Why Men Just Can't read Women
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/06/01/ftlit01.xml&sSheet=/arts/2005/06/02/ixartright.html
Why men just can't read women
(Filed: 01/06/2005)
Even Orange Prize finalists rarely attract male readers. Sinclair McKay explains
Now, chaps, quiet at the back, here's a quick test. Which of these names or book titles rings a bell of familiarity? Joolz Denby's Billie Morgan? Or Maile Meloy's Liars and Saints? Hush now, please, ladies, no clues. Of course, the fact is that these books are on the shortlist for next Tuesday's Orange Prize for Fiction, which this year is celebrating its 10th anniversary. However, if you are a man, the chances are that you are not going to go near any of them.
His and hers: men prefer boys' books
The truth is that men will not, on the whole, read books written by women - even Orange Prize winners. On the face of it, the notion is an annoying generalisation. But a new report compiled by academics Lisa Jardine and Anne Watkins of Queen Mary's College London appears to prove that very thing.
Alarmingly, their survey covered about 100 writers, academics and critics - ie, people who have a vested interest in not looking like the idiot who has failed to read the great novel.
"Men clearly now know that there are some great books by women - such as Andrea Levy's Small Island - that they really ought to have read and ought to consider great writing," the report said. "They may even have bought, or been given the books, and start reading them. But they probably won't finish them."
Can this be true? What about the most celebrated of recent novels by women, Monica Ali's Booker shortlisted Brick Lane? According to Professor Jardine, this is a book that men will pretend to have read. But, very often, they haven't.
At least in this case, we chaps have pretended. There are a great many other instances in which we wouldn't even go that far. A S Byatt's Possession? Nup. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale? Hardly. Hands up any man who has read a word of Carol Shields. No? Andrea Levy, then. Still no takers?
To be fair, publishers don't make it easy for us. Those wispy, pastel-shaded covers are not encouraging. Strolling up to the counter with a copy of The Lovely Bones would be the equivalent of buying a great big pink girl's blouse. In the case of Sophie Kinsella and her doubtless side-splitting series of Shopaholic novels, fluffiness is obviously a deliberate marketing move - much in the way that women are turned away at the door of any work by Sven Hassel (Nazi lettering, soldiers in tin helmets, guns firing).
But this does not wholly explain the gender divide. The reluctance of men to touch women's fiction stretches back rather further. Jean Rhys? No, thanks. Virginia Woolf? Now look, we all enjoy a joke.... Well how about Ivy Compton Burnett? Elizabeth Gaskell?
Very often, the snub is not deliberate. It's just that other novels seem to clamour for male attention rather more loudly. Like Flashman. Or any thriller involving Opus Dei. Or Robert Ludlum barnstormers with titles such as The Syndrome Factor. J K Rowling would appear to be the exception. But would boys and men have been so willing to read the Harry Potter books had the name Joanna appeared on the covers?
So why is this? A deep-seated reluctance to grapple with emotional depth and complexity? An aversion to careful nuance and subtle shadings of characterisation? Or simply the feeling that E Annie Proulx's work would be much improved by the occasional description of a flashing red LED countdown on a thermonuclear bomb?
This is a social as much as a literary question. If the best fiction is about searingly truthful exploration of the inner recesses of the human heart, then it is obvious that your average chap is going to go nowhere near it. We get enough of that at home.
Kingsley Amis once said of the Orange Prize: "If I were a woman, I would not want to win this prize. One can hardly take the winner seriously." Much too harsh. If anything, the reverse is true. And it is possibly this level of seriousness, more than anything, that proves the off-putting factor to us gadfly males.
It is not that we are disdainful of Rose Tremain or Zadie Smith. It is just the feeling that you are not going to have much of a laugh in the company of their narrators. Now where did I put my copy of Where Eagles Dare?
Why men just can't read women
(Filed: 01/06/2005)
Even Orange Prize finalists rarely attract male readers. Sinclair McKay explains
Now, chaps, quiet at the back, here's a quick test. Which of these names or book titles rings a bell of familiarity? Joolz Denby's Billie Morgan? Or Maile Meloy's Liars and Saints? Hush now, please, ladies, no clues. Of course, the fact is that these books are on the shortlist for next Tuesday's Orange Prize for Fiction, which this year is celebrating its 10th anniversary. However, if you are a man, the chances are that you are not going to go near any of them.
His and hers: men prefer boys' books
The truth is that men will not, on the whole, read books written by women - even Orange Prize winners. On the face of it, the notion is an annoying generalisation. But a new report compiled by academics Lisa Jardine and Anne Watkins of Queen Mary's College London appears to prove that very thing.
Alarmingly, their survey covered about 100 writers, academics and critics - ie, people who have a vested interest in not looking like the idiot who has failed to read the great novel.
"Men clearly now know that there are some great books by women - such as Andrea Levy's Small Island - that they really ought to have read and ought to consider great writing," the report said. "They may even have bought, or been given the books, and start reading them. But they probably won't finish them."
Can this be true? What about the most celebrated of recent novels by women, Monica Ali's Booker shortlisted Brick Lane? According to Professor Jardine, this is a book that men will pretend to have read. But, very often, they haven't.
At least in this case, we chaps have pretended. There are a great many other instances in which we wouldn't even go that far. A S Byatt's Possession? Nup. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale? Hardly. Hands up any man who has read a word of Carol Shields. No? Andrea Levy, then. Still no takers?
To be fair, publishers don't make it easy for us. Those wispy, pastel-shaded covers are not encouraging. Strolling up to the counter with a copy of The Lovely Bones would be the equivalent of buying a great big pink girl's blouse. In the case of Sophie Kinsella and her doubtless side-splitting series of Shopaholic novels, fluffiness is obviously a deliberate marketing move - much in the way that women are turned away at the door of any work by Sven Hassel (Nazi lettering, soldiers in tin helmets, guns firing).
But this does not wholly explain the gender divide. The reluctance of men to touch women's fiction stretches back rather further. Jean Rhys? No, thanks. Virginia Woolf? Now look, we all enjoy a joke.... Well how about Ivy Compton Burnett? Elizabeth Gaskell?
Very often, the snub is not deliberate. It's just that other novels seem to clamour for male attention rather more loudly. Like Flashman. Or any thriller involving Opus Dei. Or Robert Ludlum barnstormers with titles such as The Syndrome Factor. J K Rowling would appear to be the exception. But would boys and men have been so willing to read the Harry Potter books had the name Joanna appeared on the covers?
So why is this? A deep-seated reluctance to grapple with emotional depth and complexity? An aversion to careful nuance and subtle shadings of characterisation? Or simply the feeling that E Annie Proulx's work would be much improved by the occasional description of a flashing red LED countdown on a thermonuclear bomb?
This is a social as much as a literary question. If the best fiction is about searingly truthful exploration of the inner recesses of the human heart, then it is obvious that your average chap is going to go nowhere near it. We get enough of that at home.
Kingsley Amis once said of the Orange Prize: "If I were a woman, I would not want to win this prize. One can hardly take the winner seriously." Much too harsh. If anything, the reverse is true. And it is possibly this level of seriousness, more than anything, that proves the off-putting factor to us gadfly males.
It is not that we are disdainful of Rose Tremain or Zadie Smith. It is just the feeling that you are not going to have much of a laugh in the company of their narrators. Now where did I put my copy of Where Eagles Dare?
posted by bitandpieces at 8:00 AM
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