Categories: Ranty McRant
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by Candy • Monday, February 12, 2007 at 03:29 PM
Ron at Galleycat has some marvellous linkage on the various reactions by chick lit authors. Go ye forth and click; marvel and chuckle with evil glee. Me? I’m behind on my writing and blog-hopping. So apologies for the stale air of this piece; I just managed to steal a few free moments to compose my thoughts and my bile.
So while reading Maureen Dowd’s incredibly silly piece on how OMG THE SHELVES THEY ARE PINK WITH CHICK LIT PLAGUE, I couldn’t help but compose this little mental letter to her:
Dear Maureen:
George Eliot called from beyond the grave, and she’d like her schtick back.
Love and lipstick-free kisses (I read the pink books, but I don’t wear make-up, which I hope is at least a point in my favor),
Candy
Though the comparison is quite unfair to Eliot, since a) she actually had a coherent point about technique and skill being important to storytelling, instead of just slagging off in a singularly sloppy fashion an entire genre of books, and b) Eliot actually knew what she was talking about, whereas Dowd’s attempt to assert her feminism by displaying a rather potent mixture of ignorance and misogyny was, to quote Sarah, shooting herself in the foot with her vagina. (Hey, new idea for a play: Reservoir Vaginae! No, wait, sorry, didn’t mean to offend: Reservoir Hoo-Hoos.)
My eyes did widen just the littlest bit when I read this part of her article:
Even Will Shakespeare is buffeted by rampaging 30-year-old heroines, each one frantically trying to get their guy or figure out if he’s the right guy, or if he meant what he said, or if he should be with them instead of their BFF or cousin, or if he’ll come back, or if she’ll end up stuck home alone eating Häagen-Dazs and watching “CSI” and “Sex and the City” reruns.
You know, she may have a point there. It’s not as if The Bard himself has ever written a story (or three) featuring cross-dressing protagonists and reams of comic miscommunication, or plays driven by romantic misunderstandings, or stories about tangled-up couples who wibble endlessly about their love and obsessively analyze what their lovers say and do. No no no. Not Shakespeare. It’s not as if he’d ever stoop to making dirty jokes and puns in his plays. Because dammit all, he’s litrachure.
Why? Being dead, white and formerly endowed with a penis helps, but most importantly, you have to remember that back when his plays were published, none of the covers were sullied by so much as a smidgen of pink ink. Or stiletto heels. Shakespeare’s heroines were always the most sober paragons of womanhood, and not horny, flighty teenagers.
I even found Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” with chick-lit pretty-in-pink lettering. (...) Trying to keep up with soap-opera modernity, “Romeo and Juliet” has been reissued with a perky pink cover.
Oh, the horrah, the horrah! What a sign of these degraded times! Publishers putting lurid covers on classics to catch the public’s eye?* Quelle idée! I have seen the horsemen of the cultural apocalypse, and they’re wearing Jimmy Choos.
This passage also amused me:
In the 19th century in America, people often linked the reading of novels with women. Women were creatures of sensibility, and men were creatures of action. But now, Leon suggested, American fiction seems to be undergoing a certain re-feminization.
Oh God forbid that girl cooties reappear in literature. We like our books to be potent and masculine, redolent of pipe smoke and Hemingway’s unwashed underwear. We’ve forgotten that the masculine experience, that prototypical manly isolato striking out to wrestle (in a non-homoerotic, not at all naked-and-rubbed-all-over-with-oil way) with fish or bulls or stallions or giant sperm whales called Dick, should be held as the ideal and the eternal; stories about women’s struggles with family, the cult of beauty, their careers and their lovers are fluff. Harlequins, as she called ‘em. Yes. Got it.
This choice tidbit from Leon ”I flap like an outraged matron when confronted with fictional hypotheticals distasteful to my delicate sensibilities” Wieseltier was also very amusing to me:
“These books do not seem particularly demanding in the manner of real novels,” Leon said. “And when we’re at war and the country is under threat, they seem a little insular. America’s reading women could do a lot worse than to put down ‘Will Francine Get Her Guy?’ and pick up ‘The Red Badge of Courage.’”
Dear heart, I don’t know how to break this to you, but...I’ve read The Red Badge of Courage three times. The first time was when I was twelve years old. I’ve read plenty of books about Man’s Inhumanity to Man In a Time of War; for a slightly more contemporary take, I highly recommend Pat Barker’s WWI trilogy, though some may want to approach that with caution because not only is it written by a woman, it contains *drops voice to a whisper* the gay. The thing is, it’s not a zero sum game. There are those of us who like our pink books and who are very, very well-versed in the Western literary canon. This may be difficult for you to wrap your mind around, Leon (can I call you Leon?), but do try. You’ll find it amazingly liberating.
* Yes, am quite aware that the slideshow on the Slate.com article showcases newly-designed pulp covers. Can’t find any links to the original pulp covers to, say, The Sheltering Sky. Dammit.
The only thing I’d point out here is that when Shakespeare’s plays were first published for mass reading, Shakespeare had been dead for a hell of a long time.
Will was a genius, but he was also a harried theatre manager trying to find plays his troupe could put on that were new and interesting. He didn’t sit up in an ivory tower somewhere with a quill pen searching for days for “just the right word”.
In other words, he was a lot more like a romance or chick-lit novelist than a real literary lion.
Oh, and also he stole most of his characters and plots. I wonder: does that make him one of those horrible fanfic writers? Perish the thought!
oh man, i just laughed REALLY REALLY HARD. *struggles to think of an image that will convey depths of amusement and fails*
This was my favorite part:
“Oh God forbid that girl cooties reappear in literature. We like our books to be potent and masculine, redolent of pipe smoke and Hemingway’s unwashed underwear.”
