If “The Marriage Plot,” by Jeffrey Eugenides, had been written by a woman yet still had the same title and wedding ring on its cover, would it have received a great deal of serious literary attention? Or would this novel (which I loved) have been relegated to “Women’s Fiction,” that close-quartered lower shelf where books emphasizing relationships and the interior lives of women are often relegated? Certainly “The Marriage Plot,” Eugenides’s first novel since his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Middlesex,” was poised to receive tremendous literary interest regardless of subject matter, but the presence of a female protagonist, the gracefulness, the sometimes nostalgic tone and the relationship-heavy nature of the book only highlight the fact that many first-rate books by women and about women’s lives never find a way to escape “Women’s Fiction” and make the leap onto the upper shelf where certain books, most of them written by men (and, yes, some women — more about them later), are prominently displayed and admired.
So begins
The Second Shelf: On the Rules of Literary Fiction for Men and Women, an essay in the New York Times by novelist Meg Wolitzer. She was
interviewed about her essay in the NYT Book Review podcast (mp3 link, interview starts at about 18:30). Wolitzer references the classic 1998 essay by Francine Prose,
Scent of a woman's ink: Are women writers really inferior?, and further back in time you find Virginia Woolf's
A Room of One's Own, which,
as literary critic Ruth Franklin notes, still sounds fresh today.
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 4, 2012 -
105 comments
"You never hear, “Famous author Neil Gaiman caught with seven stewardesses in a Wichita bus depot.” Chuck Wendig says,
"We need literary rock star heroes to swoop in and save publishing." Well, perhaps... But can you picture this?
"The authorial world demands this. And we’re not talking about some little Twitter snit, some online battle oozing across a handful of Livejournal comments. It’s not enough for Stephen King to talk to Entertainment Weekly and be all like, “Well, Stephenie Meyer is no J.K. Rowling, pfft.” I’m talking, Terry Pratchett needs to go and take a shit in Dan Brown’s mailbox."
posted by jenfullmoon
on Jul 30, 2011 -
144 comments
Readersvoice.com is a lovely, low key site that interviews authors in a down to earth fashion that you normally don't see. The whole approach is wonderfully refreshing and endlessly fascinating.
posted by milkwood
on May 15, 2007 -
3 comments
Star Trek: Voyager fanfiction. For years, people have asked themselves, what would happen if certain crewmembers hooked up? Endless combinations have been thought out and pondered, but perhaps the most popular of all, Janeway and Seven of Nine, has been given the full treatment here. Possibly not safe for work (especially the "R" rated stories), because you could be carried out as you laugh yourself to death. A look into the bizarre and often highly amusing world of fanfiction.
posted by insomnyuk
on Oct 19, 2003 -
66 comments
William Gibson now on William Gibson then. Yep, that is indeed me, though nothing I'm saying there, at such painful length, is even remotely genuine. They were offering $500 for someone to monologue about the summer of lurve, etc., and I was (1) somewhat articulate, and (2) wanted desperately to get my ass out of Yorkville ... $500 was serious money
posted by delmoi
on May 1, 2003 -
10 comments
An Exercise in Identity A group of writers seeks to collaborate under a single pseudonym, not for fear of scorn or ridicule, but presumably because they think it makes for better business. Do readers have a right to know who a work's author really is, or can identity just be another aspect of the fictional work? (via Kuro5hin queue)
posted by Erasmus
on Dec 19, 2002 -
27 comments
What DOESN'T this guy do? He writes
novels,
screenplays, and
old school radio dramas. In his spare time he records
sci-fi inspired avant-garde electronica,
trippy ambient stuff, and produces albums for
other bands. He meshes
spoken word and noise-pop , and with his old band, the unapologetic New Romantics
Oo Oo Wa, produced
an absolute wanker masterpiece, and ended up getting signed by the
same guy who gave the
Smashing Pumpkins their first record deal. Of late, he just turned up on
Electric Lash: A Tribute to The Church. Creative genius, or too damned much Starbucks?
posted by timsteil
on Nov 5, 2002 -
8 comments
Are you writing a novel? An article in the NY Times urging would-be authors to pack it in. Given the quoted stat (that 81% of Americans 'feel they have a book in them'), and extrapolating it for the rest of the world, that still means that there are roughly 12,887 unwritten books out there in me-fi land. Is this true? And has anyone actually written theirs down?
posted by jonathanbell
on Sep 30, 2002 -
59 comments
Envy of the Literary World, or another Trust-Fund Novelist? Following up on the discussion of J.T. LeRoy a few weeks ago, here's a story from the Observer about Nick McDonell, who's 18, just out of high school and about to publish a major novel (you may have read about him in the New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" section). The catch is, his dad edits SI, his publisher is his godfather, and Hunter S. Thompson, who plugs the book, is a family friend. The book's not out yet, so the quality question is moot at this point. But still ... what gives with all this ridiculously young writers these days?
posted by risenc
on Jun 19, 2002 -
50 comments
Typewriter Dependency (common disorder resulting from metaphysical thinking about punctuation) [nyt reg req] "A recent survey of the top 1,000 living English-language authors finds that more than 80 percent own manual typewriters averaging 43 years in age and three broken functions, with a per-unit resale value of $4.75 and slipping. Yet in a questionnaire about their response if brigands should invade their homes and demand either their beat-up old manual typewriters or their spouses on pain of death, a whopping 96 percent wrote ''Spouse.''
posted by Voyageman
on Jun 9, 2002 -
23 comments
Tom Perrotta may be one of the best novelists working today, yet not that many folks know his name.
His books and
short stories portray prosaic suburbia accurately and without condescension, and he has uncanny insight into the mind of the terminally adolescent. Not to mention an uproarious sense of humor. If the films of Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater, the music of Weezer, or
Pete Bagge's comics resonate with you, you may want to check out their literary equivalent. As an added treat, here's an
audio link of Perrota reading his work. For my money, this guy is one of our best American writers right now, although you wouldn't know it.
posted by jonmc
on Mar 2, 2002 -
10 comments
Dr. Paul Linebarger became a
spy for the U.S. Intelligence community because he was an expert in propaganda, psychological warfare, and the culture of China. In his
other secret life, however, he wrote some of the most
wildly inventive and
unusual science fiction ever, forming a history of mankind and its
Instrumentality that spanned fifteen thousand years. To protect his identity, he published under the name
Cordwainer Smith.
posted by Hildago
on Feb 21, 2002 -
15 comments
So, has Stephen King lost it? This guy seems to think so. Some would say he never had it. I think that while this guy makes a few valid points, he goes overboard, and brings up many things that just seem petty and silly, like he's trying to over-prove his theory, and increase the word count of the article. What do you think? (Side note: I wouldn't be surprised if "Richard Blow" becomes the name of a victim in a future King novel...).
posted by sassone
on Feb 19, 2002 -
23 comments
William Gibson talks about the Japanese as the Ultimate Early Adaptors, mobile phones and schoolgirls. As usual he is obsessed with wrist watches.
posted by laukf
on Mar 31, 2001 -
18 comments
how in the world did
this article, which basically repremands readers from making assumptions about and being intrusive into the private lives of memoirists, end by propositioning dave eggers? i mean really, wtf? the author of the piece, lorri gottlieb, ought to be ashamed of herself.
posted by palegirl
on Jun 16, 2000 -
9 comments
