If you haven't read author Meg Wolitzer's provocative essay on the different rules for men and women in the world of literary fiction, you must read this. Her April 1, 2012 essay, The Second Shelf, for the New York Times Book Review told known and rarely acknowledged truths about the publishing industry. Basically that "isms," (racism, sexism, chauvinism and I would add ageism) are alive and well in traditional publishing. The"isms" result in first rate fiction by women being marketed as second rate "Women's Fiction," aka something a man would never read. Seems when men like Jonathan Frazen, Jeffrey Eugenides and Chad Harbach for example, write about the same subjects as female writers - marriage, family, relationships - they just write great fiction. I suppose that's because testosterone instead of estrogen was involved in the writing of the book. What else could possibly explain the disparity?
The Times is still printing letters to the editor on Wolitzer's essay, the links are below - read, learn, comment.
Thanks Meg.
My novel definitely fits in that category of "women's fiction," and I think of this as a marketing advantage, but it does send the wrong message to a whole segment of readers I'd like to reach (men). The problem is that writers need to seize on anything that will make their writing more marketable (and categorizable=marketable) and many of the readers out there are women.
Posted by: Kelly Hand | 05/30/2012 at 01:14 PM