly should Watkins have done? What should she have said?

86southernbooklady
Feb. 24, 2016, 1:53 pm

>84 jennybhatt:, >85 LolaWalser: “Write what you know” is now spelled “Fake what you can sell.”

And we're back to the difference between "true" and "authentic." But if artists can't write across our own imposed lines and categories, if they can't imagine themselves into the life of a person who is not like them and do so with the ring of truth, if they are deemed inauthentic before they even start in the attempt, then art is sunk as a pursuit. The whole point of art is to break us out of the prison of our own existence, put us into the world of another.

87southernbooklady
Feb. 24, 2016, 4:44 pm

Speaking of the need for diversity in the institutions of publishing and literature, Obama has just nominated Carla Hayden for Librarian of Congress:

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/270598-obama-nominates-first-black-female-l...

88LolaWalser
Feb. 24, 2016, 8:18 pm

>86 southernbooklady:

Well, Watkins wasn't writing a fiction, she was talking about a problem she had, being false to her perspective. I can see where her argument would serve as a useful template for others with similar problems, but I don't see why she'd be beholden to make ALL those arguments herself.

If the purpose of her essay had been to talk about racism, it would rightly be considered a total failure. But that wasn't her purpose and frankly, how could it have been? Perhaps she didn't feel she was equipped to say much more about it, perhaps she was trying to be respectful? Should a white person's be the leading voice in discussions of discrimination writers of colour face? Marlon James and others are far better placed to take the argument in that direction, as indeed they did.

If she had completely ignored racism, that too would have been a failure--evidence of a narrow-minded, blinkered worldview. But she didn't ignore it--what she wrote reveals that she is aware that others, writers of colour, have her problem, AND other besides. Should she have spent more time on that, said more than she did? What else could she have said that couldn't be taken as a reason to attack her?

>87 southernbooklady:

Disgraceful comments.

89jennybhatt
Feb. 24, 2016, 10:47 pm

>85 LolaWalser::

I'm sorry but I honestly think this line of argument is a bit of a strawman fallacy.

I'm not reading all the articles/comments from writers of color that have come after Watkins' essay as bashing Watkins for saying what she did. Many are happy that she opened up this conversation again and also sympathetic towards her. I wrote very favorably about it on my own blog (but nowhere near the extent that I've posted here). She was sincere and compelling and decisive in that call to action at the end.

My take is that people like Marlon James (who is very openly supportive of Watkins as we heard/read in that NPR discussion), Kavita Das, Roxane Gay, and other writers of color have simply been trying to make the conversation broader, as it should be.

Should Watkins have had to bear the responsibility of speaking up for writers of color when she put her piece out there? I don't think so at all. She stood up and spoke about what has personally affected her. I speak up about what affects/bothers me. I don't, for example, have the ability or knowledge/experience or bandwidth to talk about writers in totalitarian regimes who get a bullet in the head instead of freedom of speech. Is that a burning platform issue? Of course. Does everyone who speaks up about challenges in the publishing industry have to address it? No.

I'm so not reading the Kavita Das quote that you highlighted as something against Watkins. Just as I didn't think Marlon James was slamming white women readers from his comments -- and, turned out, of course, he wasn't based on his following comments/interviews where he had to explain himself that he was speaking about the mythical white woman reader that agents/editors keep resorting to when trying to get writers of color to make changes to their books.

Das' entire take, for me, is about the public reaction to Watkins' essay and she's supporting her points with her personal experiences. Das is not happy that Watkins' essay received so many positive responses (at least on FB and Twitter, where I was active at the time and added my own positive comments) while writers of color, who've been speaking out the issues of being asked to conform/fit to the needs of the "average reader" by agents/editors, have not.

It is also OK to take issue with a couple of bits of a piece of writing while being fully supportive of the rest. That doesn't mean a complete dismissal of the person who wrote that piece. Clearly, Watkins was not at all upset with Marlon James (whose comments in his various articles/posts before the NPR discussion sounded very similar to Das'). So, she understands that these writers of color are not criticizing her for not taking on their concerns as well.

Finally, because I can only speak for myself..... Do I expect my white women writer friends to take on my concerns when they're voicing their own? If they want to, great. If not, I'm OK with that because I'm capable of speaking out for myself. Now, when I do speak out, if I'm not being heard or I'm being dismissed, and my white women writer friends can help amplify my voice, yes, I would really appreciate that. What I cannot stand, though, is when someone turns around and says something like, "Why don't you just focus on writing really well? It's a slog for all writers, given the industry. So, just put your best writing out there and don't get on your soapbox too much. We're all in the same boat." This has actually happened in one of my online writing groups. No. We're not all in the same boat, sadly. This is like white feminists saying to women of color "we're all black" (as Meryl Streep did recently).

90jennybhatt
Feb. 24, 2016, 10:55 pm

>86 southernbooklady::

It's easy to take 1-2 sentences and parse them out like this. I don't think that's the thrust of the article as she reiterates in her last point:

And let it be said that nobody wants white writers to stop writing, not even about cultures which are not their own. Hey, some of my best friends are white! All of this talk of “diversity” is not about policing whiteness — it’s about the fury of marginalized writers who want to stop their stories from being stolen, distorted and mutilated in the name of cultural imperialism. As hopeful YA author Kara Stewart says, she writes because she is determined “to get a Native perspective out there. To tell about my tribe, my people. To set the record straight.”

As with my latest response above re the Watkins article, it's not about white writers or white women writers not being allowed to write what they want to or say what they want to about their concerns. It is about allowing writers of color to have their own voices, to be able to write their own stories, and be heard with just as much legitimacy and authority. This is still not happening as it should. That's all.

91sturlington
Feb. 25, 2016, 7:08 am

>85 LolaWalser: I don't see that quote as a criticism of Watkins, it is a criticism of the world, essentially. I liked Watkins' essay. It hit a nerve with me and obviously a lot of other people and got a lot of attention. The criticism is that similar essays by people of color about their even more difficult experiences don't hit the same nerve, I think. Just right now, we're starting to talk about sexism really openly and frankly in so many areas of life, but we're not quite ready to talk about racism yet, perhaps.

But yet, the more people talk about both of these things--about how sexism and racism silence us and constrain us--the more likely it is that they will be heard. That will encourage more people to speak up and more people. Even if it seems like no one is listening, I think all these voices are having an impact. I have been more aware than ever before that this conversation is going on, and that people who have experienced oppression--no matter what kind--are getting to the point where they're just not going to shut up about it, no matter how uncomfortable it makes others feel.

>90 jennybhatt: I agree. The conversation is not about pushing white writers out, although I think a lot of white people, consciously or not, see racism as a zero sum game. It's an unfortunate side effect of privilege, that the process of losing privilege feels like losing rights.

The real challenge, and an exciting one it is, is to widen the field to allow room for all voices to speak. It's not zero sum because I believe that with more writers writing about different people and experiences, there will also be more readers reading what they write. If we make room for more voices, the number of readers will grow organically because those who might have turned away would return if someone were speaking to them.

92southernbooklady
Feb. 25, 2016, 8:38 am

>88 LolaWalser:Well, Watkins wasn't writing a fiction, she was talking about a problem she had, being false to her perspective.

Yeah, I get that. I was really responding to the fairly hefty section of that article that was talking about how novels written by white people are bestsellers while novels written by people of color aren't. Watkins' essay was invaluable to me first and foremost because it was an honest account of her own perspective. Honesty is all we can ask of any writer. It's all we need of any writer, I think.

>90 jennybhatt: All of this talk of “diversity” is not about policing whiteness — it’s about the fury of marginalized writers who want to stop their stories from being stolen, distorted and mutilated in the name of cultural imperialism.

Okay, once again I'm probably going to sound muddled but I'll attempt to delve further. I don't think I'm really disagreeing with anything here. I'm not talking about "policing whiteness" exactly, but about the approach to the problem of institutionalized and internalized racism that assumes it can somehow be fixed by making sure that a suitable number of writers of color win the Pulitzer, or that white writers are more circumspect about how they include people of color in their novels.

I think there is an element of missing the forest for the trees here in all this tallying and checklisting -- which reminds me, irresistably, of my days sitting nekkid around a campfire at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, where every sentence in every conversation seemed to begin "As a White/Asian/African-American Lesbian/Bisexual Wiccan/Jewish/Atheist Feminist I think that..." As if claiming those labels for ourselves meant that we somehow owned them, as if by saying "I am a white lebsian feminist atheist" my perspective is somehow definitive of what it means to be all those things. It isn't, of course. My perspective is only definitive of what it means to be me -- which is what I loved about the Watkins essay.

So I think there is something deeper and more insidious happening when a writer of color is told "Your manuscript is not a good fit." The editor thinks they are saying "your book isn't something we can sell." But what they are really saying is "your book doesn't have a place in the world as we see it and understand it." It's a denial, a complete erasure of the writer's perspective and voice. It is literally saying "You don't fit into my world." Which is, as far as they are concerned, the only world that matters.

I don't know how we counter that except to commit ourselves to be utterly open to every voice. To read not as if we are "colorblind" but with a desire to see every possible color in the rainbow. To remember that when a person "doesn't fit" into our world, it may well be because our world is too narrow. To have our world constantly challenged and expanded by what we read, rather than comfortably re-affirmed and restricted to what we think we already know.

If we do that, and if the meter by which we judge a book is its quality of honesty, its inherent truth, rather than where it does or doesn't fall in the white western canon, then it seems to me we would end up surrounded in diversity. We wouldn't be able to help it. Our entire reality would reflect the diversity that has always been there.

93southernbooklady
Feb. 25, 2016, 8:45 am

Since we're talking about diversity here:

Simon & Schuster creates Muslim-themed children's imprint

94jennybhatt
Feb. 25, 2016, 8:58 am

>92 southernbooklady:: Thanks for clarifying. Yes, I think we're mostly in agreement. :)

I don't have any answers beyond what you've said, other than the one point I've made earlier re. not putting all the burden on readers. Agents/publishers also need to be more conscious of how they're responding to writers of color.

The good news is that, as I do my own research into the non-Big-Five publishers out there who are trying to publish more diverse books, I'm finding a handful. It's not a lot and I'm sure they get swamped beyond their limited capacities. But, they're working on it.

Also, while self-publishing is still a very murky and messy option, with a lot of quality issues, I can see how, over time, it will allow marginalized voices to get their books out there. There are some interesting developments afoot with self-publishing that give me hope (though I've never published anything ever).

95jennybhatt
Feb. 25, 2016, 10:17 am

Another new article on diversity in publishing. This one has 50 people from across the book world speaking about their experiences/opinions. It's long and I'm reading it piecemeal, so no reactions yet.

http://www.bkmag.com/2016/02/24/you-will-be-tokenized-speaking-out-about-the-sta...

96southernbooklady
Bearbeitet: Feb. 25, 2016, 10:21 am

From Lit Hub this morning:

You will be tokenized: Speaking out about diversity in publishing

http://www.bkmag.com/2016/02/24/you-will-be-tokenized-speaking-out-about-the-sta...

whoops, x-post. Sorry. :)

97LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Feb. 25, 2016, 11:41 am

>89 jennybhatt:

You are ascribing to me arguments I didn't make and have no interest in making--that I'm complaining about "policing whiteness", "pushing out white writers" etc. I did not; I made an observation specifically about the aggressive response to Watkins the article you linked to begins with:

That voice is not the same one that Claire Vaye Watkins channeled in her much-discussed essay, “On Pandering,” which floats out self-recriminations at her habit of pandering to the “white male literati,” and ends by calling out to (white) women to “burn this motherfucking system to the ground.” Them’s fighting words. Why did writers of color refuse to answer her rallying call? To marginalized ears, those words weren’t a fierce cry to feminist solidarity. They sounded like more pandering — pandering to institutional whiteness, which sustains the business of publishing.

So, one, "writers of color refused to answer her rallying call", two, Watkins' argument about pandering is turned against her and she is accused of pandering (further).

I understand this may have been mere rhetoric to get the article going, but it still caught my attention and therefore I asked--and still ask--what exactly should Watkins have said to avoid that criticism? I'm not being rhetorical.

I'm so not reading the Kavita Das quote that you highlighted as something against Watkins.

I didn't say it was "something against Watkins", I said it indicated that there "may" be a problem generally (and therefore with Watkins specifically, had she said more/other? than she did) with a white person talking (too much or too little, only nobody knows what's what) about racial discrimination, when there is this difference in perception Das mentions. Clearly it breeds annoyance.

98LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Feb. 25, 2016, 11:47 am

This:

Racism is more about controlling equity and power, racism {as} is a sin of omission.

ETA: apparent typo in the article

99jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Feb. 25, 2016, 1:24 pm

>97 LolaWalser::

"You are ascribing to me arguments I didn't make and have no interest in making--that I'm complaining about "policing whiteness", "pushing out white writers" etc."

No, no, no. I wasn't doing that at all. That bit about "policing whiteness" etc., is a direct quote from the article I shared yesterday and was in response to an entirely different comment (>86 southernbooklady:) in an entirely different context. My response to you in >89 jennybhatt: does not talk about this AT ALL. Sorry, I know there are a lot of comments and links, so I can see how you might have just scrolled through two subsequent comments of mine. :)

"So, one, "writers of color refused to answer her rallying call", two, Watkins' argument about pandering is turned against her and she is accused of pandering (further)."

Yes, I see now what you were referring to in >85 LolaWalser:.

1) To me, the reference to "writers of color not answering her rallying call" is somewhat true because I read some of the Twitter/Facebook discussions between the likes of Roxane Gay, Porochista Kharakpur, and a few others.

2) Personally, I don't think Watkins was pandering to anyone in her essay. So, I, like you, don't agree with that particular observation in this article and don't think she needed to do anything different.

"I didn't say it was "something against Watkins", I said it indicated that there "may" be a problem generally (and therefore with Watkins specifically, had she said more/other? than she did) with a white person talking (too much or too little, only nobody knows what's what) about racial discrimination, when there is this difference in perception Das mentions. Clearly it breeds annoyance."

So, I was responding to the second-last paragraph of >85 LolaWalser: -- the part where you shared a bit of Das' article and said, of Watkins, that she was "damned that she didn't but also damned because she did" and "as if Watkins were personally responsible she's getting lauded". Hence, my response that I didn't see Das' article as something against Watkins. My apologies if I read that wrong.

OK. I'm writing out a summary for my benefit more than anyone else's. I feel the need to hit the pause button and do a recap of sorts because there has been so much to unpack from the near-daily articles we're seeing and from all of us bringing our own perspectives to them. Please feel free to add/change to these points. And, I thank you for a terrific, lively discussion. This is good stuff. :)

1) The publishing industry is biased and not as diverse as we'd like it to be. This holds true for women writers, writers of color, LGBTQ writers, and so on. There are plenty of stats and statements as evidence that is hard to ignore.

2) Many agents/editors/publishers, particularly those within the Big 5 publisher circles, have a typical average reader in mind when they accept books. This "typical average reader" happens to be a mythical white woman reader. Well, at least, white.

3) Given the above, emerging/new writers in those minority groups mentioned in point 1 find it difficult to get their work accepted without giving in to advice/requests/demands to conform/fit in certain ways. They see this as not being allowed to tell their stories in ways they consider true and right. Furthermore, when some of these stories of minority groups are getting out there, sometimes, they're being told by writers who don't actually represent them truthfully or accurately (for a variety of reasons from lack of understanding to lack of talent to needing to conform).

4) Watkins' essay and rallying cry stirred up a lot of good debate and dialogue across North America. In the UK, Kamila Shamsie had already stirred up this particular issue re. bias against women writers last year. Joanne Harris too. And, again in the UK last year, Nikesh Shukla had begun stirring things up for writers of color (BAME). Just as Marlon James has done for North America. All of these together have created what we might call a "tipping point" with this longstanding issue.

5) As a direct result of 4 above, many minority group writers are now speaking up on social media, blog posts, articles, etc. Many of them are using the Watkins essay as a starting point or hook but going on to speak about their particular issues. I don't see them as critiquing Watkins for not speaking on their behalf. Just that the reaction to Watkins' essay was favorable when some of these minority writers have been saying a lot of this stuff before she did. And, they were not being heard as she was. I happen to agree with this because I've been following some of these minority writers for a few years now and I have seen them mention these things. I don't think Watkins should have done anything differently unless she herself wanted to. I would not want to put words in any writer's pen/keyboard. If there are others out there who would like to do so, I do not stand with them.

6) Now, a good number of the minority writers who are speaking up to re-energize this diversity-in-publishing debate are also proposing certain options to make things better -- whether it is what readers should demand, what minority writers should push back against, what agents/editors/publishers should change about their approaches, or what awards and MFA programs should do to further support. All of these are valid and will likely need to be addressed systematically. And, for me, this is the part of the debate that is most crucial. Not simply because it's about looking forward and understanding how to fix the problems. But, also because it is not being discussed in concrete and substantial ways yet. I posted way up somewhere my response to Shamsie's article last year on some tangible approaches that I'd like to see happen. Some of you have also shared what you think about necessary changes as well.

7) Likely, the reason that we're not seeing more public dialogue/debate/articles focus more on fixes rather than restatements of the problem is that many, like us here, are still processing the many articles/posts being generated as responses and responses-to-responses. And, some are still genuinely trying to understand the nature of a problem that they did not think was that big a deal. So, there has to be a necessary period of time for people to just think out loud, talk amongst themselves, and settle on their final positions (much like we're trying to do here).

8) Eventually, though, we need the gatekeepers to change their rules for who's allowed in and who's not. And, while we're starting to hear some small noises from their direction, there is nothing of solid evidence yet. Of course, this is because any substantive changes will impact profits, which are not exactly growing in the publishing industry.

OK. This was me trying to get my head around this entire discussion we've all been having. Happy to discuss further.

100southernbooklady
Feb. 25, 2016, 1:42 pm

>99 jennybhatt: 2) Many agents/editors/publishers, particularly those within the Big 5 publisher circles, have a typical average reader in mind when they accept books. This "typical average reader" happens to be a mythical white woman reader. Well, at least, white.

They also have a mythical idea of what that white woman reader is willing to read and they have difficulty imagining a literary market outside the usual categories they are used to relying on. Otherwise, why in the world would anyone ask, as someone did in the Brooklyn article, whether a book about Misty Copeland was "a black book" or "a ballet book." I mean, come on.

101LolaWalser
Feb. 25, 2016, 3:31 pm

>99 jennybhatt:

Nice write-up, thanks.

>100 southernbooklady:

They also have a mythical idea of what that white woman reader is willing to read and they have difficulty imagining a literary market outside the usual categories they are used to relying on.

Apparently. Part of why I'm not grasping this very well is that my own preferences etc. are so different to those marketing ideas and labels, categories etc. Or what supposedly a majority of readers wants.

I'm sorry that the group lorax has started (Diverse Reading Challenge) has gone very quiet, it was meant to focus on exactly these issues. (I intend to keep my thread going, but I seem to be currently the only one more or less active there...)

102jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Feb. 25, 2016, 10:50 pm

>100 southernbooklady: and >101 LolaWalser::

This is definitely one of the biggest issues at the root of the problem: this assumption of what white women readers (or readers of any gender/color/persuasion) like to read.

My suspicion is that these publishers who insist on sticking with what they think are "tried, tested, and true" demographics and tastes are not able to keep up with the evolving zeitgeist of reader preferences because they don't have the best tools and systems to track how reader tastes have evolved. You only have to look across social media to see what people are reading, liking, commenting on, and sharing. Now, Facebook has all this information and the publishers don't.

(ETA: That said, I must share a particular personal experience. Since 2014, I've been participating in a weekly books thread over at The Guardian online. It's called 'Tips, Links, Suggestions'. Each week, their community person collects the best comments of what people are reading and publishes them the following week. Several of my reads have been featured too. Now, 95%+ of the books that are discussed in the comments and then featured the following week are overwhelmingly white. I sneak in the odd book by a writer of color, but that does not get featured. Even last year, when Kamila Shamsie and Nikesh Shukla were writing about publishing diversity issues on that same site, it did not seem to change reading preferences on TLS. Agents/publishers who might be looking in such places are going to make certain kinds of assumptions. There are likely other similar examples out there.)

Now, because I want to focus on the way forward:

1) If I was an agent or publisher, you know what I'd do? I'd start an online weekly/monthly publication as part of my brand. Or, at least, connect officially with one out there. I'd use it to do market tests across social media by commissioning articles related to certain topics/themes that I'm getting submissions for. I might even commission those new/emerging authors to write some of those articles and see what kind of reception they get. We do this in other business fields all the time (particularly tech, where I've been on the real-life as well as the consulting side).

2) If I was a writer of color, I'd want to make sure that my book gets a lot of play on social media, Amazon reviews, and so on, because that makes a difference. Self-publish the first one, if you need to. Get the attention and then take the second one to agents/publishers. They will jump on an author who is already somewhat popular because that means profits.

3) As readers, we need to share, like, comment, review diverse books -- some of you have already said this earlier in this thread. Do it on social media, leave Amazon reviews (they make a huge difference).

103southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 8:39 am

>102 jennybhatt: My suspicion is that these publishers who insist on sticking with what they think are "tried, tested, and true" demographics and tastes are not able to keep up with the evolving zeitgeist of reader preferences because they don't have the best tools and systems to track how reader tastes have evolved. You only have to look across social media to see what people are reading, liking, commenting on, and sharing. Now, Facebook has all this information and the publishers don't.

More to the point, publishers are having trouble converting the diversity of interest they see on the Internet into real tangible products and sales.

Some of this probably has to do with different culture of the Internet vs Print culture. Reading a book takes time. The Internet is all about instantaneous gratification. Then too, producing a book requires a real investment of money that has to be earned back if you want to be able to produce more books. But online culture has a relentless pressure towards things being free. I can't tell you how many writers I know who are thrilled to get their work onto one of Amazon's 99 cent daily deal offers.

So the standard print publishing model is ill-equipped to understand and take advantage of the culture it sees on its computer screens and iPhones. I'd posit that it still, even now, does not really understand where books fit into such a culture. And when you are in an industry that still requires selling through a 10,000 copy print run to make any kind of a profit on a book, well, "tried and true" is what they will go for.

One place it does seem to work is when writers use the Internet to create the future market for their books. That woman who blogged about cooking a new Julia Child recipe every day for a year turned that into a book deal. The guy behind "Henri, Le Chat Noir" has a whole set of merchandise in print now thanks to the fact that he has a photogenic cat and a talent for writing captions. And of course E.L. James was an Internet success long before she was noticed by the print publishing industry.

But 50 shades not withstanding, fiction has an uphill battle precisely because it demands the kind of focus and time from its readers that Internet surfers have all but forgotten how to give. I think print publishers are still looking for that magic formula that will help them understand how to get a person addicted to their Instagram feed to set the phone down and spend a little time reading a book they were willing to pay for.

104southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 8:42 am

And speaking of diversity, in the United States even publishers committed to publishing works in translation favor men over women:

http://arablit.org/2016/02/25/women-in-translation-from-arabic-does-it-matter/

For the most part, this imbalance has been written about anecdotally. But lately, the “Three Percent” site has worked to track who’s being published in translation in the U.S.: women or men. There, Three Percent reports an overall approximate 71/29 imbalance across languages, favoring books by men.

105jennybhatt
Feb. 26, 2016, 8:54 am

>103 southernbooklady:: Thank you for going deeper. You're absolutely right. It's as is the shifting tectonic plates between print and online are making it all very tricky to navigate.

I will say that, because of those internet-to-book examples that you mentioned, as well as some others like 'The Martian' by Andy Weir (which was entirely blog-published and then self-published as ebook on Amazon -- all before a big publisher and Hollywood came a-knocking) they are definitely sitting up and taking notice. In one of my FB writer groups, there are regular stories of such blog-to-book or self-published to big publisher successes.

>104 southernbooklady:: Oh dear, oh dear. Books in translation is a whole other problem in the industry as well.

106Bookmarque
Feb. 26, 2016, 9:26 am

Pause for a quick question from the peanut gallery. Are writers of color told/encouraged/required to write about how awful it is to be that color? Is this a constraint in what they write, is what I'm asking.

107southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 9:35 am

>106 Bookmarque: It's more insidious than that. If writers of color want to have their work accepted by mainstream publishing, they frequently have to submit something that conforms to the industry's preconceptions of what it means to be a person of color. The industry is gun shy about taking on work that challenges those preconceptions.

More bluntly, I'd say that the industry (and presumably the reading public) likes successful overcoming hardship stories -- stories that simultaneously tell white people that people of color can be successful in a white supremacist culture and allow white people to feel like whatever obstacles a person of color has to overcome is not the white reader's fault, because he/she is not racist in the way the people in that writer's story are racist.

108jennybhatt
Feb. 26, 2016, 10:24 am

>107 southernbooklady:, well said. I completely agree.

I would add that this is also where we get what Adichie called "the danger of the single story". In that recent Brooklyn Quarterly article from yesterday, one of the writers of color described it as below (and I've heard this from others too).

Mira Jacob
novelist
The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing

After 20 years, my novel sold right away and everything changed. When I went to these houses, I was in this rare position that I got to interview the people who were interested in the book. I was worried they would sari and spices me, that they would do the India they wanted. One said, “You can talk about all of these things but you can’t have them all in there. What’s the most important angle? It’s the immigrant angle, obviously.” I’ve been running from that editor my whole life. I will be one person only to that editor. I cried that night even though I was able to say no to her. How many authors had to hear that before me with this editor as their only option? How many stories have I not heard because this editor was in charge?


Jhumpa Lahiri took umbrage, in a New York Times interview, a couple of years ago when told that she was writing, primarily, the immigrant-against-the-odds story. She was quick to respond that America is a country of immigrants and, on that basis, every story, whether from a writer of color or not, is an immigrant story.

109Bookmarque
Feb. 26, 2016, 11:12 am

That sounds like a trap that has many victims. As a reader, and one of those dreadful white women readers, I don’t read about anyone’s struggles very often because it’s not what I’m interested in. Someone overcoming something, ugh. And so when it seems all writers of color ever produce is the story of their race’s struggle I skip it. Write it all you want, I’m not dictating what stories people should tell, but I probably won’t read it.

Almost every “diverse” book I see has that front and center and so there lies the rub. See, what I also keep hearing from the dreaded white readers is that they don’t care about color, they just want a story. That seems to be code for is they don’t want a lecture. Me included. Here’s an example.

Years ago, Stephen L. Carter received wide acclaim for selling his first novel for a 7-figure advance. It was The Emperor of Ocean Park and now I’ve read it I’m a fan and have bought and read many more of his books. But for years I avoided it because I thought it would be axe-grindy. It isn’t. Race and race relations do enter into the story, but as shades of characterization rather than the focus of the whole book. Instead we get a long-arc thriller that is not an easy read like a Patterson, but is a whole lot more enjoyable. At least to me. That’s what I want. Capers. Shenanigans. Humor. Secrets. Layers. Complexity. Entertainment.

So it’s a shame that non-white authors seem not to be able to get things like that published, or if they do, that I don’t know about them.

110southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 11:29 am

>109 Bookmarque: As a reader, and one of those dreadful white women readers, I don’t read about anyone’s struggles very often because it’s not what I’m interested in. Someone overcoming something, ugh.

I'm one of those dreadful white women readers as well. But I have to ask, isn't "someone overcoming something" the basic narrative of every story?

At the risk of sounding harsh, I think white people tend to shy away from "axe-grindy" stories because such stories force them to acknowledge a reality they prefer not to look at. Reading about people suffering blatant unfairness and injustice unsettles the better angels within us because we have to acknowledge that the world that treats us well, (relatively speaking) also treats other human beings terribly.

111Bookmarque
Bearbeitet: Feb. 26, 2016, 11:43 am

Loosely, yes, all books have a conflict, but it’s like Wally Lamb v. Ross Thomas. Only one of those guys is ever gonna be an Oprah book if you follow me and I’ll never read a Lamb again.

And there are all kinds of reality I don’t want to look at, but have and will have to again. Not in my leisure reading though. I just abandoned a Joyce Carol Oates novel because of the relentless, mindless hatred in it. Vicious and hideous and I don’t care to put it in my head. I understand and acknowledge that there is unfairness and cruelty in the world; as a literate woman of the latter 2Oth century I can’t help this, but again, not in my entertainment. I have no patience for it now.

112jennybhatt
Feb. 26, 2016, 11:43 am

>109 Bookmarque: and 110:

I can see both sides of the argument.

Yes, agents and editors want writers of color to do the immigrant-overcoming-the-odds story more than anything else. And, these are particular kinds of odds: assimilation issues, racism, otherness/alienation, and so on. And, yes, these are not always palatable to some readers because it might make them look closer at some harsh truths inside themselves and/or the world around them as well. Fair enough. We're never going to convince people to read what they're uncomfortable with or don't enjoy.

That said, many writers of color also want to write about dealing with other kinds of odds. And, yes, I agree that pretty much all fiction is about dealing with some struggle, internal or external or both. But, some writers of color might want to write about, say, struggles related to that deadly virus that's going to wipe out the human race. Or, about that goal to get to the top of the career ladder, no matter what. And, sadly, these stories, which will be unique and different from other similar dominant narratives, don't get past the gatekeepers. Or, if they do, it is with conditions like Mira Jacob's above: can you play up the immigrant angle?

113sturlington
Bearbeitet: Feb. 26, 2016, 11:54 am

>110 southernbooklady: Couldn't it just be just as valid that some people don't want to read those stories, just like some people don't want to read immigrant stories? It seems to me like writers of color are put in a box that they can't get out of, they aren't allowed to tell stories except for those that are just about race, and then people associate them with only these certain types of stories and they get tired of them and don't want to read them any more. It's a vicious circle.

I don't want to read any more stories about World War II. This isn't because I don't want to acknowledge the reality of what happened. It's because I feel like I've read the WWII stories so many times and I want to read something different, something new.

Perhaps every writer has to write a coming-of-age story. I don't blame them, it's a universal experience, and they should get it out of their system so they can move on to other things. But I don't want to read them anymore and I'll probably ignore any that I see. I feel like I'm done with that genre. It's not on the edges of what I want to explore.

I think this is why I'm attracted to genre fiction, and why I want to see more diverse writers in genre. The boxes there don't seem so rigid, at least not anymore.

>109 Bookmarque: I don't know if you read science fiction, but have you tried Dexter Palmer? I thought his first book was very interesting, and his new book seems to be well-reviewed. I also really liked Assumption by Percival Everett, which is a crime novel and does touch on race but it's not a story about race. Those are a couple of examples I can think of off the top of my head.

>112 jennybhatt: ETA Yes, exactly, those are the kinds of stories I want to read. The story about the deadly pandemic but from a different perspective. The story about aliens, but in Africa. Ok, I just put Lagoon on my reading list after a brief search. :-)

114southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 11:58 am

>111 Bookmarque: I understand and acknowledge that there is unfairness and cruelty in the world; as a literate woman of the latter 2Oth century I can’t help this, but again, not in my entertainment.

Well I think a big part of what we have to ask ourselves as a culture is what happens when our "entertainment" is based in and perpetuates racist or misogynist assumptions. Why do we find such things "entertaining" at all?

For example, I'm a fan of classic "noir" literature. I love the language, the atmosphere, the grittiness of it. But most noir is misogynistic in the extreme, responsible for unleashing some of the most blatant violence and hatred on the female body I've ever seen in print. I can't ignore that in the name of "art" and I can't say I find it entertaining. Instead it's this constant awareness in my mind that art uses misogyny in the way it uses anything to hand. Whatever I find "true" in noir fiction, misogyny is always going to be an unavoidable part of that truth.

I'm not trying to put you on the spot, Bookmarque, at least not specifically. I'm just saying that there is a cost to "looking away" from the implications of our entertainment.

115southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:04 pm

>113 sturlington: I don't want to read any more stories about World War II. This isn't because I don't want to acknowledge the reality of what happened. It's because I feel like I've read the WWII stories so many times and I want to read something different, something new.

And I groan and roll my eyes at stories about women friends getting together later in life to regroup after all their marriages have failed. :)

I suppose I think if an author has something true to say, then that truth will out, no matter whether they are using World War II settings or women friendship dynamics to say it. It's one reason why statements like "I won't read books with...(children dying/pets dying/British settings/insert your pet peeve here)" doesn't fundamentally make sense to me. The truth in a story is going to burn through whatever arbitrary personal preferences we have about what we feel like reading, but only if we open up the book and read it.

116LolaWalser
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:06 pm

>114 southernbooklady:

Instead it's this constant awareness in my mind that art uses misogyny in the way it uses anything to hand.

Eh, I don't know... how much it's "art" "using" misogyny, and how much it's just people expressing their misogyny, because they can. Because nobody thinks (or thought, at least) less of them for doing so. Because it was something "everyone" was expected to feel, something everyone felt, given the evidence.

Still do, actually...

117Bookmarque
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:08 pm

Re msg #114 - Understood and I don't think you can define it, even for one person. I've changed a lot over my lifetime and have less and less tolerance for misogyny, to use your example, than I have in the past. What I dug when I was 20 is a lot different now that I'm almost 50. Noir is a good example, too. I love it and read a lot of it, but am put off by very little because a trope is a trope is a trope to some extent. I mean, we’re talking the stretch of human misery, right? That’s what fiction is. We don’t read happy books do we? So depending on how you look at it, we’re all consuming each other’s unhappiness. I just can’t get up on my high horse and say that what I consume is more righteous than what you consume. And by you I don’t mean you specifically, SBL, but generally. If you choose to read about African slavery and the Holocaust, and I choose to read about murderers and con men, who’s the winner?

118southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:11 pm

>116 LolaWalser: Because nobody thinks (or thought, at least) less of them for doing so. Because it was something "everyone" was expected to feel, something everyone felt, given the evidence.

well we eventually reach a point where such things no longer reflect our culture, in which case they lose their relevance as art. We no longer find nigger jokes funny, but awful. We're awake enough to the realities of overt racism that even the the Metropolitan Opera has decided to drop black face make up from its productions of Othello:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/04/429366961/metropolitan-opera-t...

119southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:15 pm

>117 Bookmarque: We don’t read happy books do we?

Heh. You should meet all the women I know who love Jan Karon.

I'm just saying that we want our unhappy books to be easy to swallow.

120Bookmarque
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:16 pm

And so we should create more misery by reading books we hate and make us unhappy? lol

It's a vicious circle, right?

121LolaWalser
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:17 pm

>118 southernbooklady:

Racism, maybe, but I see no evidence that misogyny doesn't still sell, though. The LOA published those noir classics, Thompson etc. get re-issued... Mind you, I'm not saying this (publication, re-publication...) shouldn't be happening--I'm just observing that it is happening.

I asked in another thread whether misogyny compromises a work of art. The answer seems to have been a general no. Your work can piss and shit on women, specifically, all you want, and still be considered a great artistic achievement.

122southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:21 pm

>121 LolaWalser: I asked in another thread whether misogyny compromises a work of art. The answer seems to have been a general no.

A more hopeful answer would be "not yet."

>120 Bookmarque: And so we should create more misery by reading books we hate and make us unhappy?

Well, I think we make it a vicious circle. But if we value truth over fantasy, then that is not exactly a commitment to being "unhappy." Truth and understanding are their own reward. We are hopefully better people (and therefore "happier" people, maybe?) for embracing truth instead of avoiding it.

123Bookmarque
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:27 pm

Now you've found the high horse, SBL. Truth. But see, I get it. Misery, unhappiness, degradation, usury, humiliation, bullying, betrayal - all those truths. Got it. Books make the reality fantasy, at least novels, do. Why do I need to beat myself over the head with it daily? Why do I need to embrace it? I'm not making it a lover. It's the ugly side of what we are as a species and I know it's there. So have I won the prize yet?

124southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:38 pm

>123 Bookmarque: Now you've found the high horse, SBL.

Hey, I like junk food as much as the next person. But I'm aware that it isn't good for me. More to the point, that I can't live on it.

I'm sorry I've made you upset. It's not my intention. And really, I don't think "Misery, unhappiness, degradation, usury, humiliation, bullying, betrayal" are the be all and end all of other people's truths. I think white people often feel like they are, because white people, as a group, are responsible for causing so much of it and don't like to think about that too much. But I suppose in my mind "truth" is really what comes through from the storyteller, no matter who they are. It is in the power of literature to allow me to see and understand the world as another person sees it and understands it. To exist, briefly, in a world that I am not at the center of, not even an important part of.

That's pretty incredible to me. Amazing really. And far from feeling "high horse" a fairly humbling experience.

125Bookmarque
Feb. 26, 2016, 12:41 pm

I'm not upset, SBL, really, I'm not. I'm actually avoiding doing some lowly women's work and enjoying the conversation.

And I don't live on trashy thrillers alone, either.

Ugh. The house won't vacuum itself so catch you wimmins up in a couple hours!

126sturlington
Feb. 26, 2016, 1:08 pm

>115 southernbooklady: Yes, but we have to winnow down all those books to a manageable number somehow. I do it by cutting out YA, WWII stories, coming of age stories, women friendship stories, animal snuff, children in jeopardy, rape and stalker porn, etc, etc. :-)

By the way, I just discovered The Expendable Man by Dorothy Hughes this year. You might like her, since you like noir, if you haven't read her already.

127southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 1:39 pm

>126 sturlington: I do it by cutting out YA, WWII stories, coming of age stories, women friendship stories, animal snuff, children in jeopardy, rape and stalker porn, etc, etc. :-)

Ha. I'm surprised you can find anything to read! :)

I gravitate to certain kinds of books, of course. I like southern literature, black humor, "literary" fiction. But here's the thing -- if a source I respect suggests a book outside my usual reading territory, I won't pass it up on the grounds that I "don't do YA."

128sturlington
Feb. 26, 2016, 1:48 pm

>127 southernbooklady: My reading list is overwhelming! But yes, I am the same way. Although, I will admit that you're going to have to do a lot of convincing to get me to pick up YA or a 700-page debut novel. There's just too many books I want to read and not enough time to read them.

129RidgewayGirl
Feb. 26, 2016, 2:40 pm

I've been following this conversation with great interest. Last year, I resolved to read more books by women authors and it enhanced my reading enormously. If the hurdles are higher for a certain group to get published, it stands to reason that the books being published by those authors are of a higher general quality.

This year I have resolved to read more diversely. It's been a challenge - I'm reading books I wouldn't ordinarily pick up. Sure, I'd probably read The Turner House by Angela Flournoy or An Untamed State by Roxane Gay, or even Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates anyway. They fit within the books that I am drawn to, but I've also been reading outside of my comfort zone - for example, Paul Beatty and Viet Thanh Nguyen. And those books have been rewarding as well.

I do read for entertainment, but not only for that. I read to see more than the single world I inhabit. And for that, I need diverse books. While those who purposely read books from a variety of voices will probably always be a smaller group than those reading purely for comfort and entertainment (and nothing wrong with that! I do that as well, and happily) there is a growing awareness among readers that the books on offer don't represent the world as it is.

Book Riot has been blowing this particular horn for quite some time.

130Bookmarque
Feb. 26, 2016, 3:41 pm

#113 sturlington

I don't read Sci fi, but I did put Assumption on my library list. Thanks for the tip!

131jennybhatt
Feb. 26, 2016, 11:12 pm

This is interesting. Scroll down to "People Who Influence Which Books America Reads".

Not implying that the white folks there don't advocate writers or color, of course. I don't know anything about them.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/26/us/race-of-american-power.html

132southernbooklady
Feb. 26, 2016, 11:51 pm

7 out of 20 are women.

133jennybhatt
Feb. 27, 2016, 1:04 am

>132 southernbooklady:: True. I didn't even count that but should have noted.

Surprised they did not put Oprah on that list. I don't follow her book club so not sure if she's no longer doing it or if it's not as popular anymore.

Also, I'd think Emma Watson, with her new book club over at Goodreads, might come to wield influence over reading choices.

Bill Gates -- I know many guys who follow his reading lists.

Zuckerberg's got his 'Year of Books' that got so many likes and follows on the FB page.

Also, I read somewhere that Reese Witherspoon uses Instagram to post her reading choices and she has a lot of followers.

I'm now wondering about how they settled on these influencers -- the criteria. :)

134jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Feb. 27, 2016, 5:37 am

One other question.

Does this new appointment of Lisa Lucas at the National Book Award Foundation mean that, over time, she could be considered one of the key book/reading influencers in the US?

http://thesource.com/2016/02/13/lisa-lucas-becomes-first-african-american-woman-...

Don't know but the National Book Award is a pretty big deal, right? So, whoever is at the helm there should be able to wield some influence too, maybe?

This line of thinking about who really influences the reading tastes of the "average reader" reminded me of that hilarious scene from 'The Devil Wears Prada', where Anne Hathaway's character smirks about the fuss over belts/accessories and Meryl Streep's character explains to her how runway fashion inspires main street fashion and, therefore, her unremarkable, average blue sweater.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5WWy_0VLS4

I wonder if a similar argument couldn't be applied to books when people say, for example, I don't like classics or I don't like genre or I don't care for this sub-genre. I mean, would there even be a 'Twilight' without a 'Dracula'? And, would there be a 'Midnight's Children' without 'Arabian Nights'?

135krolik
Feb. 27, 2016, 4:16 am

>131 jennybhatt:
Thanks. Some of those names surprised me. The other categories are interesting, too.

136southernbooklady
Bearbeitet: Feb. 27, 2016, 9:42 am

>133 jennybhatt: Most of those "influential" people seemed to be the heads of the various big six publishing houses. I suppose they would be ultimately responsible for deciding if a book is going to be published, and therefore even available to be read.

Oprah's reading choices remain highly influential -- despite the snark people give her she's always been a genuine reader and "book person" and that clearly translates into something people trust when she talks about books -- but she scaled back her book club after it kind of ran away from her and became this huge thing people would compete over. I think it stopped being fun for her.

I'm sorry about that, because she is a sincere book lover and reader, who loves fiction no less, and there aren't too many of those in the entertainment industry that had that kind of cachet with readers. Colbert does have a huge influence, but he's mostly into nonfiction, at least from what I can tell. Indeed, there aren't too many celebrity types out there where one of the things you want to know about them is "what are you reading?" Certainly not the Facebook guy, or Jeff Bezos, or Gates.

As far as Lisa Lucas is concerned, my great hope is that she brings the National Book Foundation into the 21st century. Likewise, Carla Hayden's nomination for Librarian of Congress -- which I really hope isn't sacrificed to all the anti-Obama political machinations in the Senate. Hayden could totally bring the LC up to date in a way that is sorely needed.

And interestingly enough, I think Obama is a book guy. I'm always interested in what he's reading. Mostly, I get the sense that he likes to read, and read all sorts of things.

137jennybhatt
Feb. 28, 2016, 1:32 am

>136 southernbooklady::

Yes, in the brief kerfuffle with James Frey and Jonathan Franzen, I tuned into Oprah's book club updates. She appeared sincere to me too.

You sound like you're in the book industry, based on other posts here. Or, you follow it very closely. :) How/why do the National Book Foundation and LC need to be updated? I honestly don't know, though I do pay attention to the National Book Awards, of course.

Yes, I always pay attention to any articles talking about what the Obamas are reading. I hope that continues after his presidency ends too. In fact, I hope that the Obamas, together, do something for book-reading overall. Not another book club but, perhaps, a foundation for mentoring new/emerging and diverse writers or something. We can dream, can't we? :)

138southernbooklady
Feb. 28, 2016, 8:31 am

>137 jennybhatt: You sound like you're in the book industry, based on other posts here.

I currently work for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, a trade organization for independent brick and mortar bookstores in the American South. I've been a bookseller since I managed to talk my way into working at a bookstore in Boston to help put myself through college back in 1985. (You could argue that college was secondary to the bookstore job!) I've also worked in and around small publishing houses, in both an editorial and graphic design capacity, and I've done my own fair share of writing -- nonfiction and poetry, mostly -- and have been involved with a non profiting writer's organization for, oh, years and years.

Really, I've just loved reading since I first learned how to do it, so all of my professional life has orbited around books and has been basically a way to subsidize my reading habit. :)

As for the NBF and the Library of Congress, the Natonal Book Awards have always been regarded as kind of elitist (not a bad thing in my mind) and out of step with the popular tastes (also not a bad thing). It never seems to have been able to reconcile it's goal of honoring great American literature with its peculiar tone-deafness towards the literary culture that literature is suppose to represent. I still remember how Harold Bloom almost had a heart attack when they gave Stephen King their lifetime achievement award! And I can't forget the controversy a couple years ago when they accidentally announced "Shine" instead of "Chime" as a finalist, and then made Lauren Myracle withdraw. And who could forget the watermelon comment about Jacqueline Woodson's "Brown Girl Dreaming." So even when they are being aware of the diversity of American literary culture, they don't seem to know how to deal with it. As a result, for an organization that is supposed to show us "the best American literature" they have squandered a lot of their authority and public trust.

Lucas is a dynamic figure, though, used to dealing with a multitude of voices and media, and apparently a kick-ass fundraiser. I have high hopes she could re-establish the standing of the NBF and make it an organization that everyone can see themselves reflected in.

