Why (do you) make a point of reading female authors?

Thirty years ago I basically didn't know women wrote books. Twenty years ago I didn't believe making a special effort to read female authors, or even talking about women authors separately from men, emphasising them, giving them space, was necessary or good (rather the opposite). Ten years ago I began to wonder whether everything I had thought before was wrong.

Now I'm trying to catch up.

You?

About 6 years ago I started reading more again when I finished my Masters. I found that although I read lots of books my men, most of my favorites were women. I just didn't know where to look for high quality current fiction by women, though. Bestseller lists often don't appeal to my taste. I like the classics or books that I snobbishly refer to as literary fiction.

Joining LT helped me find more women authors (I'm ashamed to admit I didn't even know Margaret Atwood, now one of my favorites). I read about 60% books by women at this point without even trying. I'm just naturally drawn to books by women and don't need to necessarily make an effort to seek them out anymore - they tend to find their way to my wish list easily enough!

I like to read a 50/50 split of male authors and female authors every year, since that is roughly the distribution of humanity. If I don't pay attention to what authors I read, I generally end up with a 70/30 split. I have to actually try in order to read enough books by women, and I find that kind of upsetting.

I realized while I was in college that as I grew older I was reading fewer books by females. Many of the female authors I loved when I was growing up (Madeleine L'Engle, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ursula K. LeGuin, L. M. Montgomery, Diana Wynne Jones, E. Nesbit, Patricia C. Wrede, etc) are classified as "kids' books" or "YA", even though many of their books are perfectly good for adults. I felt like society was telling me that my reading habits could only grow if I read male authors. (Thankfully I found LT in the nick of time and learned that most of my expectations about books were being wormed into my brain by marketing).

probably started when i took a ... something like "women in fiction" class as an english elective in college (was a science major). at some point, helped by classes like that, i realized that when reading for assignments it was primarily men, although not exclusively, but that i also loved books written by women. when i came to feminism (sadly long after college) i understood how silencing these women's voices, just by not reading them as much or having them as accessible or seemingly as worthy as male writers by being left off of syllabi contributes to the underlying sexism in (at least) my country. and like norabelle says, i want to read books representing people in our population. not just white guys. i don't do as well with race and ability etc as i do with gender, though.

Interesting topic. I read a lot of books off my gramma's shelves when I stayed at her house in the summers--Louisa May Alcott, P.G. Wodehouse, Daphne duMaurier, Graham Greene, Margaret Mitchell, Jules Verne, Rumer Godden, all my aunt's Nancy Drews, and a boatload of Zane Gray westerns my grandfather read.

I hated the Nancy Drews and Zane Grays equally because I tricked out the formulae pretty fast and got bored with them. (Well, Wodehouse always followed a formula, but he was so funny it didn't matter.)

I guess I never really thought about picking out a book because of the author's genre until I took a women's lit class 35 years ago in college.

I didn't care for Marge Piercy or Sherri Tepper much. Atwood and Austen were revelations. I've re-read them often, and am glad Atwood has more than six books in her canon.

If I'm trolling for new books in a genre I like, I might look specifically for women's names (e.g., recently called up LT's list of 500 top dystopian novels and saw some that I put on my wishlist).

But mostly I don't think too much about an author's gender when I'm reading a book. It's either a good story or it's not.

I like to read female authors because I want to listen to voices other than the ubiquitous white, middle-class, male voice. Also because I'm female, and some female authors (Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler...) speak to my soul.

So far this year, I have read 32 books by women, and 44 books by men. In 2013, I read 64 books by women (one of them transgender), and 76 books by men. Ideally, I'd read as many books by women as by men, but this is not happening, mainly I think because I also want to read books outside the US/western European canon, and there are a lot more books written by men than women available in translation. And I went on an Ismail Kadare binge, which skewed the numbers a bit...

Before I started journaling my reading, in 2001, I just read whatever caught my eye at the bookstore without any sort of plan whatsoever. Over the decade since I started journaling, I've gradually become more purposeful in my reading, and if I look back over my journals (now on LibraryThing), I can see a steady improvement in the books I choose to read reflected in higher ratings and fewer abandoned books.

At the beginning of the year, I did an exercise where I identified my top 10 favorite books of all time. I noticed that 7 out of 10 books were written by women (and of the 3 on my list written by men, one of those men was gay), but in my general reading, I'm still reading 2 books by men for every 1 book by a woman, according to LT stats. I decided to get even more purposeful in my reading and read mostly women, choosing books that are similar to my top 7 favorite books/authors. I still have a lot of unplanned reads, but the deliberate planning has been helping me discover new to me authors and break out of my ruts. This month, for instance, I'm reading 5 sci-fi/fantasy books all by women I have never read before.

My goals to stretch even further would be to read more women of color and more authors from countries other than the US/Canada/Britain. I would also like to read more gay authors and more authors of color generally. As a former English major, I find that I have about had my fill of the white male voice, even though there are many white male authors whose books I enjoy. But I want to hear from some other voices and open up my world even more.

I would love it if this group could be a place to look for suggestions beyond the authors we all already know and love.

I've never consciously sought out male or female authors in the way that I have consciously sought out, say, Russian authors or Caribbean authors or Southern (American South) authors. Thus, my library and my reading habits have been tilted towards the male, since that is who gets published and who gets accepted into the canon. Like most women, I'm adept at "putting aside" my sex when I'm reading about what it is to be human according to men.

