Saying Oops!
There are two kinds of mistakes. The OOPS variety, of which I am guilty due to ignorance/negligence, and the OOPS variety that comes from bad judgment, or in the case I will illustrate, backpedaling to correct what might have been true at the time, but after some thought….remains true but unpopular.
Ignorance/negligence.
All of your comments had mysteriously ended up in my SPAM folder in my email. I wondered why no one ever commented and I now realize…you were. So sorry. I will get to all of them, promise.
Bad Judgment.
My last post quoted a flustered and slightly stunned Jennifer Egan, this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction (A Visit from the Goon Squad), where (after literally just finding she won) in an interveiw she calls works that were plagiarized by a graduate student “banal” and “derivative.”
As you know, a giant hissy-fit occurred in the form of Jennifer Weiner screeching far and wide that Egan was a snob. (Oh, and I’m sure the “Weiner”-”whiner” thing has been over-done for her, but it wouldn’t be so darn ironic if she wasn’t such a poster child for whining. I mean it. Try, without cringing, reading her Twitter page over the past few months, or read an interview...a blog.... Agonizingly…well, whiny.)
I posted an open letter from a private email I sent Jennifer Egan. In true, gracious form, she emailed me back. She stands by her public apology and I can see why. No one wants to appear ungracious and no one wants to be perceived as a snob. I think, however, that the authors, sorry FEMALE authors who outcried in unison over her original comment, made it a gender issue–not Egan. Why is it that male authors can diss each others’ work, say they don’t like certain classical authors, etc., and no one writes them mean notes and ignores them at lunch? Hm?
Because they are grown ups. That’s why.
I received a pretty strong reaction to my previous blog from my friend and fellow author, Natalie R. Collins. She disagreed with me completely and if you’d like to read why, you can go check out her argument. I commented on her blog and my comments are to follow.
Basically, Ms. Collins asserts that literary snobbery is alive and well and it’s uncalled for. She sanctions Jennifer Weiner’s reaction as well as other chicklit aficionados and decries the myth that chiklit is indeed banal and derivative. My responses.
(Natalie)~
Hmm. Well, you did tell me to shoot back. So here I am, wracking my brain for anyone who refers to themselves as a “literary snob.” But I can’t think of one. I have, however, heard many accusations flung about calling various authors that moniker. Funny….I’ve never heard of any backlash when that term is tossed forth because frankly, there never is--any backlash, that is. But if someone refers to a genre writer as “banal and derivative”, an awful “tweeting” and spiteful blogging moves across the land. Why?
I think it’s relatively simple to see. It’s a matter of class.
Jennifer Weiner may write well and she might sell a lot of books. I think she even stated that she was going to go “cry into her royalty check.” Wow. SUPER classy.
You’re right, Weiner has every right to be pissed about all of the perceived slights she receives on a daily basis. That IS her right. Good luck with that, Jenny. And to tell people that they read “drivel” is Egan’s right (although she never actually said that.)
Your blog jumps around a lot and states that people get to have an opinion. Then they don’t. Then they do. Which is it? Since I’m of the opinion that we all get to have an opinion no matter what, I can say with some certainty that, based on interviews, her words, and what I’ve read about her, Jennifer Weiner has very little class. If the term “literary” is so repugnant, then why all the fuss that she and others…are not?
Reminds me of a topless dancer. She can pole dance like no one out there; she executes her spins and twirls with aplomb and at the end of the night, she gets to roll around naked in her cigarette-saturated twenty dollar bills. Successful? Well to her, perhaps she is. But when all is said and done, at the end of the day, she’s still a stripper.
And the stripper is mad because the dancers at Juilliard’s won’t refer to her as an “artist.”
But…but…lookie at how much money she makes! And I’ll bet she gets more people that see her in a weekend than those uptight ballerinas in a whole year!
It’s the strangest thing. To eschew a label and yet so obviously and fervently yearn for it… it’s rather tragic.