The Library of Congress has come under serious fire for not staying up to date with the realities of digital publishing, especially copyright issues. The former Librarian, Billingsworth, was a wonderful, scholarly man but was almost 40 years in the position and just not too interested in the way intellectual property has changed over the last decade or so. Carla Hayden is, firstly, a trained librarian -- something not traditionally required for the position -- and she has a very clear and proactive idea of the function and mission of a library, and its role as a preserver of culture and a service to every member of the community. Ultimately I think many people regard libraries as big rooms to store books people might want. They are much more than that, of course.

Plus, Hayden was an outspoken opponent of Federal attempts in the wake of 9/11 to violate the privacy of its citizens by demanding the right to see what they check out to read. I will always love her for that. The people I know over at The Library Journal are thrilled with the prospect of her appointment.

139sturlington
Bearbeitet: Feb. 28, 2016, 10:00 am

N.K. Jemison is back in the NYT Book Review this week reviewing diverse genres by diverse authors with, I think, a fair and balanced tone. This is an example of what I think major review sources can do to promote diverse writing and reading, although it would be nice if they incorporated these kinds of reviews every week. Ah well baby steps.

The Latest in Science Fiction and Fantasy http://nyti.ms/1XKGwvK

Please note, she is not reviewing SF/F as that genre is typically understood. Not the same old, same old.

140jennybhatt
Feb. 28, 2016, 10:36 am

>138 southernbooklady:: Ah. I would have loved to have a career around books like you. Sounds like you really enjoy it.

Yes, I recall reading about the watermelon controversy as well as the Lauren Myracie one. Guess it just goes to show that none of us are above having some biases, whether we're aware of them or not. I, too, hope for the positive changes you've described for the NBF and the LoC.

--------------------

>139 sturlington:: I haven't been regularly following Jemison's reviews but only because I'm not a SF/F reader. That said, you are right that she's been reviewing somewhat different books than one might expect -- which is all good.

--------------------

I stumbled onto this article about the 100 most-read female writers in college classes in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It's not exactly new, but definitely interesting. And, so many writers and books here that I have yet to read.

141southernbooklady
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 2, 2016, 6:25 am

Smiling Slaves: two picture books show why we need more diversity in publishing

How, then, should children’s book authors and illustrators approach the subject of slavery in early American kitchens? Is it better to simply avoid the topic altogether as being inherently unsuitable for picture books? African-American culinary historian Michael W. Twitty blogs at Afroculinaria and is the author of the forthcoming book “The Cooking Gene.” He’s an expert in the history of race, slavery and American food. In an email to me, Twitty explained: “Children must learn about slavery in the United States and in the Western world in general, because, to quote the last Republican campaign, ‘We built this.'” He adds: “I think the illustrator of ‘A Fine Dessert’ meant well in depicting the role of enslaved people as part of the plantation household, but it’s the smile that confuses us. We smiled to hide our feelings. ‘We wear the mask that grins and lies.’”

The trouble is that readers who have never considered slavery from the slave’s point of view will tend to interpret those smiles as benign, irrespective of whether the illustrator intended them as smiles of mother-daughter love, or smiles of pleasure at a job well done. But “our people weren’t eating that dessert,” Twitty asserts. “Being enslaved wasn’t a job or a joy, it was being a non-citizen and a non-human. I think for those who have worn the period clothing and done period cooking on plantations, it’s easy to see how such a rosy depiction can later translate at best to ignorance and at worst indignant surprise at the sensitivity Black Americans express at the depiction of their past as a mercy.”


The person being quoted, Michael Twitty, writes this great blog on African-American cooking and cuisine and the realities of slave cooking -- he does demonstrations that make the realities of plantation kitchens inescapable.

Part of the problem is that our society has poorly dealt with slavery in relation to our children. The first “talk” about race, especially for children of color, should confront American slavery, and it would be great if there were a plethora of books to ease that process. This book, although well-intentioned, doesn’t quite succeed.

We need literature that wrestles with the evils of slavery while confronting its complexity – we have yet to find a middle ground for a national conversation and understanding of “the peculiar institution” that doesn’t sandwich our understanding between slavery as Maafa and slavery as Song of the South.


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/19/slavery-childrens-books-lit...

142LolaWalser
Mrz. 2, 2016, 1:57 pm


Can't help thinking of the traditional racist representations of blacks in children's books, to the jolly Sambos and lovably dimwitted Epaminondas...

It's startling to think how much the smiling, and/or "comic" black person has been present in white American culture from the start, and what the figure signifies. From "happy" slaves in the fields and plantation houses to performers of every kind, this is one of the most common historical representations of black people--the other one, of course, being the savage.

143jennybhatt
Mrz. 4, 2016, 11:13 pm

An interesting list of 12 women of color authors to read this year: http://www.bustle.com/articles/144471-12-women-of-color-authors-you-need-to-know...

144LolaWalser
Mrz. 4, 2016, 11:22 pm

Thanks! Aboulela's and the South Korean book immediately attract me. I have a different book by Gay to read, but I suspect I'll want to read that one too.

145jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 5, 2016, 9:03 am

>144 LolaWalser:, you're welcome. :) I am looking forward to a couple of books from that list too.
___________

Here's another interesting essay that starts off with a bit of a critique of Watkins' 'On Pandering' and goes on to make some good points re. class diversity (which, to me, is actually connected to both gender and ethnic diversity).

https://www.kenyonreview.org/2016/02/on-poverty/

She suggests (and I agree):

"This means no submission fees. This means paying your interns—and your writers. This means shorter residencies for writers who will be fired from their jobs if they leave for long, or who have children without nannies. This means searching for writers to celebrate beyond New York and outside of academia. This means putting up flyers for your journal and posters advertising your readings not just at the hipster coffeehouse and AWP elevator, but at community colleges and laundromats, at halfway houses and homeless shelters. This means recognizing that not everyone—including every writer—has internet at home, not everyone has a working printer, not everyone can apply for a grant early or at all, not everyone has an hour of free time, not everyone can write when they are not bone tired or hungry or cold."

Her ending:

"We are not poor out of lack of hard work. We are not poor because we “want it less.” We stay poor because of institutionalized sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, and classism. We stay poor because doors stay closed."

146LolaWalser
Mrz. 5, 2016, 1:48 pm

>145 jennybhatt:

Regarding this new criticism of Watkins I can only note that, for my part, it didn't occur to me for a second that she was MOCKING THE POOR. I read her brief description of the poverty of the larger environment in which the privileged college existed as pointedly bitter and satirical, meant to draw attention to the contrast between the two. We discussed before her mentioning her white privilege and whether that was enough or well done (IIRC, nobody answered that). I suppose the question of whether she "addressed" it or not depends on how one decides to define "to address".

As for the rest, I'm sure the author has every argument on her side. Class differences and privilege always meant wildly different fates for authors; poverty marred terribly the life and work of innumerable talented people.

That's why I believe the society needs to provide for everyone means of decent survival, which would give everyone freedom to produce and create to their best ability, at peak strength.

IOW, that's why we need some form of communism.

147jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 5, 2016, 10:24 pm

>146 LolaWalser:: I also did not read Watkins' essay as mocking the poor but I should probably go back and re-read it for the points this essay makes. I doubt very much that Watkins meant any intentional slurs there at all.

I found the rest of the points this author made about how those who are not well off enough cannot often consider writing as a decent career option. Heck, not even a hobby option. Those submission fees at lit mags are really a bit much. (A whole other hornet's nest -- there was a long Atlantic article last year that generated a lot of discussion in its comments and on social media).

"That's why I believe the society needs to provide for everyone means of decent survival, which would give everyone freedom to produce and create to their best ability, at peak strength."

I'm so in agreement with you here. :) That said, I'm more comfortable with this being called "democratic socialism" than "communism" (because of the historical negative connotations). This is likely a different discussion thread somewhere on LT so I won't say much more.

148LolaWalser
Mrz. 6, 2016, 10:54 am

>147 jennybhatt:

This is likely a different discussion thread somewhere on LT so I won't say much more.

Right; however, I will add for the record that I don't agree one bit with the idea that because of some "historical connotations" we should retire the term "communism". It's a theoretical concept no less than "democracy", and historical societies that manifested some form or elements of communist organisation are no more "negative" than historical democracies.

Whether we're talking about mechanisms of providing everyone with means of survival, or, specifically, all writers with means to write free from material pressures, we're talking about using communist principles. There is no socialism without communism. And no, "democratic" won't work here for the same reason democracy has proven incapable of getting rid of formal inequalities of slavery and oppression of women. If a referendum about giving all writers a living salary were held tomorrow in the US, what chances that a majority would vote for it? Should majority opinion lead us in establishing all principles? I'd say, hardly.

By the way, can't resist noting that similar "linguistic" complaints are made about the use of "feminism". More people would be "feminist", they say--if only we avoided the use of the word "feminist".

Ask me what I think of THAT... ;)

149sturlington
Mrz. 6, 2016, 11:29 am

Two interesting book reviews of biographies of 19th century women writers in the NYT Book Review today: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/books/review/the-civil-wars-of-julia-ward-howe...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/books/review/constance-fenimore-woolson-and-mi...

I found these both really interesting, and they tie into Chapter 3 of Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead, which I was just reading yesterday, when she discusses the unique predicament of women writers.

150LolaWalser
Mrz. 6, 2016, 11:57 am

>149 sturlington:

WOW!! (Reading the first article on Julia Ward Howe.) Just WOW. Un-fucking-believable. And Hawthorne REALLY said she ought to have been whipped? WOW.

151sturlington
Mrz. 6, 2016, 6:49 pm

>150 LolaWalser: I know.That whole review blew my mind.

152LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 6, 2016, 7:54 pm

>151 sturlington:

The worst of it is, one might think a marriage/husband like hers was extreme, rare, but as it happens, I had read recently about Coventry Patmore and his domestic life, and there are striking similarities to the attitudes of those two.

I think it's more that we don't grasp entirely just how terrible was the situation of women in earlier times, how common this kind of abuse was, how normal. It doesn't take a pathological sadist to behave like this. Just give men absolute power over their spouses, fill them up with religious and other gender-supremacist garbage, and this is what you'll get from any of them.

153jennybhatt
Mrz. 6, 2016, 10:34 pm

I hadn't read/known about Julia Ward Howe's life either -- thanks for posting. Truly, it wasn't that long ago. And, there are still many parts of the world (both developed and developing) where women are still similarly dismissed (both online and offline).

154southernbooklady
Mrz. 6, 2016, 10:48 pm

I'm getting that Julia Ward Howe book. I think it would be a good companion to Megan Marshall's book on Margaret Fuller.

155jennybhatt
Mrz. 7, 2016, 9:24 am

I just came across the PEN America Equity Project. There's a lot of links on this page of theirs: https://www.pen.org/pen-equity-project. I like that they're trying to make it an ongoing discussion and even keeping some of those pages open for comments.

156LolaWalser
Mrz. 7, 2016, 2:40 pm

>155 jennybhatt:

Thanks!

From the discussion "Little Black Sambo & The Gingerbread Man":

Fatima Shaik: When I asked my civics teacher to include black contributions to the city of New Orleans, she said, “There are none.

Omg. And Shaik can't be more than forty-fifty.

157jennybhatt
Mrz. 10, 2016, 9:24 am

Earlier in this discussion, there had been talk about the new director, Lisa Lucas, of the National Book Foundation in the US and how that might bring about some needed changes. Here's a quick new interview with her. It definitely makes me hopeful that she has plans to work towards more diversity in publishing.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/69604-f...

158LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 13, 2016, 2:06 pm

Consider the results of the study described in this article: How Has the MFA Changed the Contemporary Novel? in the light of the data discussed above--that some 80% of editorial jobs in publishing are held by women (white).

What was analysed:

We collected a sample of 200 novels written by graduates of MFA programs from over 20 leading programs (including Columbia, University of Texas at Austin, Iowa, and others) that have been published in the last 15 years. (This sample includes authors like Rick Moody, Alix Ohlin, and Ben Lerner.) For the sake of comparison, we also collected a similarly sized group of novels published over the same time period by authors who haven’t earned an MFA degree (including writers like Donna Tartt, Miranda July, and Akhil Sharma).


The result I found most stunning:

The percentage of male protagonists in novels written by MFA grads is well over half, at 61 percent, while that figure is 65 percent for non-MFA novels. Further, if a novel has a female lead, the chances that it has two strong female characters is only 32 percent for both MFA and non-MFA novels. Last, the percentage of novels that have a majority of male characters in the non-MFA group is 99 percent, whereas it is 96 percent for MFA novels.


That's 400 novels published in the US, presumably within that system chock-full of white women (N.B.--up to some managerial threshold), of which a majority--61%+--have male protagonists, and 95% have a majority male characters.

Curious, isn't it.

159jennybhatt
Mrz. 13, 2016, 11:50 pm

>158 LolaWalser:: Right. This is why I say that it is about the entire ecosystem and not just the gatekeepers. For example, though publishers/editors have a lot of women in the ranks, for a long time, award committees tended to be mostly male. As did the corporate bosses of those female publishers/editors.

Well before the 2014 Guardian article about how award-winning books contain mostly male protagonists (can't find the link right this minute), I'd done a little survey of the Booker and the Pulitzer. I'd called it 'The Fall of the Female Protagonist in Literary Fiction'.

http://storyacious.com/2013/08/09/marginalia-recent-fall-of-female-protagonist-i...

Side-note: I wish I'd taken it a lot further than that one post at the time but I didn't think there was interest. Then, months later, Joanne Walsh came out with her Guardian piece that said a lot of the same stuff. Oh well.

160Bookmarque
Mrz. 14, 2016, 2:12 pm

So people are flipping out about what Lionel Shriver said about winning the Bailey’s v. the Booker and it got me to thinking. It seems most everyone is saying that of course we need special contests for women authors because the system is so unfair. They cite lopsided statistics about the winners of other prizes as being heavily male. Yet I can’t help but wonder that they are because some who would put forward a women author could have second thoughts by saying “oh well it’s probably going to be nominated for the Bailey’s so that should be enough, she shouldn’t get to be in both contests because one is closed to men”. Is this a thing?

On the bleeding heart Book Riot podcast the hosts were angsting away about this on and on and then wondering why there aren’t race specific contests because a similar slant exists against people of color winning major literary prizes. Do we need this? Does everyone need their own special bucket of peers only to judge them? Is it healthy and fair or does it further marginalize some groups by implying they can’t compete with white men of letters?

161jennybhatt
Mrz. 14, 2016, 11:32 pm

>160 Bookmarque::

I'm in two minds about having separate awards. My thinking is that, for a time, it is necessary, till the general award committees and biases can be addressed properly. Then, you don't need two separate awards. And, the proof should be in the pudding. If we begin to see a balance of genders winning the general awards, then we don't need separate ones.

The problem is, as I have mentioned earlier, that, up until very recently, most book award judging was also not done via diverse committees. So, that, clearly, did not help. I think it is getting better. But, we're not quite there yet. On either side of the pond.

162jennybhatt
Mrz. 15, 2016, 11:45 am

An interesting article on why even white male writers should discuss gender.

I’m telling you this as way of explaining that there is no monolithic experience of masculinity; even people who appear to exist within the patriarchy don’t, nor would they want to. This sentiment comes repulsively close to the statement “not all men.” I am aware of how that phrase is used to derail discussions of rape and sexism, or at least toss a cloak of exceptionability around the speaker. I will admit to my share of bad guy behavior. In college, I grappled with the urge to be a better human being and the desire to act like a man, two things that often seemed in opposition to one another. I had a large, close group of female friends, but gaining their trust and respect meant behaving in ways my dad would have called emasculated, which perhaps explained why, for a while, I grew my hair out and pulled it back with plastic barrettes—I felt more comfortable expressing my feminine side than my masculine. But during my senior year, with graduation looming, the end of youth and my entrance into manhood, I faced a kind of crisis.

And this:

Publishing is a business like any other, which means it is, by nature, conservative, responding to the demands of the market as opposed to shaping it. I see women calling for more books that reflect their experiences and rewarding those that do with sales and attention, but I don’t find the same demand coming for books that challenge masculine stereotypes. And I’m not speaking theoretically here, but from experience.

And, this ending:

There is no one story that speaks for all men, or all white people, as I’m sure there is no single narrative that fits every woman. If reading has taught me anything, it’s that the world is a complex place filled with many types, many voices, and that there are more out there, visible now only by their absence. We need to hear from everyone, even people who might make us uncomfortable, or whose stories bring to light parts of ourselves we’d rather not see. Male writers should be following the lead of female writers and sharing the ways that patriarchal forces have forced them to fit tight, uncomfortable molds, and their experiences shouldn’t be discounted purely because of their gender. We can’t be scared of having a conversation, which means both talking and listening; we can’t let discomfort turn to fear and then destructive rage, we can’t pull our car up to someone else’s and belittle them, or see them only in stereotypical terms, it’s not right. We have to be better than the oppressive, small-minded forces of silence and stagnation. Shit’s not going to change otherwise.

163librorumamans
Mrz. 15, 2016, 4:11 pm

>149 sturlington: & >150 LolaWalser:
Thanks, sturlington, for linking to those reviews. I have just finished reading Censoring Queen Victoria which examines the process by which Victoria's correspondence up to the point of Prince Albert's death was pruned, shaped, and primped to present a picture of the monarch suitable for public consumption.

Viscount Esher and A. C. Benson (you can read about them on Wikipedia) were the editors chosen for the job, both of them products of Eton and Cambridge, and all that that entails.

Benson, a bi-polar homosexual, was the son of a future Archbishop of Canterbury, himself a man of rigid principles and frightening temper. The passage in the book that clobbered me was an extract from a diary kept by Benson's mother. This entry, written some years later, recalls her wedding day:
Wedding night – Folkstone – crossing – Oh how my heart sank – I daren't let it – no wonder – an utter child ... [her ellipsis] danced and sang into matrimony, with a loving but exacting, a believing and therefore expecting spirit. 12 years older, much stronger, much more passionate! And whom I didn't really love – I wonder I didn't go more wrong.
...
   Paris – the first hard word about the washing – But let me think how hard it was for Ed. He restrained his passionate nature for 7 years and then got me! this unloving childish, weak, unstable child! Ah God, pity him! Misery – knowing that I felt nothing of what I knew people ought to feel. Knowing how disappointed he was – trying to be rapturous – not succeeding – feeling so inexpressibly lonely and young, but how hard for him! Full of all religious and emotional thoughts and yearnings – they had never woke in me. I have learnt about love through friendship. How I cried at Paris! Poor lonely child, having lived in the present only, living in the present still. The nights! I can't think how I lived. [pp. 45-46]

164jennybhatt
Mrz. 17, 2016, 9:06 am

So, I was not familiar with Joanna Russ and her book: "How to Suppress Women's Writing" (and she says, at the start of the book, that she includes, in her exposition, all marginalized writer groups). This review is a sort of point-by-point summary of this 1983 book and I want to read it now.

http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/i-think-from-now-on-i-will-not-trust-anyone-w...

165sturlington
Mrz. 17, 2016, 11:24 am

>164 jennybhatt: I have not read that but I have read The Female Man and she was certainly angry! That anger you rarely see in women's writing, by the way.

166sturlington
Mrz. 17, 2016, 11:54 am

>165 sturlington: Which reminds me that I just finished Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, a very angry book with an angry protagonist. Reading through the reviews, I see critiques of the protagonist: "she wasn't likable enough," "she did bad things and didn't feel sorry," "she complained too much." Telling, isn't it?

It would be interested to compile a list of books about angry women. Other than the Russ and that one, I can only think of two that I have read in recent years: The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud and Gone Girl.

167LolaWalser
Mrz. 17, 2016, 12:57 pm

>166 sturlington:

Oh good, I have that one (Who fears death). Give me anger, give me Kali, and an ocean of blood! >:)

>164 jennybhatt:

I've had that for ages and still not read. Whenever you get to it I'll be interested to hear what you thought.

>163 librorumamans:

That's a bit too elliptic for me. I notice she's angsting over how much her husband (?) supposedly "suffered" while it can't have been easy for a know-nothing Victorian bride either, whatever "it" was.

168sturlington
Mrz. 17, 2016, 1:07 pm

>167 LolaWalser: Please post a thread when you read it. There's a lot going on in it that warrants discussion. Kali, yes, among other things.

169LolaWalser
Mrz. 17, 2016, 1:44 pm

>168 sturlington:

I will--unless you'd want to start commenting before? Feel free, I won't look until I read it (I'll pick it up next after Roxane Gay, which should be done today-tomorrow.) Oh, and also--it just occurs to me--there's no "reading" thread in this group, is there--anyone want to make one?

170jennybhatt
Mrz. 17, 2016, 9:46 pm

>169 LolaWalser:: Yes, please let's make a reading thread in this group. I would but I don't quite know how to position it as I've only been following 2-3 threads in this group so far. Also, though Ive been reading a lot of articles online and offline, I'm way behind on reading books related to these particular themes. So, I would love a books thread.

171jennybhatt
Mrz. 18, 2016, 9:20 am

This is not a new thing: women writers getting asked questions that men writers don't, typically. Still, worth a read. Gender bias not even hidden in these kinds of questions. And, to be honest, I've even heard some of these posed by female interviewers (sorry, Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air).

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/03/patronizing-questions-we-ask-women-who-write.htm...

172LolaWalser
Mrz. 18, 2016, 11:19 am

>170 jennybhatt:

Ordinarily I wouldn't hesitate to start something called (with my usual creativity in those matters) "What are we reading" or "The reading thread" but I'd like to see whether anyone has other ideas or preferences...

And, of course, we could have specific threads for individual books whenever someone wanted a focussed discussion etc.

173jennybhatt
Mrz. 18, 2016, 9:46 pm

>172 LolaWalser::

I'm good with either of those titles, as it keeps it very clear. But, yes, let's see if there are other suggestions. :) Thanks.

174LolaWalser
Mrz. 18, 2016, 11:05 pm

>173 jennybhatt:

Why don't you start a thread? Nothing to make you feel faster "at home" than that. :)

175jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 19, 2016, 1:19 am

>174 LolaWalser:: OK. I'll give it a go. But, please feel free to help me along if I do something wrong. I've only started a couple of threads at LT in the past and none of them took off. :) Let's hope this time is different.