Her unquestioning assumption that a book written by some guy about war a hundred years ago is automatically more relevant to the “real world” than a book about a woman figuring out how to live her life makes me want to vomit. Sure, old books can be totally topical, but couldn’t she have picked something a little less Western Literary Manon? And yeah, I’ve read Red Badge of Courage too. Big fucking deal. Has SHE read it? Because her statement that “we’re at war and our country is under threat” makes me think the basic message of the book might not really appeal to her.
said on...Romeo and Juliet are the ultimate horny, flighty teenagers. The fact that said play is supposed to be the Great Romantic Story of All Time pisses me off like you wouldn’t believe.
Give me Cyrano de Bergerac. All the tragedy, and he actually loves her for decades and doesn’t give the viewer the feeling that they’d be sick of each other next week if nobody died in the end.
Candy, I freaking LOVE THIS POST.
I’m the first to admit that I know nothing about fine literature. . . (Oh, I read “real” lit sometimes, and i hate some and love some, just like romances.) But the idea that fiction is only valuable and literary if it is difficult and deep and nearly unapproachable. . . I seem to recall that this is a very recent development. Like, in the past eighty years or so. Before that, no one believed you should have to work hard to prove yourself a real reader. So why the hell is REAL literature held up as being the only kind worth knowing?
Seems to me that Worthy Literary Fiction is just a pompous, whiny, mommy-never-loved-me little brother to his dirty, light-hearted, smutty, entertaining big sister, Popular Novel. Oh, how he hates her and her loud friends and those orgiastic parties he never gets invited to! Trashy sluts, every one of them! *sob*
said on...Shakespeare’s heroines were always the most sober paragons of womanhood
And were never, ever played by young boys in drag. Nope. Not once. B/c that would smack of ::whispers:: the gay.
We’ve forgotten that the masculine experience, that prototypical manly isolato striking out to wrestle (in a non-homoerotic, not at all naked-and-rubbed-all-over-with-oil way) with fish or bulls or stallions or giant sperm whales called Dick, should be held as the ideal and the eternal
Oh, I chortle with glee. And gleefully write about the nineteenth-century poetry equivalent of chick lit. Oh, does this *ever* give me exigence.
Ahem. Sorry. Geek rant over. :)
said on...But the idea that fiction is only valuable and literary if it is difficult and deep and nearly unapproachable. . . I seem to recall that this is a very recent development. Like, in the past eighty years or so.
I’m not sure I agree with that, because I don’t think all literary snobbery centers around the idea that it’s worthy only if it’s difficult. Lit fic tends to value beauty and novelty in the way language itself is used, which occasionally translates to pretentious language, and it’s sometimes a touch too in love with tragedy for its own good, but not all lit fic is obscure on purpose. Most literary fiction authors like Roddy Doyle, Pat Barker, Margaret Atwood and Barry Unsworth are very, very readable, and don’t make too many attempts to be tricky-dicky with their writing. Most literary fiction authors don’t ponce around for the hell of it; they stretch language and structure in certain ways because they’re going for certain effects, like Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury, or Carol Shields did in The Stone Diaries, or Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse-Five. In some ways, modern literary fiction comes from authors going “You know, we’ve been doing this for a few hundred years. What the hell can we do to it that’ll make the form seem fresh, that’ll stretch what it means to be a novel?”
As for all the Dead White Dudes: You’re right, a decent chunk of what’s considered “great literature” now was popular reading back in the day. Hardy, Trollope and Dickens, for example, were serialized in popular magazines before having their works collected and re-edited in book form. They’re considered difficult now because of the archaisms, the obsolete cultural references and the somewhat different sentence structures--many of these people never met a subordinate clause they didn’t love.
Seems to me that Worthy Literary Fiction is just a pompous, whiny, mommy-never-loved-me little brother to his dirty, light-hearted, smutty, entertaining big sister, Popular Novel.
Eh, I think I disagree with you there. I’m of the opinion that categorizing lit fic in such a way is about as unfair as tarring all romance novels with the bodice ripper brush. (Wow, that’s a strange mental picture, there.) I love my poncey books about depressed people. I also love my trashy novels about cross-dressing plucky heroines.
Also, a point I forgot to make in my article is that all of this ranting makes Dowd and Wieseltier sound old. Not good old, as in “We’ve accumulated a lot of experience and wisdom, and we’d love to share it with you.” I’m talking “These kids these days, with their Becks and their listening to the No Doubts and the 23 Skidoos and their pierced I-don’t-know-whats. Get off my lawn!” old. I’ve said it before on this website, but I’ll say it again: the one reliable constant is that each generation thinks that the next generation is more stupid, more useless and more degenerate than theirs. How they long for the days, when men were more manly, women more womanly, and essentialists more essential!
For your reading pleasure: an essay on the dangers of novel-reading. Excites the passions, distracts the youth and promotes lazy thinking, don’t you know.
I have seen the horsemen of the cultural apocalypse, and they’re wearing Jimmy Choos.
OMG. I just snorted my Merlot.
Candy, this is one of the many reasons I heart you.
Eh, I think I disagree with you there. I’m of the opinion that categorizing lit fic in such a way is about as unfair as tarring all romance novels with the bodice ripper brush. (Wow, that’s a strange mental picture, there.) I love my poncey books about depressed people.
Hey, I love some of that stuff too. Though, really, ONLY the approachable stuff. Margaret Atwood, yummy! Faulkner? Nuh-uh. I can love a book like, say, Waterwoman, even though it is depressing in the extreme, without thinking that it’s better just because it’s harder to penetrate. Also, I like jokes about penetration, but that’s neither here nor there.
I just don’t appreciate the weird pompousness of people who consider that stuff the only true way to enlightenment. It’s insular and dismissive and surprisingly ignorant. Just like a romance reader calling fine lit whiny and pompous. *guffaw*
I’m not sure I agree with that, because I don’t think all literary snobbery centers around the idea that it’s worthy only if it’s difficult.
Hmm. I can see that, but I would argue that it’s seen as more worthy if it’s more difficult. I guess what I should have said was that up until the twentieth century, fiction was written not only to be read, but also to be readily understood and enjoyed. So why did inaccessibility become a benchmark? When did it become lowly to wrap up loose ends? (Oh, I’m a sucker for the wrapping up.) When did happy endings become trite?
