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(4 months later)
On Wednesday night, hundreds of bottles of Baileys cream liqueur were doled out to eager partygoers, who also got a novel to thank them for turning up to celebrate what used to be called the Orange prize. For this year only, it was the Women's prize for fiction and will henceforth take on the name of its new sponsor, who generously provided the aforementioned goody bag treat. The sponsorship announcement – made at the beginning of the week, ahead of the prize being awarded to AM Homes for her novel May We Be Forgiven – was greeted with a mixture of pleasure and relief, not least because this year's especially strong shortlist, which also included Barbara Kingsolver, Kate Atkinson, Maria Semple, Hilary Mantel and Zadie Smith, reminded people that this is a prize seriously worth protecting. But in and among the general approval, there was the odd titter that such a well-established prize should find itself being backed by a purveyor of sticky drinks. Good news, obviously, but isn't Baileys a bit of a, well, girls' tipple?On Wednesday night, hundreds of bottles of Baileys cream liqueur were doled out to eager partygoers, who also got a novel to thank them for turning up to celebrate what used to be called the Orange prize. For this year only, it was the Women's prize for fiction and will henceforth take on the name of its new sponsor, who generously provided the aforementioned goody bag treat. The sponsorship announcement – made at the beginning of the week, ahead of the prize being awarded to AM Homes for her novel May We Be Forgiven – was greeted with a mixture of pleasure and relief, not least because this year's especially strong shortlist, which also included Barbara Kingsolver, Kate Atkinson, Maria Semple, Hilary Mantel and Zadie Smith, reminded people that this is a prize seriously worth protecting. But in and among the general approval, there was the odd titter that such a well-established prize should find itself being backed by a purveyor of sticky drinks. Good news, obviously, but isn't Baileys a bit of a, well, girls' tipple?
Is writing about books a male pursuit? Yes, if you go by the numbers. For the past three years Vida, an American organisation founded in 2009 to monitor and promote the status of women in literary arts, has produced an annual count of the number of men and the number of women who write in a range of newspapers and periodicals (most, but not all, American). The resulting piecharts make dismal viewing; although, as its datastore builds up, Vida has been quick to point out where improvements, both incremental and dramatic, have been made. It has also acknowledged the limits of its own research, noting the work of, for example, Roxane Gay, who undertook a similar tally last summer for writers of colour, which she published in The Rumpus. The numbers, as she pointed out, were also "grim", the more so, perhaps, for the novelty of the exercise: "Race often gets lost in the gender conversation, as if it's an issue we'll get to later."Is writing about books a male pursuit? Yes, if you go by the numbers. For the past three years Vida, an American organisation founded in 2009 to monitor and promote the status of women in literary arts, has produced an annual count of the number of men and the number of women who write in a range of newspapers and periodicals (most, but not all, American). The resulting piecharts make dismal viewing; although, as its datastore builds up, Vida has been quick to point out where improvements, both incremental and dramatic, have been made. It has also acknowledged the limits of its own research, noting the work of, for example, Roxane Gay, who undertook a similar tally last summer for writers of colour, which she published in The Rumpus. The numbers, as she pointed out, were also "grim", the more so, perhaps, for the novelty of the exercise: "Race often gets lost in the gender conversation, as if it's an issue we'll get to later."
The intensifying debate about intersectionality – in brief, the study of how groups exposed to different kinds of oppression relate to one another and frequently overlap – provides another dimension to this kind of culture-watching. I've worked on the books pages of many newspapers, and have been instructed to keep an eye on gender balance countless more times than I have racial; class, educational background, sexuality, physical ability, never – except on specific occasions, such as when you ask a "gay writer" to review a "gay book". In addition, gender balance doesn't exactly mean equal pegging, and certainly not "more women than men"; it more usually means "some women". Or has meant. These impressions – anecdotal, personal and not scientific – range over many years, and things are changing.The intensifying debate about intersectionality – in brief, the study of how groups exposed to different kinds of oppression relate to one another and frequently overlap – provides another dimension to this kind of culture-watching. I've worked on the books pages of many newspapers, and have been instructed to keep an eye on gender balance countless more times than I have racial; class, educational background, sexuality, physical ability, never – except on specific occasions, such as when you ask a "gay writer" to review a "gay book". In addition, gender balance doesn't exactly mean equal pegging, and certainly not "more women than men"; it more usually means "some women". Or has meant. These impressions – anecdotal, personal and not scientific – range over many years, and things are changing.
