Brainy Broads Cheapshot Chicks; Blog Blowhard Blurts: "Baloney!"
This Is Not Chick Lit, a new anthology from "America's Best Women Writers," sets out (finally!) to overthrow the tyranny of the anti-woman book business and kick out the bimbos who have consigned reading gals to a softcover Abu Ghreib of designer handbags and unreliable boyfriends.
Among the serious belles of belles lettres who are fighting this uphill battle: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Aimee Bender, Judy Budnitz, Jennifer S. Davis, Jennifer Egan, Carolyn Ferrell, Mary Gordon, Cristina Henríquez, Samantha Hunt, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Dika Lam, Caitlin Macy, Francine Prose, Holiday Reinhorn, Roxana Robinson, Curtis Sittenfeld, Lynne Tillman, Martha Witt. You can see why these women are so motivated. I mean, how long has the male-dominated literary establishment conspired to keep Francine Prose from publishing? Why does Hollywood stubbornly refuse to adapt any of Egan's books for the big screen? And Sittenfeld? What kind of world are we living in where the media refused to make a single mention of her obscure cult novel Prep?
Poking holes in such deluded self-regard should be easy enough, but Scott Stein (the Scott Stein) shows there are still some interesting things to say on the matter:
Women are hardly oppressed by the publishing industry, the critics, or the literary establishment. Women publish serious books and are taken seriously; they are reviewed in major publications and taught in university courses; they write bestsellers in every genre; they hold many major positions as editors and literary agents; one of them (Oprah) owns the most powerful promotional vehicle for books that has ever existed; their most commercially successful author, J.K. Rowling, could probably buy and sell a dozen Dan Browns and still afford a few John Grishams to mow the lawn.
Women are also certainly not oppressed by the reading public, since women are the ones who buy most of the fiction, which is why publishers cater to women by publishing chick lit. Gloria Steinem's problem is that women don't make the choices that she wants them to. Not enough women are buying the right kinds of books. Too many of them want to be entertained by something light and amusing and not substantial enough. Too many women–writers–are making too much money by giving other women–readers–exactly what they want to spend their money on. There are men involved in the industry, too, but I would guess that the majority of editors and agents involved in publishing chick lit are women.
Calling a collection of serious stories This Is Not Chick Lit isn't an act of rebellion or a political statement. It's a marketing strategy. "Hey, over here," it says to serious readers, "be seen reading this book. You'll feel better about yourself and will impress people." Or, less cynically, "Hey, if you don't like chick lit, try some literature written by women."
There's also a good discussion of the way book-cover semaphore does the work of genre creation and author stratification.
I wish America's greatest women writers luck with their marketing strategy, but there's another element at work here—one of class. The writers above are the literary equivalent of Oscar winners, and as such they'll always be at a disadvantage, in terms of artistic license, against an acknowledged low genre like chick lit—which has already shown its literary value through the kind of borderline-insane experimentation only a low genre can carry off.
That having been said, I like Francine Prose. But for another view, dig Alan Charles Kors' big red F-grade for Prose's campus-PC burlesque Blue Angel.