Sexism in Literature

"This is going to sound sexist," he says warningly, "but American woman writers are just awful..."

Sexism, still alive and well in literature apparently.

He then proceeds to knock Eudora Welty, whom I consider a damn fine female writer, but my head is still spinning from the whole American woman writers bit. I am seriously offended. Eudora Welty is to me one of the best short story writers in American literature. Nevermind she was a she. Her work still holds it own in the male-dominated world of literature.

I ask for examples. He looks in a book of Welty's collected short stories. He reads until he is annoyed and stops. He blurts out "as full of himself as a colt". It's a metaphor I say and probably one she grew up hearing since she was from the South. He goes on saying Welty is "too clever, too effusive, trying to hard to be clever".

I don't want to sound snobby here but until you have examined a vast proportion of a writer's work you cannot judge their writing. You can judge the work on its own merits, but not the writer him-or-herself. I loved W. Somerset Maugham because the first thing I read were his short stories. Then I decided to read Of Human Bondage and didn't like it as much. Now that I've read nearly everything that Maugham ever wrote I can still earnestly and with authority say he is one of the best writers to ever write. Sure he's slightly outdated now, but I don't give a fig. I have yet to find a book that is as witty and sharp as The Razor's Edge. I can nearly recite his short story "Rain" verbatim.

He sits down in the chair and opens up a book of Alice Munroe's Selected Stories. He doesn't approve. He gives Munroe the same treatment he gave poor Eudora. The language is too precious he says.

Now he or you or I have as much right to not like a writer for whatever reason we want. The writing might not be to our tastes or the subject of the book or story might bore us. Yes, everyone might be named Rose. Yes they might write lines like "she understood Char was beautiful". But if you could hear what he's saying now (which basically boils down to backtracking faster than a politican), you'd probably feel the same way as I do which is, how dare you take my books off my shelf and then proceed to butcher some of my favourite writers (Well I'm not a fan of Munroe's. I bought her book because I wanted to see what happens when you take another writer's style and make no effort to reshape it into your own.)?!?!

I ask him, "Do you understand that Eudora Welty is considered one of the finest American writers of all time and a master of the short story?"

No, he doesn't care. He doesn't care about a writer's reputation.

"If you don't care about a writer's reputation, then why do you bother to read books that are recommended to you?"

It's who recommends them he says. And the work itself.  "Who's opinion is it", he asks, "and why do they deserve it?"

I ask him why he bothers to write down ever book ever mentioned in the works of Borges, Miller, or Colin Wilson, all of whom he's told me make the best recommendations for books.

"It's all about pleasure for me. I only read it because I like it."

So let's get away from the whole recommendations thing then. "How can you judge female American writers based on just Welty and Munroe?"

He doesn't. He likes Sylvia Plath and Amy Hemple. Still I refuse to let him off the hook because whereas I go out of my way to support female writers in general, his reading is predominantly male.

I tell him I don't understand why he'd make such a blanket statement. Why not he says.

Have you ever read Wharton I ask him? No.

What about Carson McCullers? She's genius he says. Harper Lee is also a genius apparently.

I keep at it, citing other female American writers. He conceeds. But in the end it doesn't matter does it? He prefers male authors. Is it because most books published are written by men? Does he think that female writers can't be as good as men?

Not at all he says. But he reads most male writers because he's a man and there's more of them. I certainly wish that we women had this luxury. Of the 100 books on Time's list of the All Time 100 Novels only 18 of the books were written by women and two of those 18 were written by Virginia Woolf.

So my question to my readers is, who are you favourite female authors? They obviously need our support.