/lit/ - Literature

>Do I think I should be getting all of the attention that Jonathan "Genius" Franzen gets? Nope. Would I like to be taken at least as seriously as a Jonathan Tropper or a Nick Hornby? Absolutely.

That's like Uwe Boll asking to be taken as seriously as Francis Ford Coppola.

It's too bad that someone like Jodi Picoult is bringing this up because there is a case to be made about the lit establishment's narrow critical focus, the way women's work is viewed, etc., but as it is it comes off like Nicholas Sparks beefing with the reanimated corpse of DFW

>>1078120

What drives me crazy about it is that both of those bitches aren't even really saying they want to be treated like Franzen. Except that that's what they're saying. In other words, they want to be treated like good writers who produce meaningful fiction without actually, you know, writing well or producing meaningful fiction.

>I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.
Yes, the difference is gender

I have skimmed through a couple of these and have come to the conclusion that chicklit is basically porn for women. So if they want recognition, I want equal time for bangbros.com.

>>1078137
decent chicklit is Nick Hornby for women, that's all

>>1078133

I agree. It's like this is almost calculated to prevent serious discussion about female authors. Also, if Picoult is the best women have to offer (she isn't), then being ignored is deserved.

>>1078099

i actually have a bias towards woman writers, ever since i was a kid buying fantasy novels. I always thought to myself "wtf would a girl know about dragons and knights? nothing fuck them" so i always bought male authors, and that bias still stuck with me...i dont see women as great artists

they just dont have the neural power i guess...i dunnno, but there never will be a female shakespeare, goethe, cervantes, dante, darwin, newton, einstein, alexander the great, tesla, etc.

>>1078179
w e l p

>>1078179

You're an idiot. Go away, please.

I have no idea who any of these people are.

And it feels fucking great.

I happen to like scifi (yea yea genre fiction trolls get back to your bridges).

Almost every goddamn female author in this genre sucks, with a few notable exceptions (Andre Norton I'd be looking at you if you were, you know, alive.)

>>1078188
well show me im wrong


even in stupid forms of art like music and painting women never excelled, you dont even need schooling for those just an instrument or paint brush

kind of sad, no?

>>1078204
Read "The screwfly solution".

"The Screwfly Solution" is a 1977 science fiction short story by Raccoona Sheldon, a pen name for psychologist Alice Sheldon, who was better known by her other nom de plume, James Tiptree, Jr. It received the Nebula Award for Best Novelette, and has been adapted into a television film.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution

>>1078229
wherever possible, u dun goofed

>>1078229

>stupid forms of art like music and painting

>>1078229
>show me im wrong

Let's start with this bit:
>stupid forms of art like music and painting

>>1078232

Tiptree was a fucking genius and is unfairly obscure. "The Milk of Paradise" is something I still reread every couple of years.

>I think there are a lot of readers who would like to see reviews that belong in the range of commercial fiction rather than making the blanket assumption that all commercial fiction is unworthy.

BAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
PEOPLE ARE SAYING THAT MY BOOK WHICH IS CAREFULLY FORMULATED TO APPEAL TO THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR OF READERS ISN'T ART!

>>1078170
Where I live, the dominant literary types are all fanboys of female literary authors. Tis practically all that gets discussed.

Some of them I respect. Most of them not.

I feel a very distinctive shift in modern male and female literary writing. Its not about excluding women, although the reason for their exclusion might very well be femininity.

I think a lot of it is how they convey/portray the interior of the protagonists.

>Why do you feel that commercial fiction, or more specifically popular fiction written by women, tends to be critically overlooked?

Uh... because it's "commercial" fiction?

>>1078263
Tiptree would be such an interesting figure even if she hadn't been a good writer. so nutty.

>I don't write literary fiction - I write books that are entertaining

ALL MY RAGE.
ALL OF IT.

SINCE WHEN IS LITERARY FICTION NOT FUN?

>>1078293
and then she says she wants to be taken seriously.

Bitches and whores.

There are bound to be plentiful exceptions, but I think men, far beneath the surface, are always reading critically and women emotionally. It's difficult to deny that women are, generally, capable of greater empathy. I think that is a large part of what informs their reading.

As a writer, I think its important to be able to balance both sort of aspects. I think the reasons the chiclit authors fail is because their target audience excludes half of humanity; if you exclude half of all human experience and perspective, how the fuck can you expect to be a decent writer?

>[...]their thoughts on what role gender plays in literary criticism, the importance of popular fiction in our culture, and whether progress is being made.

>whether progress is being made.

Wow feminism sure has a funny way of impinging itself on merit-based action, doesn't it?

>>1078302
>mfw female protagonists are specialty subject matter and equally masturbatory and shallow male protagonists have universal appeal

>i didn't actually upload an image but you get the idea

>Chick lit gets ignored. It would be as if... music critics... refused to acknowledge the existence of Katy Perry or Lady Gaga. How seriously would a reader take a critic like that?

Oh god, if only.

What a self-condemning simile.

Just a side note, and digressive.

In the interview Pinter lines up one of the questions to allude that Gary Shteyngart writes literary fiction.