But I did discover, as my reading deepened, that the women authors I found had a voice and a perspective that had been lacking in the male-authored books I had read, but that I found familiar and "true" in a deep sense. This was profoundly gratifying, even revelatory.

I still don't choose the books I read based on whether or not they were written by a woman, but I have since (thanks to the suggestion of a brilliant mentor) developed a habit of asking myself of every book "What does this have to say to women?"

In the end some of my favorite books-- Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, anything by Shakespeare -- have but little to say to women, little consciousness that women even exist beyond their roles as adornments for the men of the story.

Books by women, on the other hand, usually do have something to say...to women.

I, too, was a science major who took a women in lit class freshman year in the mid-70's. At that time, I thought we might read Pearl Buck, Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchel. I remember we read Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor and a newcomer to the scene, Margaret Atwood and others I can't remember any more.

I've never specifically focused on women authors, but have assumed that I read about 50/50 male/ female. I was surprised to see that last year I read about 2/3 male authors. This year, I've read 28 books by male and 23 by female authors.

I found these thought provoking links posted on the Club Read group on LT:

http://flavorwire.com/429473/why-i-only-read-books-by-women-in-2013/

http://the-toast.net/2014/02/03/what-happens-when-you-tell-people-youre-reading-....

I have always been a big reader, and as a child, I found that I gravitated toward books by men because society told me that books by women were fluffy or less-than. The frilly pink covers didn't help (I hated pink princessy things as a child). In fact, it was my father who told me, when I was probably around 10 or 11 and began reading YA and adult books, that there are great, meaningful books out there by women. When I started reading people like Margaret Atwood, Laurie Halse Anderson, Daphne du Maurier, and Shirley Jackson in my teens, I realized I was missing so much by going the "standard" route.

I grew up in a super conservative area but fortunately had progressive parents who encouraged me to read books from around the world. I quickly realized, when taking literature classes in high school, that the Western canon is by and large rich, white, straight men, with a token women's or African-American book tossed in here or there.

I am very much a "read whatever catches my eye" reader, but I make a conscious effort to make sure the places that books are catching my eye -- especially on the Internet -- are places that are inclusive of authors of out-groups (women, people of color, LGBTQ authors, foreign authors). This is both because I want to expand my own knowledge of experiences unlike my own, and because I see it as an equality issue in publishing. Who is going to publish Zimbabweans if no one is reading them?

>8 southernbooklady: That's a terrific question to ask yourself, one that I am going to adopt.

I also enjoy movies, where it's even more difficult to find women writers/directors and women's perspectives beyond the tired rom-com genre. I recently saw the latest X-Men movie (bear with me here), which I really enjoyed. Even though only one major developed character in the movie is female, when I ask myself that question about the movie, I find it has a lot to say to women, about women's power and agency and the way men try to control/use/protect women. It's quite unusual to find that in a superhero movie. Even my 6-year-old son wonders where are the girl superheroes are!

I'm still (and probably always will be) resistant to the idea that books--GOOD books anyway--speak only to one gender, the one coinciding with the author's. There must be some basic commonality to human experience or the genders would be two different species. I think readers are called upon to be "universal subjects"--to immerse ourselves in the world and viewpoints of human beings as diverse as possible. And that's what many readers do. The authors are limited, readers are not.

My problem with traditional assumptions is that white men's authority was taken for granted, that it was an absolute, whereas everyone else's viewpoint was relative, fatally "limited" and "particular". So Jane Austen can be a fine stylist and astute psychologist--of her own gender and class--but someone like Tolstoy is "naturally" capable of grasping and depicting truthfully everyone, men, women, children of any sort.

Well, no, I don't believe Austen understood people less well than Tolstoy because she never rode out with the hussars and spent drunken nights gambling and whoring.

But I also don't believe that manly derring-do (for example) is automatically closed off and foreign to women. For one thing, nothing is easier to understand than "manly" appetites and ambition. But for another, is it really true that only men have such appetites and ambition? When as a kid I read and reread obsessively Jules Verne's A fifteen year old captain (English version of the title decidedly gendered: Dick Sand, a captain at fifteen), I read myself in that teenager, taking over command and leading a motley crew through slavers' Africa, having those fantastic adventures. And so on with other "boys' own" type stories.

But it's not necessarily about that sort of adventure, it's about the psychological prerogative of making yourself the centre of action, the "decider". The subject.

Obviously, in an unjust, unequal society, only the masters are the subjects, so Tolstoy writes about Anna Karenina; Anna Karenina doesn't write about Tolstoy; the Goncourt brothers and Zola publish "psycho-physiological" studies of women, women don't publish such studies about men etc.

I have gone through periods in my life where I read mostly women authors, probably in the 70s and 80s when a lot more books by women were being published. Now I don't consciously look for books by women, although I do have a nagging sense I should be reading more books by them. I look for books that seem interesting and some are by women and some by men.

I don't unless I'm in the mood.

I have read voraciously my entire life. I deliberately disregarded noticing authors, instead of synopsis, for years because I didn't want to be biased by what other people said (I have authority issues). When I finally started to, I realized that I saw a difference between male and female authors.

