There are really few things quite so entertaining as watching people as ignorant as a box of pig shit offering their opinions on literature. Especially when the people in question are W.F. Price and his gang of misfit boys at The Spearhead, who are back for yet another take on the whole Women’s Lit question.
At this point I’ve run out of jokes on this particular subject, so I’m just going to let Mr. Price dig his own hole here. Here he is, trying to argue that feminism has made terrible lady writers even terribler.*
[I]t appears that since feminism’s triumph, female achievement in the higher arts has deteriorated substantially. When women no longer have to excel to be read and recognized, but simply have to advertise the fact that they are women to be celebrated for dubious achievements, they won’t put as much effort into producing anything of quality. So the sorry state of women today is a direct result of feminist privilege, which absolves them of all responsibility and deflects any criticism. …
Yes, feminism has wrecked Western womanhood, reducing the young women of today to spoiled brats who can’t take a hint of criticism, and immediately turn to authorities to bolster their self-esteem. No woman can be too fat to be beautiful, too dense to be intelligent, or too dull to be creative. They are all equally super-duper goddesses, before whom men must genuflect and heap up mounds of praise.
Price of course gives no examples to back up any of his, er, “arguments,” and somehow I suspect he hasn’t actually read any fiction written by women beyond an odd title or two he might have been assigned in high school. I wonder if Price could even name a half-dozen living woman novelists without having to resort to Google — excluding JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer and Jackie Collins (who hasn’t heard of them?) and Harper Lee (who wasn’t assigned To Kill a Mockingbird in high school?).
*I am aware that “terribler” is not a real world.
David, thanks!
If he does read a lot, though, he should be aware that bookstores/libraries are full of all kinds of books, even if he never ventures far from the SF series shelves. Those other books wouldn’t be available if people weren’t reading them.
(Or “wrote” children’s books.)
Anyway … yes, I was able to read a book for 9- to 12-year olds when I was 10. Deal with it. I’m a fucking genius.
even if he never ventures far from the SF series shelves.
In all fairness, a lot of my leisure time reading comes off those shelves, too – and there are still quite a few talented women writers being stocked there, whose work tends to have very feminist themes. There are also quite a few good male authors who are capable of writing believable female characters as well.
Jodi, the last two times I’ve moved I had hundreds if not thousands of pounds of books. I go by weight in books it easier. Well guess what? When you have a yard sale you can’t give the damn things away. I never even stored them on bookshelves, I had them in cardboard boxes. The only reason people have them on display on shelves is to show off and say “look at men I’m so well read.” I’d need another house to store all the books I’ve read, and why would I do that? To impress others?
@Lady Victoria Von Syrus it’s weird that ppl assume that having a long list of names meant that you must have just gone looking for them o_O I’m one of the ppl who just absorbs stuff I’m interested in and remembers it xD I can name almost every goalie (and most of the back up goalies) from the NHL 1995-96 goalie for each team, for example xD I remember WAY too much detail (incl planet names) from Star Trek: TNG even tho I haven’t watched every episode like 50 times… I just pick stuff up o_o If somebody asked me to name a bunch of Swedish NHL players I liked in the history of the NHL, I could get out a bunch, and I suspect there’s way more female authors xD
It’s not even that it “matters” to me. It’s that I just absorb information on stuff that I like :3 Like the birthplace of hockey players… their names… and I can sort them in my head by category… I’m pretty sure “gender doesn’t matter to me” doesn’t mean “I have no idea what gender anybody is” xD
That should be *1995-96 season obv xD
David, it’s straight up uncanny. Sometimes I think NWO is just fucking with us. No one can be this wrong, this often and still get hysterically huffy when someone points out his poor spelling or the fact that the Greek and Latin alphabet are not the same. Uncanny.
I really love looking at other people’s bookshelves and trying to see what authors and titles we have in common. Both the lists provided by Amanda and Ithiliana made me really miss my own shelves.
“No one looks at authors other than the biggies who’ve made a name for themselves by consistently writing good books. This is definitely true.”
Stephanie Meyers made a name for herself and (in my opinion) can’t write worth a damn.
Also, Meg Cabot (AKA Patricia Cabot, AKA Jenny Caroll) is a feminist author and she writes amazing stories.