However, our count of the gender makeup of reviewers and authors reviewed, and our further breakdown of the split between non-fiction and fiction, makes for instructive reading. A lot of it is predictable: some organisations are better than others; there is a vast difference between the number of women asked to review fiction and non-fiction.However, our count of the gender makeup of reviewers and authors reviewed, and our further breakdown of the split between non-fiction and fiction, makes for instructive reading. A lot of it is predictable: some organisations are better than others; there is a vast difference between the number of women asked to review fiction and non-fiction.
Numbers will never tell you everything. When people hazard guesses about why women review less – or less prominently – than men, they often say that women don't push themselves forward, don't ring up books desks and demand to be sent books, and books of a certain calibre. Looking back at her time as literary editor in the 1970s, Claire Tomalin recalls: "I tried very hard both at the New Statesman and the Sunday Times to find and use more women reviewers – but I also remember being attacked for not doing better. The truth is, there were many more men eager to review, offering to come into the office to talk about books, more male academics then, too. But I did bring in women – Victoria Glendinning, Marina Warner, Hilary Spurling, Alison Lurie, Anita Brookner. None of the arts critics at the NS were women, though - think how much better things are now in that field."Numbers will never tell you everything. When people hazard guesses about why women review less – or less prominently – than men, they often say that women don't push themselves forward, don't ring up books desks and demand to be sent books, and books of a certain calibre. Looking back at her time as literary editor in the 1970s, Claire Tomalin recalls: "I tried very hard both at the New Statesman and the Sunday Times to find and use more women reviewers – but I also remember being attacked for not doing better. The truth is, there were many more men eager to review, offering to come into the office to talk about books, more male academics then, too. But I did bring in women – Victoria Glendinning, Marina Warner, Hilary Spurling, Alison Lurie, Anita Brookner. None of the arts critics at the NS were women, though - think how much better things are now in that field."
Certainly, there are more women writing about the arts than there were in the 1970s. It is also true to say that journalistic style has undergone a revolution since then, and that the area in which women are demonstrably dominant is feature-writing; they are also well represented among columnists. In literary journalism, does this translate as women reviewing novels by women and about them, about relationships and families, books described as domestic fiction, rather than non-fiction that fits into neat categories such as politics and military history, categories at which men have long been expert?Certainly, there are more women writing about the arts than there were in the 1970s. It is also true to say that journalistic style has undergone a revolution since then, and that the area in which women are demonstrably dominant is feature-writing; they are also well represented among columnists. In literary journalism, does this translate as women reviewing novels by women and about them, about relationships and families, books described as domestic fiction, rather than non-fiction that fits into neat categories such as politics and military history, categories at which men have long been expert?
There is also the sense that men can review well-known men and well‑known women, but that women are more usually asked to review women and rarely very celebrated men. My own experience more or less supports this; I have reviewed books, mainly fiction, for more than 20 years but I've never been asked to review Martin Amis or Jonathan Franzen, although I've interviewed both in platform events. Make of that what you will: I wonder how much it is to do with organisers feeling that it will appear daringly counterintuitive, making it crystal clear that "this is not a macho boys' club; we've got a chick in to do Martin". I should add that I regard Amis as neither macho nor  boys' clubby. I have also reviewed Howard Jacobson, who appears in the next paragraph, on several occasions.There is also the sense that men can review well-known men and well‑known women, but that women are more usually asked to review women and rarely very celebrated men. My own experience more or less supports this; I have reviewed books, mainly fiction, for more than 20 years but I've never been asked to review Martin Amis or Jonathan Franzen, although I've interviewed both in platform events. Make of that what you will: I wonder how much it is to do with organisers feeling that it will appear daringly counterintuitive, making it crystal clear that "this is not a macho boys' club; we've got a chick in to do Martin". I should add that I regard Amis as neither macho nor  boys' clubby. I have also reviewed Howard Jacobson, who appears in the next paragraph, on several occasions.