Hey Leon, guess what? I’m not only a WWII historian, I also write pink books with plenty of pink parts inserting themselves into each other willy nilly.
I wonder what you have to say about Bob Hope? Shouldn’t he have been fighting, Leon? Cuz, you know, according to the great you, entertainment has no value.
Tell us oh wonderful Leon. Show us the way!
Actually. . . I know that some of us popular fiction fans lash out at literary snobs in frustration. I don’t appreciate the whole Jane, You Ignorant Slut thing, so I call them pompous. But what is the reason for their lashing out? What is Maureen Dowd’s motivation?
(I apologize if this has already been discussed and I missed it. In case you can’t tell by all my posts today, I’m running on fumes. Fumes being the soul-stealing, odorless-yet-deadly gas put off by nine five-year-olds in your house for a birthday party.)
Ann, I am shocked and appalled. Hopefully you’re taking medication for that split personality disorder. Surely such bifurcations cannot naturally exist within one individual.
Whenever I read snobs disparaging my chosen genre, it makes me want to go write loads of the hot hamana humpty humpage. Hmm… you know, it could be some’a that there reverse sie-college-y stuff. They wanna read about the pink parts humping willy nilly, and can’t bring themselves to write it, so they much sneakily inspire twisted souls like me to do it for them.
said on...I’ve read Camille (can’t remember the author’s name), Steinbeck, Faulkner, W. Somerset Maugham, Jane Austen, and others. I have enjoyed them. I’m gonna read ‘Magic Mountain’ before I die. I have never read anything called ‘Chick Lit’ but I might someday. If I want to.
This essay by Dowd is just a stupid, little attempt to demean people in the hopes that we’ll feel chastised, change our ways, and try to gain her approval. That’s all these kinds of things are ever about. Screw her. I’ll read what I want.
sherryfair said on...[Dumas the younger is the author.]
I’m not going to disparage Dowd’s femininity or her presumed sexual ability or her intelligence, but I am going to question her feelings of security regarding her social class (including educational attainment & value of the writing she does) & her intellectual credentials. I do think she’s a smart, sharp-tongued woman. She’s written things that have made me laugh & things I’ve skimmed because they are predictable, as she baits whoever’s in power currently. As she fills up the column inches every week, she makes a lot of misfires, so I’ll just add that to the tally.
Makes me wonder if she’d be called a traitor to her gender or an Uncle Tom by some feminist authors.
This controversy & the response it draws is so predictable, isn’t it? We just go in circles on this whenever these sort of remarks come up. I feel like I could write a lot of the comments here—I know what’s coming when I read these headlines.
but I am going to question her feelings of security regarding her social class (including educational attainment & value of the writing she does)
This is exactly why I threw out the “Mommy doesn’t love me” insult. I don’t understand the drive to demean popular fiction. Is it a just a simple need to have your betters pat you on the back?
Robin said on...This controversy & the response it draws is so predictable, isn’t it? We just go in circles on this whenever these sort of remarks come up. I feel like I could write a lot of the comments here—I know what’s coming when I read these headlines.
Which is a sort of trap in and of itself, isn’t it?
Personally, I don’t think that piece was worthy of Dowd at her best, and it may place near her worst—NOT because she disparages chick lit, but because her arguments are soooooooo facile and woefully shallow (not to mention just plain misinformed in some cases—see the references here to George Eliot and Shakespeare and Austen).
What did catch my attention, though, in an interesting way, was the point about refeminization of literature. THAT, I think, is a tantalizing little slice of bait, because the feminization of literature in the 19th century was all about cordoning off the “domestic” or “feminine” sphere as that of the drawing room or the kitchen or the otherwise “private” domain of women (as opposed to the public and commercial sphere men occupied). That certain elements and examples of sentimental fiction were subversive only made the dynamic more interesting, and more important, IMO, historically speaking. So I would like to think about that more, but NOT in the way Dowd characterizes it, and not as some dopey and simplistic attempt to establish some seriously spurious feminist credentials. How to do that without looking like one is in league with Dowd, I don’t know. But it might start with looking at how women construct their fictional selves and their fictional worlds and the particular mixture of fantasy and reality that women find appealing (whether it be empowering, comforting, challenging, etc.).
Responding to Victoria Dahl’s query about Ms. Dowd’s motivation, I think Jenny Crusie’s idea may have some merit. I’m not totally convinced, but I’m willing to bet this article is garnering Mo a nice bit of attention.
It’s just a bit disheartening, whatever the reason, that women still feel such a strong need to limit the horizons of fellow women. That we’re still stuck here, like a needle in a groove it can’t get out of, forcing us to hear the same thing again and again.
I really wouldn’t mind so much if the tone of her article had expressed a desire to inspire readers to rediscover some older books that have stood the test of time due to their content, writing, uniqueness, ability to explore the human condition in a meaningful way, or whatever other qualities she admires in them. But thanks to her apparent assumption that a person can’t read a book with a pink cover and survive the experience with two brain cells left over to rub together, she’s unfortunately done the opposite.
It’s all just a shame, in more ways than one.
said on...Agree. Dowd does sound a bit like a boy (”...it’s been touched by a GIRL?! Get the disinfectant!") How odd that a column in praise of Shakespeare et.al. should make one want to go out and buy a ton of chick lit in the name of Sisterhood. Perhaps I’ll take it a step further and make a pink cover for my War and Peace. ("What’s that?” - “Uhm… basically it’s about this young man who’s the natural son of an aristocrat and he inherits his father’s fortune and marries someone for her looks, but she’s an ice cold bitch who betrays him with her own brother… and the natural son’s secretly in love with his best friend’s fiancée, and SHE’s in love with the cold bitch’s brother too, so they duel, and they both survive, and then...” - “Oh, THAT kind of book.")
Can anyone give me a digested read summary of the Red Badge of Courage so that I can pretend to follow the discussion?