Note, I largely read SciFi/Fantasy

From my perspective, female authors:

1) Write complex, detailed characters
2) Focus on internal struggles
3) Care less about what happens and more about the impact of what happens on the people involved
4) Historically, older (17th, 18th, 19th century) female authors tended to write a more limited scope- reflective, no doubt, of the more restricted lives many women lived.
5) Use "rape" as a horror signal word, not a cruelty signal word
6) Have shallow, poorly sketched in/mis-proportioned worlds
7) Post-feminism, many frequently try to invert gender in ways that rarely clique for me as a reader- exactly identical men and women are boring, it deletes gender- a very real thing- from the equation. Less of an issue these days, but a big bugbear for me in the 80s.

Male authors:

1) Write complex, detailed worlds
2) Focus on external struggles
3) Care less about impact, and focus on how people react with actions to events
4) Use "rape" as a cruelty signal word, not a horror signal word
5) Have shallow, poorly sketched in/misproportioned characters

Example: My wife read Sara Douglas, so I did too. The first part of her Wayfarer Redemption series introduces the Battle-Ax, warleader of the Axmen, destined to destroy his half-brother or be destroyed by him.

Viewed from a step back, Battle-Ax does nothing but have sex with, cause to fall in love with, and then rely on several magically powerful women who do everything for him. I enjoyed the journey immensely, but I will occassionally twit my wife that the books are about the power of Battle-Ax's magic penis to motivate others.

Now look at the Belgariad. Huge setting, with varied locales, and fairly unchanging, unflagging, utterly self-confident characters.

I've noticed the same in poetry. The Rosettis, brother and sister. Dante wrote erotic poetry, evocative to the senses, emphasizing experiential elements. Christine, on the other hand, wrote deeply spiritual poetry, focusing on internal, transformative or revelational experiences.

My 2 cents.

EDIT: Wow, didn't start right.

To clarify, if I want an emotional journey, I reach for a female author. If I want the equivalent of watching a film, I reach for a male.

>14 BrainFireBob: 6) Have shallow, poorly sketched in/mis-proportioned worlds

I find this an interesting observation, given the classic status of writers like Anne McCaffrey, Robin McKinley, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula LeGuin, Joan D. Vinge, and JK Rowling. In fact when you think of it in terms of worlds that have made it into the wider public consciousness (Hogwarts, Dune, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, and god help us, Twilight), women authors seem to have held their own.

I'm far, far behind the times though when it comes to "world building" -- the last serious fantasy novel I read was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (also incredibly well-sketched).

Now look at the Belgariad.

Heh. I got very tired of these very quickly. But that's probably a personal idiosyncrasy-- I get bored with series usually around the third book

I read very little science fiction and fantasy, so, nothing much to say there. I'm aware of the notion that women tend to write "soft" sci-fi--emphasis on psychology, character, social science stuff, and men "hard", emphasis on technology, science... Ironic, though, that (whatever Thomas Disch says) the beginning of the modern genre is marked pretty decisively by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

But speaking of Christina Rossetti, >14 BrainFireBob:, check out this thread, sweet coincidence:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/173606

Maybe she wasn't all that ethereally "spiritual" after all? ;)

I need to reread Goblin market. Seem to remember there was some naughty fruit in it.

This was a really interesting thread to read and think over. So many of the posts had me nodding my head and thinking "yes, yes, definitely this." There ended up happening so much that I decided not to respond to each of these posters individually as this message would become ridiculously long then!

Personally, I can't say that I really do make a conscious effort to read books by women. This thread made me curious to see how my current library breaks down and, according to LibraryThing stats, it turns out it's 47% male authors and 52% female authors. There's lots of caveats on that though - it includes my Wishlist (so plenty of books I haven't actually read yet), apparently 100+ authors in my library do not have a gender set with LibraryThing statistics, and it includes the large number of children's books I have used for work, which are not really relevant to this conversation.

Like many others have said, I noticed that a lot of my required reading in high school and college literature classes were mainly "dead white guys." While I still love my Dickens and Hemingway and so on, despite their poorly sketched female characters and other troubling parts, I do feel like my education was severely lacking in voices from women, the LGBT community, and basically anyone outside of the U.S. or Great Britain. These days, I would very much like to right that and feel like I've done better with the first two than the last one. But that being said, I still tend to base my reading choices much more on things like:
- what my book clubs (in person and online) are reading
- recommendations from friends, family, etc.
- books physically given to me by friends and family
- thoughtful reviews
- additional books by an author I already like
- nonfiction topics on which I want to learn more
- and more rarely now, something that catches my eye in a bookstore or library based on the cover image or an interesting/quirky title.
Although, like someone else noted, I do try to place myself in areas (online discussion groups, thoughtful news outlets for book reviews, specific book clubs, etc.) where I am more likely to hear of titles that are by are authors as diverse as the world really is.

Someone (I think Lola) noted that books shouldn't speak only to one audience (i.e., women) but should appeal more universally. Of course there are exceptions, but most of the books I read by women do seem to be more of the latter than the former. I read books by women to make sure I hear from many voices and see from multiple perspectives (the same with trying to read books from other cultures). Generally speaking, I don't think too much about the author's gender while reading (unless there are examples of gross misogyny), but I also don't think that I would get a broader view of the world if I stuck to solely reading the classics canon of largely male authors.

