For the most part, however, male authors are somewhat like male porn stars: getting work, but outearned and outnumbered by their female counterparts, who are in far greater demand from the audience (for very different reasons). –Teddy Wayne, Salon.com
I stumbled upon an article from Salon.com titled, “The Agony of the Male Novelist.” I’m sure I’m not alone in my immediate feelings upon reading that title. Something in the vein of, Is that a *expletive* joke?! (expletive can also be replaced with “stinkin'”). The article opens up with a complaint made by mega-selling author Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes) about her lack of real estate in The New York Times this year, specifically in comparison to the numerous articles written about Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections, Freedom–both of which are excellent; read them immediately and then call me so we can talk about them). In a nutshell, Weiner believes that men get more face time in the review section and only 41% of reviews last year were about books written by female authors. Classic girl vs. boy.*
In an interesting twist, the article goes on to talk about the misunderstanding that men are these powerhouse-authors who are churning out books and racking up tremendous sales. Facts and figures: women buy about two-thirds of all books in print, and 80% of all fiction; a majority of book clubs are made up of women and are centered around books with female tropes and characters; Oprah’s Book Club; Target Book Club. Teddy Wayne begins to make the argument that being a male (especially midlist) author is pretty tough. I’m going to spare the details, not only because I don’t want to retype the article, but mostly because I want you to read it yourself and form your own ideas (if you even care to dwell on the subject).
A few of mine? Well, I looked through the measly amount of books for pleasure I have here (not counting books on my Kindle or the plenty I have at home in KC) and 8 of the books are by a male and 8 by a female. In this pretty much useless survey it appears that I may not have a bias. In truth, when I am looking for a book in the bookstore (one of my favorite pastimes; bookstores [the few that are left] are like crack dens for me) I’m not sure that I give much conscious thought to the gender of the author. I like to read good books. I like to read interesting and thoughtful and funny books. For the most part, I don’t care if it’s a guy or a gal who wrote it, just as long as I found pleasure in the story. Why does everything have to become about gender politics?
And, on that riotous note I am going to get out of here. What do you think? If the book is well written, should it matter whether the author is a man or a woman?
*I guess my question to Ms. Weiner is: what if women didn’t write that great of books this year? What if the male-dominated list is as such because men did really write better literature?**
**I know I let my naive colors fly sometimes, let’s just move on.
A Broad At Home 