Linda Grant's experience of being reviewed bears this out: "It's odd that in an art form such as the novel, written by so many women and read by so many women, the review pages still bestow secondhand status on us. It's not just the dominance of reviews by men of novels by men, it's also the prominence. Many papers have lead reviewers, most are men. But what is truly odd is how few novels by women are reviewed by male reviewers. My last novel, despite having a male protagonist, was reviewed by only two male reviewers. Howard Jacobson's novels are rarely reviewed by women. So the ghetto is reinforced."Linda Grant's experience of being reviewed bears this out: "It's odd that in an art form such as the novel, written by so many women and read by so many women, the review pages still bestow secondhand status on us. It's not just the dominance of reviews by men of novels by men, it's also the prominence. Many papers have lead reviewers, most are men. But what is truly odd is how few novels by women are reviewed by male reviewers. My last novel, despite having a male protagonist, was reviewed by only two male reviewers. Howard Jacobson's novels are rarely reviewed by women. So the ghetto is reinforced."
The plot thickens when one realises that this is not because it's exclusively men who are doing the commissioning; in recent years, the literary editor of a newspaper has been as likely to be a woman as a man, and women currently fill that post at the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Times. Very few of them, men or women, work for a female editor, of course; only two national newspapers have a woman in charge.The plot thickens when one realises that this is not because it's exclusively men who are doing the commissioning; in recent years, the literary editor of a newspaper has been as likely to be a woman as a man, and women currently fill that post at the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Times. Very few of them, men or women, work for a female editor, of course; only two national newspapers have a woman in charge.
But are both literary editors and their bosses in thrall to the idea of the "star reviewer", created by steady accretion of high-profile reviews, eventually leading to the figure of the "man of letters"? We must acknowledge, of course, that the idea of even a man of letters becomes more anachronistic by the year. However, there are women of letters but they are rarely identified as such. Why? Well, annoyingly enough, it's complicated.But are both literary editors and their bosses in thrall to the idea of the "star reviewer", created by steady accretion of high-profile reviews, eventually leading to the figure of the "man of letters"? We must acknowledge, of course, that the idea of even a man of letters becomes more anachronistic by the year. However, there are women of letters but they are rarely identified as such. Why? Well, annoyingly enough, it's complicated.
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The idea of literary value – in terms of column inches, publishing advances paid out and earned back (or not), the sales of foreign rights, even the hovering likelihood of posterity – is a nebulous one, hard to quantify or qualify. Sometimes, a few hard facts emerge – and even their significance resists assessment.The idea of literary value – in terms of column inches, publishing advances paid out and earned back (or not), the sales of foreign rights, even the hovering likelihood of posterity – is a nebulous one, hard to quantify or qualify. Sometimes, a few hard facts emerge – and even their significance resists assessment.
Last month, PEN auctioned off first editions of books by a stellar collection of writers, who had also annotated them, at Sotheby's in London to raise funds. A delicious byproduct for mercenary onlookers, of course, was that we could see how everyone ranked once the money was on the table. Feeling flush? Then splash out £14,000 on Julian Barnes's Metroland. Purse-strings chafing? Then Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin, at £1,400, is more in your price range.Last month, PEN auctioned off first editions of books by a stellar collection of writers, who had also annotated them, at Sotheby's in London to raise funds. A delicious byproduct for mercenary onlookers, of course, was that we could see how everyone ranked once the money was on the table. Feeling flush? Then splash out £14,000 on Julian Barnes's Metroland. Purse-strings chafing? Then Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin, at £1,400, is more in your price range.
Here's the deal, though; once you removed the statistic-busting phenomenon that is JK Rowling, you discovered that 14 women writers collectively fetched £55,000 (an average of around £3,900 a book) and 35 men whistled up £237,000 (an average of £6,700). One woman made it into the top five. No point in launching a guessing game; it was Hilary Mantel (£16,000 for Wolf Hall).Here's the deal, though; once you removed the statistic-busting phenomenon that is JK Rowling, you discovered that 14 women writers collectively fetched £55,000 (an average of around £3,900 a book) and 35 men whistled up £237,000 (an average of £6,700). One woman made it into the top five. No point in launching a guessing game; it was Hilary Mantel (£16,000 for Wolf Hall).