>18 sweetiegherkin: Someone (I think Lola) noted that books shouldn't speak only to one audience (i.e., women)

One might ask why a book that is about a specific life experience -- a woman's, or a gay person's, or whatever -- is seen as speaking only to that audience. Why wouldn't it speak to a man, or a straight person?

The truth is, if it is well written, it will. Are the novels of Jane Austen irrelevant to men? How about those of Dorothy Allison? Toni Morrison? The only reason such books are seen as "speaking to only one audience" is because others just don't bother to listen.

> 19 Thanks, you put that much more eloquently than I could.

At age 32, Tolstoy made the sad mistake of sharing his journal/diary with his 18-year old bride, Sonya. She was devastated by the journal's revelations. For the rest of their marriage, they had complete access to each other's journals. A bad idea, because they both (to my recollection) employed decoy diaries and a second 'real' or 'true' diary.

According to at least one biographer, Tolstoy gained his insight into his female characters' psyches from reading his wife's diaries!

I think it's safe to say that each female author is an expert in the female psyche: her own.
Her mind is her own, and she reveals it. When women readers read the 'feminine' introspection of, say, Doris Lessing, Anais Nin, or Virginia Woolf, we empathize (often despite cultural differences).

A female character by a female author is, in my opinion, more authentic. For the author tends to draw on first-hand shared experiences, insights, and purviews in the crafting of a character. Then, too, is the fact that women have an affinity and appreciation for verbal expression. Hence, the extraordinary popularity of contemporary romances/women's fiction/chick lit among women.

>21 shakespearechick: I think it's safe to say that each female author is an expert in the female psyche: her own.

Is that a safe assumption? Women are as capable as men at self-deception and hubris. I've always thought art was more about the process of discovery, though. And since writing is one of those things that can take us out of ourselves and put us into the lives of people completely different from ourselves, I would think that the ability to reach across boundaries of gender, age, race, whatever, would be a necessary skill.

A female character by a female author is, in my opinion, more authentic. For the author tends to draw on first-hand shared experiences, insights, and purviews in the crafting of a character.

Write what you know? If every writer did that, we'd have a lot fewer books to read.

Then, too, is the fact that women have an affinity and appreciation for verbal expression.

Do they? Is this where someone says "We need to talk," and someone else groans?

I don't like the implication that there is one "female" psyche that all women share... that there is just one way of being, thinking and feeling, for women.

I'm more inclined to think that all women share a basic situation--we all exist in a world which depreciates female sex, we all, even the most privileged, experience attacks on our personhood because we're women. But beyond that, surely there's evidence we are at least as "diverse" in our psychological make up as the men.

"I don't like the implication that there is one "female" psyche that all women share..."

One may not like it, but there it is. According to neuroscience, women are more verbal.
And I believe it's true: women (myself included) love to read and to talk. Biology is (partly)
destiny.

"I've always thought art was more about the process of discovery, though. And since writing is
one of those things that can take us out of ourselves and put us into the lives of people
completely different from ourselves, I would think that the ability to reach across boundaries
of gender, age, race, whatever, would be a necessary skill."

The art--in this case, a novel--must be created from a particular perspective. Either male or
female artist/writer/novelist. For instance, in THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK, Anna (the main
character) comments about her period and bodily functions. In the late '60s, Doris Lessing
may have been the first novelist to mention these virtually taboo subjects: they are, most
definitely, part of a woman's life experience.

I'd say in ULYSSES, James Joyce created a phenomenal character in Molly. I was amazed, in
college, at the novel's beauty in general and specifically Molly as a character. But when you
read the biographical info, Molly was inspired by Joyce's life-long companion, Nora--her
thoughts, words and experiences.

Today I'm more interested in reading a woman's direct thoughts and experiences: her unfiltered
assessment of her own life.

"Write what you know? If every writer did that, we'd have a lot fewer books to read."

Many years ago, I purchased and read a novel by Paolo Coelho. One-quarter way into the novel,
I discerned that the main character is a woman. For the rest of the novel, I spent second-
guessing every word and situation the character spoke about. I just did not 'believe' in the
premise. And so, I finished the book mildly annoyed. In a first-person novel, it is--for me--a
distraction.

If the narrator is 'omniscient', then I'm more likely to accept whatever premise is presented.
But I'm also less likely to enjoy the book, as I want to be inside the narrator's mind.

Neuroscience might suggest that a woman is more likely to be verbal than a man is, or more likely to be verbal than non-verbal, but that doesn't mean that all women are the same or that someone can make vast assumptions about what more than 50% of the population of the world thinks or feels. You might be a woman who loves to talk, but I am a woman who hates to talk. Because all women are different.

>24 shakespearechick: Many years ago, I purchased and read a novel by Paolo Coelho. One-quarter way into the novel, I discerned that the main character is a woman. For the rest of the novel, I spent second-guessing every word and situation the character spoke about. I just did not 'believe' in the premise. And so, I finished the book mildly annoyed. In a first-person novel, it is--for me--a
distraction.

But this strikes me as a personal preference, not a generally applicable rule. And it causes me to wonder if the reverse is true for you...are male characters written by women authors de facto "inauthentic"?

I don't like the implication that there is one "female" psyche that all women share... that there is just one way of being, thinking and feeling, for women. I'm more inclined to think that all women share a basic situation ...

