“Here’s an idea,” Linda Holmes says in an op-ed piece on NPR. Read the full post.
Aug 26
2010
11:39 AM ET
Stop calling it chick lit!
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Jodi Picoult is basically entertaining garbagio. There are plenty of male writers who write entertaining crap that sells well that don’t get critical respect. And they don’t deserve it. If Ms. Picoult would like more critical acclaim than she should write better books. Plenty of female writers getting loads of critical acclaim: Alice Monro, Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lampiri, etc, etc. Take a look the list of Nobel Prize winners, National Book Award fiction winners, Booker Prize winners. They aren’t laundry lists of white guys. I think the issue here is not whether women don’t get enough critical respect (because they get lots of it.) I think that readers of crappola beach books (and their authors) want these books to be treated like high literature. And they are not.
But when do these women get the over-the-top coverage of a Franzen?
Toni Morrison???!!! She has gotten two-and-a-half Franzen’s of hype! (Not that she didn’t deserve it.) When I lived in New York a few years ago every writer I knew wanted to be the next Jhumpa Lampiri (not the next Franzen). She was a literary goddess.
The point here is this: Picoult and Weiner write poo. It is true, the New York Times does not review poo favorably. But it is not apples to apples. Picoult might have a point if Nicholas Sparks won some National Book Awards. But he hasn’t. The issue here is commercial crapola versus high literature. If Ms. Picoult would like critical acclaim instead of popular sales, she should write for highly esteemed but obscure literary journals, and for years slave over a stylistically and thematically magnificent masterpiece. Until then, stop the squawking and relax. Take your 80 foot yacht out and enjoy the good life. Jeez.
A good writer is a good writer no matter what genre they may write but it the writer is a women writing for female readers then it is automatically dismissed as a waste of time or even better, a threat to the weak minded. I’m glad someone pointed out the unfairness. Probably won’t change anything, but it is nice that the topic gets some attention.
Nooooo way. Uhm, Jane Austin as an example? Her books tend to be read by women but she ranks pretty high in the literary pantheon. And Nicholas Sparks and James Patterson are acknowledged as crap even though they are male writers. Churn-it-out commercial writing ranks lower because its should. Most of it is throw away. To point how ludicrous this argument is, would you say Maxim is not an idiotic magazine and no less a magazine than the New Yorker, because the world discriminates against knuckle-dragging 19 year old post-adolescent men?
The question was: Do you believe there is a bias against women writers? Yes I do.
Ugh. Based on what?
agreed 100%.
I think ‘media bias’ needs to be broadened. Yes, books written by men may have more coverage in the press but how many are instantly nabbed up and made into big screen or TV movies?