The problem I see it this: Jennifer Weiner and the ChickLit crowd have their collective panties in a bunch because the “snobs” don’t acknowledge them as literary. And why should they? The whole point, the whole purpose of genre fiction is to give readers what they want—what they expect. No one wants to go into a McDonald’s and be surprised, do they? And I’ll bet more people go to McDonald’s than a hole in the wall restaurant in one location that serves superb food.
You asked if Egan should have out-sold Weiner and my answer is: who cares? I’ll bet any amount of money Egan doesn’t. See, that’s the other difference between the two. Art doesn’t always translate into commercial success and vice versa. Literary snobbery? The only crowd that seems upset is the commercial crowd. The literary voices are uniformly silent.
Who decides what is literary? The LITERARY WORLD decides, and that, Natalie, is why Weiner and Cabot and other ChickLit writers will never win the Pulitzer. The literary world doesn’t respect them and they’re pissed. Are they popular? Sure. So is McDonald’s.
Jennifer Egan had just won the prize and was asked a question about her advice to young women authors. She answered and she answered well: aim high and don’t cower. If you write for money, then own it, say it, and move on. Some writers write for more. Some aspire to more. And Jennifer Weiner will fade away and never enter a classroom to be dissected, deconstructed and lauded because frankly, at the end of the day, she’s just a stripper. And I'm not dissing strippers. Unless they demand to be called "artists." Then, I'm gonna have to draw a line.
As a side note: the book by Franzen I listed was Freedom, not The Corrections.
Second note: ever heard of e.e. Cummings or Mark Twain? They had some issues with the Merriam-Webster, and so does Egan. So if you like it by the book, so to speak, I wouldn’t read her novel. It just might change a paradigm or two, and if that’s not your cup of “oatmeal” then I’d pass on it. For me, I can’t think of a higher aspiration than impacting the world in that way. But that’s me.
***
Natalie replied to my comment and my final comment reads after.
Hey JA,
First of all, Google “literary snob.” You will find many people who are MORE than happy to call themselves a literary snob. You may not know them personally, but they are out there.
Secondly, WHO IS the literary world? Who are “THEY?” Tell me who is deciding this, besides the Pulitzer Prize committee, because there aren’t enough of them to count, and most books, even the ones considered “literary,” never see the “Pulitzer” light of day. It’s that big “THEY” again. You know, the very vague, “Well, THEY said….” Who is THEY? There is no “literary” committee that makes these pronouncements. It’s just people who read.
Thirdly, is thirdly a word? I’ll look it up later.
I love Mark Twain but have always found Cummings very hard to digest. I know this is my background in editing and proofreading. I was trained by the grammar Nazi. Please do not think I am kidding. Heh. I am not.
As for my blog jumping around, wellll, that sounds kind of like my mind right now. I had a lot to say and wasn’t sure I was getting it across. Obviously, I didn’t do a very good job.
After reading your comment, I have this to say. I consider all your points well-stated and backed up. And I was not trying to misquote you or change your stance. For example, on the Franzen book, I brought up THE CORRECTIONS because I have read it. I have not read FREEDOM, and I don’t really like to discuss things I haven’t read. That’s not an informed opinion.
And now I shall go digest what you wrote, and see if there is any other things i feel I need to say. Right now, I don’t.
Thanks for responding!
***
(Natalie)~
I know you didn’t mean to misquote me—I didn’t think anything of it, I just wanted to correct it.
Well, I Googled “literary snob” and you’re right; there are many people who refer to themselves as such.
However, in your blog you intimated that Jennifer Egan was one based on your assessment that she was “condescending” and her comment “elitist” (synonyms, I’m sure, for the literati.) Jonathan Franzen has been called one. So has David Foster Wallace. My point? The people flinging the term typically fling it at the writers themselves. I have yet, in all my Googling, to find an author who refers to him or herself as a literary snob. Outside of the Industry, who cares what people call themselves? Hell, I’m a beer and wine snob.