I really like this observation!

Tangentially related, when I submit papers that are blind peer reviewed for presentation at symposia and conferences, I am almost always misidentified as a man. I don't think my outlook is male at all, but there is something in my writing style (and I wish I knew what it was) that is consistently seen as male ... even when I write about women writers or experiences.

I've talked with female colleagues about this, and they generally get identified by he correct gender.

This has been happening for 30 years. It never fails to bother me.

"But this strikes me as a personal preference, not a generally applicable rule. And it causes
me to wonder if the reverse is true for you...are male characters written by women authors de
facto "inauthentic"?"

Funny you should mention this. Just a couple of days ago, I read chapter one of a novel
by Canadian author, Catherine Mckenzie. Half-way through the chapter, I gathered that
the narrator is a man! It was off-putting and intriguing at the same time. The chapter
was well-written. I read as much out of curiosity as to be informed (as two or three bloggers
list Mckenzie as a favorite author, though I'd never heard of her).

But I have to say, I'd have a problem with a female author who chose, say, a male coal miner as
the narrator for her novel. I don't think I could accept the premise and 'suspend disbelief'--although
COAL MINER's DAUGHTER was not technically a novel but a memoir.

But where do you draw the line? Could a non-musician write "authentically" about a piano player? Could an American write authentically about a British person? Could straight people have authentic gay characters in their books?

>21 shakespearechick: I think it's safe to say that each female author is an expert in the female psyche: her own.

I'd assume that this is somewhat generally true, though. And not in the fact that all women are alike and understand all women, but just in the general sense that very often our theor(ies) of mind are predicated on the minds that we have the most direct access to (our own) and whose experiences mirror our own.

Autistics were long thought to lack the ability to empathise (or even be social), yet there are now things such as Autreat (and that's an ugly page, looks like it was built in '97 or something, but...)

As a general rule of thumb, we all probably have an increased ability to identify with people that we already share much in common with.

Oh, and to answer the question posed in the thread title...

Simply because I find that if I don't make a point of it, for whatever reason it doesn't happen (or at least not as frequently as it should...)

I've recently taken to making a concerted effort to rectify that, and welcome any recommendations.

"But where do you draw the line? . . . ."

I like to think that I embrace diversity. And I do.
I like to think that I read widely. And I try. But the reality
is that I follow what piques my interest. I like reading memoirs and biographies of interesting people (usually of and by women, but not necessarily; I eagerly read Walter Isaacson's bio of Steve Jobs). I also like to read novels--lately, by women as well.
At the same time, I tend to want to read books that I connect with emotionally.

So in non-fiction, whatever is the author's true experience, I can appreciate.
In fiction, however, one must accept the world the author creates and that doesn't
always 'ring true'. For example, could you accept Eudora Welty or Margaret Mitchell
writing from another perspective? "Why I lived at the PO?" but from a male perspective?
Or GONE WITH THE WIND (saw the movie)--from Rhett Butler's point of view?

>32 shakespearechick: For example, could you accept Eudora Welty or Margaret Mitchell
writing from another perspective? "Why I lived at the PO?" but from a male perspective?
Or GONE WITH THE WIND (saw the movie)--from Rhett Butler's point of view?

Well, my point is that I'd have to read it to see. Like any book, I'd have to judge it first on its own merits, before I started faulting it for the merits or lack thereof of its author. Margaret Mitchell--not such a great writer, so I'm skeptical about her ability to write a "Rhett's Gone with the Wind." Eudora Welty -- a fantastic writer. She may well be able to pull off any voice she wants. And it all may indeed "ring true." -- a phrase you seem to use to imply authenticity, but it's not very specific. I've ready plenty of science fiction and fantasy that "ring true" on many levels.

There are times...especially with contemporary authors...where the reality of the authors life will sometimes interfere with my ability to appreciate or surrender to the reality they create in their fiction (see the the discussions of Orson Scott Card in this topic: https://www.librarything.com/topic/174719), but I'm aware that's a personal quirk when it happens to me. A bias I impose on a work that may not have earned it.

But if art is about allowing us to see outside the prison of our own existence, and into other worlds, other lives, then I accept as a premise the artist is capable of imagining those other worlds and other lives and portraying them with authenticity.

Gender essentialism is ludicrous and applying it to literature really drives home how comically insane it can be. (If there's ONE "female" and presumably ONE "male" perspective, then it makes no difference whether you reach for Gertrude Stein or Jodi Picoult, Kafka or Tom Clancy--hey, it's one and the same female/male psyche in either case, communicating one and the same message to, men on this side, women on the other!)

To begin with, literature doesn't always aim for realistic psychological portraiture, and even such as does, if it's of a certain quality at least, aims to develop a character, not just plunk down a stereotype. And gender essentialism reduces everything to stereotypes.

There's also a bunch of assumptions about writers and writing that I find bewildering, for instance, that they ought to "write what they know" and that one can only know what they themselves "are".

That's, like, completely the opposite of what I think literature is about--even more than literature, what living and communicating are about, which is above all a striving for understanding. In my view, writers have a DUTY to exercise their imaginations to the utmost--writing as method acting!--BE a boy, girl, French general, ancient Egyptian soldier, a chair, a talking banana!

