Gawker
One of the things about being a stay-at-home writer is that you have perhaps a little bit too much time to peruse and write blogs! We were reminded of this by chick lit author Jennifer Weiner's rant in the comments of the Times' 'Paper Cuts' blog, which she continued on over at her own blog 'Snark Spot' (really). She has a bone to pick with an author who'd yearningly mentioned her books' consistent presence on bookstore shelves. "Be careful what you wish for, oh shelfmate o' mine! If you wrote chick lit—provided it was any good—you would indeed find your books on the shelf of most every store. But your books would not be reviewed twice by the Times."
She goes on: "Your books would not be reviewed once by the Times. Your books would be completely ignored by the Times unless they included a thinly-veiled villainess who was nonetheless recognizable to Times editors, in which case said editors would hire her former deputy to review your book. Also, you'd be ignored by Oprah. This would be worse." Ignored by Oprah! But wait, the list of depredations worsens.
Your MFA-toting literary peers would shun you at panels or public events, assuming you actually got invited to such things. They'd sneer at your breezy, accessible tales of young women and love, especially if your breezy, accessible tales were selling and their deeply ambiguous, finely wrought short-story collections and/or memoirs about masturbation were not.Now, Jennifer is clearly being a little bit nuttily megalomaniacal (and taking a line on the Times from Gore Vidal, too) but she's also right. Obviously, complaining that the Times and Oprah have neglected your hugely successful novels is just plain greedy. Why should the Times review Jennifer's books? Everyone who would need to already knows about them and reads them. It would be like if Frank Bruni went to the Olive Garden and then informed his readers that "despite the wan atmosphere, the bottomless bowl of salad is a refreshing medley of romaine and spinach, a wishing well of leafy greenage. Freshly baked breadsticks, their girth belying an earthy wheatiness, arrived at the table in a warm basket. I put the tip in my mouth, swirling my tongue over the poppy seeds." Like Olive Garden readers care?The grande dames of literature would turn up their distinguished noses, complaining that you'd undone their years of struggle by writing amusingly of heroines who care about love and marriage. Maureen Dowd and her very good friend Leon Wieseltier would call you frivolous (apparently, novels about women who date are verboten, while autobiography about not being able to get a date is just fine).
Your loved ones would blush when describing your covers and mumble the names of your titles. You'd spend each day living with the pain of having betrayed feminism, your early intellectual promise, and your expensive education by writing something popular instead of something important. Your life would be a hot-pink hell, a toxic cocktail of shame and sugary Cosmpolitans. Worst of all, nobody from the Times would ever email to ask what's on your iPod or how many hours a day you burn on Bluefly.com.
On the plus side, you'd be able to buy a great many pairs of cute shoes...and any board book your daughter's heart desired.
But Jennifer is right that our rules about what constitutes highbrow and lowbrow literature are not only arbitrary, but informed by a outdated, snobbish sensibility that doesn't seem to have much to do with what people actually want to read about. Also, that Maureen Dowd can be such a ladder-pulling-up cow sometimes.
Comments
But really, it's about the Art, so one should be willing to blow one's nose with a five rather than a twenty-dollar bill.
What does this say about the prospects for my new "chick-lit" novel The Guy Took Her in Her Good Bed Shoes?
I just like that Jennifer Weiner makes you think of bottomless vessels of Olive Garden food.
Waaah, waaah, waaah.
"I put the tip in my mouth, swirling my tongue over the poppy seeds."
That covers her relationship with Jakob. 2,986 more words to go.
I think Jim's comment following hers sums it up pretty nicely.
Cute shoes indeed... but apparently, it can't buy you a good colorist.
I'd do her. I love crazy.
Am I the only one who sees that as a beautifully written, perfectly detailed passage? I'm looking forward to her bitter yet hilarious memoir, which will be reviewed by the Times and featured on "Oprah."
If I adore the "earthy wheatiness" of Emily's work here, does that make me a sycophant.
I will build her a higher pedestal, and name it Freedom.
Yeah? What's with the Times?
I'm dying to know what's on her ipod.
God forbid a writer should make the decision to feed herself and her family with popular fiction. Even Beethoven did folksong arrangements.
Poor girl needs to relax... what she needs is a nice Cosmo mixed by a hot bartender followed by a day of shoe shopping with the girls. What bills? LOL!!1!
Masturbation doesn't sell?
Well, I guess that leaves me with a full trash can.