Now, the ubiquitous “they” and the Literary World are not identical or interchangeable. The Literary World is comprised of much more than angsty bloggers crowing at their superb literary tastes. Consider the judges and committees for these awards:
The Nobel Prize in Literature The Pulitzer Prize for Literature Aga Khan Prize for Fiction Ambassador Book Award American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medals in Belles Lettres, Criticism and Essays American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Drama American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction, Novels, Short Stories American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry American Book Awards Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Arab American Book Award Arthur Rense Prize Asian American Literary Awards Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature Autumn House Press Poetry Prize for a full-length book manuscript Autumn House Press Fiction Prize for a full-length book manuscript Bancroft Prize The Best American Poetry series Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry Bollingen Prize The Dana Award Donna J. Stone National Literary Awards Edgar Allan Poe Award Edward Lewis Wallant Award Fabri Literary Prize Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction Frost Medal Goldsmith Book Prize Harold Morton Landon Translation Award Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature Hopwood Award Hugo Award James Duval Phelan Award James Laughlin Award Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize Joseph Henry Jackson Award Kate Tufts Discovery Award Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Lambda Literary Award Lannan Literary Awards Mary Tanenbaum Award for Nonfiction Michael Braude Award for Light Verse Micro Award for Flash Fiction National Book Award National Book Critics Circle Award
That’s just to the “N’s”. Do I need to list them all? Now, include with them the editors, contributors and consumers of literary magazines such as McSweeny’s, The Paris Review, and hundreds of others. How about editors and publishers of the literary tomes themselves? Now let’s include writers who identify themselves as literary authors. Finally, the consumers and readers of literary fiction. This, Natalie, is the literary world, not a vague, anonymous, unlimited group of nameless, faceless people spanning across time. These are the people who would not publish, read, or award anything to the Jennifer Weiners in this business. (How apropos that her name corresponds phonetically with “whiner”.)
There is no doubt that Weiner can write. There is no doubt she is successful. That isn’t the point. The difference between literary works and, for example, chicklit, goes much deeper than whether or not people can string a coherent sentence together.
The pivotal and central heart of the differences lies in the themes and motifs of the work. In chicklit, the themes are all very similar. Self-esteem, big thighs, shoe fetishes, “can a fat girl find true love?”, girlfriend relationships, dysfunctional and/or quirky parents, cheeky, sarcastic protagonists, cardboard cut-out male characters who always manage to “see the light” at the end of the book (a.k.a. finally seeing who’s really in front of him and LOVING her!) and learning to be strong in a “man’s world” at the office, in love or in life. Oh, don't forget the mandatory quirky or eccentric or uptight BFF.
While no one can disregard or ignore that these are contemporary themes, and in truth, much of the female population can relate to them, they lack the universality that spans across gender, race, culture, socio-economics and, ultimately, time.
Many people want this type of book. There’s no denying this. Many people like romantic comedies. Many people want escape. Again, nothing wrong with this. For those writers (or movie makers, for that matter) who want to provide this escape, I say ‘carry on’. But don’t get pissed off when Bridget Jones’s Diary isn’t up for a damn Oscar. DEAL. That’s not why they made the movie, that’s not the compelling force of the movie, and it WILL NOT make a difference in the average life of the average person. It was never slated for that kind of impact. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun, well executed or well-acted.
Jennifer Weiner is mad because she wants to be well-regarded in a world that esteems unique, universal and influential endeavors over entertainment. She's an entertainer, that's it, and she’s having a hissy.
Oh, and by the way, it’s erroneous to believe that literature has to be “dark and angsty”. Try HELL by Robert Olen-Butler, THE LONELY POLYGAMIST by Brady Udall, PORTONY’S COMPLAINT or NEMISIS by Philip Roth. Dark? Depressing? No. Universal, unique and influential? You bet.
***
My point in reiterating all of this is that there is indeed a difference between writing styles and genres. Some deserve critical acclaim, and some deserve what they get: sales from people who want to be entertained. If money and popularity are what you’re seeking–AND you’re getting it, then why be butt-hurt that someone doesn’t like your work or the work of your genre?
In other words, growthefuckup.