A writer, in my view, brings to their work a unique sensibility and talent more than just their biological coordinates. They don't only pull stuff out of their head; like everyone else, writers observe and build up their knowledge through living and interacting in the world. That Tolstoy based his characters on what he learned about real people is one of the reasons he's great, not a defect!

Like artists, writers sketch, they note things they heard, they study and explore. They don't just "are".

There's also a bunch of assumptions about writers and writing that I find bewildering, for instance, that they ought to "write what they know" and that one can only know what they themselves "are".


Terry Eagleton does a pretty extended riff on this concept (which he argues is actually late-era conceit brought about by the Romantics) in How to Read Literature.

"There are times...especially with contemporary authors...where the reality of the authors life will sometimes interfere with my ability to appreciate or surrender to the reality they create in their fiction (see the the discussions of Orson Scott Card in this topic: https://www.librarything.com/topic/174719), but I'm aware that's a personal quirk when it happens to me. A bias I impose on a work that may not have earned it."

I always feel like my reading of the author's life enhances my reading of the book. With contemporary authors, however, it's difficult to gauge when it becomes gossip. So, for example, I've read the biographical info about Doris Lessing and several of her novels. I enjoy seeing how the novels developed organically--why and how she wrote a particular work. So maybe that's why I could not accept her science fiction (though I've tried). I'm too invested in her 'real life'.

Often, I will limit myself in my readings of an author. Joyce Maynard, for example.
I like/enjoy the memoirs but have yet to read any of her novels.

"That Tolstoy based his characters on what he learned about real people is one of the reasons he's great, not a defect!"

My reaction was to Tolstoy's biography. Sonya, his wife, claimed emotional abuse: it upset her that he used her words/their private life in his novels. I'm more interested in reading what she had to say about her own life, and not his interpretation.
And I'm not saying Tolstoy is not worth reading (I spent a summer, years ago, reading WAR AND PEACE!) at least once in a lifetime. At the same time, there is a backstory I personally find disturbing.

>35 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

Yes, the Romantics are credited with introducing "psychology", but Montaigne got there first, albeit not in a fictional framework.

What's funny is that thousands of people of all description, myself included, have found themselves in Montaigne. As a reader I found my self in books by men, women, young, old, gay, straight, fornicators and asexuals, religious and irreligious, times and nations dead and living.

>36 shakespearechick:

Quite a few authors seem to have been awful people. I'm not a fan of Tolstoy's (man or writer), but I can't help loving Natasha Rostova. Someone show me a better adolescent girl written by a woman.

It's not "Bella Swan" for sure.

Yes, the Romantics are credited with introducing "psychology", but Montaigne got there first, albeit not in a fictional framework.

I think that Eagleton's bit is less about "psychology" necessarily than the place of the "individual" in determining identity. A somewhat snarky read would be that the Romantics introduced Narcissism as a thing to be valued.

And I'm not doing justice to his point (which isn't necessarily his point, but simply one mentioned in his book.)

>38 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

I think that Eagleton's bit is less about "psychology" necessarily than the place of the "individual" in determining identity.

Right, that's about what I meant by "psychology". Precious personality, unique personal insight etc.

>36 shakespearechick: At the same time, there is a backstory I personally find disturbing.

The age-old issue of can we separate the artist from the art.

I was pretty sure that I was reading about 50/50 male/female authors this year, maybe even more women than men - until I did the math, and found out I'm reading at 66/29 male/female authors (discounting anthologies, collections, and books with both a male and a female author).

Which is why I make a point of reading female authors. Because that's what happens when I don't.

>18 sweetiegherkin:, >19 southernbooklady:

Someone (I think Lola) noted that books shouldn't speak only to one audience (i.e., women)
The only reason such books are seen as "speaking to only one audience" is because others just don't bother to listen.

i've been thinking about this while i've been gone from lt for a bit - i don't know that i specifically seek out women authors much but i'm definitely conscious of it when i'm reading women. not necessarily because i'm checking to see, but because i think that women tend to write about experiences that men just don't. it often becomes apparent just by reading the book what the gender of the author is. so it's not that books speak to only one audience; if they're any good it speaks to everyone. but it speaks from a perspective that is just different if it's from someone who isn't a privileged white male. it's the perspective that sonia sotomayor brought to the supreme court - some of the stories out there can only really be told (or told in a specific way) by a woman.

I enjoy many male authors a lot, but this year I haven't been in the mood for a lot of their nonsense. Current case: England, England, by Julian Barnes, an author I've really liked previously. Parts of this book are wonderful, some boring, but when he talks about the main female's character's sex life, I just roll my eyes. I just am not interested in his views of female sexuality. They don't mesh with mine, or anyone I've known, and well, whatever. Just shut up and get on with the novel.

I'm toying with the idea of reading only women for a while. I feel like the books I read by men are getting repetitive in the sense of theme and character.

>44 sturlington: I feel like the books I read by men are getting repetitive in the sense of theme and character.

How so?

>45 southernbooklady: Well, it's a bit of a vague feeling but I'll try to pin it down. One thing that has been disturbing me lately is reading about violence, especially violence that seems to be there for its own sake or for entertainment value or just because that's the way the world is, especially especially violence against women and children. All my life I have read a lot of dark fiction/horror/apocalyptic fiction, but at this point in my life, I feel like I am done with gratuitous violence. This seems to be more of a component of books written by men than by women, at least in my experience.