She lost me at "nonetheless." Kate Betts' review of The Devil Wears Prada is one of the best things ever. Also - who did Maureen Dowd leave stranded when she "pulled up the ladder" -- writers like Jennifer Weiner?
@Mr. 60%: Maroon 5, Natalie Imbruglia, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayer, and The Compleat Works of Kelly Clarkson.
I would suggest her new book be titled "A Snobs Guide to Chic Lit".
BUT...
"what people actually want to read about" is not a valid criterion for serious writing. A subject in which you think you are not at all interested, written about by a brilliant writer, becomes more than interesting. The intelligence and skill and art with which a subject is handled is the most important thing.
In fact, it is often the worst and most pretentious writers who try and tie themselves to a big subject, or a momentous trend, and let that subject or trend do the work.
9/11 plus texting!
What Olive Garden do you go to? I've never gotten poppyseeds on my breadsticks.
Since apparently what people what to read about is Julia Allison, I guess we can expect laudatory notice on the part of Emily when that New York article drops.
The sassy preggo wins this round, methinks. She may be crazy, but she's mostly right, and at least her brother doesn't edit Slate.
@gonzosmom: If you write it, they will cum.
@atipofthehat: The Bruni-channeling was a Josh pinch-hit.
@emily: It was more Amanda Hesser. From Bruni we want to hear that the Olive Garden is like "the Tarragon Tonys"
Having grown up there, I can testify that nothing churns out crazy ladies more than the Philly suburbs. Welcome to the Main Line, bitch!
I agree. And not only should the Times book critics pay more attention to chic lit because of its popularity, but the arts critic should review Thomas Kincade's (Painter of Light!) work because every old Christian lady in America owns one so it must be good and relevant and worthy of praise.
OF COURSE she's right. But that does not excuse the wide proliferation of books-for-women (!) that are so mind-numbingly, shit poor they are not only insult women, but also HUMAN BEINGS. Just try to read one. Pick up any book with a picture of a high-heeled slut balancing on a martini glass filled with watches, or diapers. You'll feel like you clubbed yourself over the head and put ice picks through your eyes. Unfortunately, I don't think many women are reading this shit. Little girls are. Which is feeding that woefully harmful, monster-of-a myth that tells us shoes and Mr. Right is all a girl has to live for. It's a seductive myth, though. Shoes are so pretty and when you're 13, 14, 15, 28, men seem redemptive.
Sweet jesus christ. How many times are artists going to pretend to care about this argument? Didn't The Who Sell Out come out like three decades ago? "Chick lit" is Avon romance for 20-somethings with too much disposable income, who have moved right past your cultural debates into consumerist debates re: appropriate clothing and accessory combinations. Stop this fakery and obsessive posturing, the grave's been dug and filled.
@emily: Thanks for letting me know.
Wait, does this mean I'm gay? And, if so, do I need better clothes?
Anyway, my real point was in my 2nd post: @atipofthehat
@SlightlyLessDeliciousNoise: She just wants a Nobel Prize for Chick Lit to be established. Is that a crime?
Is her last name Weiner or Whiner?
I'm sure having a last name like Weiner doesn't help in the whole "being taken seriously" department.
I'm with TedSez. I think that's hilarious, and that JW's more right than wrong about the hypocrisy of the literary world at this point.
And to touch on your point, A Tip of the Hat, there was a time when serious literature knew how to be popular, too. 19th century classics have ghosts and whaling ships and hidden passageways and murders and sensational trials and emotional confessions and, occasionally, insane first wives locked in the attic. 21st century "serious literature" is about professors in Connecticut contemplating divorce and fretting over tenure.
@picardia:
Try a side of Jose Saramago. He's got it all.
I got one of her books ("Good in Bed") for my wife, expecting it be more than just chick lit. I was wrong. It's modestly entertaining, but it's not anything approaching literature.
Life is so rough selling your books to Hollywood and having Cameron Diaz star in the movie.
@picardia: Actually, if you go back to the 19th century newspapers and look at the popular literature of the day, it overwhelmingly consists of bad books the titles and authors of which you wouldn't recognize (unless they happened to help start the Civil War). A lot of what we consider to be the books worth reading from that era were not popular at all then, including Moby-Dick, though Melville's first two seafaring yarns, which were quite simple, topped the charts. I think there is a tendancy to mistake what we are told is serious literature--or what is marketed as such--for writing that actually is serious--or even not-so-serious, but simply good.
