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Recently, I once again shared airspace with the lively and fun Ed Champion of the Bat Segundo show, who, amidst much chatter about redheadedness, was one of the many men who have challenged, in RANK FINGER-POINTING outrage, my alleged needless gender focus, to the tune of half a show. (Over coffee I had brewed for him, I might add.) Ed’s objection to my book was along the lines that he a) once had long hair and b) was not a violent mill-worker, and had thus somehow become the object of discrimination. I will simply direct all further inquiries here.
Oh, whatever. I will do one more pick, from Levi’s otherwise nice write-up:
My biggest problem with Shelf Discovery involves its unnecessary gender focus; which Michael Orthofer also recently wrote about. Teenage boys read books too. Why leave half the world out?
It’s not yet at arguing with the dining room table level, but I just — I just do not follow the logic here. My book, last time I checked, was not a Valediction Against Boys Reading. If the argument is that boys DID read these books, I have said nothing to the contrary and, as my grandmother would say, Enjoy!. If the argument is that I have not written enough about books FOR boys or BY boys, though in fact I wrote about many, I direct the critic to his own typewriter, where I have not placed a ONLY FOR WRITING ABOUT GIRLS!!!!!!!!!! sign, the last time I checked. And if men are worried no one is paying attention to them, I direct them to NPR, which created a male-only companion piece of a kind to my TOTN interview by devoting the response segment to a man, talking about books he read as a boy, none of which appears or has anything to do with my book.
If the argument is simply that I wrote about a period of books mainly by female authors, often featuring female heroines, and read mostly by girls — hello. I did. Now go iron my shirt.
Lizzie, Can I marry you when I grow up?
What you said. Times a million.
Justine Larbalestier
24 Aug 09 at 9:19 am
“UNNECESSARY gender focus.”
Holy frijole, I guess this means that GQ is going to have to shut down.
Staggering.
Maria Bustillos
24 Aug 09 at 9:47 am
Lizzie, I think I do see your point of view about this better now that you’ve expressed it quite strongly (with a delicious line from Barney Frank, no less). Really, I think what Ed and Michael and I were all expressing was just a plaintive cry of “don’t forget us!”. We just want to feel included. It’s like when we were kids and our sisters were having great pajama parties in the next room but we couldn’t join in. No fair!
Levi
24 Aug 09 at 11:29 am
Hmmm, and last time I checked you do put a number of personal observations in the book…and you just happen to be a girl….instead of whining about it perhaps one of the complaining dudes will write about what novels they loved as a teen boy. That’d put a cork in them.
MelissaW
24 Aug 09 at 12:20 pm
Hear hear Lizzie! I just will not understand why people assume that white male is neutral, and anything that speaks directly to some other kind of experience is therefore limited and exclusionary. How many “Best of” lists contain books written almost exclusively by white men, about the concerns of white men? Who complains then? Certainly not the white men so affronted that in your own memoir of reading you chose to address, primarily, the books that you, first as a girl and later as a woman, loved with your whole heart.
You didn’t set out to write a reader’s advisory book here– if you had, there might be some cause for criticism. You set out to write about the books you’ve loved, and why you loved them, and you produced an incredible book.
I’m sorry you have to deal with all these white males’ solipsism. Everything has been about them for such a long time that I guess they are still adjusting.
Margaret
25 Aug 09 at 2:00 am
Oh no! Not a book with GENDER FOCUS!
Really, I’m not sure what the big deal is. Lots of books are geared more toward one sex than the other.
If men are worried about being left out of this book, maybe a male author should write a companion to this book focused on boys. Simple enough. Seems like a better response than whining that you should have written this book differently.
Rachel Heston Davis
Up and Writing–www.rachelhestondavis.wordpress.com
Rachel Heston Davis
27 Aug 09 at 9:51 am
As for what Levi says, “we just want to feel included”–your invisible knapsack is showing.
Sophie
11 Sep 09 at 10:53 pm