Writing by women is in exceptionally good health. This year's Costa book awards, in which five category winners eventually compete against one another, also featured an almost entirely all-female shortlist (the winner of the biography award was written and drawn by Mary and Bryan Talbot). Mantel, as it happened, won that. Reading by women is thriving too: broadly speaking, women still buy the most novels. But the literary culture – the creation of reputation, the business of criticism, the nebulous idea of the great writer – still feels more masculine than common sense would suggest it should be.Writing by women is in exceptionally good health. This year's Costa book awards, in which five category winners eventually compete against one another, also featured an almost entirely all-female shortlist (the winner of the biography award was written and drawn by Mary and Bryan Talbot). Mantel, as it happened, won that. Reading by women is thriving too: broadly speaking, women still buy the most novels. But the literary culture – the creation of reputation, the business of criticism, the nebulous idea of the great writer – still feels more masculine than common sense would suggest it should be.
"A certain prickliness on the part of women writers is currently fashionable," Katie Roiphe observes writing about "the latest fracas over literary sexism" – the reaction of novelist Claire Messud to an interviewer from Publishers Weekly who asked her whether or not she would want to be friends with Nora, the narrator of her (brilliant, angry) new novel, The Woman Upstairs. In response, Messud turned interrogator: "For heaven's sake, what kind of question is that?" she asked. Would the same be demanded, she continued, of Humbert Humbert or Mickey Sabbath, or Oedipus, or the characters of Thomas Pynchon or Martin Amis or (the only female writer she mentioned) Alice Munro?"A certain prickliness on the part of women writers is currently fashionable," Katie Roiphe observes writing about "the latest fracas over literary sexism" – the reaction of novelist Claire Messud to an interviewer from Publishers Weekly who asked her whether or not she would want to be friends with Nora, the narrator of her (brilliant, angry) new novel, The Woman Upstairs. In response, Messud turned interrogator: "For heaven's sake, what kind of question is that?" she asked. Would the same be demanded, she continued, of Humbert Humbert or Mickey Sabbath, or Oedipus, or the characters of Thomas Pynchon or Martin Amis or (the only female writer she mentioned) Alice Munro?
An interview with Messud in New York magazine – in the form of an "at home" with her and her husband James Wood, once of this parish and now book critic at the New Yorker – kicks off by telling us that her hair has turned grey, swiftly qualified to a somewhat classier-sounding pewter, which, luckily, looks well with her shirt and necklace. A little trivial, of course, but then Wood gets described as lanky and balding, though apparently "gentler in person than he is on the page" (did the interviewer expect him to stand at the door with an axe?), and good at making salad. He is also characterised as "the devoted husband of a bestselling novelist with a few of her own ideas about how fiction works"; a funny sentence construction that carries a faint whiff of husband stoically bent over his books as wife keeps popping up with pesky theories about realism.An interview with Messud in New York magazine – in the form of an "at home" with her and her husband James Wood, once of this parish and now book critic at the New Yorker – kicks off by telling us that her hair has turned grey, swiftly qualified to a somewhat classier-sounding pewter, which, luckily, looks well with her shirt and necklace. A little trivial, of course, but then Wood gets described as lanky and balding, though apparently "gentler in person than he is on the page" (did the interviewer expect him to stand at the door with an axe?), and good at making salad. He is also characterised as "the devoted husband of a bestselling novelist with a few of her own ideas about how fiction works"; a funny sentence construction that carries a faint whiff of husband stoically bent over his books as wife keeps popping up with pesky theories about realism.
But you can't read an "at home" and then complain if it goes on about gnocchi and curtains. This is modern life. In between, there is lots of interesting and illuminating stuff, particularly when Wood talks about why he left "airless" literary London, sickened by his monitoring of "who's up, who's down"; at another point, Messud offers that only one of them can work in the house at a time, otherwise they run short of air. Elsewhere, Wood mentions how easy it is "for the male voice to be the authority, the scrutinising and stern corrective voice"; Messud, discussing The Woman Upstairs, notes that "the acculturation of women does not encourage selfishness, assertiveness, singlemindedness". Wood is primarily a critic, and Messud primarily a novelist; their thoughts about language and writing, about the discourse and demeanour of the literary world, don't reveal some kind of conflict of interest or territoriality, but they do yield insights into different facets of how we make sense of the business of creating – and then reading – literature.But you can't read an "at home" and then complain if it goes on about gnocchi and curtains. This is modern life. In between, there is lots of interesting and illuminating stuff, particularly when Wood talks about why he left "airless" literary London, sickened by his monitoring of "who's up, who's down"; at another point, Messud offers that only one of them can work in the house at a time, otherwise they run short of air. Elsewhere, Wood mentions how easy it is "for the male voice to be the authority, the scrutinising and stern corrective voice"; Messud, discussing The Woman Upstairs, notes that "the acculturation of women does not encourage selfishness, assertiveness, singlemindedness". Wood is primarily a critic, and Messud primarily a novelist; their thoughts about language and writing, about the discourse and demeanour of the literary world, don't reveal some kind of conflict of interest or territoriality, but they do yield insights into different facets of how we make sense of the business of creating – and then reading – literature.
