Lionel Shriver on literary sexism

[msrisotto]

I write a nasty book. And they want a girly cover on it

A really ranty good article. Particularly where she mentions that publishers perceptions of what women want to read are outdated. I wonder if they would be surprised that I enjoyed freakonomics and have "Elephants on acid", "The God Delusion", as well as some horror and literary prize winning literature in my collection? Women are not lightweights....

Very interesting article.

I was just buying a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yesterday on Amazon and was quite bemused that there were separate adult and childrens editions. Maybe male and female editions is the way to go?

I hope you're joking!

I read this. As well as the comments about the daft ways in which books are marketed to women in both US and Europe, I thopught it was very interesting in its reference to the strikingly macho ethos of the Great American Novelist. Historically, the myth of the novelist in the US seems to have been an extrordinarily hyper-masculine affair. Hemingway, etc al. The lone, hard-drinking hard-fucking male above the constraints of domesticity.

The British novelist myth is much softer and encompasses the female quite gladly in comparison, perhaps because of the numbers of completely brilliant woman novelists among 19-th century literature.

this is the UK edition of a book

"I am limited by my iPad" show off

USA edition of the same book

So, it's more than just a male/female issue.

I absolutely love Lionel Shriver's writing. I read a blog and the blogger was on a master's course with some classes by the (very sexist) Martin Amis. She wrote that he would never read Shriver because of her politics (re. Ireland) and he seemed to be advising his class not to either.
I was laughing to myself. Touch of the green-eyed monster Mr. Amis?

Eleison, yes, that is interesting, and it makes me wonder how that works with the reading dempographic she quotes of an 80% female readership. Is the great American novel refelected in the sales figures of Don DeLillo, Norman Mailer and all the other 'heavyweights', I wonder, or purely the result of the lit critics' admiration that LS describes in the article?

The cover thing seems complex and very interesting to me. Men tend not to read books by women (hence JK Rowling not using her name, Joanne, in order not to put boys off reading HP. Likewise AL Kennedy). So, given that, and given that 80% of the people reading books are women (if the figures are correct), and given that publishers are in business to make money for themselves and their authors, one must assume that the publishers are attempting to draw the largest possible sales. Now, I'd personally be quite drawn to a book with elephant carcasses on it, but I assume I'm perhaps not typical of that 80%. The attendant effect on the literary critics' opinion of the writer is the interesting thing. Are they really unable to see beyond the cover?

I thought this was a really interesting article - no wonder she was fed up! My mate just got her first book published (it's a teen rom-come thing, not exactly a challenging read as she cheerfully admits). Her publisher said if she used her (female) name on the cover, it'd sell less well than if she used initials, because the main character is a boy. But apparently they also expect most of the readers to be girls, which I thought was interesting.