Yale Chick Lit Debate Revisited
A few months ago I drafted an entry and linked to an article by Dayo at Yale. The article was one which, in my view, gave the standard chick-lit-ruins-women argument based on what appeared to be the reading of a few chick lit offerings and the reviewing of back cover blurbs. The argument struck me as dated and uninformed.
Dayo found the entry. Dayo is not happy.
Dayo alleged that I had excerpted the article and not provided full text. This is wrong. The link was in the entry. Still is - click on the words “this article” in my first sentence of the previous entry. Dayo says the “self-important blogosphere” misunderstood the chick lit argument proposed. I am reprinting Dayo’s comment - in full - right here. You can decide if Dayo is informed, correct and well-reasoned. You may also want to keep that phrase “self-important” in mind as you read:
Interesting. I’m glad to see the self-important blogosphere rear its head once more. I am the female author of the above article, which–poorly excerpted–the lot of you have decided to rip apart for a number of reasons. A bit late in the game, I’ll offer this as a reply: Firstly, the intentional delusion of “escapist” meaning in literature presupposes an apolitical slant to the printed word. Reading geared toward females, and in the cutthroat world of publishing, “reserved” for female writers, takes on the burden of REPRESENTATION for women to BOTH sexes. Men dismiss it; women are only hurt by the presumptions inherent in the most “known” tropes of chick lit. Why must she shop, and pout, and hover by the scale, and be dependent on males? That the stereotypical, privileged, gum-chewing female bimbo “speaks” for women as the only ambassador in print ignores the stratified and unbelievably diverse nature of female reality in the world today. What image, other than that of a spoiled brat, might the prototypical lovelorn London press agent offer to a woman anywhere in the so-called “third world”? Or in the first world? Women struggling to live through childbirth, abuse, and facing a host of other socio-political oppressions are fully uninitiated into the cult of material personality so prevalent in these texts.
Further, the excerpt failed to mention my critique of the system of generating “good” literature, which is related to both publication and habits of interpretation. These “airy” novels are not considered alongside those of (what I call) “the cult of the young, male author”. This system of valorization for young, snarky 20-etc male writers is utterly underused for females. The female author is taking a gamble on her gender with each word; and I agree with some posters that the cloisters of ” high” art are closed to many women on principle.
My point is the reductionist perspectives such literature promotes about the modern “woman” are both structural and contextual. If a woman writer (of whom so many are so talented) chooses to stake out territory for equal representation in print, she is walking a thin wire, sacrificing sales for the sake of political truth. Pointless dating chronicles not only make for ho-hum reading, they engender prejudices against marginalized women, not to mention a pretty talented half of civilization. This is a shame, that’s all. Enough already.the FULL text can be found here:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=31698
April 10th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Funny that the journalist lambasts you for excerpting her work when she fully admits that she hasn’t read the books that she is trashing in her article. Which is the worse crime?
In addition, she laments the idea that the world at large and the publishing community are somehow celebrating a cult of young male novelists who are “serious” and yet forgetting female novelits? Are they? Are they when they copare Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep to Catcher in the Rye? Are they “underusing” the… what was it? “System of valorization for young, snarky 20-etc male writers?” I didn’t notice that while Prep was gathering mentions on every bestseller, awards, and “best of list” last fall.
I again maintain (as I did in the original post) that what this young woman did was choose a few poorly-researched examples of high comedy and satire in the literary marketplace (please, Shopoholic? It’s SATIRE!) and hypothesize that, based on the covers, it is meant to be somehow the alpha and omega of women’s literature and statement about the female experience.
If the author bothered to actually READ a chick lit here and there, she’d realize that there’s much more than pouting, shopping, hopping on scales and whatnot. There are many ambassadors in print for the female experience, and not just the aged stereotype (Seriously, Dayo, your “prototypical London press agent” went out in 1997) she seems determined to beat into jelly.
April 10th, 2006 at 10:52 am
And…for those who don’t know. Diana, like Dayo, is a Yale grad. However, Diana doesn’t dismiss the genre. No, on the conrary, Diana received an impressive contract for her first book, SECRET SOCIETY GIRL (go pre-order it on Amazon or any other book retailer you like). The buzz for this book is huge.
Diana is smart and funny, and a strong and vibrant voice for the very books Dayo knocks without ever bothering to read them. Diana understands the power that comes when smart women write the smart books they want to write. Listen to Diana (and go pre-order her book).
April 10th, 2006 at 11:32 am
Reading geared toward females, and in the cutthroat world of publishing, “reserved” for female writers, takes on the burden of REPRESENTATION for women to BOTH sexes.
Ms. Dayo can bite me.
I read the full article the first time you linked to it and it seriously annoyed me then. I’ve seen this line before, that books written by women and for women take on the burden of representation, therefore must live up to what the speaker deems as “appropriate” subject. Anything the speaker does not deem as “appropriate” is considered unworthy and potentially oppressive to women.
When I turn to reading for entertainment and relaxation, I want something that’s going to take me away from the problems around me — and reading for entertainment is not the only reading I do. Along with the romances in my TBR pile are books on the American eugenics movement, civil war in the Sudan, and the struggle of women in Iraq. In recent months, I’ve watched a friend lose a child who was less than a year old, helped another find shelter when it turned out her “prefect” marriage was actually abusive, and watched people around me deal with career setbacks, emotional and finacial trouble, even mental illness.
I do not need a self-important academic who can’t be bothered to not only do adequate reserach on the genre she’s trashing by reading a few, but who can’t even be bothered to check the fact that you did indeed link to the original article in your entry. It speaks of political agenda over scholarship and is a poor reflection on her, her university, and the academic community as a whole.