May I simply be completely juvenile (since you’ve all done such a bang-up job of being smart already) and say Dowd and Leon can sharpen their teeth and scratch my ass?
Yes? I can? Wunderbar.
So, the only thing I got from that article was that she hated the colour pink.
Good think she doesn’t hang around here…
Candy, you are my plucky heroine. Thank you.
I read her original blog and was amazed, especially at her listing of various types of chick lit. I posted there and informed her she forgot about vampire chick lit. Then I suggested she host a book burning if it would make her feel better.
Do these women NOT know they aren’t feminists? Feminism isn’t “the right to think the way I want you to think”. It’s the right to make choices. Period.
said on...I very rarely feel compelled to respond to blogs, but for some reason that one got me up in arms. I’m really tired of the idea that I must be stupid and uneducated because I read romance, which everyone apparently thinks is the same thing as chick lit. Even my fellow English majors seem to think of my free reading choices as my dirty little secret, and they know that I’m familiar with “real books.”
It as if Dowd belives I give a shit about her opinion. But of course she knows I/we don’t. Jenny Cruise is right...you need to make a stir in Bloglandia? Pick on a certain faction ohhhhh lets say women! and the stuff they like, you know nothing too controversial just slam on something they are secretly embarrassed about doing like reading chick-lit.
Then just watch the comments and e-mails stack up! It works everytime! People will be ripping you to shreds in their blogs AND linking back to your blog and in the case of NYT, SUBSCRIBING to the blog!!! That will get the attention of the big boss!
And you have a saftey net too! If your comments really do cause a for real stink, you can just point out all the flaws in Chick-lit cause everything has flaws that must be either embraced or over looked in order to enjoy it.
“Looking for love, through the bottom of a cocktail glass is pretty much SOP.” and then you’ll be right and they will have to agree.
See how it works… but of course we knew all this.
Okay, after a couple of glasses of champagne and a good night’s sleep, I’m feeling almost literate. Whew!
Thanks, fiveandfour, for the link to Jenny Crusie’s response. While I was there I found this tidbit, which manages to crystallize my argument even though the words come straight from a rectum!
A David Isaacson wrote an article for American Libraries journal titled “Don’t Just Read--Read Good Books!” He says, and I kid you not, “We should want our patrons to read good books, and then better ones, and then, once curiosity is aroused, the best ones they can find. And although this sounds not only old-fashioned but “judgmental,” I think librarians ought to have the courage to say that some books aren’t worth reading at all and don’t belong even in the most “balanced” collections.” (emphasis mine)
Oh, but there’s more: “But I question the argument that libraries should go out of their way to acquire romance novels, thrillers, and other literature whose primary purpose is escape and titillation”
See? See? This was what I meant in my semi-lucid argument. WHEN DID ENJOYMENT BECOME DIRTY?!?!?!?! And why didn’t his mommy ever hug him? So sad.
Oh and PS I Heart CSI!
It’s generation X’s version of Murder She Wrote...only gooshier, and more cleavage Oh and in the case of CSI:NY a truly adorable guys with Staten Island accents!
I would argue that it’s seen as more worthy if it’s more difficult. I guess what I should have said was that up until the twentieth century, fiction was written not only to be read, but also to be readily understood and enjoyed. So why did inaccessibility become a benchmark?
Actually, for a good while, fiction, and especially the novel, was meant to be didactic--or at least, that was the excuse given for writing them. I’m going to talk in sweeping generalities here, and keep in mind this is all pulled from the banks of Memories of Lit Classes Past, so those of you more knowledgeable, feel free to correct me. Anyway, as novels came to be as a form, there was a great deal of tension regarding it. People were concerned about it being moral, and there were very real worries that Them Kids What With Their Impressionable Minds would be taken in by the stories, confuse them with reality and be corrupted beyond salvation. (This happens over and over again when kids discover fun new ways of distracting themselves and engaging their brains--the exact same concerns were brought up with, say, roleplaying games, and video games, and movies.) A lot of early novels were really overt about moral lessons, often stopping the narrative dead in its tracks and inserting commentary like “Hey kids! See all this lurid stuff I’m doing? And what a big ole whore I’m being? And how I’m a thief and a liar? Don’t do it. And now, back to my lying, thieving, whoring adventures!”
Anyway, the overt proselytizing became more and more subtle and some time in, eh, I want to say the 19th century or so, people got over a lot of the hang-ups and pretty much unabashedly wrote novels to entertain and tittilate, with maybe a thin veneer of “Hey kids, don’t do what we’re doing!” to satisfy the old ‘uns. And these novels were always viewed with quite the jaundiced eye, too--the penny dreadfuls, the cheap gothics, etc.
As overt moral didactism fell more and more out of vogue, novels became more an exercise of the mind and the intellect. I think the deliberate attempts at inaccessibility were a way to establish that distance from the pulp novels.
And as sherryfair hinted at, part of it’s a class issue at heart.
Wow, I just pulled much of that out of my ass. Quick, somebody come up here and debate it! I predict a long, boring day at work, and I’d love to argue this out over the comments.
I’m not going to disparage Dowd’s femininity or her presumed sexual ability or her intelligence(...)
Heh. Yes. I’ve noticed some of those types of comments creeping in--the ones about her femininity and sexual ability, I mean. Poking at her intelligence for making some shallow, facile arguments is fair game, I reckon.
Makes me wonder if she’d be called a traitor to her gender or an Uncle Tom by some feminist authors.
Huh, interesting. Can you expand on this point?
This controversy & the response it draws is so predictable, isn’t it? We just go in circles on this whenever these sort of remarks come up. I feel like I could write a lot of the comments here—I know what’s coming when I read these headlines.
I know, me too. But isn’t it kind of weirdly comforting? “OK, wait for it, Candy’s going to bring up Shakespeare’s comedies...AND THERE SHE GOES!”
What did catch my attention, though, in an interesting way, was the point about refeminization of literature.