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Can you be a critic if you're not interested in the tide of "who's up, who's down"? Yes and no: ideally, what you need to do is watch its ebb and flow from another shore, so that you don't live in fear of getting stranded. To do that, you do need air, lots; selfishness, assertiveness, single-mindedness too. Scrutiny, of course. Sternness, probably. But authority? What is it? Who confers it? If nobody does, can you summon it up and project it on to the outside world? Can you do this more easily if you are a man than if you are a woman?Can you be a critic if you're not interested in the tide of "who's up, who's down"? Yes and no: ideally, what you need to do is watch its ebb and flow from another shore, so that you don't live in fear of getting stranded. To do that, you do need air, lots; selfishness, assertiveness, single-mindedness too. Scrutiny, of course. Sternness, probably. But authority? What is it? Who confers it? If nobody does, can you summon it up and project it on to the outside world? Can you do this more easily if you are a man than if you are a woman?
Writing about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh in 1978, Lorna Sage drew attention to the "slump" in its reputation after the success it had first enjoyed after its 1856 publication: at first, she argued, it seemed to have successfully liberated the epic form from a male monopoly; subsequently, though, a ringletted Barrett Browning morphed into "almost the archetype of the powerless, fey poetess". And ailing on her sofa with a lapdog is how many generations of schoolchildren came to know of her; not that many, probably, got much further. Sage's analysis was that the writer had "surfaced briefly" from a mass of other women writers "whose work could be regarded more or less as a side-effect of frustration"; then she "sank without trace".Writing about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh in 1978, Lorna Sage drew attention to the "slump" in its reputation after the success it had first enjoyed after its 1856 publication: at first, she argued, it seemed to have successfully liberated the epic form from a male monopoly; subsequently, though, a ringletted Barrett Browning morphed into "almost the archetype of the powerless, fey poetess". And ailing on her sofa with a lapdog is how many generations of schoolchildren came to know of her; not that many, probably, got much further. Sage's analysis was that the writer had "surfaced briefly" from a mass of other women writers "whose work could be regarded more or less as a side-effect of frustration"; then she "sank without trace".
All these ideas occur in Sage's dense, but not especially long, first paragraph. But it also contains an even more intriguing parenthetical aside about the "difficult case" of George Eliot, who wrote not out of frustration, but "as an extension of the womanly duty of mediation". Perhaps this is what AS Byatt, a writer whom Sage once described as wanting "to salvage continuity", means when she describes her admiration for Eliot's depiction of the childhood cruelty (including canary-strangling) of Daniel Deronda's Gwendolen Harleth: "Everything is qualified, your emotional response to it cannot be simple." Or what Zadie Smith means in her essay on Middlemarch when she writes of how, over time, Eliot learned "sympathy for the stumbling errors of human beings".All these ideas occur in Sage's dense, but not especially long, first paragraph. But it also contains an even more intriguing parenthetical aside about the "difficult case" of George Eliot, who wrote not out of frustration, but "as an extension of the womanly duty of mediation". Perhaps this is what AS Byatt, a writer whom Sage once described as wanting "to salvage continuity", means when she describes her admiration for Eliot's depiction of the childhood cruelty (including canary-strangling) of Daniel Deronda's Gwendolen Harleth: "Everything is qualified, your emotional response to it cannot be simple." Or what Zadie Smith means in her essay on Middlemarch when she writes of how, over time, Eliot learned "sympathy for the stumbling errors of human beings".