Or that Japanese words mean things xD
Getting hysterically huffy is his schtick tho xD It’s like… Kurt Angle back when he was a heel and the crowd chanting “YOU SUCK” down at him xD Do you think he’d have a shot at Pecunium and the World Title next Sunday at MBZ Wrestlemanginia if he wasn’t such a hilarious heel? 😀
Lady Victoria von Syrus You said this…”Since women still shoulder the majority of domestic chores and child-raising in addition to maintaining a career, this can be challenging”
You see this is one of the things that really irks me and other men. If a woman stays at home and a man works, he is also providing childcare by providing money. If they both work and she does the brunt of hauling the child around and such. The father perhaps maintains the house, mows the lawn whatever. This is also part of childcare. Those things still need to be done to provide for the child. Can’t you see that.
When you have a yard sale you can’t give the damn things away.
That…may be because you read shitty books. Srsly, the books you read end up in the 50-cent bin at Half Price Books.
The only reason people have them on display on shelves is to show off and say “look at men I’m so well read.”
Or maybe so you could read them? A couple days ago I found myself on an unsuccessful hunt for Andre Breton’s novel Nadja because it’s (I think) in the back of a double row of paperbacks on a shelf in a closet behind a dismantled table. Why keep them if you can’t get to them?
Or that reminiscing that you read a children’s book when you were a child isn’t “bragging.” I have a feeling that this is going to devolve very quickly into “OH, LOOK WHO’S WEARING PANTS AND SHOES! LAH DEE DAH, DON’T YOU THINK YOU’RE SPECIAL?!?”
Incidentally, I did read The Odyssey for the first time when I was 11. Loved it! Awesome adventure story.
To continue the list of living great female authors:
Susannah Clarke
Helen Fielding
Danielle Trussoni
And because not everybody writes in English:
Hella S. Haasse
Amélie Nothomb
Fred Vargas
Anna Enquist
Isabel Allende
Marjane Satrapi (those are graphic novels, but they qualify as literature)
And many, many more…
Have you tried pricing them at 25 cents each? I have found psychologically that if things are free, ppl will tend to think “do I REALLY want this cluttering up the place?” but if they’re just dirt cheap, ppl will be like yay deal! A whole book for 25 cents! 😀 I could read it on the bus or something!
I’ve done this w/ my books and w/ my giant bin of random terrible comic books xD (all from the 2000s xD so they’re not even vintage terrible, they’re Civil War/House of M/Amazons Attack/Various Crisis tie-in terrible xD ) and it makes a HUGE difference 😀
But YMMV 🙂 Just a suggestion :]
Does Noel Streatfield write childrens books Bee? And your telling me as a fucking 10 year old you “noted” the authors names of the books you’ve read?
Well I read a whole wack of childrens books as well. Oddly enough I don’t recall or care who wrote them. In fact as a 10 year old I’m certain that was at the bottom of my to do list.
Have a yard sale Katz and let me know how you make out. You bookshelf will sell for more than every book you have put together.
“When you have a yard sale you can’t give the damn things away.”
There isn’t a market for badly written Jewish, excuse me, Rothschild Conspiracy Theories?
As a 10 y/o I was always fascinated by stuff like authors names 😀 Baseball players, stats… cards.. xD It was fun xD Same w/ remembering all the episode names and guest stars on shows :3
I think it’s a different personality thing :3 I mean some ppl are interested in some things, and some aren’t, some ppl have a better casual memory than others.
I’m not sure why it’s an insult or a WTF YOU DO THAT!? WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT YOU? thing just b/c ppl are different and that they were different as children o_o
Wait I’m confused o_O Does he just want to declutter his bookshelf, or is he looking to make a pretty penny now? o_O
WTF Price won’t let this go. He’s got yet another post on women writers up now, this one noting that VS Naipaul doesn’t think much of them.
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2011/06/05/vs-naipaul-women-writers-unequal/
Again, VS Naipaul really is one of the greatest writers alive today. But he is, by all accounts, a complete utter fucking asshole, so it’s not altogether shocking that he’s also a misogynist.
Barbara Kingsolver
Madeleine L’Engle
Phillipa Gregory
Anne Rice
OK, the last one undermines our overall point, but still…
Good gravy, girlscientist is still continuing the list of living “great” female authors.
Theres gotta be around 200 listed already. If you read a book a week in between work/play and the rest of your life you’ll be set for 4 years.
Oh, this is just ridiculous.
Yeah, when I was a child I knew the names of the authors of my books. I don’t even understand what you’re on about. I fondly remember books I read when I was ten and occasionally check them out of the library (if I don’t already own them) in order to enjoy them again.
Maybe the reason you didn’t care or pay attention to the authors of the books you read as a child is your own lack of intellectual curiosity. You know like the way you assume a japanese word is “made up” or are too lazy to do a simple google search on Streatfield.