By: Booksquare

Booksquare — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 06:59:33 +0000

Given the amount of reading you have versus the amount of time you have (presuming the standard 24-hour day, though that seems quite flexible for some), your position makes perfect sense (though I would argue with you on the quality of the writing — a perfectly subjective topic that makes arguing all the more fun! — while agreeing that the story had moments that should have been better developed, but that was due to the structural choices made by the author). I’ve hung out at your site often enough to know that you don’t make judgments based on gender.

That being said, “literature” as taught in American schools is heavily male-centric. This is the result of many factors, not the least of which is the lingering notion that women don’t write real books (I realize this is not the view of smart men, but I’ve had more than one man tell me that women’s books are naturally inferior due to subject matter — one built his case on the notion that men write about things that go boom. I wish I were making this up.). For girls, there are many choices when it comes to reading for pleasure, but agreed-upon curriculums tend to feature Scout and Emily Dickinson and a few female characters/authors — though somehow the husband assigned himself a semester of Flannery O’Connor during high school. He’s still not sure how that happened.

By: derik

derik — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:27:42 +0000

My point was that the subject matter of the 70’s women movement would have been interesting if the writing were good, though not interesting to me enough that I wanted to suffer through the bad writing. The content in isolation from the art was not enough for me. I will go the other way, though and have the art in isolation from content be enough. If the writing is really great then I don’t care what it’s about.

Comments on: Don’t Fear The Women

By: Booksquare

By: derik