But then, what do I know? I’m just one of those women “struggling to live through childbirth, abuse, and facing a host of other socio-political oppressions” that we face in daily life.
April 10th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Thanks for the plug, HelenKay. Watch me blush. In defense of the journalist, however, let me say that I truly do understand the origin of the attitude. There was a prevailing opinion on campus while I was there that unless we were going after a Nobel in Literature, or at least a Pulitzer, we would disgrace the art of letters.
Luckily, I had a few open-minded professors who taught me that there is a spectrum of value in literature, and often we don’t know what we value until we view its place in history. I think that chick lit’s examination of young women in the post-feminist world will end up saying quite a bit. I believe that Shanna Swendson had a good blog post a bit back about how much she had to ponder the role of women after reading the Undomestic Goddess.
Another excellent example of a Yale grad writing chick lit is Lauren Willig (class of ‘99), whose Pink Carnation series has been making a huge splash. It’s chick lit crossed with historical adventure in these stories of a young university researcher (the chick lit side) who stumbles upon the heretofore secret diaries of a young 19th century spy.
If the heroines of chick lit are supposed to be representative of the breadth of female experience, I’ll take one who is a Harvard grad researching her dissertation in England anytime. I can’t wait to hear how that chick’s not a role model. Smart, well-educated, hard working…
Just because something is entertaining does not mean it isn’t also meaningful. Caro nailed it as well. Sometimes, as she mentions above, people also need the escape, the soul food provided by entertaining, amusing, and, dare I say it, *silly* novels.
I was completely cured of any remnant of literary snobbery on September 11, 2001, when, while trapped on a plane that should have landed in New York, then later in an airport that no one could leave, then later on a train filled with refugees from Manhattan, I read and re-read a romance novel. Later, from the safety of a dorm room in New Haven, I emailed the author of that romance novel, telling her how much her book had meant to me that day, and that whenever i was overcome by the events happening around me, I could escape for a few minutes into a world where love was triumphant, the good guys won, and everyone lived happily ever after. Entertainment has its own value.
But whether the book is meaningful, meaningful and entertaining, meaningful and not entertaining, or entertaining and not particularly meaningful is not a factor by which to judge their value, especially if that was not the intent. It’s like going to a fabulous burger shack and complaining about the lack of foie gras. Yes of course there are silly chick lit novels. There are silly horror novels and silly sitcoms and silly films. And there are examples of each that aren’t silly. And they all have their place, and I highly doubt that any are “edging out” the other. The same girl I see on the metro reading Traveling Pants will be reading the Economist the next day.
April 10th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Hi,I found this website via a link at Bookseller Chick’s blog and I must say that apparately a college education didn’t teach Dayo what the word “elitist” means,but then again she only has to look in the mirror for a picture perfect defination.
For someone who worries alot about image of women in literature,it’s interesting to note that her biggest complaint about chick lit is that men won’t read it. I don’t see any reason why any genre should have a rubber stamp of approval from any gender,race or religion. It seems to be a crime in her book to read for fun. Perhaps she should go back to Jane Austen,who said this about fiction in Northanger Abbey:
Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel–writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine–hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel–reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss — ?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best–chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.
April 10th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
All I got to say is the heifer obviously haven’t read any chick lit featuring a black female heroine. Who the hell is shopping, pouting, hovering by the scale, and being dependent on males? No sista I know fictionally or non-fictionally. And Lord knows my characters are initiated enuf into socio-political oppressions to flip their weaves, flash their bling and cuss her snotty Yalie ass out if she ever came around talking that smack to them.
Marginalized women, indeed!
April 10th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Very interesting discussion. It seems the arguement is based in part that chick lit has a responsibility to present females in a particular light. I don’t believe it is a book’s responsibility to represent anything more than the author’s attempt to share a story. The individual author may have a particular point or theme- or simply may be hoping to create a diversion. If all books gave us a strict politically correct view based on societies standards than you can imagine many great works of “literature” would be not allowed. If a story isn’t of interest (for whatever reason) to a particular person- well then don’t read it. Read something else. Or write what you think people should read. The bookstores are full of far more books than any one person will have time to read. Belittling what others choose to read, or write, to me is the larger sin. For me- I’ve pre-ordered Diana’s book.
April 10th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
It always worries me when one person decides their ‘thoughts’ on a subject should apply to everyone.
April 13th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
For a Yale graduate writing a piece on fiction, you’d think she might have made an effort to correctly spell the name of the man who is, arguably, the most successful novelist of our day.
It’s STEPHEN King. Not Steven.
April 15th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
I should say it’s not. I’M married to Steven King!
Try having Procter for a last name. Just because it rhymes with doctor doesn’t mean it’s spelled that way.
Cindy
August 1st, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Again, belatedly, I ask this blog’s readers (who knows how many participate in this apparent circle-jerk–are Diana and HelenKay roomates or something?): Realize who is being played, and by which structures…Random House (e.g., substitute any of the houses that give routine exposure to young, male counterparts) has a limited catalogue each year, and every time Shopaholic or Bergdorf Blondes–satire or not–is signed and promoted by a (statistically male) editor over a work of more ‘concrete’ literary merit, other serious authors (take Diana’s proud little effort) are squeezed out. That’s economics, folks–a subject also taught at Yale. And it’s the female writer’s loss. Don’t call me ’snotty’–the attack is on the stupid stuff, for reasons of basic supply and demand.
The writing’s on the wall. To all the high-minded proponents of “deep” chick-lit I say: Good luck fighting it out for a major publisher. I also say: of course literature is political, of course it “represents”–don’t post-feminize yourself into a place of further marginalization.
DFO 8/1