Eliot, Byatt and Smith are connected by their careers as both novelists and critics. The impulse towards mediation or continuity is not noticeably a brake on their desire to speak forthrightly and truthfully about the work of other writers; Eliot, for example, did not hesitate to identify "a composite order of feminine fatuity" in the "mind-and-millinery" novels that she described in her essay "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists", published the same year as Aurora Leigh.Eliot, Byatt and Smith are connected by their careers as both novelists and critics. The impulse towards mediation or continuity is not noticeably a brake on their desire to speak forthrightly and truthfully about the work of other writers; Eliot, for example, did not hesitate to identify "a composite order of feminine fatuity" in the "mind-and-millinery" novels that she described in her essay "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists", published the same year as Aurora Leigh.
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Here is a more pressing question: who cares? In 2001, Amis wrote a foreword to three decades of his essays and reviews, collected as "The War Against Cliche". In it, he revealed that the business of book-reviewing – a "career" that he'd satirised a few years previously in The Information – had changed substantially since he'd started out, with his job at the Times Literary Supplement and his spare time spent in pubs and coffee bars discussing Northrop Frye, Tony Tanner and George Steiner with Clive James et al. Then came the twin destroyers of inflation and democratisation. The former meant that you couldn't afford to live on nothing; the latter that, in the formulation of Gore Vidal that Amis cites, nobody's feelings are more authentic, and thus more important, than anyone else's.Here is a more pressing question: who cares? In 2001, Amis wrote a foreword to three decades of his essays and reviews, collected as "The War Against Cliche". In it, he revealed that the business of book-reviewing – a "career" that he'd satirised a few years previously in The Information – had changed substantially since he'd started out, with his job at the Times Literary Supplement and his spare time spent in pubs and coffee bars discussing Northrop Frye, Tony Tanner and George Steiner with Clive James et al. Then came the twin destroyers of inflation and democratisation. The former meant that you couldn't afford to live on nothing; the latter that, in the formulation of Gore Vidal that Amis cites, nobody's feelings are more authentic, and thus more important, than anyone else's.
"This is the new credo, the new privilege," writes Amis. "It is a privilege much exercised in the contemporary book review, whether on the web or in the literary pages. The reviewer calmly tolerates the arrival of the new novel or slim volume, defensively settles into it, and then sees which way it rubs him up. The right way or the wrong way. The results of this contact will form the data of the review, without any reference to the thing behind. And the thing behind, I am afraid, is talent, and the canon, and the body of knowledge we call literature.""This is the new credo, the new privilege," writes Amis. "It is a privilege much exercised in the contemporary book review, whether on the web or in the literary pages. The reviewer calmly tolerates the arrival of the new novel or slim volume, defensively settles into it, and then sees which way it rubs him up. The right way or the wrong way. The results of this contact will form the data of the review, without any reference to the thing behind. And the thing behind, I am afraid, is talent, and the canon, and the body of knowledge we call literature."
But Amis assures us that he doesn't, contrary to appearances, deplore this state of affairs: "It is the summit of idleness to deplore the present, to deplore actuality. Say whatever you like about it, the present is unavoidable."But Amis assures us that he doesn't, contrary to appearances, deplore this state of affairs: "It is the summit of idleness to deplore the present, to deplore actuality. Say whatever you like about it, the present is unavoidable."
Unavoidable, but not static; which means that it develops in ways that cannot be foreseen, the specifics and minutiae of which are often beyond our imagination. Amis's foreword was written before the world of online reviewing had really got going, before the proliferation of blogs, of below-the‑line comments, of social media. The process of democratisation surrounding books has increased apace; more is written about books, by more people, in more places. Several of the more influential lit-bloggers are women, including the Devon-based dovegreyreader, who has been blogging since 2006 and who has always insisted, despite the high regard with which she is viewed, that she doesn't see herself as a professional book reviewer; the point, she has said, is that she wanted the freedom to be subjective. In the States, one of the longest-standing and most successful blogs is Bookslut, founded by Jessa Crispin. In 2008, she told Publishers Weekly that "Bookslut is on the outside: we're not located in New York, we're not in print, and we take things less seriously than the New York Times Book Review".Unavoidable, but not static; which means that it develops in ways that cannot be foreseen, the specifics and minutiae of which are often beyond our imagination. Amis's foreword was written before the world of online reviewing had really got going, before the proliferation of blogs, of below-the‑line comments, of social media. The process of democratisation surrounding books has increased apace; more is written about books, by more people, in more places. Several of the more influential lit-bloggers are women, including the Devon-based dovegreyreader, who has been blogging since 2006 and who has always insisted, despite the high regard with which she is viewed, that she doesn't see herself as a professional book reviewer; the point, she has said, is that she wanted the freedom to be subjective. In the States, one of the longest-standing and most successful blogs is Bookslut, founded by Jessa Crispin. In 2008, she told Publishers Weekly that "Bookslut is on the outside: we're not located in New York, we're not in print, and we take things less seriously than the New York Times Book Review".