ETA: Here it is -- http://www.librarything.com/topic/220307

176sturlington
Apr. 1, 2016, 4:20 pm

I am currently reading The Wave in the Mind by Ursula K. Le Guin. I wouldn't recommend this on the whole, because it's not entirely feminist (although everything Le Guin writes has that undercurrent) and also because it's kind of a hodgepodge. I'm picking and choosing what to read based on the intros myself. But I just read this and wanted to share it, from the essay, "Off the Page: Loud Cows":

It was men who first got poetry off the page, but the act was of great importance to women. Women have a particular stake in keeping the oral functions of literature alive, since misogyny wants women to be silent, and misogynist critics and academics do not want to hear the woman's voice in literature, in any sense of the word. There is solid evidence for the fact that when women speak more than 30 percent of the time, men perceive them as dominating the conversation; well, similarly, if, say, two women in a row get one of the big annual literary awards, masculine voices start talking about feminist cabals, political correctness, and the decline of fairness in judging. The 30 percent rule is really powerful. If more than one woman out of four or five won the Pulitzer, the PEN/Faulkner, the Booker--if more than one women in ten were to win the Nobel literature prize--the ensuing masculine furore would devalue and might destroy the prize. Apparently, literary guys can only compete with each other. Put on a genuinely equal competitive footing with women, they get hysterical. They just have to have their voices heard 70 percent of the time.


The next paragraph is quite funny and talks about the importance of women reading their poetry and making their voices heard:

...Making female noises, shrieking and squeaking and being shrill, all those things that annoy people with longer vocal cords. Another case where the length of organs seems to be so important to men.

177sturlington
Bearbeitet: Apr. 1, 2016, 5:30 pm

Also of interest is Le Guin's short essay, "Award and Gender," published in 1999 (I presume not much has changed since then):

The inescapable conclusion is that prize juries...through conscious or unconscious prejudice, reward men four and a half times more than women.

The escapable conclusion is that men write fiction four and a half times better than women. This conclusion appears to be acceptable to many people, so long as it goes unspoken.

Those of us who do not find it acceptable have to speak.


ETA This essay also points out the importance of reading not just the arbitrary award winner but also the shortlist.

178jennybhatt
Apr. 1, 2016, 10:00 pm

>176 sturlington: and >177 sturlington:: Thanks for those excerpts. I so agree with her point about women being allowed to speak 30% of the time, in general terms. That's why, to a certain extent, I think that social media is good because, despite the trolling and abuse that women have to put up with, at least we can get things out there.

And, good point re. reading award shortlists. In the past few years, I've been paying more attention to these than I have ever done before.

179sturlington
Apr. 2, 2016, 9:06 am

>178 jennybhatt: I'm often more interested in the shortlist than the award winner, maybe because the award winner might be safer or more widely appealing.

180jennybhatt
Apr. 4, 2016, 11:33 am

Vivian Lee, an editor for Amazon Publishing's 'Little A' imprint talks about diversity in publishing:

http://therumpus.net/2016/04/the-saturday-rumpus-interview-vivian-lee/

"There’s a lot of hand-wringing over the “diversity problem” but not a lot being done yet. I think the root of the problem goes back to my tweet earlier. Everyone in publishing needs to take accountability for diversity—not just POC editors. From the ground up we have to hire diverse editors, designers, marketers, publicists, etc. I do think once we change from the “inside out,” then publishing will realize that Junot Díaz, Zadie Smith, etc don’t have to be the sole voice of an entire group of people. I can’t speak for other houses, but I am excited to say that Little A is committed to publishing diverse stories, voices, and authors.

In my dream scenario as an editor, if we all seek out more writers of color and diversify our list, then agents will have to also diversify their list and seek out more writers of color, and readers will get more of a chance to read stories they normally wouldn’t read, and then more books by writers of color will be published. I’m pretty direct with agents about what books I want and it forces them to look at their own list and see where they can improve."

181jennybhatt
Apr. 6, 2016, 8:03 am

This is just awful. And, I mean, though I've read Talese over the years and liked his stuff, I sort of knew there was this misogyny there. Don't know how I knew.

Gay Talese in Twitter storm after failing to name inspirational female writers.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/02/gay-talese-twitter-female-writers

Talese first named the novelist Mary McCarthy as a woman who had inspired him in his work.

The Post quoted Littlefield as saying: “And then there was a pause and he said, ‘None. And I’ll tell you why.’ And he went into this explanation about how educated women don’t want to hang out with anti-social people.”

I mean, he tries to justify himself further and says he doesn't want to make it about gender. But, there were many women writing amazingly well when he was starting out, so I find this hard to accept.

182LolaWalser
Apr. 6, 2016, 12:19 pm

Sometimes I'm disappointed to hear stuff like that, but never surprised. I'm not familiar with Talese (is he an older gentleman?), but when you get this routinely even from young-ish authors such as Knausgaard, who told Siri Hustvedt, when she asked him about mentioning only one woman author, that women are "no competition", or when you hear about academics such as the professor at the U of T here practically boasting about not covering women authors in his class--what else would one expect?

183southernbooklady
Apr. 6, 2016, 9:03 pm

>181 jennybhatt: Not surprising to me either. But what really gets me is the matter-of-fact tone. The "no, I don't really read women writers, they weren't important to me" tone. And especially the "I come from a different generation" tone. None of these people ever seems to think, wait a second...that's problem. Can I really say I know my craft if I have missed the work of half the people writing on the planet?" Granted Talese cut his teeth in a pretty male-dominated field, but isn't such an admission cause to doubt his own perspective and journalistic status?

184LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Apr. 6, 2016, 9:23 pm

Coincidence... I added a book by Mary McCarthy today (named in >181 jennybhatt:: Talese first named the novelist Mary McCarthy as a woman who had inspired him in his work.) and on the first page there's an uncredited blurb from Newsweek: MARY McCARTHY "OUR ONLY REAL WOMAN OF LETTERS." My copy is a 1981 printing and I suppose the blurb could be older, but who knows...

I've noticed that these men who don't read women will frequently tout one--and usually only one--exception to the rule. And they do this in a supremely self-satisfied, smug fashion, because it goes to show that they are not prejudiced against women authors (not even a boor like Naipaul would boast that he had never opened a book written by a woman)--it's just that women suck so hard at writing, these gentlemen can't possibly find more than one (maybe two...) worthy of their attention and praise. So that their very "admiration" for this rare bird (ha) is in fact nothing more than another expression of misogyny.

185jennybhatt
Apr. 6, 2016, 11:05 pm

>182 LolaWalser:: Yes, I remember reading about those Knausgaard comments. I thought that Siri Hustvedt had an excellent rebuttal in LitHub. http://lithub.com/knausgaard-writes-like-a-woman/

>183 southernbooklady:: Exactly so. It's not as if there weren't good women writers when he was starting out or in the decades since. It is, clearly, that he chose not to bother reading them. That is inexcusable for a so-called "man of letters". Even if he'd read them enough to then say "I didn't like X because..." or "I will never read Y again because..." But to entirely negate their very existence is pathetic.

>184 LolaWalser:: Yes, I've noticed that too -- when male writers tout only 1-2 female writers just to avoid criticism. Again, pathetic. You'd think, given all the furore caused by Watkin's essay last year, Talese would have thought twice before throwing another match on the blazing fire. But then, likely, he's never read anything by Watkins or any of the other women who have offered perspectives on this topic. Sad.

186southernbooklady
Apr. 6, 2016, 11:45 pm

>185 jennybhatt: It is, clearly, that he chose not to bother reading them. That is inexcusable for a so-called "man of letters".

There's a quote I come back to all the time from Gore Vidal (speaking of grumpy old men) about the function of art being to make us aware of the prison of our own existence, our own set of assumptions and unchallenged "truths" and show us that there are other worlds, other ways of existing:

(See http://www.librarything.com/topic/158235#4266237)

...the complacency in Talese's tone in that article made me think of that Vidal quote, he sounds like a person content in his own prison.

187sturlington
Apr. 7, 2016, 11:58 am

Hmm, is it possible the Talese brouhaha is overblown: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/fashion/gay-talese-twitter.html?_r=0

188LolaWalser
Apr. 7, 2016, 12:33 pm

>187 sturlington:

Not just overblown, but completely manufactured! Thanks.

And, wow, 84 and still damn stylish.

189southernbooklady
Apr. 7, 2016, 1:14 pm

eh. I can see how the misunderstanding happened, but for a guy who knows about picking the right words, his response wasn't brimming with clarity.

190LolaWalser
Apr. 7, 2016, 1:49 pm

>189 southernbooklady:

But it seems he was answering a different question to what the Twitterstorm made it seem to be.

191southernbooklady
Bearbeitet: Apr. 7, 2016, 2:02 pm

He heard a different question -- he interpreted the question to be about who influenced him as a young journalist. But 1) he doesn't say "as a young journalist there were no women writers in my field..."

Here's the question he was asked, though:

"In addition to Nora Ephron, who were the women who write who were most, who have inspired you most?"

"Did I hear you say what women have inspired me most?" Mr. Talese said.

"As writers."

"As writers," Mr. Talese said. "Uh, I'd say Mary McCarthy was one. I would, um, (pause) think (pause) of my generation (pause) none. I'll tell you why. I'm not sure it's true, it probably isn't true anymore, but my -- when I was young, maybe 30 or so, and always interested in exploratory journalism, long-form, we would call it, women tended not, even good writers, women tended not to do that."


So we might be missing some context there, but there was nothing in the original question that suggested Talese should limit his answer to "women writing when he was 30 who wrote long-form journalism." That's where his mind went, clearly, but I doubt the person who asked the question intended such specificity. And really, if someone asks you "what women writers influenced you" are you really not going to be aware of how weird it would sound to say "none"? Wouldn't you be compelled to go for the broad answer, not the narrow one?

192LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Apr. 7, 2016, 2:19 pm

>191 southernbooklady:

But isn't that because he's a journalist--investigative at that? If I got that right--as I said, I'm not familiar with the man. The way I'm understanding it, he was answering (logically, imo, if he is/sees himself first and foremost as a journalist) which writers influenced him in that sense.

And, I don't know, but I don't find it extraordinary that male journalists in that period would crowd out the impact of the female ones in one's male mind. Are there many/any men even today claiming overwhelming female influence on their work?

And this guy was twenty in 1952...

193sturlington
Bearbeitet: Apr. 7, 2016, 2:20 pm

>191 southernbooklady: I am more willing to cut some slack for an unexpected question that he may have misinterpreted, answered without much forethought and then had tweeted into controversy immediately thereafter.

194LolaWalser
Apr. 7, 2016, 2:34 pm

>193 sturlington:

Me too--especially at that age.

That said, assuming the reply was valid as it stands (later on he mentioned more women authors he'd admired as authors, even if he doesn't claim them as professional influences), it is still interesting and indicative of, how could one put it, the mental segregation men (typically) suffered and suffer from, in regard to work by men and work by women.

Isn't this exactly what Knausgaard was talking about? This blocking off of women somewhere where he doesn't see them, read them, take them in account, as competition and influence.

195southernbooklady
Apr. 7, 2016, 3:39 pm

>192 LolaWalser: A journalist and a biographer. And he co-wrote a book called "Writing Creative Nonfiction - the Literature of Reality." And I don't find it extraordinary that there wouldn't be (many) women journalists in the era he was making his own career, but I do find it sort of bizarre that a man asked about women writers who influenced him couldn't dredge up the name "Carson McCullers" or find a reason to regard a woman novelist as an acceptable answer.

And yeah, he's old. But all that really does is put in in the same category as my grandmother who reverted to calling African-Americans "colored" in her old age. I don't know if Talese has hit that level of dottiness yet, but I'm thinking not, given the fact that he was a speaker at something called "The Power of Narrative Conference" at Boston University. Presumably, he knows something about the power of narrative.

196jennybhatt
Apr. 7, 2016, 11:20 pm

Hmm. Certainly, there are more nuances to this story than some publications have been reporting. Still, as some of you have said here, be careful with your responses in a public forum to a sensitive question -- that's the key lesson here. And, one we hope others will take from this story.

As indeed from the other controversy that went viral: Calvin Trillin's New Yorker poem about Chinese food.

https://storify.com/karissachen/world-is-our-oyster-sauce

And, a bunch of similar poem responses (e.g. Have They Run Out of White Poets Yet?) have taken the hilarity to a new level:

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/07/have_they_run_out_of_white_poets_yet_asian_write...

197sturlington
Apr. 8, 2016, 6:59 am

Both Trillin and Talese are older men who are demonstrating a certain level of cluelessness, but I'm still not convinced they deserve the Twitter smackdown. It's like Hulk Hogan doing a backbreaker takedown on my grandma because she said something racist. She's not going to change or even really know what she did wrong.

I think the problem with these swift Twitter attacks on absolutely everyone who offends is they don't allow for understanding of context or nuance, nor do they open the way for dialogue or a meeting of the minds. They also distract from the truly egregious offenses that are happening. In certain cases, such as pressuring a corporation for bad behavior, these campaigns can be effective, but they are in danger of losing that effectiveness if there's a new one every damn day, and if the targets more and more resemble my grandma.

198southernbooklady
Bearbeitet: Apr. 8, 2016, 8:46 am

>197 sturlington: I'm still not convinced they deserve the Twitter smackdown.

It is in the nature of twitter that it is swift to react, swift to move on, without nuance and only limited context. It's like the literary version of the paparazzi. If it trains its eye on you, it's going to get a damning or embarrassing picture at some point.

But it is always up to us to look deeper. To be thoughtful, not reactive. And I think if you do in this case, what you get is what Lola said: " This blocking off of women somewhere where he doesn't see them, read them, take them in account, as competition and influence."

Talese can be faulted for not being aware of this massive blind spot in his collection of received experience, or taking the pains to rectify it. He can be faulted for assuming that the way he sees the world is the way it really is.

199sturlington
Apr. 8, 2016, 9:27 am

>198 southernbooklady: I'm sorry, but that's not what I got from what he said. He said women fiction writers were very influential on him as a young writer, but not women journalists--specifically women sportswriters--because there weren't very many writing at that time. He also said that as an older writer he doesn't really have influences, and I can see his point. That doesn't mean he doesn't read women writers or admire or respect them. I will grant you the cluelessness and that he could have chosen his words more carefully, but on the other hand, how many of us are perfectly well spoken 100% of the time.

There was another NY Times article about this today, and from reading the comments, the sense comes through that if you don't want to be attacked on Twitter, then you should lie. Instead of being honest about what Talese was reading as a young writer, which reflects that time period, he should have a ready answer prepared that's as inoffensive and inclusive as possible, regardless of whether it's true. A savvy person with a public persona will do just that, which just removes honesty from our conversations. I don't see how that can possibly be helpful or move us forward to the world we want to see. We need to be able to speak honestly to one another without fear of pillory in order to have the conversations that we need to have.

Talese is not a monster. Quite possibly he is a product of his generation. I have no idea what he is like now, but judging solely by who he's married to, I'm going to assume he is more open-minded than many white men of his generation. He seems much less worthy of pillory than, say, recent male scientists who don't seem to think women can do science still.

200southernbooklady
Apr. 8, 2016, 9:52 am

>199 sturlington: He said women fiction writers were very influential on him as a young writer, but not women journalists--specifically women sportswriters--because there weren't very many writing at that time.

Well that's what he should have said in response to the original question. It's not what he did say, though. It took that twitter storm to make him clarify and expand his comments. Which begs the question, would he have done so without that immediate outcry? Would he even have realized how his answer could have been interpreted?

I have no doubt Talese was being completely honest, and I am sure he is a generally thoughtful, intelligent person. But I don't think such a person would, in the face of the immediacy and heightened decibel levels of today's Internet, feel pushed to lie about what they thought. I do think they would be inclined to think twice about how they say whatever it is they want to say.

201jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Apr. 8, 2016, 10:43 am

>199 sturlington:: I completely agree with your last paragraph there, now that I've read more of what actually went down. I don't know, yet, what to do with the Trillin story -- I'm sure there will be more fall-out just as there was with the Talese story.
__________________

On an entirely separate note, this article about how Reese Witherspoon is doing more than her fair share to bring books by women writers to the screen is interesting. They're not necessarily books I might read or even movies I might watch. But that she's using her Hollywood clout to make sure that women writers and their female protagonists are getting more attention has to be a good thing, right?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/reese-witherspoons-new-role-power-broker-1460054342

202sturlington
Apr. 8, 2016, 10:00 am

>200 southernbooklady: The question that was put to him could have been better worded as well, to be fair.

203southernbooklady
Apr. 8, 2016, 10:41 am

>202 sturlington: Sure, but the question was from the audience, not the interviewer. So when it comes to expecting clarity, I'd say the onus is on the guy who makes his living with the written word.

Which is not to say he's some kind of terrible sexist monster. Just somewhat unthinkingly complacent and complicit in his male privilege.

204sturlington
Apr. 8, 2016, 10:53 am

>203 southernbooklady: The moderator could have asked for clarification, then. I don't think the punishment fit the crime. And Twitter is a big deal because it's treated like a big deal by the media. All the major news outlets have covered this. But because of its one sidedness, it provides no opportunity for dialogue or clarification. It's mob rule there.

Me, I'm glad I didn't pursue a writing career because I'd be terrified of speaking in public in today's world. Especially since the onus is on the public figure to never misspeak or misunderstand. Writers often have to think things through before formulating their response. That's why their medium is the written word. I used to hate being at conferences because if I hadn't prepared my response ahead of time, at least mentally, I inevitably never communicated properly precisely what I meant.

>201 jennybhatt: Thanks for posting that. I admire Reese Witherspoon for using her influence this way.

205southernbooklady
Apr. 8, 2016, 11:41 am

Sigh. I suppose I am just increasingly impatient with the "I'm from a different era" excuse. If we want people to change the way they think we have to, you know, demand they change the way they think. We have to call ourselves on all the crap we take for granted in this current status quo.

Talese has been through his share of controversies, though. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thy_Neighbor%27s_Wife) He'll weather this one just fine. Now as to whether this was a real controversy or just an example of a twitter-blow up, I think that's a different question. The media, in its constant race for relevancy, is quick to publish and thus prone to making mountains out of molehills. There's an apology in the NY Times today about how they handled the story:

http://www.nytco.com/dean-baquet-responds-to-gay-talese-goes-through-the-twitter...

Yesterday’s story was flawed and Nikole was treated unfairly. But this incident is larger than the exchange between her and Gay Talese. Too often, we are clumsy in handling issues of race and gender and this story was another unfortunate example. We have made strides in our coverage and culture, but the best solution is to continue building a more diverse, inclusive newsroom.

206LolaWalser
Apr. 8, 2016, 11:44 am

>195 southernbooklady:

Re: he co-wrote a book called "Writing Creative Nonfiction - the Literature of Reality."

I take your general point. I've wondered (and wonder) often the same about many people--I think I even discussed Bellow specifically in this regard--how can they be so blind when their gifts and training supposedly gear them to observation?

But I'm not sure how much can be discerned about Talese's views from this unfortunate flap. He answered sincerely a different question to what was meant--I can't blame him for that when I've made the same mistake (and I'm nowhere close to 84, if that mattered). When asked again, he was able to talk about women authors he admired. This is the sort of thing that gets hashed out in conversation, not with out-of-context soundbites.

>204 sturlington:

Twitter is fucking poison. It reminds me of Emily Dickinson:

How public – like a Frog – To tell one's name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!


Conditionally admiring, with long knives clutched in their grubby little hands.

>196 jennybhatt:

That's the fault of whoever at the New Yorker okayed that poem. Trillin is eighty. His head isn't in 2016, it's, at best, somewhere circa 1972, when "we" (people who write, buy and read The New Yorker) were all nice white people, comfortably liberal but splendidly unaware of subtler forms of discrimination; and the Chinese ("they", of course) were all somewhere far away--whether actually in China or manning our laundries and take-outs. The idea that "we" now includes Chinese (and more) just hasn't really taken root. And I'm afraid it can't, in such old exhausted soil.

I must admit I've always had a soft spot for The New Yorker's provincialism, enjoyed it as a private joke, it's at such odds with how these people see themselves.

207sturlington
Bearbeitet: Apr. 8, 2016, 11:52 am

>206 LolaWalser: I recently read a good essay by Margaret Atwood in Negotiating with the Dead where she uses that poem to dissect the catch-22 facing authors, where being obscure and being famous are both a kind of hell. But she does point out that at least with being famous, you're more likely to get paid.

208sturlington
Apr. 8, 2016, 11:55 am

>205 southernbooklady: I think we do have to ask ourselves, though, are we calling someone out to try to help them see things differently or to get some attention and retweets and Twitter Fame and blog clicks?

209southernbooklady
Apr. 8, 2016, 12:02 pm

>208 sturlington: All that really means is that we should strive for the same kind of even-handed consideration and thoughtfulness that we are demanding of others. I'm good with that general principle. Even so, I don't think Talese's original response deserved to go by unchallenged.

210southernbooklady
Apr. 10, 2016, 10:15 am

68 Women Talese should read:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/women-gay-talese-should-read#.fvjWN6prm

It misrepresents and over-simplifies the controversy and most of the women are from after Talese's "era" -- but not all of them (ahem, Martha Gellhorn, Lillian Ross, Zora Neal Hurston, etc). It's an interesting list of women journalists who specialize in "long form" journalism. Sheri Fink isn't on the list though.

211LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Apr. 10, 2016, 1:40 pm

Yes, the article misrepresents. (deleted some more heated qualifications of the article)

I seriously doubt Talese had never heard of Martha Gellhorn and Lillian Ross etc. so if he didn't name them, it's because they weren't an inspiration or influence. Which is what the question was about. On the other hand, apparently Ephron and McCarthy were an inspiration and influence. Presumably he answered truthfully, which is more interesting than lying, because informative of his worldview. It makes sense that someone who's found McCarthy "inspiring" did not find so Ross or Gellhorn.

212southernbooklady
Apr. 10, 2016, 1:47 pm

I was interested because so many of the women on the list were unfamiliar to me. New names to watch for!

213LolaWalser
Apr. 10, 2016, 1:50 pm

>212 southernbooklady:

Yeah--better start getting influenced in time! See what we may face in three-four decades! :)

214jennybhatt
Apr. 11, 2016, 9:18 am

Here's another list of women journalists from 1960-onwards -- prompted by the Talese saga.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/04/queens-of-nonfiction-56-women-writers-everyone-s...

There are many here that I haven't read either. My goodness. Just goes to show that, if we just take the time to look, excellent writing by women has been out there for decades.

215jennybhatt
Apr. 11, 2016, 9:27 am

And, here's one of Talese's former teaching assistants on his sexism. Boy, that comment about Gloria Steinem...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/09/gay-talese-sexism/

216LolaWalser
Apr. 11, 2016, 4:06 pm

I wonder how far would stretch all the insults Steinem got in her life, if written on little pieces of paper--past Jupiter? :)

If you think that's bad for 1964, consider that she is being called a jackbooted feminazi today, and that by people like Ishmael Reed.

217jennybhatt
Apr. 11, 2016, 11:52 pm

>216 LolaWalser:: Re. Gloria Steinem -- true. She's had a lot worse come her way, both then and now.