ROBIN! I was waiting for you to show up and talk about one of those points. I was struck by the overt distaste Dowd and Wieseltier were displaying for the “refeminization” of literature, and I was pondering how it said all sorts of interesting things about gender and social class.
I’m running late for work, though, and this comment is horrendously long as it is. But I’d love to pick this up later and work over the topic some more.
Oh, but there’s more: “But I question the argument that libraries should go out of their way to acquire romance novels, thrillers, and other literature whose primary purpose is escape and titillation”
See? See? This was what I meant in my semi-lucid argument. WHEN DID ENJOYMENT BECOME DIRTY?!?!?!?! And why didn’t his mommy ever hug him? So sad.
This is actually an old, old argument against novels--check out the essay I link to above, wherein Vicessimus Knox talks about acceptable vs. unacceptable reading in the 18th century. The targets have changed; they used to be leveled against “immoral” books, now the targets are “trashy, mindless entertainment.”
This is actually an old, old argument against novels--check out the essay I link to above, wherein Vicessimus Knox talks about acceptable vs. unacceptable reading in the 18th century.
See, this is where your education comes in so damn handy!!!
Yvonne said on...This sort of thing always reminds me of the speach Stephen King gave when he won the 2003 Distiguished Contribution to American Letters from the The National Book Awards.
Do read the part where he thanks his wife Tabitha there at the beginning, it makes me *sigh*.
http://www.nationalbook.org/nbaacceptspeech_sking.html
But what I’m getting at is much later, when he speaks about the plight of popular fiction.
“What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture?”
His writing isn’t always great, but I do love the guy.
“OK, wait for it, Candy’s going to bring up Shakespeare’s comedies...AND THERE SHE GOES!”
But I’m guessing no one was expecting Hemingway’s underwear (thanks for that, by the way...another image I’m hoping won’t be played back in the moment before I die), so Shakespeare’s comedies are forgiven.
I think librarians ought to have the courage to say that some books aren’t worth reading at all and don’t belong even in the most “balanced” collections.”
I remember some people (mostly writers) talking about this recently. I was too busy at the time to pay much attention, but the gist of the discussions I saw were along the lines of “and who gets to decide what books are worth reading and what books deserve to be in libraries?” For myself, I’d scrub Robinson Crusoe off the shelves if that weren’t unfair to Crusoe-lovers, so I do understand that sometimes a person may wish certain books didn’t exist.
But libraries are a bit of a separate animal from book stores, I think, since they are funded by the public and I believe do have some responsibility to uphold certain cultural ideals. Thus, while there’s a part of me that thinks David Isaacson is a supercilious asshole, there’s also another part of me that agrees with his idealistic take on what a (public) library should be.
[BTW, since libraries keep books on the shelves based partly on demand (this seems to be more and more of a factor lately), one thing I thought of when I saw the “who gets to decide” question was “me!” Meaning, if there are some books that aren’t popular, but you still think are “worthy”, check them out once in awhile even if you own them. I remember when I went through my F. Scott Fitzgerald phase there was a librarian who told me she hadn’t seen his books checked out in at least a couple of decades - he just wasn’t popular any more. I wonder how long unpopular books are allowed to hang out on shelves these days - will they be allowed to sit there without being checked out for a couple of decades, waiting to be rediscovered again?]
said on...There’s ridiculous snobbery on all sides of the issue.
I can understand her wanting to get women reading more than just pink covers. Or that seeing pink covers for many automatically assumes “Stupid and flighty.” Often times she’s pretty much right. It is important to read about contemporary issues and enjoy your reading while doing it but then asking someone else to take it seriously while it’s packaged in pink with stiletto heels? Much harder to do.
On the other hand seeing another Hemingway type novel be touted as the be all and end all of literature with it’s overtly masculine view point is stupid as well. Maybe he did touch on universal truths, or at least experiences, but that doesn’t mean it universally applies to today.
Nor does saying everyone should go out and read The Red Badge of Courage give ANYONE in today’s world a real good grip on how to view or understand various world point of views. It would have been better if this women offered more than just literary fiction as her standing point.
Not to mention the other fact that the majority of chick lit is for fun. It’s supposed to be your relaxing bit of fluff to take your mind off your daily trials. If one takes it seriously then maybe one needs to seek some other kind of help. It’s packaged and put out there as FUN. Not as something deep and meaningful to have vast political and economical and social conversations and debates about. It’s FUN.
Granted not everyone has the same idea of fun. But that is perhaps where she goes wrong in her article. Instead of addressing the fun aspect she simply puts it down, poops all over it, and leaves it at that. Never giving room for varying tastes or reasons for reading. Again a flagrant victim of the “Mine is better than yours NAH NAH NAH!” syndrome.
said on...What astounds me about Dowd’s comments is that she seems to have completely ignored the possibility that people who read chick lit also enjoy more serious literature as well. Sometimes a person can be in the mood for deep and intellectually stimulating and sometimes you need the brain candy.
From my own experience, if I’ve spent a day battling with scientific articles, the last thing I want to do is come home and battle with deep and thought-provoking literature. I’ve hit my quota of thought-provoking for one 24 hour period. I need light and frothy. Escapism.
Personally, I’m not a fan of chick lit. Generally most grates on nerves like nails on a chalkboard, but that’s not an indictment of anyone else reading the genre. It’s simply not for me. More a romance fan myself and clearly suffering from paranormal romance chlamydia at the moment.
But I do love nineteenth century literature. Jane Austen holds a very special place in my heart. More modern lit, by and large, I loathe. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Joyce ... I shudder. Dysfunctional people living miserable dysfunctional lives. And this is great literature?
There are exceptions, like Atwood. People who can tell an interesting, gripping story and still have deeper levels. But those sorts of books are getting harder to find. In the meantime, I’m enjoying books for the pure prurient pleasure.
But libraries are a bit of a separate animal from book stores, I think, since they are funded by the public and I believe do have some responsibility to uphold certain cultural ideals.
Wow, I find that frightening, aside from the cultural ideal of “censorship is bad”. I probably don’t want to know how libraries decide on their collections though.
