Franzenfreude

[Mirabell]

A very interesting article about gender bias and Great American Novelists
The Jonathan Franzen flap and unconscious gender bias. - By Meghan O'Rourke - Slate Magazine (http://www.slate.com/id/2267184/)

(the other linked articles are just as interesting and relevant)

[Eric]

The hard-faced mildly successful editor-poet O'Rourke protests too much.

She says that all her ideas are speculation. Indeed. But paranoid feminism is pass?. Whatever the talents or otherwise of Franzen, O'Rourke ignores all the thousands of successful women novelists and poets, from Plath to George Eliot, Oksanen to Zadie Smith, Tokarczuk to Bishop, Lessing to Brookner, Dickinson to Austen, who didn't or don't suddenly want to become a man to avoid bias.

O'Rourke's just another wind-up journo in the American establishment babble-bubble, trying to write herself to fame in totally the wrong way. Her ramblings will be totally forgotten within six months, while the women above have established a name for themselves, not as women authors, but as authors.

Never suck up to feminists. It brings the worst out in men. They either get macho and beat their wives, or become all cuddly & pink socks.

[Clarissa]

This debate reminded me of another great female writer: Virginia Woolf, and her A Room of One's Own

virginia woolf / a room of one's own : shakespeare's sister (http://egophelia.free.fr/2femme/woolfroomsister.htm)

It is a fact that the press will describe the physical appearance of even the most talented and bestknown female writer.

However, the Franzen is on my list of books to reqd soon.

[Clarissa]

This debate reminded me of another great female writer: Virginia Woolf, and her A Room of One's Own

virginia woolf / a room of one's own : shakespeare's sister (http://egophelia.free.fr/2femme/woolfroomsister.htm)

It is a fact that the press will describe the physical appearance of even the most talented and bestknown female writer.

However, the Franzen is on my list of books to read soon.Even you, Eric, start your comments with
The hard-faced mildly successful editor-poet O'Rourke. This has nothing to do with what he wrote or her opinions, whether you agree with them or not.If the article had been written by a man about Zadie Smith, it would inevitably have included the fact that she is stikingly beautiful. Which is neither here nor there as far as her books are concerned.

[Clarissa]

This debate reminded me of another great female writer: Virginia Woolf, and her A Room of One's Own

virginia woolf / a room of one's own : shakespeare's sister (http://egophelia.free.fr/2femme/woolfroomsister.htm)

It is a fact that the press will describe the physical appearance of even the most talented and bestknown female writer.

However, the Franzen is on my list of books to read soon.Even you, Eric, start your comments with
The hard-faced mildly successful editor-poet O'Rourke This has nothing to do with what she wrote or her opinions, whether you agree with them or not.If the article had been written by a man about Zadie Smith, it would inevitably have included the fact that she is stikingly beautiful. Which is neither here nor there as far as her books are concerned.

[Eric]

Yes, Clarissa, O'Rourke looks as hard as nails. I have the same prejudice about the appearance of Coetzee, who can hardly be accused of being a woman.

*

Anyway, being interested in literature, I bought "Le Magazine Litt?raire" this afternoon at the newsagent's. I'd leafed through the summer issue and it had looked boring. This issue, the September one, has as the front cover theme "Les romanci?res fran?aises". There were articles in what the French term the "dossier" or theme of the month about a number of women authors from Mme de Lafayette in the 18th century, via George Sand and Colette, to Sagan, Leduc, Duras, plus an article about the little-known H?l?ne Bessette, then again famous ones such as Yourcenar, de Beauvoir, Rolin, the critics Cl?ment-Cixous-Kristeva, two giggly girls (male prejudice; see photo) Christine Angot and Catherine Millet, NDiaye, Darrieussecq, and beyond this section on French women authors, Ali Smith, Sarah Waters, Sofi Oksanen, and a few men.

This magazine did something that should be done more: celebrating women writers instead of whingeing about their eternal second-class-citizen status. I shall read as many of the articles as I can, including the one about:


Au XVIIIe si?cle, les femmes sont d'influentes prescriptrices dans les salons, mais le production intellectuelle et litt?raire reste un privil?ge masculin. De fortes t?tes passeront outre, sous couvert d'anonymat ou en simulant la modestie.

But that was some 250 years ago. Nowadays, French women writers are just as visible as the men.

[Clarissa]

Having lived in Paris, I can only confirm what you say about women writers in France and women in general. But then again, intellect/ intelligence have always been considered admirable in France, unlike in the UK where it was more of a handicap. No one in France would have written that Yourcenar looked like an old bag - or a more polite equivalent, as no one would have written of O'Rourke that she was 'hard-faced'. :) You say that you have the same prejudice re.Coetzee. My reaction to that: would you have remarked on it, as you did with O'Rourke?

Intelligence and being feminine, ideal in a woman, so far as the French are concerned. One only has to see how they treat their women to realise that. Compare the French female politicians - and there are many - to the Merkels, Hilary Clintons etc. Mme. Lagarde, French finance minister, may not be the most beautiful of women but she is infinitely more feminine and attractive than Merkel or Clinton.

The French feminists did not burn their bras nor did they become second rate copies of men. They stayed female, they stayed feminists, they stayed attractive. However, that is thanks to French men and the way they treat their women! And, unlike their jolly hockeysticks equivalent, French women do not go in for bingedrinking and foul language to prove themselves.

In France, I have always been treated as an equal, among men or women, gender did not come into it.Women are not 'second-class citizens' in France.

France is indeed different - and, as a feminine feminist and, hopefully, not too stupid, my favourite country.

[Eric]

Clarissa, I've seen various photos of Yourcenar. The one on the back of the box of a three volume boxed set makes her look like an attractive, if rather short-sighted, young woman, hardly out of her teens. The one in Le Magazine Litt?raire this month, taken in 1937, maybe fifteen years after the other one, has the same traits, but she looks rather more masculine and has cut her hair very short. By the time she was wearing that thick coat and was probably in her sixties, she probably didn't care a damn what people thought, as long as Grace didn't nag her too much. Wives can nag, you know.

*

These 18th century women apparently had a bit of a rough time. They were allowed to run the salons, and gush forth there, but if they wanted to write books of their own, they had to use a pseudonym or do them anonymously, in epistolic or novel form - as the novel was regarded as a low literary genre. Look at it now, at it pinnacle. So that article I referred to gives some insights into ladies' struggle that they no longer have in the 21st century. So no more feminist fights, please, for fiction, faction and fuction. The genre is already swamped with chick lit.

But in the 18th century, there were several novelists, evidently, whom the writer (should I say writress...?) of the article, one Benedetta Craveri, lists with clear relish. So while I have great respect for ladies with brains who were then treated like glorified hostesses, I have no sympathy for the wannabes of now, when the publishing industry and the grant-awarding bodies are so full of the monstrous regiment already.

*

To avoid thread-spoiling I will copy this onto the thread I started for this issue of the mag and henceforth write comments there. Because I've got nothing to say on Franzen.

[Clarissa]

AS Byatt says women who write intellectual books seen as unnatural | Books | The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/20/as-byatt-intellectual-women-strange)

Recent article by A.S.Byatt pertaining to the gender difference, if any, in writing.

Eric, there you go again, commenting on Yourcenar's appearance!

[Bubba]

In this month's Atlantic is a short review (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/10/smaller-than-life/8212/) of the Franzen book by the always enjoyable B. R. Myers.

In Eric's defense, Clarissa, he has often commented most unfavorably on Coetzee's appearance and even, if I am not mistaken, put it forward as a legitimate reason not to read his books. I'm not so sure I disagree with him.