218southernbooklady
Bearbeitet: Apr. 19, 2016, 10:50 am

Is this the place we are talking about diversity in publishing?

Read Between the Racism

It's a good in depth look at the issues facing the publishing industry, when it comes to being "diverse" -- that is, how do you get the sales numbers and what they call in the article the "cultural dissemination" to converge? Or is diverse publishing by default a not-for-profit endeavor in a capitalist society?

"It's really nice seeing people talking about diversity," says Lulu Martinez, a publicist at Kensington Books, "but if people went out and purchased books, the story would be different." . . .

Mejias also sees the situation being such that writers of color aren't allowed to fail the same way white writers are allowed to. If one book by a white author doesn't sell, no one at the publishing house says they shouldn't acquire any books by white authors the next season. But if a book by, for instance, a Puerto Rican author doesn't sell, the publisher may take its sweet time in "taking a risk" on another. . .

Hernandez and Mejias agree that it's also important to promote more editors and publishers of color into positions of power on the creative side of the table. Mejias attempts to start this early, through the internship program he started at Writers House. By using his wide-ranging network—he's a person who seems to know everyone and be known by everyone in the industry in return—he helps "the poor brown kid from the Bronx," as he refers to his younger self, get the publishing and agency jobs that have been occupied for so long by middle-class white people. . .

In other words, Hernandez and Mejias differ on a crucial point: responsibility. It's hard to say whose job it is, in such an interconnected ecosystem, to fix the situation. Another editor I spoke to, Anitra Budd, the first black woman to become an acquiring editor at Coffee House Press and now a freelancer, also wonders how much responsibility people of color have to their own community. . .

Budd believes too that writers of color and other minorities shouldn't feel the need to either write about their experiences or to pander to a white audience. . .

"Publishing is all about risk," Budd says, and this is true—from the financial risk publishers and agents take on to that of authors choosing to dedicate their lives only to writing; the personal risk that belongs to the trio of author, agent, and editor if a book doesn't sell, because their jobs and reputations may be on the line; and the wider sense of cultural risk, the stories and books that can change people. "There's a big difference between cultural dissemination and sales numbers," Budd believes, and she points to Citizen, by Claudia Rankine, which is unlikely to have gotten a huge advance, as an example. "I mean, my God—it's changing people, it's changing people in front of our very eyes."

219jennybhatt
Apr. 19, 2016, 11:31 pm

>218 southernbooklady:: I read this just yesterday as well and wanted to mull over it some more. This part below is, to me, true and worrying. It's the same as it is with any minority group in society as well, as we know. Sad.

"Mejias also sees the situation being such that writers of color aren't allowed to fail the same way white writers are allowed to. If one book by a white author doesn't sell, no one at the publishing house says they shouldn't acquire any books by white authors the next season. But if a book by, for instance, a Puerto Rican author doesn't sell, the publisher may take its sweet time in "taking a risk" on another. . . "

220southernbooklady
Apr. 20, 2016, 8:53 am

>219 jennybhatt: And that is exactly why I find the labels so problematic. No one would bat an eye if a manuscript was refused because "vampire novels aren't selling well anymore" (hey, a girl can dream!) or "the last book we had about a nanny didn't do so well." But to treat an minority group that way is profoundly prejudiced. It encapsulates what is meant by "institutionalized racism."

And speaking of institutionalized racism, a bookseller friend of mine is very hopped up about a book coming out from Mulholland Books, Underground Airlines by Ben Winters. Due in July. One of those "what if there was no Civil War" stories. She told me that when she was talking to the author, he told her that he had to fight to have a black man on the cover of the book -- apparently because books with black men on the cover don't sell. That is how ingrained racism is in this country. Just the picture of a black man on a book will make (white) people instinctively avoid it.

221sturlington
Apr. 20, 2016, 9:40 am

I know this is old, but it's relevant: http://jezebel.com/5321358/are-black-covers-segregated-in-bookstores

And she points out that the idea that "black covers don't sell" is a self-fulfilling prophecy:

I have found few examples of books with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them. Until that happens more often we can't know if it's true that white people won't buy books about people of colour. All we can say is that poorly publicised books with "black covers" don't sell. The same is usually true of poorly publicised books with "white covers."


And: http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2012/12/10/it-matters-if-youre-black-or-white-th...

This is only about YA, but it matters because most readers get hooked on reading (or turned off of it) at a young age.

222jennybhatt
Apr. 20, 2016, 9:44 am

Oh my God, yes. People of color on covers -- that's an entire topic worthy of discussion. Even novels that are set in other countries suffer from this so that we might typically only get a silhouette of a man or a woman rather than the actual person of color. Wow.

223sturlington
Apr. 20, 2016, 10:28 am

Although I have to say, as a matter of personal preference, I don't like any people to be shown on the cover. I prefer more abstract covers. But what I hate the most in terms of cover, because it's boring and expected, is generic thin white woman with long hair, usually focusing on only parts of her body or showing her from the back.

224sturlington
Apr. 20, 2016, 10:38 am

Looking through my books to see if I have any diverse covers. Some of the Octavia Butler covers are gorgeous, for example. Here are some I found. I think they're all very nice and not at all generic. That's an advantage too of being forced to match the cover to the book's content--the cover artist needs to employ a little creativity. One of the main reasons I own paper books is for the cover, and they have become depressing in their sameness lately.

225LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Apr. 20, 2016, 12:43 pm

Covers that use stock photos such as described in #223 pretty much guarantee I won't pick up the book. They've come to signify a very specific dull petty bourgeois voice (and yes it is predominantly female and white and straight) droning in the most predictable way about two or three stereotypical plots. It is distressing when they are applied to good, original stuff (case in point: Elena Ferrante's My brilliant friend sequence in Europa editions and translations. Awful.)

In general, I am used to and would always prefer the, as it seems to me, non-American* tendency to subject/author neutral, abstract or graphic book design, for example:

 

One of these is by an Algerian man, the other by a white Frenchwoman. One is about the 1960s Algeria, the other an experimental "new novel" about a novel. This is colour (and gender/ethno/orientation etc.)-blindness, and obviously it has positive and negative sides, the latter especially from an American point of view which is all about bombarding commercial "target groups" and "niches". Personally, I feel that in this case it's more positive than negative. How can it be useful for covers to create pre-conceptions about books? To the reader, I mean--clearly it's useful to the marketers.

*I say non-American because, while I still frequently encounter such abstract or non-figurative, minimalist design in books published elsewhere, it seems almost non-existent for current fiction by North American publishers. Exceptions exist, of course--the NYRB classics line, some Penguins...

226southernbooklady
Bearbeitet: Apr. 20, 2016, 12:53 pm

There's this idea in American book design that the cover is supposed to titillate -- to tease the viewer about what can be found in the book. Fundamentally, the philosophy that puts women with long hair standing on a beach on the cover of women's fiction is the same as the one that puts scantily dressed girls in seedy hotel rooms on the covers of pulp/noir fiction.

That said, I like beautifully design books and covers. And clever ones:

227jennybhatt
Apr. 20, 2016, 1:08 pm

>226 southernbooklady:: Ooh, I do like that cover. And the blurb there is pretty inviting too. :) Must add that to my "check-out" list. Thanks.

228LolaWalser
Apr. 20, 2016, 2:20 pm

>226 southernbooklady:

See, when I see that I think "cute" because it's a serious, non-fiction subject (so a visual gag is unexpected and prized--aren't they clever and am I not clever for responding to it), but I'd detest it on a fiction.

229southernbooklady
Apr. 20, 2016, 2:41 pm

>228 LolaWalser: Like this?

230LolaWalser
Apr. 20, 2016, 2:42 pm

>229 southernbooklady:

That's a satire, I think? Humour goes with humour, but yes, I'm not a fan of that one either.

231southernbooklady
Apr. 20, 2016, 2:53 pm

The point is that the covers are a deliberate engagement. Designed to appeal, to attract, to trick a book buyer into picking up a book. Sometimes it is just "marketing," sometimes it is almost the first statement of what the rest of the books will say.

And sometimes it's just hilariously bad:

232LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Apr. 20, 2016, 2:56 pm

>231 southernbooklady:

Of course the point is to engage and appeal but not only pictorial covers do that.

233LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Apr. 20, 2016, 3:00 pm

By the way, it looks as if #231 is a GOOD cover, for the book that one appears to be.

234jennybhatt
Bearbeitet: Apr. 28, 2016, 9:50 am

This article about the resurgence of noir in literature is interesting. The main point is about how modern noir is where the problem is not the individual (the criminal/perpetrator) but the world, so it is a form of protest literature. And, I like, particularly, the point about how, it needs to be different from classic noir by addressing racism and sexism.

"I look forward to readers who will point out exciting works that I’ve missed — because a true contemporary noir renaissance will need more. More female noir, black noir, Latino noir, queer and trans noir. More noir from English writers outside the Anglo-American axis, and more translation to and from other languages and cultures. It must be global, and it must be diverse.

Of course it’s not up to me: tomorrow’s writers will choose the modes they think best to attack prejudice and injustice. I hope some of them choose noir. Light can slant harshly though Venetian blinds in most any neighborhood on the planet; tough-as-nails private investigators can come in any gender identity or color of the rainbow; doom-driven crooks can ride from first kiss to gas chamber with a member of the same sex as easily as the opposite. Noir does not belong to America, or the ’50s, or some set of lily-white literary gatekeepers: it’s your world… if you’re hard-boiled enough to live there."

ETA to add link, apologies: https://medium.com/electric-literature/noir-is-protest-literature-thats-why-it-s....

Sorry.

235sturlington
Apr. 28, 2016, 8:39 am

>234 jennybhatt: Interesting. Noir is an adaptable genre; I love to see what modern writers do with it. Can you post the link?

And here's a hopeful story: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/02/26/467969663/wheres-the-color-in-kids-lit...

236jennybhatt
Apr. 28, 2016, 9:50 am

>235 sturlington:: My apologies for the missing link. I've just edited and added. :)

And, yes, I've been following the Marley Dias story. Such a cool kid.

237LolaWalser
Apr. 28, 2016, 9:58 am

>235 sturlington:

So cute.

>234 jennybhatt:

it needs to be different from classic noir by addressing racism and sexism.

That's quite a project. There are probably generational (and gender?) differences, but my impression is that fans of noir, like fans of James Bond, like it precisely for those traits.

Any fans of old stuff, really. Sometimes they'll mask it, but basically it's exactly the "un-PCness" of it that they like.

238southernbooklady
Apr. 28, 2016, 11:58 am

>237 LolaWalser: it's exactly the "un-PCness" of it that they like.

It's the male fantasy that they like.

239sturlington
Apr. 28, 2016, 12:26 pm

Lately I've been trying to read early noir by women -- really interesting stuff but hard to find. The article mentions Jessica Jones, an intriguing example of modern noir.

I like noir because it views the world in morally complex ways. Shades of gray, rather than black and white. I've read a couple of examples that have tackled issues of race, in clumsy but interesting ways.

240.Monkey.
Apr. 28, 2016, 12:34 pm

>235 sturlington: Love that!

>239 sturlington: Yes, indeed. Just because much of it has issues, doesn't mean people only like it for nasty reasons, that's ridiculous.

241LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Apr. 28, 2016, 12:57 pm

>240 .Monkey.:

Just because much of it has issues, doesn't mean people only like it for nasty reasons,

I didn't say that. ETA: sorry, I guess "exactly" was misleading in that sentence. But no, I don't think it's necessarily the "only" thing fans like--as someone who loves film noir and still watches James Bond I should know! :)

>238 southernbooklady:, >239 sturlington:

This notion (un-"PC" is more attractive?/interesting?/exciting? than "PC") also came up in the context of sci-fi, Rambling, offensive – and unbeatable: beam me up, old-school sci-fi. The argument is older, of course. It can be framed as "what makes for conflict", or "what best makes for conflict"--except that in older literature it rarely comes up as "conflict", rather there's some status quo that's presented uncritically or sympathetically or enthusiastically--in short, straight white men rule--everyone else drools.

242LolaWalser
Apr. 28, 2016, 1:01 pm

Lest it seem like a digression, I think it's something worth considering because you've probably come across it in some guise--"PC" or "diverse" is boring--"boring" seems to be the "safe" negative thing to say.

Ever since reading that article about sci-fi I've been thinking about counter-arguments but one should first understand what exactly is the argument, and I still don't quite get it.

243sturlington
Apr. 28, 2016, 1:16 pm

Speaking of this argument about PC--That story I posted about the 11-year-old girl looking for examples of children's book about black girls also appeared on Mashable and the comments were predictably trollish, but also, I think, bizarre in their vitriol. They were attacking this girl for being racist and PC, but I had to wonder how many of these presumably white, quite often male adults had ventured to read a book about a young black girl? I would be willing to bet that if they did read, they remained within the comfortable confines of their assumptions and prejudices--old school sci-fi, is good, or the misogynistic flavor of crime. And yet they were attacking this girl because she wanted to read about someone like herself and was having a hard time finding the reading material.

244LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Apr. 28, 2016, 1:44 pm

>243 sturlington:

Omg I can't believe even a kid gets trolled! What scumbags. I don't know what's worse, scumbaggy jumping on a kid or "reverse-racism" idiocy.

245LolaWalser
Apr. 28, 2016, 1:45 pm

Interesting:

BBC Makes Diversity a Priority, Pledges Half Its On-Air Roles and Workforce Will Be Female By 2020

Last week, the BBC rolled out a diversity package wherein they pledge the following by 2020:

half the on-air talent on their TV and radio programs will be female
half of their 21,000-person workforce, including leadership positions, will be female
15% of their workforce and leadership would come from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds
BAME people will the same percentage of on-air and leading roles
in addition, disabled and LGBTQIA people would each make up 8% in these categories

246librorumamans
Bearbeitet: Apr. 28, 2016, 3:28 pm

>237 LolaWalser: It's ... the "un-PCness" of it that they like.

>238 southernbooklady: It's the male fantasy that they like.

Which sounds to me rather like the controversy over the Hugo Awards having been hijacked by the Sad Puppies (Wikipedia) yet again this year, according to The Guardian.

Fixed the link

247LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Apr. 28, 2016, 4:29 pm

>246 librorumamans:

Your link needs fixing! (it loops back to this thread)

Yes, I noticed people discussing this again in the SF group, and you make a good point--from what I remember, at least for several notable "puppies" diversity i.e. treating people as equals regardless of race, gender, orientation, is a huge bone of contention. There's one egregious bastard in particular who speaks of non-whites as lower life forms and thinks women don't deserve the vote or some such. These people publish, are read, have fans...

248librorumamans
Apr. 28, 2016, 3:33 pm

>247 LolaWalser: Your link needs fixing! (it loops back to this thread)

Done. Weirdly, the actual link was correct but I made a typo in the html: hfref instead of href.

249LolaWalser
Apr. 28, 2016, 4:31 pm

>238 southernbooklady:, >246 librorumamans:

I don't want to divert this thread but I've been thinking about this "male fantasy" thing a lot recently; will take it up again in the Misc. thread.

250jennybhatt
Apr. 29, 2016, 8:50 am

>249 LolaWalser:: Could you please direct me to that Misc. thread too? I was going to respond here re. the PC aspect but if the discussion is going to move, I'll go there. Thanks.

251LolaWalser
Apr. 29, 2016, 10:36 am

>250 jennybhatt:

Jenny, sure, the Misc. thread's here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/221031 but I was just gonna natter in digression about James Bond and whatnot--if you want to comment about the "PC" aspect maybe it would be better to continue topic with the link below if the thread's too long, or just keep it here? Whatever suits best, of course!

252LolaWalser
Apr. 29, 2016, 11:48 am

This connects to the conversation about Watkins and Marlon James... (Sorry about the caps)

CHARLOTTE BRONTË MAY HAVE STARTED THE FIRE, BUT JEAN RHYS BURNED DOWN THE HOUSE: WIDE SARGASSO SEA AND THE LIMITS OF BRONTE FEMINISM

253southernbooklady
Mai 4, 2016, 1:13 pm

Since we've been talking about the publishing industry here, this might be the place to mention that Bookslut is shutting down. There's a great interview with Jessica Crispin here:

http://www.vulture.com/2016/05/rip-bookslut-2002-2016.html

I've got to say, she may have been an industry outsider, but I'm going to miss her attitude:

A couple of newspapers refused to use the word Bookslut, and so did your parents. Did you ever regret the name?

No, fuck them! I was working at Planned Parenthood — at the time, it was like a babe space. One time my co-worker gave me a pap smear during a meeting. It was just a weird commune mentality, so it didn’t occur to me, honestly, that it might be a problem. Why wouldn’t you be totally comfortable with your co-worker swabbing your cervix?

254LolaWalser
Mai 4, 2016, 1:27 pm

>253 southernbooklady:

Ha, I was just snarky about it elsewhere--didn't like how she plays fast and loose with terms like feminism and culture... Name (Bookslut) is familiar but I never followed it...

It reminds though that I have a bookmark from a Naked Girls Reading event. Shows what it says on the tin.

255jennybhatt
Mai 4, 2016, 11:11 pm

>253 southernbooklady:: I read that interview earlier too. I was a longtime subscriber of her blog, Bookslut, mainly because she and her writers highlighted authors that didn't get airtime elsewhere. I didn't agree with everything she said or wrote but that's OK. I wanted to hear/read those different POVs as a way to check/question my own. I didn't change most of my perspectives because of her either, for that matter. But, I appreciated the food for thought that her corner of the internet offered.

I wish there were more like her. She's right about other book-related sites and how, in order to make money, they have to become more populist or clickbait-y. I agree with her that it is a sad state of affairs -- what's happened to literary criticism, both offline and online (it's all mostly online nowadays anyway).

256jennybhatt
Mai 5, 2016, 10:31 pm

Another article about online lit mags and their diversity issue. Makes good points like: how can a list about novels set in Texas not include any non-white authors or stories?

http://www.deadendfollies.com/blog/online-literary-magazines-diversity-problem

For what it's worth, I think Electric Literature has gotten better with including more women. The Rumpus is doing this thing with making more women writers of color visible through a monthly interview column. The Millions remains hopelessly white, though they've now put a woman editor at the top. I'm not including Book Riot here, though they are probably the most diverse of this lot -- but, only because, for me, they cater to the under-30 or even under-25 crowd.

257southernbooklady
Mai 6, 2016, 8:33 am

>256 jennybhatt: The Millions remains hopelessly white

Funny, because they just published the review I did of Desiree Cooper's new book, Know the Mother.

258sturlington
Bearbeitet: Mai 6, 2016, 9:35 am

>257 southernbooklady: Congrats, I just saw that on their home page. I thought your review was terrific and I'm happy it's getting exposure, so please don't take the rest of my post as a knock on that. I also saw that the Millions has an interview with Victor LaValle on their home page, and granted, he seems to be everyone's darling right now, but he is also very upfront in the way he talks about race and people's problems with race, and I think he is an exciting writer for many reasons. So my observations of the Millions, since it's now been a couple of years since I regularly visited the site, may no longer be accurate or they may be purposely trying to change.

>256 jennybhatt: I used to read all the big book sites, but they have the same problem as the rest of the Internet, which has turned into a morass of nothing to read. In order to get clicks and pageviews and ad dollars, everything is either really generic and safe or clickbaity and faux-outrageous (the second applies to Book Riot, imo). The Millions, for example, is very well written and and has a distinct style but in many ways it's a reflection of the small NC town where I live where you can't throw a rock without hitting a writer. It's firmly situated in the bubble--by that, I mean a kind of safe, white-ish, liberal place where everyone agrees and gets along and has a glass of wine. I don't mean this as a pejorative--I like living in the bubble for my daily life, but I know I'm living there, I know it's easy, I know I have absolutely no effect on state politics because my vote is diluted by living there, and quite often it can be dull! When I noticed this about the Millions, I stopped reading it, because it was just boring. If you're not paying attention, drifting into the bubble can happen all too easily.

I think there's definitely a cycle of a publication starting out doing something new and exciting and attention-getting, and then in order to sustain that attention (and the cash flow), gradually becoming blander and safer and less willing to push the envelope. If you're not willing to do that, then you're going to be like Jessa Crispin and, once you start getting bored with what you're doing, you'll move on and (I hope) start something new and exciting and attention-getting. Here's a quote from her that gets to what I'm saying:

Well, the only reason why Bookslut was interesting was because it didn’t make money, and when I realized the sacrifices I was going to have to make in order for it to make money, it wasn’t worth it. It used to be you could get an advertiser for a month; now it’s all directly linked to how many pageviews you get. So you can’t write about obscure literature that only ten people care about and make eight cents. You have to write about the books that all the people already know about. And then it just orients you toward clickbait, and you have to come up with stunts and your design has to be beautiful.


That essay you posted, which I enjoyed, was prompted by a post on Electric Literature about the top 10 Texas books. Which is just undisguised clickbait and should not be taken at all seriously. I understand why it set him off, but when I see any kind of list or number in the title of a post, I completely disregard the site. It's like putting popup ads on top of your content. If you don't respect me, why should I read you? Which is basically why I have stopped reading pretty much everything on commercial sites lately, excepting the NYT.

Ok, this devolved into a bit of a rant, so if anyone has any interesting book sites to recommend, please share!

259jennybhatt
Mai 6, 2016, 12:41 pm

>257 southernbooklady:: My apologies. I guess I spoke too soon. Congrats on your review. I'm headed over to read it now. I guess my comment was more in a general, longer-term sense. They've always been good about including a lot of women, though -- give them a lot of credit for that.

260jennybhatt
Mai 6, 2016, 12:46 pm

>258 sturlington: Yes, I know just what you mean. I read that interview with Jessa Crispin and found myself nodding my head several times.

The Toast is a great place for book stuff online, though. They've done a nice essay on forgotten women writers by Anne Boyd Rioux, who runs a blog/site called Bluestocking on the same topic. This one is on Alice Dunbar Nelson. I'm going to have to look into her work.

http://the-toast.net/2016/05/05/alice-dunbar-nelson/

"In her writing, Alice took a very different path than her first husband (Paul Dunbar). While Paul had gained fame for writing plantation poetry, Alice wrote many stories, such as those in her fabulous collection The Goodness of St. Roque and Other Stories (1899), featuring multiracial Creole characters in New Orleans. She didn’t describe her characters as white or black, but simply described their varying skin tones and coloring. One of her best stories, the oft-anthologized “Sister Josepha” from The Goodness of St. Roque, seems on the surface to be a local-color story full of French patois and the Vieux Carre atmosphere of New Orleans. Close reading, however, reveals it to be the story of an orphan girl, a beauty of unknown parentage and indeterminate racial status, forced to live in a convent to escape the common sexual exploitation of multiracial women."

