Lauren – Thank you for putting THIS IS CHICK LIT together. I truly admire your respectful and smart introduction in the book. And, absolutely, there is nothing vitriolic or inappropriate about THIS IS CHICK LIT in my view. It’s in reaction to another book, yes, but it proves by example the point that chick lit is worthy writing. I’ll add a disclaimer in the main test so that it’s clear I am not referring to the book when speaking of the chick lit side of the debate.

The flu in summer – that just stinks. Feel better soon.

I found this little rant to be particularly insulting:
http://www.weeklydig.com/arts/articles/chick_lit_is_hurting_america

(I hope this link posts and doesn’t spam me out.)

Ah, anonymous vitriol. Always something to take seriously.

I’m not sure I agree with your point on the covers. I think this is more than just a complaint about packaging. It may have started that way, and the publishers may have done us all a disservice in that respect, but now chick lit stands as the agreed-upon cause of all of the budens female literary writers must overcome in their careers. The “chick lit novels demean women and make it hard for any female writer to be taken seriously” refrain is one I read and hear all the time. That’s really not a cover issue. It’s a content-judgment issue. Every single time I read or hear this argument I have to resist the urge to shake someone. Really, can you think of a single male writer who suffers from the same criticism – that he and his writing choices demean other men and cause men to have difficulty getting taken seriously in publishing? Men’s Adventure? Horror? No.

For me, the “written by women for women label” is not the issue either. A tagline didn’t cause this rift. In-fighting between women caused this mess. True, the tagline has become a generalized excuse for the extreme reaction to chick lit by some women writers. But, really, women should be smarter than this. And more responsible. Instead of screaming and denying, we should all be able to accept that others write and prefer to read different types of books. That would take the steam out of the argument. Control it.

My biggest issue is that the entire chick-lit-is-bad argument carries with it a twinge (more than a twinge, really) of women needing to be protected from certain forms of entertainment. Frankly, I don’t need to be protected. I don’t need female writers and critics telling me I’m being put down. I know when someone is putting me down and, to me, being told what I should read and what books have value is the ultimate in condescension.

But I completely agree with you that this sort of backstabbing on gender bases seems limited to writers of women’s fiction. Still, it has to be, because there’s no such thing as “men’s fiction.” the Patterson situation doens’t happen because he’s not represented as “fiction for women by women” but “fiction for reader by writer.” Such is not the case for chick lit, and even romance.

The lit writer’s argument would have held water if it had been tweaked slightly: a few years ago, some lit books were completely misrepresented as chick lit in order to sell to the chick lit-friendly market. I bought some of them, thinking I was getting a funny beach read in — yes — a pastel pink cover, and being shocked when the packaging/cover/blurb/marketing was all wrong. I wish this was the argument that they took. Their beef isn’t with writers of chick lit, or even with publishers of chick lit, but with publishers of lit fiction so hungry for the dollar that they were willing to shove books that didn’t belong there into the chick lit slot. THAT is the problem, and THAT is where a book with a black cover proclaiming that NO, it’s NOT chick lit, might have been cute.

I’m a chick lit author and I love literary books. Did a whole degree on them. And I don’t much care whether my books are characterized as “frothy beach reads” or “satirical feminist tracts.” I can see both sides of that argument.