This is not the case. At all.

"This strikes me as fundamentally unfair (that if you write in an overly cliched and done to death genre people who are overly critical of books do not like you) ."

"Romance gets ignored completely...and that, I think, is the most damning argument about gender bias at the Times."
Because only women write/read romance, right? Whos biased now?

"It would be as if the paper's film critics only reviewed tiny independent fare and refused to see so much as a single frame of a romantic comedy, or if the music critics listened to Grizzly Bear and refused to acknowledge the existence of Katy Perry or Lady Gaga. How seriously would a reader take a critic like that?"
Very. Twould show good taste, for one thing.

"unlike the fashionable writers who have to depend on the critics to get noticed."
Speaks for itself.

It's sorta like when I hear people say that when a movie does poorly at the box office but gets good reviews, it means critics are just out of touch with the public.

Shit makes me rage a wee bit.

I've never written to an Editor before, but the the amount of butthurt about "boys not reviewing my COMMERCIAL fiction because I'm a girl" really makes me want to put these stupid cunts in their place.

>>1078315
Not protagonists, writers. Of chick-lit. Not female writers in general.

Hows your reading comprehension? Good?

"Chicklit" has negative connotations.

Of course you're going to be biased when the context you hear about a work in is negative. I had a lot of well read friends in high school who suffered under the shit they were assigned to read, even though they normally went for the classics.

I hated studying Gatsby, even though I had read the book and some commentaries before and really enjoyed.

tl;dr - context is important

did zizek ever bust rhymes with the RZA?

>>1078368

one thing I've always struggled with is telling what contemporary authors are ones to watch out for, without the lens of history to guide me.

shit, even professors I asked said, "uhhh I read pulp"

This is as bad as that Nicholas Sparks interview. Can't they be happy enough making millions off of dumb people? Sorry, your books are great literature, and the latest Jennifer Aniston movie isn't a great film.

2010 and women still can't write for shit, or philosophize, or direct film or be a decent scientist.

>>1078413
though I know relatively little about philosophy, the only woman I can think of is Simone deBeauvoir

>>1078419
that is to say, that's at least one I know of.

I knew kathryn bigelow was sporting a throbbing cock as he entered James Cameron's tender asshole, but he hides it well under that dress.

>>1078420
And if she wasn't a women you wouldn't have even know of her.

>>1078421
>Implying kathryn bigelow is a good director

>>1078419
Julia Kristeva and Susan Sontag can philosophize at least as well as de Beauvoir did. Might as well note them too.

>>1078430
only implying she's a well-endowed dude who pummeled james cameron's bearded asshole as he recites keanu's lines from point break.

>>1078444

>>1078413
lawd jesus u little boys

>>1078432
and I just remembered Mary Wollstonecraft

Jesus Christ. What's next? Is the director of "Vampires Suck" going to complain that the Cannes Film Festival ignored his movie's existence?

The odd thing is that the two authors interviewed exhibit a sort of contrasting effect in which one comes across pretty rational, though somewhat lamenting, about her position whereas the other displays an alarming amount of butthurt. I'll let you guess which is which. Also:

>I read a lot of commercial fiction and a lot of the same themes and wisdoms I find in commercial fiction are the same themes and wisdoms as what i see lauded in literary fiction.
Well if somebody happens to find the Dostoevsky of chicklit, gimme a ring and I'll give it an actual chance.

loool, reading jennifer weiner talk about the similarities in "themes" between commercial fiction and literary fiction is hilarious

sure, jennifer, if you use the same themes, it will be as good

Commercial writers can dry their tears with $100 bills.

I'm so glad I'm gay and could seriously give fuck all about what women think I think of them.

But staying on target, can someone please deflate this woman's ego? I understand that the article is trying to address the issue of the negative view of women writers, but when I'm addressing the issue of how gay men on the whole are not vapid HIV farms, I don't have a typical club rat bring up the issue. I do some things called "internal activism" and "pre-planning" and "thinking before I open my fat fucking mouth and make an idiot of myself."

I must say that this whole thing is thoroughly entertaining.

>Why do you feel that it is important that commercial fiction receive critical attention?

>Picoult: Because historically the books that have persevered in our culture and in our memories and our hearts were not the literary fiction of the day, but the popular fiction of the day.

What. The. Fuck. Am. I. Reading.

>the literary establishment's alleged shoddy treatment of commercial writers
And this is a problem, how? I don't see Micheal Bay winning film festivals and getting glowing reviews from critics, but he's not mad.

>when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book
oh sigh. ffs.

>Would I like to be taken at least as seriously as a Jonathan Tropper or a Nick Hornby?
>implying they are taken seriously

>If you write thrillers or mysteries or horror fiction or quote-unquote speculative fiction, men might read you, and the Times might notice you. If you write chick lit, and if you're a New Yorker, and if your book becomes the topic of pop-culture fascination, the paper might make dismissive and ignorant mention of your book. If you write romance, forget about it. You'll be lucky if they spell your name right on the bestseller list.
6/10, I got a bit upset.

Meh.