261sturlington
Mai 6, 2016, 12:54 pm

>260 jennybhatt: I'll check it out, thanks!

262southernbooklady
Mai 6, 2016, 1:34 pm

Is Alice Dunbar Nelson really "forgotten"? I think of her and Zora Neale Hurston as being of the same era/milieu. I'm most familiar with her diaries though -- Give Us Each Day, edited by Gloria Hull.

Fun fact -- she was bisexual.
Not so fun fact -- Paul Lawrence Dunbar once almost beat her to death.

263jennybhatt
Mai 6, 2016, 11:12 pm

>262 southernbooklady: I know of and have read Zora Neale Hurston but must confess that I did not know of Alice Dunbar Nelson. I also know and have read some of Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poetry and plays but, again, did not know that his wife was an equal in terms of creativity. I'm definitely going to be looking into her work some more because of how this article described it.

PS Really liked your review of Desiree Cooper's new short story collection. I must get that shortly too. Thanks. :)

264jennybhatt
Mai 6, 2016, 11:32 pm

This is a fascinating study of a collection of 10,287 reviews from the Sunday Book Review of The New York Times published since 2000.

"As you can see, the results are jarring. Book reviewers are three or four times more likely to use words like “husband,” “marriage,” and “mother” to describe books written by women between 2000 and 2009, and nearly twice as likely to use words like “love,” “beauty,” and “sex.” Conversely, reviewers are twice as likely to use words like “president” and “leader,” as well as “argument” and “theory,” to describe books written by men. The results are almost too good in their confirmation of gender stereotypes. New York Times book reviews overwhelmingly suggest that women tend to write about domestic issues and affairs of the heart, while men thrive in writing about “serious” issues such as politics. It’s not that women don’t write about politics or men don’t write about feelings and families. It’s just that there is a very strong likelihood that if you open the pages of the Sunday Book Review, you will be jettisoned back into a linguistic world that more nearly resembles our Victorian ancestors."

"VIDA and The New York Times have done a great service in pursuing better gender representation. But gender representation does not necessarily equal less gender discrimination. The pattern is bigger than a head count—it’s also about the patterns of ideas and words, which have proven far more enduring and unchanging than we previously would have thought."

https://newrepublic.com/article/132531/women-write-family-men-write-war

265LolaWalser
Mai 8, 2016, 11:19 am

Ummm... I'll play Captain Obvious once again (I read the article but don't see this addressed at all--if so, it's a shocking fault)--are they saying this
"Book reviewers are three or four times more likely to use words like “husband,” “marriage,” and “mother” to describe books written by women between 2000 and 2009, and nearly twice as likely to use words like “love,” “beauty,” and “sex.” Conversely, reviewers are twice as likely to use words like “president” and “leader,” as well as “argument” and “theory,” to describe books written by men."


does not reflect actual themes in reviewed books? That men and women are in fact writing about the same things but get reviewed differently?

266jennybhatt
Mai 9, 2016, 3:25 am

>265 LolaWalser:

"That men and women are in fact writing about the same things but get reviewed differently?"

That's how I interpreted it. A while ago, I'd read an article that talked about how Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections had been reviewed very differently because it was Franzen. Had it been written by, say, Jane Smiley, reviewers would have picked up on the themes differently.

267southernbooklady
Mai 9, 2016, 8:59 am

>264 jennybhatt:, >265 LolaWalser:, >266 jennybhatt: The article didn't break the reviews down by genre, so there's some context missing:

We examined a collection of 10,287 reviews from the Sunday Book Review of The New York Times published since 2000. We labeled the genders of the reviewer and the author under review and then ran tests to identify language in the reviews that was indicative of the different genders. The tests return a series of “most distinctive words”: these are the individual words that distinguish one group from the other.


I can't tell if women get reviewed differently than men, or if the books by women that get reviewed are different from the ones by men that are reviewed. I suspect it is a combination of the two, but the way the study is described, you can't really tell.

268jennybhatt
Mai 9, 2016, 9:27 am

>267 southernbooklady:: Fair point re. missing context. I guess I assumed that the genre was mostly literary fiction because this is the NYT and they haven't done reviews of other genres till rather recently, right? So, wouldn't that be a fairly safe assumption to make?

269sturlington
Mai 9, 2016, 9:28 am

>268 jennybhatt: No, the NYT reviews a fair amount of nonfiction.

270southernbooklady
Mai 9, 2016, 10:01 am

There are periodic complaints that it doesn't review enough fiction, in fact.

271LolaWalser
Mai 9, 2016, 1:27 pm

You'd think that the first thing they'd need to establish is whether women and men are in fact writing the same sort of books. The conclusions are meaningless without that.

A while ago, I'd read an article that talked about how Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections had been reviewed very differently because it was Franzen.

I can't speak to the comparison with Smiley, whom I've never read, but I remember the things I liked about The Corrections... It told a story about a family, intimately, but it had a larger frame than that typically found in "domestic" fiction. There was, for instance, the critique of modern education and, what I liked best, an excellent description of the post-Communist neoliberal takeover and shenanigans in Eastern Europe. I don't know how common or uncommon elements such as these may be in fiction by women, but this reminds me of something I wondered about recently--the apparent paucity of the erudite female author. It can't have anything to do with lack of education--there are tons of women with superb educations and wide culture. But, for whatever reason, female counterparts to Bellow, Updike, Robertson Davies, Mann, Eliot and similar seem... not to be there? (This has nothing to do with "greatness", it is specifically a question of style and theme. Flannery O'Connor is GREAT, but she flaunts no erudition. Neither do Faulkner or Hemingway, say.)

Can you think of a female author's book similar to The magic mountain, Humboldt's gift etc.--books steeped in intellectuality?

Mary McCarthy maybe?

272LolaWalser
Mai 9, 2016, 1:32 pm

Well, George Eliot, I suppose... I only read Middlemarch, though. But that's a 19th century novel, not really comparable to the type of book I was thinking about.

273southernbooklady
Mai 9, 2016, 4:23 pm

>270 southernbooklady: Can you think of a female author's book similar to The magic mountain, Humboldt's gift etc.--books steeped in intellectuality?

Donna Tartt writes like that. Andrea Barrett. Margaret Atwood. Pat Barker. Just off the top of my head.

274LolaWalser
Mai 9, 2016, 5:09 pm

>273 southernbooklady:

Hm, of those, I only read Tartt's The secret history and Little friend. I really don't see the slightest resemblance to Mann there. I suppose the former arguably displays the author's academic education or interest, but that's not really what I'm talking about. All those mysteries, for example, in non-contemporary or specialised settings would do the same.

Rather, it's a theoretical and theorising bent, sententiousness, blithe assumption that one can and is in fact called upon to enlighten, inform and teach. It is grand in scope; such authors show no doubt that they are able or welcome to generalize about the Great Themes. They present their ideas as universal without reservations.

It's not about showing you have knowledge or education about something, but erudition, a "Renaissance-man"'s equipment AND point of view.

275LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Mai 9, 2016, 5:16 pm

Iris Murdoch?

Whatever her value, it's notable she doesn't have the same stature, or recognition, popularity, as the male "intellectual" writers (or, perhaps we can call this philosophical fiction?)

Beauvoir? (have not read her fiction) Similar remark.

And it's still very few.

276LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Mai 9, 2016, 5:45 pm

Sontag? Have not read her fiction and it doesn't seem to be highly rated.

P.S. >273 southernbooklady: Thanks for the refs, btw.

277southernbooklady
Mai 9, 2016, 6:01 pm

>274 LolaWalser: Rather, it's a theoretical and theorising bent, sententiousness, blithe assumption that one can and is in fact called upon to enlighten, inform and teach. It is grand in scope

Well, more loosely I was thinking of novelists that were philosophical in nature, that explored "grand themes" even if they don't have a "grand scope." Barker, for example writes fiction, that is also an extended anti-war argument. One of her books is ostensibly a mystery about whether a young man really murdered his family, but is really questioning what place violent or sociopathic people have among us.

Iris Murdoch would also be on my list (I was reaching for women who were still writing which is why I didn't mention her). I think her writing intimidates people. Doris Lessing might also fit your criteria.

278LolaWalser
Mai 9, 2016, 6:24 pm

>277 southernbooklady:

I was thinking of novelists that were philosophical in nature, that explored "grand themes" even if they don't have a "grand scope."

Yes, but more than just scope, there's this element of broadcasting to the public, in a loud address, because your voice is mighty and important and everyone is "naturally" interested in your opinion. That's what the men I mentioned have, in spades. Or conviction or attitude that they have it, at any rate.

I think Murdoch and Lessing both felt they were on the margins. Bellow and similar were very much "in the centre", urban intellectuals whose books and dicta were eagerly anticipated, reviewed, discussed. Mann was treated like a personification of the "best of" German and European culture in his lifetime. No woman ever had such stature. I mean, conferred upon her, OR assumed by her, however one comes by these things.

279jennybhatt
Mai 9, 2016, 11:37 pm

"Can you think of a female author's book similar to The magic mountain, Humboldt's gift etc.--books steeped in intellectuality?"

Iris Murdoch, yes. Mary McCarthy, yes. I haven't read much Doris Lessing, so hard to say.

I find A S Byatt to be both erudite and intellectual in her fiction and non-fiction. She's not so popular beyond Possession, which is, itself, filled with a lot of exquisite knowledge and larger themes about the literary and socio-political world she was writing about. I found that her Frederica Trilogy tackled "Great Themes" too. Unfortunately, again, not that well-known. The Children's Book was another one -- crammed with so much more than just the domestic story of a family.

Zadie Smith is another and I'm looking forward to her next novel. She writes multi-cultural and socio-political novels, starting with the extraordinary White Teeth, which I still find hard to accept that she wrote in her early-20s.

I have not read her fiction, but I understand that Siri Hustvedt would qualify. Certainly, her essays/articles/non-fiction, which I have read, are impressive.

I found Arundhati Roy's fiction to be more intellectual and encompassing great themes too -- sadly, she's more focused on non-fiction now.

Margaret Atwood too, I think. I found Alias Grace a rather bigger novel than just the fictional retelling of a woman criminal. I haven't read anything else by her except The Handmaid's Tale and the odd short story. But, she'd come close, I think.

I haven't read but I understand, from reviews and articles, that Anne Tyler's latest trilogy could qualify. It covers the last hundred years and includes, I understand, a lot of larger themes of American life.

There's Annie Proulx. I remember, when I first read her in the late-90s, I kept thinking that she's a pseudonym for a man (sorry, my past biases are showing). Whatever people think of The Shipping News, for example, it is an amazingly-written book about a lot more than a down-on-his-luck man who can't catch a break. Sadly, the movie destroyed the little public interest there was in this book. And, I know that critics were sharply divided when the book first came out.

So, that's my limited repertoire. I wish there were more women writers like the ones above. I fear that there are and I just don't know of them because of either the lack of enough PR by their publishers or the not-so-good reviews they get as this article had pointed out.

I do understand that this article does not clarify things re. whether they're comparing similar books. But, even at a macro-level, if books by women are generally associated with a certain subset of words and those by men are described with a different subset of words, that tells us there is a kind of inequality. I agree with all of you that the article does not help us ascertain whether the inequality is due to how the books are reviewed or whether it is because there aren't many women writers focusing on larger themes beyond the domestic/personal.

280southernbooklady
Mai 10, 2016, 8:52 am

>277 southernbooklady: I found Arundhati Roy's fiction to be more intellectual and encompassing great themes too -- sadly, she's more focused on non-fiction now.

The only Roy novel I have read is The God of Small Things, which I adored. But it is not written with that quality that Lola is speaking of... "this element of broadcasting to the public, in a loud address, because your voice is mighty and important and everyone is "naturally" interested in your opinion. "

I do find myself wondering how much of that is inherent in their work, and how much we impose on it, from without, and how much is more a product of its era. There was a time, after all, when great philosophical questions and themes were debated via fiction. Certainly in Thomas Mann's time this was still true.

It's not so true in this day and age. Narrative and story seem more important to us than some overall message, and writers seem to be speaking to the reader, not "the human race."

281LolaWalser
Mai 10, 2016, 9:19 am

>279 jennybhatt:

Thanks, I hope I wasn't too misleading. Just to be clear, by no means do I mean that something like The magic mountain is BETTER than something like Pride and prejudice. There's no reason why women (or anyone for that matter) would have to undertake projects like the former; I'm just wondering why they don't.

I didn't mention Eco yesterday because I'm dubious about the purely literary quality of his work, but he's another example of an author of erudition without (as far as I can tell) a female counterpart.

Actually--I haven't read his fiction and I think less of his non-fiction than most--David Foster Wallace might be another. If there's a woman-authored book "like" Infinite jest, I haven't heard of it. (Again, not meant in the sense of "equal worth", value, literary quality...)

>280 southernbooklady:

There was a time, after all, when great philosophical questions and themes were debated via fiction. Certainly in Thomas Mann's time this was still true.

Yes, and I think it's important to "compartmentalize" the question by period. But, however you slice it, it seems there's a standing tendency, IF an author sets out to describe and explain "life, universe and everything", that they will be male.

282librorumamans
Bearbeitet: Mai 10, 2016, 3:00 pm

>271 LolaWalser: I wondered about recently--the apparent paucity of the erudite female author.

A very interesting observation — thanks for making it.

I agree that Middlemarch fits in here.

I've scrolled through my catalogue and, indeed, find very little that compares to, say, Mann. Some suggestions that scrolled past:
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, in some of her books?
  • Irène Nemirovsky
  • Anne Carson
  • Marilynne Robinson might fit even though her books are highly domestic
  • Alison Bechdel's Fun home is deeply layered in a way that reminds me of Davies' Fifth business
  • Hanna Moscovitch (Wikipedia) is a playwright and not widely known, perhaps, but she deals with large issues like the Holocaust and the Intifada in two- or three-person plays of considerable complexity and concision.
Corrected typos; added link

283LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Mai 10, 2016, 1:52 pm

>282 librorumamans:

Oh, I don't think I can take the credit for the observation--it's easy enough to make and I'm sure I've seen it discussed in some form or other before. :)

I'm not familiar with much work by the authors you mention (when I know the authors at all)...

It's not that there are no "intellectual" female authors, or those who address "Great Themes", or those who exhibit some specific expertise... but some combination of all that, and scope, and... AMBITION, perhaps--yes, maybe that's the concept that's missing the most--for whatever reason seems to be less common to female than male authors.

Mind you, it's not necessarily some huge mystery--a big part of "being Thomas Mann", or Saul Bellow etc. is that people believed they had authority to speak about anything under the sun, because men in general have authority (are believed to have authority) in a way women don't or at least didn't.

But for every individual woman author it's a valid question--dear Miss, Mrs or Ms, Frau Doktor or Professor, are you interested in writing novels "like" Doktor Faustus, or, etc...? If yes, but you don't, why not? And if not why not, too?

After all, plenty of women have enjoyed books by Mann or Eco, so why wouldn't (some) women also want to write books like that? If there is some obstacle, it must lie outside, in the circumstances, rather than inherent tendencies.

284southernbooklady
Mai 10, 2016, 2:02 pm

Your reference to Eco made me think of Magdelena Tulli, the Polish novelist. "Ambition" is not a word I would use for her as a person -- she's famously reclusive and rarely speaks to the press -- but the scope of her fiction is ambitious in the same way that Eco's is (she translated him into Polish). She's got that sort of view from on high of humanity going for her in her fiction.

285LolaWalser
Mai 10, 2016, 2:10 pm

>284 southernbooklady:

interesting, thanks.

286jennybhatt
Mai 10, 2016, 2:33 pm

>280 southernbooklady::

“The only Roy novel I have read is The God of Small Things, which I adored. But it is not written with that quality that Lola is speaking of... "this element of broadcasting to the public, in a loud address, because your voice is mighty and important and everyone is "naturally" interested in your opinion.“”

That’s interesting because, in India, many would describe Roy’s writing in exactly that manner. Particularly with that book because it tackles ideological conflicts and sociological issues like casteism, classism, and nationalism head-on. When I first read it, I admit that I paid more attention to the story because of the non-linear narrative and the lush language. But, on a second read, the larger themes were more in evidence. Plus, it helped that I had read “around” the book a bit in terms of the post-Independence history of South India. Sometimes, context alters perceptions. And, as I mentioned, India saw Roy's voice/writing differently than readers in the West.

>281 LolaWalser::

“Just to be clear, by no means do I mean that something like The magic mountain is BETTER than something like Pride and prejudice. There's no reason why women (or anyone for that matter) would have to undertake projects like the former; I'm just wondering why they don’t.”

I got it and agree with you — both kinds of books are aiming for different reactions from their readers and this does not make one kind better or worse than the other.

“IF an author sets out to describe and explain "life, universe and everything", that they will be male.”

I agree that fewer women writers undertake this kind of larger project with their writing. My earlier post was simply to say that there are a few, though, who do so. I just don’t think they get their due credit for doing so. Reviewers find it all too easy to write about the superficial details presented in their writing (fiction or non-fiction) rather than the underlying ideologies, socio-political issues, etc., that have been embedded with expertise.

>282 librorumamans::

I haven’t read all those writers either but for Anne Carson and I absolutely agree with her inclusion on such a list. I thought of another one: Nadine Gordimer.

>283 LolaWalser::

But, if ambition is the missing ingredient, as you suggest in the earlier bit, then the obstacle is, indeed, an inherent tendency rather than outside circumstance. Sure, we could debate how much someone's personal ambition is fueled by outside circumstances. But, writers, for the most part, have to rely mostly on their inner resources to get a work of any decent length out into the world and, for that, they all need a certain amount of ambition and hubris. So, I agree with the latter part of what you say: it has to be an issue of outside circumstance.

My earlier examples of women writers were drawn from living writers. If we look further back for women writers who could equal the likes of Thomas Mann, George Eliot (who was mentioned by someone in an earlier post) and Virginia Woolf come to mind. Both had what Woolf called the “androgynous mind”, where their voices and storytelling had a certain authority because they did not allow social conditioning/norms to cause them to conform to popular feminine ideals with their writing. Why have there been only a handful of literary heirs (that we know of) to the likes of Eliot and Woolf? And, why have they not been subjected to the kind of lionization that, say, DFW and Franzen have? So, we come back full circle to the issue of how reviewers and readers tend to perceive or recognize such women writers (of both fiction and non-fiction) -- which is the original hypothesis of the article, right?

287librorumamans
Mai 10, 2016, 2:50 pm

>283 LolaWalser:

Yes; good points.

I banged out #282 and then headed out to an appointment. Similarly, it occurred to me, I don't think there are women playwrights producing work like Tony Kushner or Tom Stoppard. That thought was a consequence of my including Hannah Moskovitch earlier. The scope of her plays isn't, as you say, ambitious in the way of the men we've mentioned.

288LolaWalser
Mai 10, 2016, 3:01 pm

>286 jennybhatt:

But, if ambition is the missing ingredient, as you suggest in the earlier bit, then the obstacle is, indeed, an inherent tendency rather than outside circumstance.

I meant ambition as intent to do something, not just an inner drive. And if someone has the ambition to write a book, why not a book "like" X rather than Y?

they all need a certain amount of ambition and hubris.

"Hubris" is an excellent ingredient to consider. That's more or less what I was trying to illustrate in the previous posts talking about men's loud public voices, stance, attitude.

I'm not sure about "androgynous mind" as a concept, for the same reasons I'd baulk at "male" or "female mind". I don't believe those exist. We see books, not minds.

George Eliot consciously imitated the "manner" of male authors she respected (which was the manner of serious, quality literature in her time). I wouldn't call that "androgynous". Or Woolf--it seems an odd thing to say, as she is in many quarters seen as a quintessentially feminine author. But, again, going down this path we start discussing people's "minds" as if we can talk about them meaningfully. I don't think we can.

And, why have they not been subjected to the kind of lionization that, say, DFW and Franzen have? So, we come back full circle to the issue of how reviewers and readers tend to perceive or recognize such women writers (of both fiction and non-fiction) -- which is the original hypothesis of the article, right?

They don't say who or what they reviewed past the genders, nor do they determine independently the themes of the books reviewed, so, no, I can't accept their conclusions as worthwhile. This is just a basic point of how to do research. Presumably they've established a piece of information, a "fact", about frequency of specific terms used to describe books by men or women, and that establishes a difference, but doesn't prove bias.

289LolaWalser
Mai 10, 2016, 3:09 pm

>287 librorumamans:

Ah, the playwrights. I actually discussed this with someone a while back... At the time (and not much has changed) I suggested that theatre (not unlike, say, cinema) presents additional problems for women because they are such collective projects, mounted by companies numbering many people, typically much more expensive, and expensive for more people, than the solitary writing of a book.

290southernbooklady
Mai 10, 2016, 3:18 pm

When I think of pontificating and hubris, I think of Gore Vidal. Now there was a man who was supremely confident in his own authority on whatever subject he decided to speak. I think he wore the mantle of "man of letters" as though it were his due.

I'll admit, I can't think of any women like that. Not fiction writers, anyway. Roy -- to return to Jenny's point above writes from a place of passion and challenges our assumptions, but a belief in the rightness of one's perspective is not exactly the same thing as an confidence in one's own infallibility. Flannery O'Connor, maybe? Not that she regarded herself as infallible, exactly, but she was a deep thinker and did not suffer fools.

291LolaWalser
Mai 10, 2016, 3:32 pm

>290 southernbooklady:

Yes, but her fiction doesn't flaunt erudition in the manner discussed. It's deep, absolutely. But in a different way. Like, as I said, Faulkner or Hemingway. Or, heck, Ecclesiastes. :)

292southernbooklady
Mai 10, 2016, 3:37 pm

>291 LolaWalser: Yes, but her fiction doesn't flaunt erudition in the manner discussed

Did Camille Paglia ever write a novel? :)

293LolaWalser
Mai 10, 2016, 3:40 pm

>292 southernbooklady:

Ha, not that I know of. I doubt she cares about adopting different point of views and doing justice to character, and I'm certain she couldn't pull it off. :P

294librorumamans
Mai 10, 2016, 11:36 pm

So, yes, the ambition of Mann arises in part from what I can see as a particularly male conceit that "I can tame this thing" — this idea, this world, this universe. And so the sainted Thomas sits down and produces his Summa, which in its very title is perhaps a nose-thumbing to everyone antecedent, contemporary, and successive to him. Nor can I imagine anyone but a male, and even a nineteenth-century German male, having the consummate arrogance of Hegel to propose that he had compiled/could compile a comprehensive philosophy of everything.