I am also getting tired of a pessimistic, bleak, cynical worldview that considers people to be little more than savage animals ready to regress to savagery at the least little thing. Again, this may come from reading too much apocalyptic/dystopian fiction, but when I contrast the Oryx and Crake trilogy, for instance, to the bulk of other post-apocalyptic fiction pretty much written by men that I've read, O&C offers a lot more than just an observation of how easily things can fall apart and we all go back to knocking each other on the head and raping all the women. Even though there is violence in O&C, there is also spirituality, alternative paths for humanity explored, and reactions other than just falling into savagery.

I consider Cormac McCarthy to be a terrific writer, and a very powerful one, but I have a book by him sitting on my TBR, and I know I'm avoiding reading it because I just don't want any more of his depressing worldview, his sense that it is all but impossible for human beings to have real humanity.

I'm also tired of reading about war, at least from the point of view of the soldier.

I don't know if I'm expressing this well. The funny thing is, looking back over the books I've read this year, very few of them have been by men, and most of those were crime novels. So I've already been trending away from them, especially in my genre of choice, science fiction, where I'm very likely to find the classics written by men have no female characters, or at least none that fulfill any function other than sex companion/secretary/sounding board. By contrast, I'm reading Ancillary Justice right now, and it's just so completely different from most science fiction I've read, in a very refreshing way, especially in how it depicts gender in a far future society.

>46 sturlington:

I think I know whereof you speak. There seems to be a shortage of female Jim Thompsons around, and I find that curious, interesting and a good deal puzzling. Where are the women--heck, where is ONE woman--writing a scene of lusciously detailed death of a male character multiply stabbed and gutted like a fish (after he'd been beaten and thoroughly fucked), as he crawls and twitches on the kitchen floor with his guts spilling all over it? Maybe she's written it, but it didn't get published? Maybe it was published, but nobody liked it? Or maybe women in the mould of Jim Thompsons just don't exist? That scene appears in a 1950s pulp bestseller, a highly-rated classic of the genre--i.e. something thousands of perfectly ordinary people (also known as "men") picked up as a bit of perfectly ordinary, over the counter entertainment in the run of their humdrum daily existence--a sub, a coffee, a little paperback... nothing to see here... nothing to wonder at... that's how you treat them dames and would that I could treat so some random bitch myself...

On the element of fatigue: my experience is indeed that experience wearies and wears one down. We don't just or always become "jaded", we also become chronically pissed off, short-tempered and, far from developing thicker skins from all the blows and insults, these metaphorical skins seem to behave more like physical ones, and become increasingly fragile.

I'm judging all authors who use violence disproportionately against women and children as a routine "element" in their junky pulp entertainment to be openly sadistic--and/or complete idiots, with tiny to non-existent creative "balls".

>46 sturlington: One thing that has been disturbing me lately is reading about violence, especially violence that seems to be there for its own sake or for entertainment value or just because that's the way the world is, especially especially violence against women and children.

I can identify with this, although I do think that it is indeed "just the way the world is." Lately I've been looking for narratives of...defiance, I guess, which is why I think I was so impressed with the new Margaret Fuller biography.

>48 southernbooklady: I guess I'm tired of reading about how the world is. I know how the world is. I want to read about how the world can be.

>48 southernbooklady:

I do think that it is indeed "just the way the world is."

I must disagree, the world is much more complicated than that. But the pertinent question, IMO, is why is our entertainment that way?

>49 sturlington: Right. I get that. I don't mean to come off as either cynical or pessimistic, and even less all mystical (I'm not in the slightest) but lately I've been interested in self-creation as as act of defiance. It's those people who awaken us to what's possible, I think.

It takes some searching, though, to find good fiction with this sense though. I mean fiction that isn't "issue-oriented" -- basically a social diatribe dressed up as a novel -- and you are right that violence, especially against women, is an all-too-common trope that men, especially seem to fall back on with little thought. I've almost given up reading mysteries altogether for this reason. They're so often just boring. When I think of reading fiction "as a feminist" that's what I'm looking for: Women who are...actualized. The don't need to kick ass and they don't need to spout slogans or be politically correct to fight on the side of the angels but I want them to be their own person. I don't know if I'm explaining myself well.

>50 LolaWalser: I must disagree, the world is much more complicated than that.

Do you think violence is something that can be eradicated? Or at least overcome, minimized? I kind of think it's a given, hard-wired into homo sapiens.

>47 LolaWalser: I have read that book. And what bothers me about that is that it didn't bother me. It was just expected for that kind of book. But now I don't want it to be the expected thing.

>51 southernbooklady: You're right. It is boring. It's lazy writing to do the same thing over and over again, trying to amp up the shock value each time.

Not long ago I was watching the latest Planet of the Apes movie. I thought it was good, very entertaining, not overly violent, although the female characters are little more than cardboard cutouts. But the movie is about the inevitability of violence and war, and predictably, that inevitability is driven by men and their actions and what they think is important. And I thought to myself, I am so over this storyline. I just don't want to do it anymore.

