DEBS:
Okay, ladies and readers, it's a can of worms, but I had to open it.
I know that Mr. VS Naipul and his assertion that men write better than women is last week's news, and that he did not win any friends or readers from fifty percent of the population (and a much greater percentage of book buyers, since women buy a lot more books.)
I also realize that Mr. Naipul (as he strokes his Nobel prize) obviously does not care.
But as I've mulled over it this last week (when I should have been thinking about my plot line) I've come to the conclusion that I do care.
And what really bugs me is not whether men write better than women, or women write better than men, but rather that anyone should make a distinction.
It never occurred to me when I was growing up that I should like books by female authors better than books by male authors, or vice versa. I just liked BOOKS. I read Nancy Drew, but I also read the Hardy Boys. I discovered Golden Age crime fiction through Christie, Allingham, Marsh, and of course, Dorothy Sayers. But at about the same time, I was reading Galsworthy and Delderfield and Winston Graham. And Ian Fleming, although under the covers with a flashlight, as my parents did not consider James Bond "appropriate reading." Funny to imagine now that those books were hot stuff!
And then I discovered CS Lewis and Tolkien and Charles Williams--the Inklings, as they were known, a group of MALE authors who lived and taught in Oxford, and who met regularly at a pub called The Eagle and Child (The Bird and Baby, as it was known) to talk about writing and books and life. If I was envious of anything, it was not that they were men, but that they enjoyed an intellectual camaraderie that seemed beyond my wildest dreams.
So imagine my shock when I realized a good many years later that there were men who bragged about the fact that they had never read a book written by a woman. I was gobsmacked, as the Brits say.
And it occurs to me now that I've never heard a female reader say, much less brag, that they have never read a book written by a man.
Nor do I think that women write better than men. They may write differently--scientists will tell you that women are biologically programmed from birth to pick up emotional cues, which might translate into a deeper insight into character--but that's a gross generalization and I can think of many male writers who create beautifully nuanced and complex characters, male and female. That's what good writers do.
As for the camaraderie I so envied, I think women writers have achieved it--we at Jungle Red are an example, if I may say it.
But my feminist hackles are up, and not just my feminist hackles, my Humanist hackles. How is it that one half of the human race can consider that the other has nothing worthwhile to say?
Isn't it past time that we moved beyond such silliness?
And in the meantime, I'll keep reading.
Okay, ladies and readers, it's a can of worms, but I had to open it.
I know that Mr. VS Naipul and his assertion that men write better than women is last week's news, and that he did not win any friends or readers from fifty percent of the population (and a much greater percentage of book buyers, since women buy a lot more books.)
I also realize that Mr. Naipul (as he strokes his Nobel prize) obviously does not care.
But as I've mulled over it this last week (when I should have been thinking about my plot line) I've come to the conclusion that I do care.
And what really bugs me is not whether men write better than women, or women write better than men, but rather that anyone should make a distinction.
It never occurred to me when I was growing up that I should like books by female authors better than books by male authors, or vice versa. I just liked BOOKS. I read Nancy Drew, but I also read the Hardy Boys. I discovered Golden Age crime fiction through Christie, Allingham, Marsh, and of course, Dorothy Sayers. But at about the same time, I was reading Galsworthy and Delderfield and Winston Graham. And Ian Fleming, although under the covers with a flashlight, as my parents did not consider James Bond "appropriate reading." Funny to imagine now that those books were hot stuff!And then I discovered CS Lewis and Tolkien and Charles Williams--the Inklings, as they were known, a group of MALE authors who lived and taught in Oxford, and who met regularly at a pub called The Eagle and Child (The Bird and Baby, as it was known) to talk about writing and books and life. If I was envious of anything, it was not that they were men, but that they enjoyed an intellectual camaraderie that seemed beyond my wildest dreams.
So imagine my shock when I realized a good many years later that there were men who bragged about the fact that they had never read a book written by a woman. I was gobsmacked, as the Brits say.
And it occurs to me now that I've never heard a female reader say, much less brag, that they have never read a book written by a man.
Nor do I think that women write better than men. They may write differently--scientists will tell you that women are biologically programmed from birth to pick up emotional cues, which might translate into a deeper insight into character--but that's a gross generalization and I can think of many male writers who create beautifully nuanced and complex characters, male and female. That's what good writers do.
As for the camaraderie I so envied, I think women writers have achieved it--we at Jungle Red are an example, if I may say it.
But my feminist hackles are up, and not just my feminist hackles, my Humanist hackles. How is it that one half of the human race can consider that the other has nothing worthwhile to say?
Isn't it past time that we moved beyond such silliness?
And in the meantime, I'll keep reading.