The erudite authors that Lola (I think) initially mentioned see the hubris in others' attempts at The Big Project: Casaubon in Middlemarch is engaged in his futile attempt to analyse all mythologies, or something like that; and Mann's character Settembrini ensnares himself in the hopeless task of exhaustively classifying human suffering. I'm undecided whether in that case, Mann is also engaging in a bit of nose-thumbing at the rest of the Settembrinis out there, and at his own brother in particular.

295jennybhatt
Mai 11, 2016, 12:31 am

>288 LolaWalser::

"I'm not sure about "androgynous mind" as a concept, for the same reasons I'd baulk at "male" or "female mind". I don't believe those exist. We see books, not minds."

Not my term, of course. It's what Woolf used specifically in A Room of One's Own to explain why, if Shakespeare had a sister, she would not have been able to write like him because of all the odds stacked against her. And, to be clear, she meant a "unity of mind" where the "sex is not conscious of itself". She got the idea from Coleridge:

"And I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man’s brain, the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman’s brain, the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually cooperating. If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine, I thought. But it would be well to test what one meant by man-womanly, and conversely by woman-manly, by pausing and looking at a book or two."

She also described these authoritative writers as writing with the shadow of the "I" (their ego, I suppose, in Freudian terms) always on the page. This, she suggested, and I agree, is not a good thing because, after all, we all bring our biases and prejudices to both our reading and our writing and the more the "I" dominates, the less clarity and resonance there will be in the writing.

As I think back to ARoOO now, I see that we're sort of repeating a lot of the arguments that Woolf presented to those Girton College women. She used authors of her time and before as examples, but the points she made are similar to the ones we've all been circling here. She talked about why male writers had the self-confidence that women writers of her time seemed to lack; why the themes tackled by male writers seemed to hold greater value than those tackled by women; how male writers have had a longer, deeper tradition to call on than female writers; how, as more women emerged from behind closed doors (e.g. for the Suffrage campaign), it made the men feel challenged and thus opt for more self-assertion through their writing; and so on.

I suppose, in the end, I agree with her in the following (sorry for the long quote but indulge me, please). Yes, she had not anticipated how data-driven our present-day society would become. But, she was right, way back then, that if writers allow surveys/measures like this one to sway them from staying true to their vision, their writing will not be honest or worthy of their personal sacrifices.

"No opinion has been expressed, you may say, upon the comparative merits of the sexes, even as writers. That was done purposely, because even if the time has come for such a valuation – and it is far more important at the moment to know how much money women had and how many rooms than to theorise about their capacities – even if the time had come I do not believe that gifts, whether of mind or character, can be weighed like sugar and butter, not even in Cambridge, where they are so adept at putting people into classes and fixing caps on their heads and letters after their names.

All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to private-school stage of human existence where there are ‘sides’, and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot. As people mature, they cease to believe in sides or in Headmasters or in highly ornamental pots.

At any rate, where books are concerned, it is notoriously difficult to fix labels of merit in such a way that they don’t come off. Are not reviews of current literature a perpetual illustration of the difficulty of judgment?… Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes. So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison."


God. I would so love to know what she would have said about this stupid survey, though. :)

296jennybhatt
Mai 11, 2016, 1:41 am

Also, for what it's worth, I don't think that it matters whether the works by women and men authors included in this recent survey were fiction or non-fiction or even whether they covered "great themes" (which, for the purposes of this discussion, really ought to have a common, working definition).

What the survey is aiming to show is how reviewers talk about women authors vs male authors -- the descriptors that are used, as the table shows. And, regardless of the content of their writing, women writers are described more in terms of their roles as mothers/wives/daughters/sisters, while male writers are not defined by their personal relationships but by their subject matter or their individual identities. That deepens stereotypical thinking and biases. I know that I'm more aware of this when I read reviews. For example, reviews or bios of Siri Hustvedt often mention she's Paul Auster's wife. But, the reverse statement in Auster-related reviews is not as frequently encountered. This makes no sense. Hustvedt is quite an authority and intellectual in her own right. She's also written about this in places -- how well-meaning, older men would say to her how it must be great to be married to another author and collaborate, etc., but no one ever said that to Auster. Her works were more often assumed to have been influenced by Auster, but never the other way around.

297LolaWalser
Mai 11, 2016, 9:43 am

>295 jennybhatt:

Woolf's concepts are still of her time, as are George Eliot's and that of every classical female author before. In large part they took on men's value-systems even as they "rebelled" in some ways. (One may compare it to the struggles of the colonised to de-colonise not just material realms but minds, typically conducted in the coloniser's language.)

All talk about "male", "female", "androgynous" minds is based on metaphorical conceits, not fact.

>296 jennybhatt:

I took another look... in >264 jennybhatt: it says:

Book reviewers are three or four times more likely to use words like “husband,” “marriage,” and “mother” to describe books written by women between 2000 and 2009, and nearly twice as likely to use words like “love,” “beauty,” and “sex.” Conversely, reviewers are twice as likely to use words like “president” and “leader,” as well as “argument” and “theory,” to describe books written by men.


Books, not authors. Not that I'm fighting your basic argument, I'm quite willing to believe (and have seen plenty of other evidence) of double standards and biases regarding anything women and men do, including writing.

Yes, I recall what Hustvedt said about being asked if her husband "helped" her etc., it's very telling.

298LolaWalser
Mai 11, 2016, 9:50 am

>294 librorumamans:

Nor can I imagine anyone but a male, and even a nineteenth-century German male, having the consummate arrogance of Hegel to propose that he had compiled/could compile a comprehensive philosophy of everything.

Ha, yes, back when they still thought of philosophy as a science...

299LolaWalser
Mai 11, 2016, 11:20 am

>296 jennybhatt:

Incidentally, does this connect in some way to what you said about the themes in books by non-white authors? There's a similar feel of "chicken or egg first?" to these problems--are women, or non-white authors, picking certain themes because they are somehow "natural" to them, or are they in equal or greater measure, more or less subtly PUSHED to write about certain things, in certain ways...

Yesterday I popped into a bookstore (happens all the time... :)) and noticed a new-ish book by Mark Danielewski, of the House of leaves fame (I was quickly bored and dropped it), and apparently along similar lines to the latter--odd layout, graphics etc. "Unusual", in a word. I think that's a "type" of author, or book, also interesting to query about "female counterpart". Whether or not he was "made by marketing", it's interesting to ask why aren't there (if I'm not mistaken) such female authors. Where's the thirty, forty-something woman who wrote or is writing something like that. Or, insofar/if all authors are "made", why isn't someone making her?

300jennybhatt
Mai 11, 2016, 11:57 pm

>297 LolaWalser::

"All talk about "male", "female", "androgynous" minds is based on metaphorical conceits, not fact."

Oh, totally. This isn't factual because of the nature vs nurture debates and behavioral conditioning theories in the last 25 years or so. Science has proved that our gender is hardly a determining factor in how we think or do anything (thank goodness), but it does contribute to what we think is acceptable or possible. I don't think that Woolf was proposing this as a scientific fact either -- certainly, she did not get into the whys and wherefores. It was simply a metaphorical way to represent the differences in writing approaches and thinking that do exist. Yes, she was writing of her times and our world has evolved. But, it just struck me that some of the points we were circling here echoed the ones she had talked about in ARoOO, which is why I brought it into the discussion.

>299 LolaWalser::

"Incidentally, does this connect in some way to what you said about the themes in books by non-white authors? There's a similar feel of "chicken or egg first?" to these problems--are women, or non-white authors, picking certain themes because they are somehow "natural" to them, or are they in equal or greater measure, more or less subtly PUSHED to write about certain things, in certain ways..."

I think, yes, it is connected. I'm a member of an online writer's group and, often, members post feedback they've received from agents/editors about how to make their book more appealing to publishers/readers. The overwhelming trends there show that women writers are nudged to make their writing fit within what's called the "women's fiction" genre, and therefore, more about the personal and emotional. Male writers, on the other hand, do not seem to be getting such feedback. They often get feedback related to the accuracy of their facts/history, or amount of action vs dialogue, and so on. These are general trends, of course, and there are agents/editors who rise above such stereotyping, of course.

"I think that's a "type" of author, or book, also interesting to query about "female counterpart". Whether or not he was "made by marketing", it's interesting to ask why aren't there (if I'm not mistaken) such female authors. Where's the thirty, forty-something woman who wrote or is writing something like that. Or, insofar/if all authors are "made", why isn't someone making her?"

What I worry about is that there are, likely, such female authors out there but their books are being turned down by agents/editors.

Let me use a different example than Danielewski because I don't know his work. When The Wolf of Wall Street, the memoir, came out, it was very well-received and, eventually, made into a now-famous movie. Reviewers praised its honesty and rawness. The thing that bothered me is that there have been similar accounts written about Wall Street by women who worked in the finance world. And, they have, mostly, sunk like stones.

Now, I cannot say whether that's because Belfort pulled no punches while, maybe, these women writers did. But, I imagine that has something to do with it. It's not that these women had not experienced, first-hand, the greed, misogyny, and amoral excesses in the financial industry. It's that any account of the male-dominated Wall Street from a female perspective would, inevitably, be a kind of victim's account -- someone who was subjected to what had been going on or, perhaps, a reluctant participant. An account by a male financier on the other hand, is seen as that of an experienced insider and that of a "doer" vs a "done-to". There was a different debate that had raged for some time when the Scorcese-DiCaprio movie came out. Bitch magazine had an article that they could have done the movie from a woman character's POV to address the gender imbalance issues. I strongly disagreed with this for various reasons, but it becomes a tangential discussion, so, some other time. :)

Here's more evidence for how books by men and women on very similar stories are treated differently:

1. Christina McDowell is the daughter of one of Jordan Belfort's cohorts, who went to jail for his part in all that, er, wolfism. She wrote a memoir of her account (http://books.simonandschuster.com/After-Perfect/Christina-McDowell/9781476785417). Most people don't even know about it. And, certainly, there is no movie in the works. Also, it is highly likely that someone advised her that the "family memoir" angle was going to be better than a no-holds-barred, raucous thriller angle like Belfort's. Even the publisher's blurb uses soft language, as you can see from that link.

2. Books that are more similar to Belfort's but have been written by women do exist: ‘On the Floor‘ by Aifric Campbell; ‘Bond Girl‘ by Geri Duffy; ‘Wall Street Women‘ by Melissa S Fisher. Most people do not know about these. Nor is anyone banging the door down to make them into blockbuster movies. Again, it is worth questioning and exploring why this is the case. Were those books not marketed well or marketed towards a particular kind of readership? Or, are they not good enough stories/storytelling? Or, is Hollywood just not interested in making movies of these books? Possibly a combination of all three.

The few reviews for all 4 books by these women that I read also had very different slants than reviews of Belfort's book. In fact, they did exactly what this New Republic survey has pointed out.

We could find similar examples in other male-dominated industries (e.g. tech, news/war journalism) where books by women writers have not been received as well as those by men. This, naturally, is taken into account by agents/publishers/editors so that they give feedback to those women writers or future women writers in that vein to make changes in order to sell better.

It is a vicious cycle, yes.

301southernbooklady
Mai 12, 2016, 8:38 am

>300 jennybhatt: Now, I cannot say whether that's because Belfort pulled no punches while, maybe, these women writers did

There doesn't seem to be any room for literary quality in your analysis. That makes me cautious about your conclusions. There is also the fact that The Wolf of Wall Street was released in 2007, the movie released in 2013, and McDowell's book in 2015. It's clear that her memoir capitalizes on the interest around Wall Street corruption stories, but does it say anything "new," in the way that Belfort's book six years earlier said something apparently new? (And I am reminded, again, of my writer friend who says that every book "has its own strange karma").

I don't really disagree with your contention that men and women are treated differently in the publishing industry, but I think you have to take stuff like this into account if you want to understand it.

It is interesting, for example, to look at memoirs in a different industry -- say, rock n roll musicians. Those have been a rising trend in the publishing industry concurrent with Wall Street Tell All stories. Is Patti Smith's Just Kids really given different treatment from Keith Richards' "Life" (not going to attempt the touchstone on that)? Different treatment because she's a woman? Both were critically acclaimed. Smith's memoir won the National Book Award. (see: The Rise of the Female Rock Memoir).

The point I am trying to make here is that the actual book is what matters most here. The book, not the author, is what is being reviewed in the pages of the New York Times. You can question whether or not the industry demands women write a certain kind of book, but the analysis of the words in the reviews doesn't tell you that one way or another, because it doesn't tell you what kinds of books are being compared.

302LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2016, 9:42 am

>301 southernbooklady:, >300 jennybhatt:

I think this is the problem when we choose specific examples--and the better the book(s), the more difficult it is to know how to compare them.

Which is why I think general surveys such as Jenny brought up would be very important.

Also, it is highly likely that someone advised her that the "family memoir" angle was going to be better than a no-holds-barred, raucous thriller angle like Belfort's.

OK, so one is a memoir-ish thing and the other a thriller-ish thing--I guess it's not surprising one seemed more attractive than the other? But I get your point. There are biases operating on multiple levels (not just once, after the book is published)--what women are encouraged (and/or discouraged) to write and how, then how it is marketed and reviewed etc.

303southernbooklady
Mai 12, 2016, 10:05 am

>302 LolaWalser: what women are encouraged (and/or discouraged) to write and how

Not to mention, what women want to write, and why.

304jennybhatt
Mai 12, 2016, 10:16 am

>301 southernbooklady::

"There doesn't seem to be any room for literary quality in your analysis. That makes me cautious about your conclusions. There is also the fact that The Wolf of Wall Street was released in 2007, the movie released in 2013, and McDowell's book in 2015. It's clear that her memoir capitalizes on the interest around Wall Street corruption stories, but does it say anything "new," in the way that Belfort's book six years earlier said something apparently new?"

Fair points re. the timing of the books and movie. But, yes, I think that the 2015 memoir, while capitalizing on the interest around Wall Street, etc., was trying to say something entirely different. McDowell had written an open letter to Scorcese and DiCaprio re. the movie and urged them to approach it differently.

But, I don't mean to imply that literary quality is not important. That's paramount, of course. Later in my long-winded post (sorry about that, just realized that I kinda went on and on a bit), I did raise the question re. the storytelling merits of the Wall Street books by women writers.

You do make a valid point, also, re. the music memoirs. But, I think that memoirs by female musicians are often as well-received, if not better-received, as those by male musicians because music isn't quite as male-dominated as finance or tech. Maybe. (Patti Smith's book is, of course, amazing -- based on the excerpts I've read.)

>302 LolaWalser::

"There are biases operating on multiple levels (not just once, after the book is published)--what women are encouraged (and/or discouraged) to write and how, then how it is marketed and reviewed etc."

Yes, right, that's what I was trying to say.

And, a propos of just this, here's an article by Anne Boyd Rioux today in LitHub. Her focus is Constance Fenimore Woolson because of her recent biog on her. But, she does start off with that Franzen-Smiley argument I'd mentioned reading somewhere earlier and she makes reference to how women writers are thwarted in their attempts to write 'The Great American Novel'.

http://lithub.com/the-dimunition-of-women-writers-an-american-tradition/

Thank you, all, for yet another wonderful discussion, truly. It helps to talk things through and see where my own understanding has flaws or where I need to mull things over a bit more.

305southernbooklady
Mai 12, 2016, 10:37 am

>304 jennybhatt: I think that memoirs by female musicians are often as well-received, if not better-received, as those by male musicians because music isn't quite as male-dominated as finance or tech.

Which underscores why what the book is about is relevant context in understanding how it is received.

306jennybhatt
Mai 12, 2016, 11:29 am

>305 southernbooklady::

"Which underscores why what the book is about is relevant context in understanding how it is received."

I am not disagreeing with the need for relevant context. Of course, that's important.

What I'm having a hard time accepting is that certain topics/themes/fields appear to be OK for women writers - like music - while certain others - like finance or tech - don't. At least on the basis of how they're marketed and reviewed.

307LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Mai 12, 2016, 12:22 pm

>304 jennybhatt:

Thank you for the same. :)

>305 southernbooklady:

Yes. But that is what's so complicated. There are husbands and wives galore in Anna Karenina but is it "domestic fiction" like say {enter example I can't think of because I don't read}? If not, why not?

And if y'all will indulge my "counterparts" game a bit more, where is, or can we even imagine, a female Bukowski? I don't mean merely a woman who spends her life drinking and screwing and writing about that--I mean a woman who does all that with his attitude... and receives that kind of glorification and cult-status-canonization.

I'm getting somewhere with this (I think). I'm trying to understand all the ways and directions in which women's writing ambitions are circumscribed, limited, compared to men's.

--Authoritative knowledge, flashy erudition, guru-ism: philosophical, "intellectual" fiction: dominated by men, or, such male authors, for whatever reason, enjoy greater popularity, renown, than such female authors.

--Form: are boys encouraged to play and produce "unusual" books, more than women? Example: House of leaves, but there's tons, and in different genres too.

ETA: Plays (and screenwriting) would fit under this rubric too.

--Persona: well, see Bukowski, but I don't mean to emphasise ONE particular type--rather, the gamut of types in male category vs. women. It seems to me men are "allowed" more types they can be (I mean what they project in their work and maybe also in public) AND be successful and popular, than women.

By the way, I know some label Bukowski an "underground" author, but with his sales it's difficult to tell what that means.

308southernbooklady
Mai 12, 2016, 12:23 pm

>306 jennybhatt: What I'm having a hard time accepting is that certain topics/themes/fields appear to be OK for women writers - like music - while certain others - like finance or tech - don't. At least on the basis of how they're marketed and reviewed.

I get that, I do. I'm just trying to point out that analyzing the words in reviews doesn't tell us much about that question. Just as an analysis of the words used in restaurant reviews of fast food joints doesn't tell us much about why people are or are not vegetarian, given that most fast food places are not vegetarian.

where is, or can we even imagine, a female Bukowski?

There is a self-indulgent angry young (and old!) man perspective to some genres that buys into the male fantasy -- indeed, is an exultation of the male fantasy. It's hard to see the point of infiltrating such a perspective with the female voice, but I suppose it can be done. Where, we might ask, is the female Tom Clancy? And yet there are women who write such books.

But there are women who write with that kind of "attitude" -- Jeanette Winterson comes immediately to mind. She is comfortable with and not apologetic about her own arrogance. But the "cult status" you are looking for may be a manifestation of the male fantasy, so Winterson probably won't ever achieve it.

As for your three ambitions: authoritative knowledge, form, persona -- the book that comes immediately to mind would be Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell -- it is erudite, flashy, intellectual, and absolutely authoritative in tone. It's form is "unusual" as well in the sense that there is as much going on in the "footnotes" as in the main text. It's also clever and highly satirical (something many people who read it seem to miss). And it does have a nascent cult following (thanks, it must be said, in part to Neil Gaiman, who adores it).

"persona" is absent, I suppose, in that Clarke doesn't project herself into the life of the book in the same way that, say, JK Rowling has done with Harry Potter. It's a little hard for me to tell, because I don't follow authors for their persona, only for their work. So cults around writers like the Beat poets or Thomas Pynchon leave me a little cold. It's the books they write that earn them my notice, not the lives they lead. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I'm only interested in their lives in so far as it illuminates how they wrote their books.

309LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2016, 12:43 pm

>308 southernbooklady:

Just to be clear, I started enumerating erudition etc. as ways in which I've so far found some difference between male and female authors (and/or their reception), I never meant any single author would or ought to show all of them.

I did think of Clarke's Strange book when considering "unusual" books, but decided that wasn't unusual enough. Willing to admit it, though. It's not easy to come up with strict criteria about what makes a book "unusual"... which is why I'm given to "showing" rather than telling what I mean.

On the work's erudition, I'm not sure... it's been a long while since I read it, but isn't it rather that she adopts a tone and language associated with a past cultivated tradition, than that she's, ummm, displaying knowledge or theorising or some such? Much more Dickens than Eliot, is how I'd (sort of) describe it...

But there are women who write with that kind of "attitude" -- Jeanette Winterson comes immediately to mind. She is comfortable with and not apologetic about her own arrogance. But the "cult status" you are looking for may be a manifestation of the male fantasy, so Winterson probably won't ever achieve it.

Very interesting idea, Winterson. (Not that "arrogant" comes quickly to mind when I think of her.) But I think I see what you mean. Hmm. But yes. No "cult" status there.

In fact, arguably someone like Kathy Acker is more "cult", but she's REALLY an "underground" author, with small sales and more or less complete obscurity. But she is also transgressive in a way Bukowski actually was not, at all, and "transgressive" has no chance in hell with the public at large.

310LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2016, 1:08 pm

Oh, I'll want to get to this again when (if everrrr) I finish the Kingsley Amis book on James Bond:

>308 southernbooklady:

There is a self-indulgent angry young (and old!) man perspective to some genres that buys into the male fantasy -- indeed, is an exultation of the male fantasy. It's hard to see the point of infiltrating such a perspective with the female voice, but I suppose it can be done.

But wait, are you saying there is no... foundation... (or whatever term fits) for FEMALE "self-indulgent angry" fantasy? Actually, this links to my perennial query about "where are the female Jim Thompsons".

Two ways of looking at it: we can ask, where are the writers, i.e. are women writing such books or INTERESTED in writing such books at all; and, two, we can ask, where are the readers, are there readers for such books from female perspective.

I presume Bukowski is predominantly read by men--I'm not sure how predominantly, as I've read him (because a male friend recommended him) and presumably I'm not the only woman to do so. In fact, I know I'm not, because he's forever writing about groupies and women who come to sleep with him because they've read his stories, and students who threw themselves at him when he was doing the college circuit etc.

Still, I guess it's easy to see why he'd be seen as a man's author, and read mostly by men. And, of course, adulated especially by men.

So--maybe there's a public for such stories from men, but not from women. I'm just trying to distinguish between what happens at an author's end vs. readers' end, i.e. is the perceived lack of "female Bukowskis" due to women--in general--not wanting to write like that, or to women not being rewarded (and maybe even punished) for writing like that.

Where, we might ask, is the female Tom Clancy? And yet there are women who write such books.

Clancy is genre, right, thrillers or military? In genre it seems common to conflate author's persona with the subject in some way, almost as a requirement. Why romance, hetero at least, sticks to female pseudonyms.

311southernbooklady
Bearbeitet: Mai 12, 2016, 1:30 pm

>309 LolaWalser: Much more Dickens than Eliot, is how I'd (sort of) describe it...

In terms of tone, I'd say more Austen than Dickens. Or rather, it's Dickensian in setting, but Austen in the quality of its perspective and opinions. I do think you can make the case for it being unusual in terms of form, though, despite its working within the adopted conventions of an earlier age. For one thing, it forces the reader to accept and actually submit to the form -- those footnotes are all integral to the larger story in a way that, say, the sidebars in Delany's Dhalgren are not. There is nothing fractured about the novel, despite the multiplicity of "sources" used to tell the tale. I was impressed with how she used things like a virtuoso confident of her instrument, instead of -- as is so often the case when someone puts a dream sequence in a novel -- as a crutch to get over a difficult patch.