I think there are a half dozen tall, pale, men in their 40s that we are told are the "serious writers" of our era. I don't buy it. I think Deborah Eisenberg has them beat. Throw in Nancy Drew, and your criteria are satisfied, too!
I've read two of Weiner's books and checked her blog a few times, and I don't get why she's so angry all the time. She's a very mediocre writer, who has somehow (pact with Dick Cheney? Sorry, I meant the Devil) managed to become a bestselling author and have one of her novels turned into a major motion picture.
And my opinion of her abilities --or lack thereof-- has nothing to do with the genre she writes. I hate the "chick lit" label in the first place, because it's misogynist. Men who write about love, relationships, sex and dating don't get stuck with any dumb labels.
There are plenty of so-called "chick-lit" authors who are actually very good. Jennifer Weiner is just not one of them.
@gonzosmom: Word. And those madwomen in the attic novels are still a great read. A good portion of the former market for those novels is no longer educated enough to read those novels so they read shit by Jennifer Weiner. She can laugh her way to the bank and I guessthat's her point, which is hardly a new one. Also, it is a fine line between romance novels and her novels and some of the crap coming out of some MFA programs. Yup. And shoes are nice. I like shoes too. Whatever. Good luck with your demons.
(I'm thinking that "Good luck with your demons" is what I'm going to wish people for the holidays this year. Perhaps I'll develop a line of cards...)
I would have thought her response was hilarious if it had been only the first and last paragraph. The magic of editing!
This particular chick lit author went to my university (undergrad) and our alumni magazine covers her rather frequently. Better than most of us career women get. She should really just stop. She is propegating the myth passed on to every sorority girl that it is her god-given right to have the most fabulous everything, and then get a sugar daddy on top of it, just be being a well dressed drunk.
I'm not bitter at all.
@midtown43: I agree with your genre and labelling critique: many male writers produce what would be called "Chick lit" if they were women (Nick Hornby). But maybe there is or was a marketing genre it would be fair to call "Let's turn Cosmopolitan into a novel!
And a number of authors bending over frontwards to meet the demand.
On the one hand, Weiner writes semiliterate potboilers. On the other hand, so do lots of guys, and they're rarely slapped with the "dick-lit" label.
Even when they should be. Because, you know, women worrying about their love lives and feeling inauthentic and buying lots of things identified by their brand names is "trash"--men doing the same thing is "groundbreaking" and "a distinctive new voice" and all the other blather I see about such novels.
@VenusCloacina:
Every movement starts with a single step...
Find a way for Kakutani to fit both "dick-lit" and "limn" into an opening paragraph, send it to her to use free of charge, and we're off!
@VenusCloacina: Exactly. The problem is that Weiner is convinced that, because she's sold a lot of books, she's a great writer. A while ago I read in her blog that she had tried to submit something to The New Yorker and was shocked (outraged!) because she'd been turned down. Jesus. The New Yorker.
Danielle Steel has sold about 500 million copies of her novels. I guess, according to Weiner, that makes her deserving of winning the Nobel Prize.
@venuscloacina: Exactly. I mean, Weiner is genre fiction, of the romance type. Genre fiction is not intended to be great art, although sometimes it turns out to be (like Jane Eyre, as some of the other commenters noted). The Times reviews other genres (true crime, mystery, sci fi), so why not romance? Or conversely, why review any of them?
@gonzosmom: If you're doing it right, dear, it already has.
Well, I'm gonna admit. I like her books. They are better than most "chick lit" (which, yes, is a "genre" name I loathe). I have reviewed some REALLY, really bad ones. It seems as though, these days, every young woman who has lived in new york thinks we want to read about her 23rd, 24th, or 25th year spent living in the big city.
I alternate between reading 'literature' and reading books that simply entertain, compel and amuse. And stuff in between. If that makes me a total pleb, so be it. I mean, on the one hand I guess it is the NY Times and it's elite and such. On the other hand, I prefer reading the Books section of the Chicago Tribune, which is more representative of the mixture I'm interested in.
One weekend in a sweat lodge with Jonathan Lethem would show her what a "hot-pink hell" really is. When your only fashion statement is made with a loincloth it becomes painfully obvious who is a writer and who is an "Author". (Or if Lethem's unavailable, how about a cage match with Wendy Lesser? You know, if you'd rather swing that way. I'm sure Anna Quindlen would be happy to be the ref.)
@TedSez: It's an eloquent rant, but I was more impressed by Emily's imaginary Frank Bruni Olive Garden review. Brilliant.