There was a story recently of a library in. . . Virginia? that was getting rid of any books that hadn’t been checked out in recent history. The head guy said, “No book is sacred.” He didn’t care if it was a classic or a mass-market paperback. I’m more comfortable with that than the idea of upholding (whose?) cultural ideals, though I still find it kind of depressing.
Forgot to mention this on my previous post, but I believe that Eloisa James still has her eloquent ‘defense of the genre’ NYT op-ed piece on her site. An article made all the more relevant since she is an English prof.
I’d love to see Eloisa’s rebuttal on Dowd’s commentary.
And this is why I worship at the altar of Smart Bitches. Well said.
Has anyone else pointed out the fact that we chick lit readers actually (gasp!) buy a lot of books?
In an industry that is slowly dying, Ms. Dowd rages on a group of women who tend to buy a LOT of books. (As many of you pointed out, we also buy more than just chick lit.)
I really don’t see why these “serious” authors like to throw stones at a lucrative part of the industry. The money the millions of chick-lit-reading women pour into the industry coffers is often used to publish those “serious” authors. Who don’t always sell a lot of books.
The way I see it, they should be THANKING US. We are doing our part to keep the publishing industry afloat. Think about how much worse off the industry would be WITHOUT chick lit.
Also: Ms. Dowd’s anger is completely mis-placed. She should be mad at Borders. The bookstore without a biography section (how is that even a bookstore?). Borders doesn’t really care about books. They make that abundantly clear in the way they shelve, present and generally market books. Because the only valid argument Ms. Dowd had involved the close proximity of chick lit to “serious” literature. How is that the fault of the book’s author? That’s BORDER’S FAULT! Borders. Is. Evil.
(There were also some flat-out inaccuracies in Ms. Dowd’s rant. “Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging,” isn’t “brit-lit chick.” It’s British Young Adult. It’s been out for years and is meant for teenagers. It’s also a hilarious series, but that is neither here, nor there. Also, Shakespeare got re-issued with pastel covers at least a decade ago, while I was still in junior high. I have a well-thumbed, PINK, edition of “Romeo and Juliet” at home that I got when I was in the seventh grade.)
said on...Weeding the collection is basically a space issue. Libraries are limited on shelf space and to put more on the shelves, you have to take some off. The most obvious choice is to throw away the books that no one has read in a few years. Most librarians have learned that weeding the collection is best done in secret and under the cover of night, ninja like. People get very testy when they see books being thrown away and are surprised that most librarians *gasp* enjoy throwing away materials that are considered useless.I wonder how long unpopular books are allowed to hang out on shelves these days - will they be allowed to sit there without being checked out for a couple of decades, waiting to be rediscovered again?
When I worked in a law library we had to check the hallways and use the service elevator whenever we weeded to make sure no attornies saw us. No matter how much we explained that these books were old and contained legal information that was invalid and that if an attorney actually used the book they could be disbarred, they would throw a fit to keep them. So we would put them back on the shelf, wait a couple of weeks and then throw them away.
It varies from library to library. We serve our population by catering to their wants (fiction) and their needs (non-fiction). As an extremely basic example, if you serve a large Jewish community, you will keep an eye out for kosher cookbooks and probably have a more extensive collection than the library that has almost exclusively Christian users.I probably don’t want to know how libraries decide on their collections though.
You can ask to see your library’s collection development policy, but they tend to be a little vague. If you’re that curious, talk to the librarian over collection development and ask what steps can be taken to add certain books to the shelves. But remember, just because you donate a book, doesn’t mean it’s going on the shelf.
And because I forgot it in my last post, not all libraries are archives. Yes, they have old crap of value, but they have to actually state that they are an archival library to care about keeping all old crap and waiting until it has value.
(I have a masters degree, and yet I can’t stop calling books from 1930 old crap.)
throwing away materials that are considered useless
Another judgment call. One man’s useless is another man’s necessity.
I think of this in the context of every day’s weather. If I were to come across a book that told me statistics on the weather of a place 100+ years ago (or heck, even last month), it’d be completely useless to me. But to a researcher digging around to prove or disprove global warming, it’d be pure gold.
I understand the space constraint issue, though, and am very glad I don’t have to be judge and jury on a book’s usefulness. (And I think technology could be a help with some of this, but of course that bumps up against copyright issues in a lot of cases, which has us back to preferring to throw something away instead of making it available online.)
Nanna said on...So I guess Ms Dowd wouldn’t agree with my chucking The Unbearable Lightness of Being to the side to lose myself in Nora Roberts’ Midnight Bayou this weekend?
I thought about this topic all day yesterday. And when I woke up this morning. And I’m still thinking…
I LIKE books. A lot. I’ve worked my way through the mystery shelves, the sci-fi shelves, the YA shelves, a spattering of the Lit shelves (such a large section!) and I’ve recently forayed into Romance. Should I feel guilty about that? Is it a dirty secret? The conclusion I have finally reached is, of course, no. Sometimes I like to wear a tailored black suit and drink a dry martini, and sometimes I like to wear a pink *gasp* sundress and drink a mai tai. The idea of doing one or the other all the time makes me shudder, as I imagine it makes most of you shudder too. I wonder if dear Maureen owns a sundress?
Does her article make me angry? Well, more yesterday than today. Yesterday I felt a little more personally offended. A little “hey! you don’t even know me and you dare to pass judgement on who I must be if The Pink does not offend my sensibilities?” Today, I’m still angry that someone so widely read, and often widely respected, displays such close-minded opinions. What’s worse? Reading a book that glorifies a shiny pair of heels, or reading an article that says This is not only better than That, but That must GO and shame on you for even touching it. Personally, I hear enough of that type of message and I don’t want any part of it.
