I know a similar thread just got locked, possibly because of me (hopefully not), but I had a fascinating related conversation last night and it got me thinking...and I wanted to see what the rest of you thought.
I work at a book store, and last night was fortunate to be stuck on a project with one of my favorite co-workers, a very intelligent and thoughtful man with a degree in philosophy and a great love of literary fiction. While we worked, we discussed cover art/titles and marketing, and he mentioned that his background in philosophy has maybe made him too sensitive to stuff like this, but he was surprised by how easily he "succumbs to marketing," as he put it. He said that he realized earlier that day that he almost never reads literary fiction written by a woman, and he feels badly about this. He suspected it was because he was enticed more to buy "men's literary fiction" than "women's lit" based on covers and titles.
I literally slapped my head and told him that I'd just inadvertently gotten a thread locked on Absolute Write about this very subject.
I filled him in on the basics of the thread, my stance, and that of Toothpaste and some others. We tossed some ideas around for a while, and then it was like a magic lightning bolt hit me. Suddenly I understood why female authors are receiving less awards and reviews for literary fiction.
It's because they're not writing literary fiction anymore!
I mean, obviously they are still writing literary fiction. The writing hasn't changed. The themes and topics haven't changed. What's changed is how these books are sold.
Within the past twenty or thirty years, "Women's Fiction" as a genre has become a big force in the industry. A huge force. If I understand correctly, Women's Fiction (the genre) doesn't include romance and usually isn't thought to include "chick lit," which has a poppier/quirkier feel with spunkier characters in comparatively light-hearted plots. Women's Fiction is the darker stuff, but with mostly female characters, dealing with issues of family, grief, love, abuse, struggle for self-identity, etc. In other words, the same stuff you'd expect in the genre of literary fiction. But with GIRLS. Most of Joyce Carol Oates's books would probably be called Women's Fiction today. Margaret Atwood? Jeanette Winterson? Toni Morrison? Dorothy Allison?
So maybe this perceived bias toward men has more to do with the advent of the Women's Fiction label, and the fact that publishers are now marketing a whole lot of books that would once be Literary Fiction as Women's Fiction. Perhaps reviewers haven't yet caught on and are still reviewing away dutifully without having figured out where all the ladies went.
If I'm right, my hope is that Women's Fiction and Literary Fiction will soon be reviewed and awarded together to get things on an even keel. I can understand the benefit of separating out a whole segment of the genre for better marketing -- Women's Fiction sells well, and that's one kind of boon to those authors. But if you guys are right and a schism has formed in the world of reviews and other forms of quality recognition, then that's not a good thing.
So...what do you think? My co-worker thought it could well be possible, that the genre that was once just Literary Fiction might have fractured into Women's Fiction and Men's Fiction, but we don't call Men's Fiction by that name...we're still just calling it Literary Fiction.
Any thoughts? (And sorry this was such a long post. You get a cookie if you read all the way through it.)
I work at a book store, and last night was fortunate to be stuck on a project with one of my favorite co-workers, a very intelligent and thoughtful man with a degree in philosophy and a great love of literary fiction. While we worked, we discussed cover art/titles and marketing, and he mentioned that his background in philosophy has maybe made him too sensitive to stuff like this, but he was surprised by how easily he "succumbs to marketing," as he put it. He said that he realized earlier that day that he almost never reads literary fiction written by a woman, and he feels badly about this. He suspected it was because he was enticed more to buy "men's literary fiction" than "women's lit" based on covers and titles.
I literally slapped my head and told him that I'd just inadvertently gotten a thread locked on Absolute Write about this very subject.
I filled him in on the basics of the thread, my stance, and that of Toothpaste and some others. We tossed some ideas around for a while, and then it was like a magic lightning bolt hit me. Suddenly I understood why female authors are receiving less awards and reviews for literary fiction.
It's because they're not writing literary fiction anymore!
I mean, obviously they are still writing literary fiction. The writing hasn't changed. The themes and topics haven't changed. What's changed is how these books are sold.
Within the past twenty or thirty years, "Women's Fiction" as a genre has become a big force in the industry. A huge force. If I understand correctly, Women's Fiction (the genre) doesn't include romance and usually isn't thought to include "chick lit," which has a poppier/quirkier feel with spunkier characters in comparatively light-hearted plots. Women's Fiction is the darker stuff, but with mostly female characters, dealing with issues of family, grief, love, abuse, struggle for self-identity, etc. In other words, the same stuff you'd expect in the genre of literary fiction. But with GIRLS. Most of Joyce Carol Oates's books would probably be called Women's Fiction today. Margaret Atwood? Jeanette Winterson? Toni Morrison? Dorothy Allison?
So maybe this perceived bias toward men has more to do with the advent of the Women's Fiction label, and the fact that publishers are now marketing a whole lot of books that would once be Literary Fiction as Women's Fiction. Perhaps reviewers haven't yet caught on and are still reviewing away dutifully without having figured out where all the ladies went.
If I'm right, my hope is that Women's Fiction and Literary Fiction will soon be reviewed and awarded together to get things on an even keel. I can understand the benefit of separating out a whole segment of the genre for better marketing -- Women's Fiction sells well, and that's one kind of boon to those authors. But if you guys are right and a schism has formed in the world of reviews and other forms of quality recognition, then that's not a good thing.
So...what do you think? My co-worker thought it could well be possible, that the genre that was once just Literary Fiction might have fractured into Women's Fiction and Men's Fiction, but we don't call Men's Fiction by that name...we're still just calling it Literary Fiction.
Any thoughts? (And sorry this was such a long post. You get a cookie if you read all the way through it.)
And we do discuss this stuff all the time. It seems the more I learn about it, the stranger and more amazing it becomes. It's like falling through the looking-glass.