As for erudition and authority, all I can say is that Clarke owns the Britain she invented. She rules it the way Elizabeth I ruled England. With absolute confidence.

But she is also transgressive in a way Bukowski actually was not, at all, and "transgressive" has no chance in hell with the public at large.

It's an interesting question it itself -- when does "transgressive" reach that status of cult following -- the precursor, I guess, to wider acceptance. More to the point, when does it reach a place where both men and women value its transgressiveness? I think of the poet Sapphire as transgressive, but if she has a cult following it remains firmly placed within the lesbian feminist community.

What about Alison Bechdel? Not a fiction writer, but she's got a real following. Especially after her last memoir.

ETA >309 LolaWalser: But wait, are you saying there is no... foundation... (or whatever term fits) for FEMALE "self-indulgent angry" fantasy?

no, not at all. I'm saying there is something masturbatory about the cults that form around figures like Bukowski, or Burroughs. I'd like to see what female self-indulgent angry looks like, frankly. Did you ever see the film "A Question of Silence"? That's the kind of thing that comes to mind for me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Question_of_Silence

312southernbooklady
Mai 12, 2016, 1:45 pm

>310 LolaWalser: Clancy is genre, right, thrillers or military? In genre it seems common to conflate author's persona with the subject in some way, almost as a requirement.

And the author is not immune. I know a woman who was hired to help convert the language of the Jack Ryan franchise into suitable dialogue for the video game, and Clancy refused to even talk to her during meetings.

313LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Mai 12, 2016, 2:23 pm

>311 southernbooklady:

Did you ever see the film "A Question of Silence"?

No, although I've heard of Gorris, I'll definitely look for this, thanks.

As for erudition and authority, all I can say is that Clarke owns the Britain she invented. She rules it the way Elizabeth I ruled England. With absolute confidence.

Oh, yes, but I'm thinking there's a difference when it's about "invented" things... Clarke herself is obviously erudite, no question--literature, history, folklore, mythology, clearly she's mastered it all.

What about Alison Bechdel? Not a fiction writer, but she's got a real following. Especially after her last memoir.

Yep (librorumamans brought her up too), Bechdel and, say... Marjane Satrapi, seem to have achieved "male-like" success in their genre. Popularity or fame, name recognition...

I'd like to see what female self-indulgent angry looks like, frankly.

Yeah, me too, any kind of "angry", really. Things I've noticed about this, in how female anger is discussed: first we have to ask, "angry" authors or protagonists? The latter are far more common, AND, they tend to be villains.

Ambiguity in this sense seems to worry people, from what I gather about the recent-ish apparent upsurge in "bad girls". Gone girl and things like that. (Have not read so not sure what's going on...)

As to authors, I can't think of many female authors with a notable stance of "angry"--Acker again, maybe... and permanent? None. I mean, if there's a famous female author who is also "angry", I don't know her, and I'm struggling for names even of not-famous ones.

Then again... can we imagine Jane Austen being angry in Persuasion, talking about how it was always men writing about women and men distorting women? I think there's anger there. How could there not be. At least, I like to imagine it.

P.S. I should have mentioned Ferrante, but there's so much to say about her... I don't want to just say "she is angry".

314LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2016, 2:22 pm

>312 southernbooklady:

Cripes. Well, I'm always glad to hear someone I'll never read is an ass. :)

315southernbooklady
Mai 12, 2016, 2:54 pm

>313 LolaWalser: can we imagine Jane Austen being angry in Persuasion, talking about how it was always men writing about women and men distorting women? I think there's anger there.

I think the anger in Austen is in evidence in the way that 99% of the men in her novels are outright cads, ineffectual ninnies, or blithering idiots.

316LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2016, 3:03 pm

>315 southernbooklady:

That's just realism! :)

317librorumamans
Mai 12, 2016, 4:24 pm

>313 LolaWalser: anger

She's not as current as some of the people who are being referenced here, but Hagar Shipley seethes with anger throughout The stone angel, and Laurence herself strikes me (without having read her bio) as writing from something like anger, much of it directed at men.

Would you say that Oranges are not the only fruit is an angry book?

There's something or someone else flitting around just at the edges of my consciousness who may belong in this discussion. She may, or may not, eventually step into the light.

318morwen04
Mai 12, 2016, 4:52 pm

So I'm late to this and I can't find which number post it was but someone (was it LolaWalser?) asked for a Mark Danielewski counterpart for House of Leaves and my brain went to Shelley Jackson and her Patchwork Girl one of the founding works for electronic literature. I haven't read any of her printed works and the other projects she's done (is doing? I'm not sure) are literature/art pieces. I really like what she does with narrative. In Patchwork Girl she does big things with very small bits information.

319southernbooklady
Mai 12, 2016, 9:58 pm

Speaking of women cult authors, Katherine Dunn has died:

http://www.wweek.com/news/2016/05/12/katherine-dunn-author-of-geek-love-dies-at-...

320jennybhatt
Mai 13, 2016, 1:10 am

>307 LolaWalser::

“I'm trying to understand all the ways and directions in which women's writing ambitions are circumscribed, limited, compared to men’s.”

Exactly. That is what I’ve been trying to understand as well. And that’s why I keep going back to ARoOO because much of what Woolf described as these ways and directions that women's ambitions are thwarted/viewed seem, to me, to be still valid today.

>308 southernbooklady::

“I'm just trying to point out that analyzing the words in reviews doesn't tell us much about that question. Just as an analysis of the words used in restaurant reviews of fast food joints doesn't tell us much about why people are or are not vegetarian, given that most fast food places are not vegetarian.”

Yes, this is fair. I suppose I look at every such survey — and there have been, recently, quite a few data-driven analyses re. the publishing industry — rather too closely because I, like many, have unanswered questions.

I suppose, for me, the uniting factor was that they were looking at reviews in a particular, single publication. So, it seemed fair to assume that the books they were considering, whether by men or women, were similar in terms of literary genre/style. Had this been a wider survey, that would have created too many factors/variables to make the survey valid. That's all.

>311 southernbooklady::

“As for erudition and authority, all I can say is that Clarke owns the Britain she invented. She rules it the way Elizabeth I ruled England. With absolute confidence.”

I agree with this, actually. Don’t know why/how I missed Clarke earlier. Definitely fits “erudite” and “authority”, if not “arrogant”.

In the same vein, I’d add Katherine Dunn (who just passed away, RIP) with Geek Love. Definitely a cult classic. And included so many larger themes/allegories of class mobility, parenthood, social mores, and so on.

“I'd like to see what female self-indulgent angry looks like, frankly.”

Does Marilyn French’s ‘The Women’s Room’ qualify? Or Erica Jong’s ‘Fear of Flying’? Or, were they, too, books of their times? Certainly, both authors were much-derided for daring to write as they did.

Today, I see this in genre fiction, which I haven’t read personally, just read about them. Like this recent trend of female protagonists who are subversive — Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, etc.

Tampa, particularly, is social criticism about double standards for men and women. Would that qualify?

I think Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie qualifies as erudite and authoritative (about the people/worlds she writes about). There is a certain level of arrogance there too, but, I suppose, nowhere near the scale of a Bukowski.

I think, if we focused on "erudite" and "authoritative", we'd find many women writers who fit the bill. "Arrogance" on the scale of Bukowski and his ilk is where we'd start falling short.

But, then, is "arrogance" a necessary quality for good, quality writing? No.

Is it necessary for developing/maintaining a certain level of ambition for a writing career? I'd argue, again, no, because all these women writers we've been mentioning have been getting on with their work without needing to be overly-arrogant.

Does the kind of high self-regard that comes with such arrogance attract more attention from readers/reviewers? Yes, this may well be the case, and particularly so these days when it translates to a greater social media following (e.g. Marlon James, whom I follow on FB, has a kind of arrogance that, say, Junot Diaz, does not. Oddly, the women writers I follow on FB -- Adichie, Lahiri -- don't even do their own posts.) James, in particular, has the kind of adoring cult/groupie following that, if Bukowski was here and on social media, would likely have. And, we know that there's a large swathe of the publishing industry decision-makers who like authors with such followings. I need to think more on this point -- how the Bukowski-style of arrogance translates in today's world and what that means for women vs men writers.

321sturlington
Bearbeitet: Mai 13, 2016, 6:43 am

>319 southernbooklady: Oh, no. I just finished Geek Love. That was definitely not a safe book.

322southernbooklady
Mai 13, 2016, 9:07 am

>320 jennybhatt: But, then, is "arrogance" a necessary quality for good, quality writing? No.

What people call "arrogance" is often just self-confidence, a quality I would say is certainly a plus when it comes to good writing.

323susanbooks
Bearbeitet: Mai 13, 2016, 10:22 am

I'm loving this discussion! Thank you so much to everyone for their detailed, thought-provoking posts.

I agree about Bechdel being a modern writer of ideas; I'd include Toni Morrison, too, especially in Beloved or Paradise. She doesn't come right out and quote the theorists/ideas she explores like Bechdel does, but both books are heavily involved with literary theory's debates.

324jennybhatt
Mai 13, 2016, 10:37 am

>322 southernbooklady::

"What people call "arrogance" is often just self-confidence, a quality I would say is certainly a plus when it comes to good writing."

Well, then I'd say that ALL the women writers we've mentioned have that self-confidence. Otherwise, they wouldn't have written as well as they have despite all the odds against them.

From several previous comments, I understood "arrogance" for the sake of this discussion as being the kind associated with authors like Bukowski, or Mailer, or Naipaul, which is very different from the self-confidence of Winterson or Clarke or any of the other women writers.

So, maybe we agree that, for the purposes of this discussion, the lack or presence of a Bukowski-like arrogance is not something that circumscribes or limits women's writing ambitions as compared to men's.

Which brings us back to the original, key question: why aren't more women writing books with larger themes that display their erudition and authority? Is it because of one or more of the following?

1) a lack of sufficient tradition in women's writing of such books?

>>>This is, I think, true if we go by the numbers of how many men vs women have successfully written such books.

2) a lack of ambition to even aspire to write such books?

>>>I don't know that we have enough evidence to answer this one.

3) a lack of acceptance by women writers themselves that those larger themes are more important/relevant than the ones that they are generally/typically seen to be taking on?

>>>I don't know that we have enough evidence to answer this one. However, I suspect the answer is an emphatic no if we ask a broad swathe of women writers.

4) a lack of a skill, generally speaking, among women writers to write well enough about these larger themes?

>>>I don't know that we have enough evidence to answer this one.

5) a lack of acceptance by the publishing industry that women can write well enough about these larger themes?

>>>Based on anecdotal evidence from women writers on feedback they get from agents/editors/publishers, I think we can say yes to this one.

6) a lack of acceptance by the general reading public that women can write well enough about these larger themes?

>>>I don't know that we have enough evidence to answer this one. However, anecdotal evidence and the kinds of discussions going on in the wider social media, including here, suggests that readers don't care whether a book is by a woman or a man as long as it meets their preferences/expectations.

To recap, I have to borrow the words of a better (woman) writer again. Here's an essay by Francine Prose, where she also asked the questions we're debating: Are women writers really inferior? If not, are they discriminated against? She was responding to the arrogance of Mailer and some of his male contemporaries, who have said, directly or indirectly, that women writers are inferior. See the Mailer quote in her article. It is sad that, though this was written in 1998, it reads like yesterday, if we consider the recent ruckus with Gay Talese (which, yes, had a lot more nuances and he should probably not be lumped in with these other guys -- I simply mean that the questions the ruckus raised are the same again).

http://harpers.org/archive/1998/06/scent-of-a-womans-ink/

Prose wrote about it again in 2011 because Naipaul had just come out with his "no woman is my equal" shtick.

http://harpers.org/blog/2011/06/on-women-writers-and-v-s-naipaul/

325LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Mai 13, 2016, 11:32 am

>317 librorumamans:

Hagar--now there's a great name for an angry woman! :)

Would you say that Oranges are not the only fruit is an angry book?

Mmnnooo--when I think of Oranges, I hear songs and poetry and see grinning colours and ducks... for some reason, lots of ducks... but it's been a long time since I read it. Yes, I remember the harrowing bits about the mad cultists who raised her, but Winterson is so alive even what is painful seems somehow cheerful. If that makes sense at all. Rationally, though, there'd be lots to make one angry, I suppose. But mainly I was bowled over by how beautiful the writing was and what a great story.

>318 morwen04:

Electronic literature! Never heard of it, the author or the book! Thanks! :)

But that goes to the point, maybe--even I DID hear of Danielewski etc. Why one and not the other etc.

>319 southernbooklady:

Oh, sorry. Have not read, have heard of. Should pick it up.

>320 jennybhatt:

I think Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie qualifies as erudite and authoritative (about the people/worlds she writes about). There is a certain level of arrogance there too, but, I suppose, nowhere near the scale of a Bukowski.

I think, if we focused on "erudite" and "authoritative", we'd find many women writers who fit the bill. "Arrogance" on the scale of Bukowski and his ilk is where we'd start falling short.

But erudition is more than mere knowledge of something, and different to education and expertise. Regarding Adichie, I've only read Half of a yellow sun, and that, at least, is not what I'd call an erudite book, whether the term applies to Adichie herself or not.

As for arrogance and Bukowski, I just want to note I think Nicki meant arrogance more in the sense of "casual arrogation of authority, public attention (etc.)" (which is so common to men, and uncommon to women), rather than in the sense of, let's say, "rude asshole".

I need to think more on this point -- how the Bukowski-style of arrogance translates in today's world and what that means for women vs men writers.

I'm not sure this is right--it was a different world when he published a poem with his phone number for a title, and he was a more complex person than one might think, much more on the recluse side than a Facebooking friend of the masses.

The remarkable "arrogance" of Bukowski isn't necessarily a trait of his own personality but lies, to me, in the fact that the sort of persona he projected in his writing--and embodied in alter ego protagonists--can nevertheless be admired, respected, looked up to, emulated--presumably because he's a man.

Descriptively, there's this forty-fifty-something loser and alcoholic, perennially idle, broke and aspiring to the state of permanent or at least frequent drunkenness, of unprepossessing or even off-putting physique, with no special gift, whose talk consists in large part of how his morning shit was and the next one might be, whether his balls hurt or not and whether he can count on an erection or not, who thinks of women in terms of attributes of their tits, ass, cunts, legs... and, (ETA: to his many admirers) he's great. What a great guy, wish I could be just like him, write just like him.

Bukowski/his work can be disgusting yet admirable, even more--lovable. Fleming's James Bond is a robotic soldier, killer and rapist with no discernible humanity and yet we still make movies about him and men still fantasize about being him.

The point is less any "arrogance" on Bukowski's or Fleming's part in creating (and perhaps being themselves) such characters than the success they enjoyed, the admiration, the love.
It's impossible to imagine such reactions to female versions of the above.

So for me what's "arrogant" isn't necessarily in the text, but primarily in the fact that those people had no problem assuming they can write about shitheads and get those shitheads loved. Because they are men.

326LolaWalser
Mai 13, 2016, 11:25 am

>323 susanbooks:

I wondered about Morrison yesterday, in relation both to "intellectual" fiction and female anger, but so far I've only read some non-fiction of hers. Thanks for bringing her up.

>324 jennybhatt:

Ha, Mailer! I read recently a short 1972 book on him by Richard Poirier. I've trouble enough believing the quotations... What a character. Well, yes, now THERE we can talk of "arrogance" in every sense.

327LolaWalser
Mai 13, 2016, 11:27 am

>324 jennybhatt:

I want to say more in response to this (I posted >325 LolaWalser: before seeing it), but no time right now. :)

328susanbooks
Mai 13, 2016, 12:15 pm

I can't recommend her fiction enough, Lola (as if that's any sort of unusual opinion). Paradise in particular, besides being a great and disturbing book, deals with questions of textual legibility that so many literary theorists were playing with in the 90s.

And I agree about Bukowski. He's arrogant, but also painfully insecure so that he does become sort of "lovable." I taught his novel Women in a Women's Studies class once upon a time and we had a great discussion. Most of the students ended up loving him for what they saw as his inadvertent deconstruction of the womanizer. I wasn't so sure it was inadvertent so much as ambivalent.

329jennybhatt
Mai 13, 2016, 1:56 pm

>325 LolaWalser::

"But erudition is more than mere knowledge of something, and different to education and expertise. Regarding Adichie, I've only read Half of a yellow sun, and that, at least, is not what I'd call an erudite book, whether the term applies to Adichie herself or not."

I was thinking more of Americanah and her non-fiction. Maya Angelou too, now that I think of it -- with her non-fiction.

"The point is less any "arrogance" on Bukowski's or Fleming's part in creating (and perhaps being themselves) such characters than the success they enjoyed, the admiration, the love.
It's impossible to imagine such reactions to female versions of the above.

So for me what's "arrogant" isn't necessarily in the text, but primarily in the fact that those people had no problem assuming they can write about shitheads and get those shitheads loved. Because they are men."

OK. But, even by this definition of arrogance, which I think I understood correctly earlier before Nicki suggested it was more self-confidence, I don't think having or not having it necessarily fuels a woman writer's ambitions and aspirations to write. It may have done so for those particular men writers, but their life experiences, given their gender and the times they lived in, may have enabled that kind of posturing too.

I really think you will enjoy Prose's 1998 essay as she gets into this with specific examples from different novels by men and women. I had it saved on my hard drive as a pdf and only remembered it a day or so ago. Her arguments are so complete and well-supported. On rereading it, I thought -- there is nothing more I can add to this. :)

330LolaWalser
Mai 13, 2016, 2:42 pm

>328 susanbooks:

Most of the students ended up loving him for what they saw as his inadvertent deconstruction of the womanizer. I wasn't so sure it was inadvertent so much as ambivalent.

Wow, you've taught Bukowski, that's so interesting! Yes, my impression too is that there is ambivalence in Bukowski and if I may go even further--humbleness, or at least, real, sincere self-deprecation. I can perhaps best explain (to myself anyway) what I'm getting at by comparing him to Henry Miller, who was truly, utterly humourlessly, almost psychotically, all about his dick and could not apprehend women as people at all. I could say more but I feel I've digressed all over the place enough already... :)

>329 jennybhatt:

I really think you will enjoy Prose's 1998 essay as she gets into this with specific examples from different novels by men and women.

Yes, totally, I was going to say but got dragged away--and yes, I still have it in HARD COPY magazine :)))--in 1998 I had a subscription to Harpers (plus a dozen other mags--golden age!)--I have kept all of them up to Lapham's retirement. (And paid to move from NYC to Toronto! But once you're moving thousands of books, what's a few boxes of magazines...)

Yes, it is a terrific article and as you say reads like it was written yesterday. But there's little I feel I can add--JUST READ IT PEOPLE! :)--only here we are, almost twenty years later, still mulling over the same problems...

I have Americanah on my TBR... mountain range... I did want to get to it soonish, will chime in for sure.

331LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Mai 13, 2016, 3:24 pm

>324 jennybhatt:

I wanted to acknowledge the points you made in this post, about

why aren't more women writing books with larger themes that display their erudition and authority? Is it because of one or more of the following?

I'll just add a few comments to your list.

1) a lack of sufficient tradition in women's writing of such books?

>>>This is, I think, true if we go by the numbers of how many men vs women have successfully written such books.


This is suggestive and giving me ideas, but I'm not sure I understand how "tradition" would work in this context. Is it that writers learn how to write and what to write about from others etc.? (I think this is true.) But why would women rely only on how women write? To go back (Euro- and Anglo-centrically), to George Eliot, say, she "wrote like a man" to the point of taking on a male name.

2) a lack of ambition to even aspire to write such books?

>>>I don't know that we have enough evidence to answer this one.


Agreed.

3) a lack of acceptance by women writers themselves that those larger themes are more important/relevant than the ones that they are generally/typically seen to be taking on?

>>>I don't know that we have enough evidence to answer this one. However, I suspect the answer is an emphatic no if we ask a broad swathe of women writers.


Agreed. It's also possible that, as suggested in Prose's essay, we bestow more meaning on men's stories because we are trained to read universal significance into them, and conversely, we DON'T bestow such meaning to women's stories because we are not taught to read universal significance into them.

I think this stems from the idea that Man is the "universal" subject and "woman" a "special case".

I'm reminded again of what Faulkner wrote to Richard Wright, after the latter published Black boy--he chided him for not writing about "the everyman".

4) a lack of a skill, generally speaking, among women writers to write well enough about these larger themes?

>>>I don't know that we have enough evidence to answer this one.


I'd bet on NO for that one, simply because it seems mad, in this day and age, to imagine women not getting access to any kind of information and education they may want or need.

But perhaps there's another way of thinking about it. I'd look at the male authors who exhibit special expertise, or flaunt erudition, or indulge in experimental writing etc.--all those things where we are detecting a lack of female authors--and try to understand what went into "making" them.

5) a lack of acceptance by the publishing industry that women can write well enough about these larger themes?

>>>Based on anecdotal evidence from women writers on feedback they get from agents/editors/publishers, I think we can say yes to this one.


Yeah.

6) a lack of acceptance by the general reading public that women can write well enough about these larger themes?

>>>I don't know that we have enough evidence to answer this one. However, anecdotal evidence and the kinds of discussions going on in the wider social media, including here, suggests that readers don't care whether a book is by a woman or a man as long as it meets their preferences/expectations.


Hm, I don't know. Anecdotal evidence also tells us men are less likely than women to read across gender line (I am not aware of research according to sexual orientation, but from the limited evidence from my gay friends, gay men who read don't tend to discriminate against women, quite the contrary.)

I'm afraid Mailer's attitude, as shown in that quotation in Prose's article, is likely to be prevalent among men. And not a few women too...

332jennybhatt
Mai 14, 2016, 12:26 am

>331 LolaWalser:: Thanks. No real disagreements with your additional notes.

For 1), I simply meant, I suppose, a strong precedence. It's not that women learn from women writers only but that precedence of a certain kind of writing within the socio-cultural group you most identify with does help with self-confidence -- at least, for me.

Been a great discussion because it has made me articulate things I've only considered in passing or in vague ways. Helps to put things down in words and have someone else pick through them. :) Thanks, all, again.

333sturlington
Mai 14, 2016, 9:13 am

>260 jennybhatt: The Toast is shutting down as well. Also, this may be a good spot to continue in a new thread, as this one is getting long to load.

http://the-toast.net/2016/05/13/we-are-closing-the-toast-july-1st/
Dieses Thema wurde unter on "women" writers (and more) part 2 weitergeführt.

Anmelden um mitzuschreiben.