I am also a little sorry for dear Maureen. To be roaming the endless shelves of the “classics” section (filled with it’s own share of trash, might I say) in loafers and a button down forever? Here, dear… you can borrow these Manolos… and have a cosmo! Yes, I know it’s pink, but it still tastes good and drinking it won’t stop you from reading your Hemmingway. In fact, he might even IMPROVE a bit. Now, isn’t that better?
said on...Here’s a quote from “Thrones, Dominations” by Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh, that summarizes the importance of popular fiction, imo:
“...clever people can get their vision of justice from Dostoyevsky,” (Lord Peter Wimsey) said. “But there aren’t enough of them to make a climate of opinion.”
He was talking about the mystery novels his wife Harriet wrote and their vision of justice, but I think the same thing applies to all forms of popular literature, Chick-lit included.
Intellectual, erudite people might be able to get their notions of life from “classic” novels. Most others read for entertainment and pleasure, and if they learn something along the way, so be it.
I think that’s the reason why a lot of “classics” started out life as popular entertainment. When they have passed the test of time, and their contents survive current fads, then they have a right to that appelation. And the literary snobs of each age are usually the worst judges of what will survive time.
It still burns my ass to see someone dismiss a whole genre so cavalierly, though.
Red Badge of Courage anyone....?
I did look it up in Wikipedia and Amazon.co.uk (three and a half stars - two people loved it, two didn’t) but I’m still curious - from just the outline it’s not obvious why it wouldn’t be an insular reading experience: Americans reading an American author writing about the American Civil War.
On a totally different tack, I was remembering Linda Smith commenting on Bridget Jones Diary when it was on the BBC list of Top 100 reads. I really admired Linda Smith, thought she came across as a wonderfully warm and witty person, but she was so dismissive of Bridget Jones - thought it a dreadful book - and only as an afterthought remarked that she had never read it. Always thought it odd that such a very intelligent woman could think that it was fair to critisise a book based only on her own preconceptions of it.
While I agree that the shelves are invaded by the Pink Covers, I can’t help but notice that the shelves are also invaded by:
-DaVinci Code clones
-Gritty/quirky/dryly amusing PIs
-political polemic
-honest lawyers vs. the establishment
-books telling how to have a more fulfilling life
-political polemic
-nasty murderer stories
-weird ghosts/not-ghosts visitations
-political polemic
-diet books
-the tale of the difficult/weird life someone had growing up in an exotic foreign country (but the book is written by a middle-class American)
and oh, did I mention the political polemic?
Wow, it sure is handy to do a survey when you know in advance what results you want. Makes it easy to gather just the right data, donnit?
said on...I think Dowd should find a new bookstore—preferably one where they separate the plays from the novels.
said on...She does not want to eat the cake.
So I shall eat it. And it is good. Mmmm, cake.
Enjoy those protein bars, Ms. Dowd! I’ll be over here eating the cake. Tomorrow I shall have chicken marsala and grilled baby vegetables. And then cake. And when I go hiking I shall have a protein bar (and when I get home, some cake).
ROBIN! I was waiting for you to show up and talk about one of those points. I was struck by the overt distaste Dowd and Wieseltier were displaying for the “refeminization” of literature, and I was pondering how it said all sorts of interesting things about gender and social class.
Well, I had a guilty moment of relief that Dowd hadn’t chosen Romance to pick on, because the “feminization” issue is certainly present there, too, and perhaps in even more traditional form.
And then I had to work through my ambivalence about responding in the sense that Sherryfair articulated (that going round and round thing), because I didn’t know quite how to respond without sounding sort of like an anti-Dowd, which would have (for me, at least), simply pulled me down into the pit with her, and then, well, she might actually have a point.
Your referencing of Eliot was great, because it got me thinking a lot about how there’s indeed a place for talking about what we, as women, are writing of and for ourselves, and what we should be able to expect of those endeavors in terms of craft, thoughtfulness, etc. But that talking about those things should not devolve into a catfight over who’s more feminist and whether I’m unpatriotic or frivolous because I read Emily Giffin.
As to the feminization issue, it’s interesting, isn’t it? On the most simplistic level, I’m thinking about how domestic fiction of the 19th century was often about women finding their own voice within the private, domestic sphere. Whereas chick lit is more about women finding their voice somewhere between two spheres, the private and the public, and perhaps not fulfilled in either space. That women are actually able to articulate themselves in this commercial space, and to further do so in commercially viable fiction seems monumentally important to me. And that women are still struggling with their residence in both the public and private sphere is, of course, one of our greatest challenges. Not only because it DOES implicate all sorts of class and gender (and racial) assumptions, but also because it brings us back to all those questions about what fulfills us and how we exercise the choices we do have (and again let me express my relief that Dowd didn’t pick on Romance).
The anxiety over how litrachure is no longer the exclusive property of men does sort of amuse me, and the idea that its so-called feminization is somehow a ghettoization of something superior is exasperating in the same way political extremism is. I’m surprised that no one has argued that women’s success in commercial fiction markets is a masculinization of women authors and editors, since the masculine assumption still seems so ubiquitous.
Oh, see, now that I’ve started there seems to be so much so say about this, that I better stop here before I exceed the word limit for this comment and embarrass myself completely.
Sherryfair wrote: Makes me wonder if she’d be called a traitor to her gender or an Uncle Tom by some feminist authors.
Candy says: Huh, interesting. Can you expand on this point?
I wasn’t very clear, was I? Sort of muttering to myself without making the connections for any passing reader. Here’s what I was thinking. Last year, I read Ariel Levy’s “Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women & the Rise of Raunch Culture” (there’s an excerpt here, if you’re not familiar with her work, at http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?sid=449&pid=510941&agid=2). She talks about women trying to behave exactly like men or identifying really closely with male attitudes as a survival tactic. I was particularly struck by a chapter in which Levy talks about the demeanor of women who were often “the first” or “the only” in their professions. You know, the pioneering tokens. (I always think of Joan Crawford planting her hands flat on the boardroom table at Coca-Cola or wherever it was: “Don’t fuck with me, fellas.") And how often those women said in interviews that they had no need of feminism, that they were perfectly equal, that they simply went along with the guys & everything was fine. They identified completely & almost seamlessly with the male culture of their workplace or profession. And occasionally, this seemed to lead to some sneering at girlishness. Well, Levy equated this behavior with that of the “Uncle Tom” figure in African-American culture. Ever since reading that, I have looked a little differently at some women who may be somewhat isolated by the power they have achieved in certain hierarchies & wondered if there is something to it. Would Dowd fit into that group, I wonder? Thus, my comment, which, sorry to say, I didn’t explain very well at the time.