I do think violence can be, if not eradicated, at least minimized. I think what that would require is security for everyone, not just physical security but also emotional and mental security, of people feeling needed and like they have a meaningful purpose in the world. Even if it's hard-wired into us, but I think it's something that our sense of consciousness and adaptability might enable us to overcome.

I don't really object to violent conflict in our entertainment. What I object to is violence that is pornographic, of glorifying it and almost wallowing in it.

>53 sturlington: I don't really object to violent conflict in our entertainment. What I object to is violence that is pornographic, of glorifying it and almost wallowing in it.

Not a fan of Apocalypse Now? :)

>52 southernbooklady:

Oh, I'm not even talking on that general level about violence, I mean phenomenally, in "what is the case" way, the world isn't such a plain wall of misery. I mean that when we say, fatalistically or not, "well that's how it is", we aren't being objective and truthful, we are distorting reality, on individual and collective level, we are lying through truthiness (no reflection on you, I do it all the time, we all do it, in haste and exasperation.) This interests me very much (how we create our representations and how they relate to facts and others' representations), but for now, concerning sturlington's theme, there is just no logical reason the representations of the world in entertainment should be like that--truthy but not true.

A couple years ago I spent almost a month ill in bed and discovered television on YouTube (I've never owned and still don't watch any current TV), and that's really when I discovered just how saturated is popular culture with violence against women--I mean "ornamental" and "motivational" violence used in most cynical fashion, not to indict institutional misogyny but as purely being a symptom of it. I've lost count how many stories (different producers, channels, countries) opened with a gory female corpse or beating of a woman, with more female corpses and victims getting sprinkled throughout. I've seen enough of that TV now that I can make some historical generalizations--how the period of sexual revolution coincided with sharpening of the represented and expressed misogyny, culminating (and remaining on that level to this day) in the seventies with extremes of explicit anti-feminist viciousness such as get tamed somewhat from mid-eighties and are gone--in THAT form--by mid-nineties... The transformations of the female villains (always diabolical, never ordinary like many male petty criminals and bullies), the slow and spare appearance of women in arguably leading, or at least not solely service roles--but, if bosses, always being harridans, nagging bitches, and not "really" competent. One dynamic that drives me crazy (too close to life perhaps), is where the woman is a boss, but the male underling--who is the real star of the show (like Bond vs. Judi Dench as M), of course-- is openly contemptuous and confrontational and in general behaving in a way that would get a female underling sacked on the spot or referred for a medical.

Women=bitches; to be crushed in any way possible and age and looks-appropriate.

Yoicks, ranting about television!

Well, yes.

And I'll rant again.

:)

>55 LolaWalser: Oh, I'm not even talking on that general level about violence, I mean phenomenally, in "what is the case" way, the world isn't such a plain wall of misery.

You mean at a discrete level? Violence is not a given in any given situation? I don't think I'd argue wiht that, but I'm not against...exploring, I guess, our propensity for violence in any given situation.

But yes, television violence (I do watch more tv than I should) --and Hollywood violence--is basically pornographic. Any given Bruce Willis film is, at it's core, men ejaculating all over themselves.

>56 southernbooklady:

The propensity for violence is a broad biological capacity that does not express itself ineluctably as rape-kill-maim-devour. There is no code for "rape" in our genes just as there is no code for "want poached salmon baguette, hold the mayo". I cringe when I see newspaper violence "explained" in terms of biology. All practical, actual misery is happening to real people for some specific reason, because a myriad factors allow it, have created an opportunity for it--not because well, we have "violent" genes. What would it mean to bring in genes to explain current events in Iraq? Absolutely nothing. The same people had the same genes twenty years ago and this wasn't happening.

But yes, television violence (I do watch more tv than I should) --and Hollywood violence--is basically pornographic.

I agree, and I think the same is true of much genre writing--wish fulfilment lit, and of course sexual wishes rule us for much of our lives...

i finished reading the opposite of fate by amy tan in bed last night. here's what she says toward the end, regarding reading books written by women:

"I was especially interested in fiction by women, because almost all the literary works I had read as an English major were by men, the one exception being Virginia Woolf. I discovered that stories by women included more stories about women, and I was startled to read, for the first time perhaps since Jane Eyre, so many books with a sensibility sympathetic with mine. Many of their voices were intimate, involving questions, ambiguities, and contradictions common among us, yet they were thoughts and emotions I had not seen expressed in other stories I had read."

>58 overlycriticalme: Thanks for sharing that. Do you think there are some stories men just cannot write? Am thinking about What Is Visible, which I cannot imagine a man could possibly write.

>59 nohrt4me2: Do you think there are some stories men just cannot write?

Are there stories that women just cannot write?

>59 nohrt4me2:

i don't think i do (think that there are stories men or women just cannot write). but i do think that, in general, there are stories that not many men or women do write. or the way we read them is different (based on the author's gender or perhaps our own.)

(this may or may not be relevant - ) i was talking to my dad yesterday about the book look again by lisa scottoline, which was recommended to me but which i haven't yet read and which he thought was "good but one of her worst" books. i was told it is a story about a woman who adopted a boy, and she laters sees his face on a missing child poster. my dad didn't like it as well as her other books because he said he figured out right from the beginning how the mystery would unfold. i expect a book like that to be a lot more about processing and emotion and deep conflict rather than a mystery about how something like this happened. is that just a difference in how he and i read? if so, is that because of gender?