But I don't regret that people talk about books more, and talk about them more openly, and don't feel held back from doing so because they lack the technical vocabulary to parse a sentence. There is a difference between, on the one hand, writing directly about whether you think a novel good, what you think it set out to achieve, and on the other being a specialist who aims to put an individual work or a writer into a literary context. That the space between the two has narrowed, that they seem to have converged, is true; but there is no reason for them not to be separate activities, and no harm in it, either. The impulse to undermine authority comes largely when that authority has been damagingly powerful and excluding; when it has not allowed other voices, other interests, other priorities, to flourish. For fiction – our mirror to the world, our way of understanding it – to allow itself to become that battleground is insane, and self-sabotaging.But I don't regret that people talk about books more, and talk about them more openly, and don't feel held back from doing so because they lack the technical vocabulary to parse a sentence. There is a difference between, on the one hand, writing directly about whether you think a novel good, what you think it set out to achieve, and on the other being a specialist who aims to put an individual work or a writer into a literary context. That the space between the two has narrowed, that they seem to have converged, is true; but there is no reason for them not to be separate activities, and no harm in it, either. The impulse to undermine authority comes largely when that authority has been damagingly powerful and excluding; when it has not allowed other voices, other interests, other priorities, to flourish. For fiction – our mirror to the world, our way of understanding it – to allow itself to become that battleground is insane, and self-sabotaging.
If the novel itself is more plural than it has been for some time – as suggested by the spread of ethnicities and styles and subject matters in Granta's recently announced best of young British novelists – if it no longer has a dominant form, then we need to be able to talk about it. We will argue about how to do so. Currently, that argument seems centred (as it is in many areas, not just the arts) on who has the right to speak, whose voice is the loudest, who has the advantage of prior entitlement, of privilege. These are arguments worth having – with the caveat that they sometimes crowd out the art form, the political theory, the person who is under discussion in the first place.If the novel itself is more plural than it has been for some time – as suggested by the spread of ethnicities and styles and subject matters in Granta's recently announced best of young British novelists – if it no longer has a dominant form, then we need to be able to talk about it. We will argue about how to do so. Currently, that argument seems centred (as it is in many areas, not just the arts) on who has the right to speak, whose voice is the loudest, who has the advantage of prior entitlement, of privilege. These are arguments worth having – with the caveat that they sometimes crowd out the art form, the political theory, the person who is under discussion in the first place.
As the writer and performer Stella Duffy puts it: "We still exist in a society where the male model – be it a novel, play, fine art or music – is perceived as the definitive, it is, therefore, inevitable that a woman's work will be judged wanting. We shouldn't – any of us – have to change our names or resort to initials to make sure gender is not a factor in our success, the fact that so many writers still do is a clear sign that we have a long way to go.As the writer and performer Stella Duffy puts it: "We still exist in a society where the male model – be it a novel, play, fine art or music – is perceived as the definitive, it is, therefore, inevitable that a woman's work will be judged wanting. We shouldn't – any of us – have to change our names or resort to initials to make sure gender is not a factor in our success, the fact that so many writers still do is a clear sign that we have a long way to go.
It's less than 100 years since women got the vote in the UK. It's just 170 years since the Brontës were writing with men's names. Changing laws is one thing, changing attitudes is quite another. That attitude shift is going to take a lot longer, and will simply not happen if we keep behaving as if equality – true equality, the one that comes with equality of access as well as equality of share – doesn't matter all that much."It's less than 100 years since women got the vote in the UK. It's just 170 years since the Brontës were writing with men's names. Changing laws is one thing, changing attitudes is quite another. That attitude shift is going to take a lot longer, and will simply not happen if we keep behaving as if equality – true equality, the one that comes with equality of access as well as equality of share – doesn't matter all that much."
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