As to Marianne’s: Red Badge of Courage anyone....?
I’m only guessing here, but I think “The Red Badge of Courage” is cited because one of its aims seems to be showing the reader that participating in a battle isn’t necessarily heroic or even a coherent, understandable experience that lends itself to being narrated. Stendhal shows Fabrizio wandering haphazardly in the mud at Waterloo. Tolstoy then picks up on that for several of his own works, including “Sebastapol” and “War & Peace,” and after reading Tolstoy, Crane depicts the American Civil War in the 1890s, though it happened before he was born. Here in the U.S., we don’t have that brilliant slew of English poets that came of age during World War I. So Crane’s usually the go-to guy for anti-heroic depictions of war, if you’re talking about anything written before Vietnam, and if you want to grab a name that’s easily recognizable because he’s commonly assigned in junior high school & high school curriculum. (Eighth grade, for me, in an Upstate NY public school.) If Dowd could shut up about Chick Lit & just talk for a few paragraphs about why Crane might make interesting reading right now for all Americans, including women, children & dogs, she’d make me very, very happy. But I guess she wouldn’t grab attention by causing offense. That is her usual modus operandi. She’s an oppositional journalist. She paints her satire very broadly.
My parents are the ultimate reading snobs. They cannot believe that I read (Shhh. And enjoy!) Romance novels. It’s a curse they struggle with.
About once a month my mother (PhD from Harvard in Renaissance Comp Lit) sends me a book I should read. Sometimes I read it, other times I don’t bother. My father (PhD from MIT in Civil Engineering) enjoys mysteries. But only very GOOD mysteries. Sometimes he sends me a book I should read, but mostly he sends me links.
A while ago, they visited me, went shopping at my local bookstore, and brought me books which I had CLEARLY overlooked in my twice weekly visits to said bookstore. In the stack of books was an Elizabeth Lowell mystery. I almost hurt myself trying to hold in the laughter.
That’s not to say that I would never read the book, or that I have ANYTHING against Elizabeth Lowell. I just thought it was amusing that in their attempt to train forty-year-old to improve her reading habits that they brought me a book by a Romance author.
Funny how snobbery works.
said on...Just wanted to comment on libraries and weeding. I work in a small library where we run a report once a year of books that have not checked out in 5 years(funny how few romances show up on these reports). I pull them by the cartloads for my boss to look at. Usually classics go back on the shelf though. For example, nobody has read Tom Jones in 15 years, but by God we keep putting it back hoping the right person will come across it. As painful as it can be, we can’t keep everything plus we actually are required to weed out a certain percentage of the collection every year. Plus our patrons love it when we do our yearly weeding because it means a big book sale so there is no keeping it hush-hush here.
Thanks Sherryfair. Worth reading then? I noticed Amazon had a couple of second hand copies for next to nothing.
Sherryfair, I haven’t read Levy’s book, but I’m having trouble seeing the connection between the powerful-corporate-woman and the girls (I use that term on purpose) who think that jiggling their T&A for strangers is empowerment.
I associate with many of the former. We have a good deal of contempt for the latter.
As I recall, E--, Levy’s not saying this is true of every woman currently working in the male-dominated business. She gave a few pointed examples. There’s a recurring figure in her book, and it’s the woman who identifies so strongly with men that she appears to have a kind of contempt for other women and the subtlest form of this is a sort of exhibitionism & devaluation of her own body. I’m not doing a good job here, sorry—I can’t explain it was well as the book does. Rest assured that it was not a wholesale indictment of powerful women in the working world. That’s not Levy’s agenda. It’s an interesting read & I’d recommend it, even if you disagree with her conclusions. (I picked it up because I’d read some sections of it in New York magazine a few years ago & because I got interested in reading about the “Girls Gone Wild” franchise.
E—I haven’t finished Levy’s book yet, but IIRC, her argument about the GGW girls is something like this: it used to be that women found exhibitionism as disempowering and a product of masculine power and exploitation. But in the era of Britney Spears’s ubiquitous hoo hoo and Paris Hilton, some women (esp. younger women) are not participating in their own exploitation, *mistaking* it for power because they have internalized a certain masculine sensibility and no longer see it as something that exploits them. So they become co-conspirators in their own exploitation—they think they’re claiming their sexual freedom and independence by showing their breasts on those GGW shows *on their own terms* instead of making Joe Francis a rich man and feeding the fantasies of 18 year old boys everywhere.
There’s an interesting opinion piece on the whole phenomenon here: http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2007/02
/03/opinion/columns/doc451c3bc8d0393620830774.txt
(I cut the URL in half to make it fit).
In general, Levy’s argument is interesting and provocative and worth considering, IMO, although I’m ambivalent about some of it.
I actually think it’s fun, but useless to fight back with literary knowledge. Someone who pens something like this is simply questing to feel superior, and if they didn’t pick on romance or chick lit, it would be clothing or television (hey, maybe I can write that one)...name anything. Just tell them to blow it out their arse. That’s what Hemingway would have said.
said on...Maureen Dowd’s problem is that she’s a grown-up version of the stuck-up, born-wealthy, snot-nosed sorority bitch who simply could not understand why anyone would shop at (horrors and horrors) Wal-Mart when Nordstrom’s sells perfectly good T-shirts for only $149.99 each.
And who thinks she’s progressive because she gave her maid $50 to help with her son’s college education. (Of course, he doesn’t go to the same college that her children attend; some things are just not for those kinds of people.)
02.12.07 at 04:31 PM |