Male authors are just, you know, better
I own a copy of the wonderful book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. It remains one of the best gifts I’ve received as an adult (thank you Roslyn!), despite the fact that it is terribly, disappointingly flawed, as all lists are.
First, the love. If it were not for this book acting like my personal reading reference guide at 2am when I should be sleeping, but instead am flicking through the glossy pages, full of desire for words yet unread, I would not be reading Edmund White’s perfectly titled The Beautiful Room Is Empty.
Similarly, I may have been duped into trying to toil through more Salman Rushdie than I have. To those of you who actually enjoyed Midnight’s Children - I can only assume our literary tastes are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
This book of books, this catalogue of lust, is the kind of thing I use as a more manageable form of google - a search with an end - a place where I don’t become overwhelmed because my options are finite.
What I passiontaly dislike about it though, is that it falls into the trap being heavily debated at the moment by the literati on the interwebs - it is undeniably dominated by male authors.
When it comes to books considered to be literature - books written by men get reviewed more, get more positive reviews when they are reviewed, and male authors are more than twice as likely to get a second book reviewed, at least when it comes to the New York Times Book Review, arguably the industry’s most prestigous reviewing forum.
My much loved book-list-book suffers from the same problem, which makes me angry and sad and guilty for not burning my bra (figuratively of course, they’re expensive).
You should read what The Slate and The Rumpus have to say about the issue. And then you should go and read fiction by women.
Just to start, you could try Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, or Janice Galloway’s The Trick is to Keep Breathing or Joan Didion’s The White Album
What are your recommendations for women’s literature?
