I’m mentioning this because Booksquare looks like a worthwhile book-world venue, and the news notes on the site (S & S, for example) seem up to date, but I’m puzzled about why the two are paired. Or did I just stumble onto the particular text above because I was trolling Google for book reviewing info.? I don’t know whether to subscribe to Booksquare or not.

Emily Alward

Of course, “masterly” style has often been far from self-evident—the Romantics’ idea of good style was quite different from Pope’s, T. S. Eliot’s from Milton’s, etc. In any case, there’s the larger question of whether style is the best or only criterion for judging aesthetic value. It’s only pretty recently that style has seemed so important—post-Nietzsche, Wilde, and Flaubert. What about truth, beauty, sweetness, or usefulness?

Booksquare rightly points out that there are stylistically innovative chicklit novels, just as there are detective and sci-fi novels. And you can argue, as booksquare does, that some chicklit novels should be reviewed by the NYTBR because of their brilliant prose style. More radically, though, you could ask questions about the criteria the reviewers in the NYTBR use to evaluate and define fiction/literature/literariness. Aesthetic judgments are always tied up in questions that go beyond the aesthetic, and involve larger judgments about what’s good, worthwhile, beautiful, significant, valuable, etc., which can be—and frequently have been—inflected by gender. To say that ideas are more important than people, as a previous commenter did (“some of my favourite authors are women”), is not a purely aesthetic judgement.

It seems more productive to try and open up these debates about value within existing cultural institutions than to start a new journal, as the original post suggested. In fact there IS a Women’s Review of Books that’s been going for over 20 years. Depressingly, these “alternate spheres” gestures don’t seem to have had enough impact on mainstream cultural institutions. And they seem a bit eighties—not in a leggings way; just a dated way.

The paradox, I think, is that places like the NYTBR act as cultural gatekeepers, defining what counts as “good” literature—but if we all agreed on what counted as good literature, there would be little point in reviews or in the NYTBR itself.

I have to disagree with this comment:

I’ve read plenty of chick lit (for work) and plenty of literature (for pleasure) and I must say, the simple truth is that romance and chick lit genre writing is not masterly. The prose is not playful and intelligent and evocative and difficult and careful. Not at all.

Just as with any genre of fiction (including literary), there is good, there is bad, there is absolutely astounding, and there’s dreck. Because so much of how a book is labeled is a marketing decision, it is possible for really excellent books to be passed by simply because they are “genre”. Critical reviewing involves looking, seriously, at the good and bad of all fiction. If we agree that women’s fiction (in this case, fiction written by women) should be held to rigorous standards — and I hold all my reading to such standards, though my taste isn’t always in line with others) — then we need to review women’s fiction rigorously.

It is egregious that it’s being reviewed in far lower numbers than “men’s” fiction. Whether or not the bias toward males writers is intentional, it does exist.

As for this:

So to compare any chick lit book to literary fiction is impossible. The very fact that it IS a chick lit book means that it is not literary (i.e. the prose is not high quality, striving to be masterly).

I, and others, have argued that Elizabeth Crane’s “All This Heavenly Glory” is chicklit by virtue of subject matter and approach (she, for what it’s worth deplores this label). It is sold as literary fiction. You will have to read it for yourself to decide, but I think it’s a great read (so much so that it made the LitBlog Co-Ops Winter list). I also think it would have found a wider audience if marketed as chicklit — of course, being marketed that way would have destroyed its literary cred. The author was limited by marketing to a specific audience — a different in-house choice would have had different results.

I know many literary authors, chicklit authors, mystery authors, romance authors, and while I’d agree that not all of them are striving for a masterly tone, I know many who are. There are many authors in this world and very few of them can be truly great. I am firmly against assuming something is less-than-powerful because of its label.

So what if “The Devil Wears Prada” was unfavorably reviewed by the NYT? How many other books have received unfavorable reviews from that publication? Slamming a book isn’t exclusive to chicklit. For whatever reason — most likely collective schadenfreude — the book resonated with audiences. It resonated with smart, educated people. It didn’t resonate with me, but lots of things don’t. The NYT receives a great many books for review consideration every week and necessarily picks and chooses what to review. It’s not a waste of space to review the good and bad of any genre — it is a disservice, however, to wilfully exclude readers because of pre-conceived notions about what constitutes quality.

I’ve all but stopped reading the LAT book review section because I can only handle so many reviews of motion picture industry-related books (not to mention the aforementioned bias toward books written by men). The LAT does seem to have an inclination toward non-fiction as well; I don’t read a lot of non-fiction. Given my annual book budget (separate and distinct from the books I get from all types of publishers for review), this editorial bias on the part of the LAT means a lot of books don’t come to my attention.

And I’m not alone — I find very few people that I know, people who read seriously and frivolous fiction, who consider the LAT book review section as a primary source for learning about books. It could be argued that unread newsprint is as much a waste of space as pages devoted to reviewing books like “Prada.”

Remember, chick lit lovers, when THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA was unfavorably reviewed in the NYTBR…twice? Now imagine week after week of that, ad infinitum. Sound fun? Sounds like a huge waste of review space to me.

S

I’m not saying all literature is masterly either. But it strives to be.

It needs to be said that books marketed as commercial fiction are meant to be read quickly. The commercial fiction reader returns to the book store a day or a week later, and buys another quick, easily digestable read. The book industry survives on this model of publishing. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, I’m just saying: romance and chick lit are not meant to be literary and they are not. They are meant to be read quickly and easily. The pleasant experience of reading them is then supposed to spur the reader to buy more books of that type.

So to compare any chick lit book to literary fiction is impossible. The very fact that it IS a chick lit book means that it is not literary (i.e. the prose is not high quality, striving to be masterly). To be crying “unfair” is simply preposterous. For a Chick Lit novel to be written in a linguistically bracing and vigorous way means that it is not, by definition, a chick lit novel at all.

S

Ding and Katie have basically made this case and I don’t need to elaborate except for one small, telling detail. On the Red Dress Ink website they provide “writing guidelines” for authors interested in submitting proposals. One guideline is: “Shaken, not stirred: Predictability is not your friend. So shake it up. Put your heroine in some inspired and crazy circumstances. Give her quirky characteristics. (Maybe even a job that’s not in publishing). Innovate, don’t imitate.”

If a publisher has to tell people specifically what type of job not to give their protagonist, you know you’re not dealing with high art.

(On a personal note: I read all types of fiction including chick-lit. Many chick-lit books are enjoyable; all of them are forgettable.)

for the record, i have read 2 of ms. logsted’s novels (think pink line and crossing the line), and in my humble opinion, sorry to say, they aren’t representative of the better-written ones. I think this fact has also contributed in my skepticism re: her essay. that’s why it seems to me that this essay was written primarily to bring attention to her works.

“I’m mad that I wasn’t reviewed by NYTBR! Wait, hey, it turns out that other chick-lit authors aren’t reviewed there as well. Maybe I could use this issue to get back at NYTBR! Take that, NYTBR!”

I read the essay thrice because I do agree with some points. But I can’t quite get behind Ms. Logsted because it reads like a personal whine hiding behind a legitimate cause.

And yes, NYTBR SHOULD review other genres as well, like chick-lit, but how about teaming up with other chick lit authors instead and write a collective statement to be published in major brodsheets, or something like that? If Ms. Baratz-Logsted is REALLY serious about this cause, that is.