Can women write?

Rabble Rabble

No, but they can definitely type.

/ gets coat

Ficheall

SVG wrote: »

I'd love to see other people's favourites (especially contemporary) too since I tend to read more male than female authors and would like to redress the balance:).

This is probably more akin to how I should have phrased my question, I'll grant
Plath is great, and Blyton as mentioned.

I was going to make reference also to the smaller number of very talented women in a variety of fields - comediennes & musicians (not singers) were the first two that sprang to mind as are often discussed - there are many, many areas where there are less renowned females than males - but I was trying to avoid drawing fire from those who'd assume I was being sexist. I failed, obviously.

parker kent, donegalfella - as previously stated, I wasn't inferring from the one book that all female authors were bad - rather that the mentioned book got me to thinking about it. I've had a similar discussion irl before, and there weren't a whole pile of good female authors we could come up with.

Eliot Rosewater

Alice Walker - The Colour Purple! A fantastic portrayal of the tyranny that culture can sometimes place on the individual.

Valmont wrote: »

You can probably tell I've become disillusioned with the higher education establishments.

I have become a little disillusioned too, with the student population anyway. I heard today that UCC Students' Union is following its No Fees march last month with a No Cutbacks march this week. Do our future politicians and economists not see the glaring contradiction in their stance?!

For what it's worth though, I don't think the student marchers are fully representative of the "intellectual students" on campus. Though the status of the university as an academic institution seems to be taking a hitting, there still exists that academic ethos, if you look hard enough and, basically, make the "right" friends.

Queen-Mise

donegalfella wrote: »

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Absolutely categorically disagree with this - 'high culture' is an illusion. At what point was it high or low? When did high culture end or become low: when Yeats/Proust/Eliot or Joyce died. Of course we have the writers of the caliber of Joyce and Proust around - the only problem with them, is they won't be appreciated until cold in the grave !!!

And secondly writing 'well' is another illusion. Many of the great writers of the past were great because they wrote differently to writers before them. Joyce used grammar in a distinctive style unlike any previous author. John Milton writing Paradise Lost again wrote differently to past authors. William Blake was an incredibly innovative writer, writing in such a simple child-like style was complete unheard of at the time.

There is no ongoing death of high culture - culture has changed radically and ever more quickly, so what is regarded as high culture has changed rather than disappeared.

parker kent wrote: »

Raw talent certainly exists, but it is not getting a chance to come through in the ways that it used to in literature.The same thing is happening in football, music etc. Instant and predictable results are preferred instead of honing a true talent.

I think this view is ridiculous to be honest. At what point in the past two and half thousand years was it more possible for a talent to emerge in literature than it it today. Yes there is a mainstream books, music etc that may have less talent in it - but that is the same as any point in the past. Shakespeare was typical for his time as was Dickens in his.

Valmont wrote: »

Back on topic, surely there is another young Joyce (or Joycette) out there somewhere? Or just not as many brilliant writers as there used to be? Will there be a renaissance in our lifetimes? I bloody hope so.

The Renaissance was a rediscovery of ancient Greek texts (particularly Plato). So what would a 'new' renaissance be a rediscovery of.

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

I have become a little disillusioned too, with the student population anyway. I heard today that UCC Students' Union is following its No Fees march last month with a No Cutbacks march this week. Do our future politicians and economists not see the glaring contradiction in their stance?!

For what it's worth though, I don't think the student marchers are fully representative of the "intellectual students" on campus. Though the status of the university as an academic institution seems to be taking a hitting, there still exists that academic ethos, if you look hard enough and, basically, make the "right" friends.

University and academic don't really equal the same things. Academia really refers to the Humanities. Whereas the ITs & universities cover far more than that. So the average university student is not an academic student.

parker kent

Queen-Mise wrote: »

I think this view is ridiculous to be honest. At what point in the past two and half thousand years was it more possible for a talent to emerge in literature than it it today. Yes there is a mainstream books, music etc that may have less talent in it - but that is the same as any point in the past. Shakespeare was typical for his time as was Dickens in his.

It is not ridiculous. Modern publishing has changed writing. Publishers are struggling big-time for a lot of reasons (the end of the retail price agreement being a major reason). They often do not want to take a chance on a younger writer or hone writers over a number of books. The same way that bands no longer get 2 or 3 albums to get used to writing and performing music. It is not that unusual for somebody to get one book/album, it is not that successful and that is the last we see of them.

Publishers are also massive organisations now thanks to the mergers and acquisitions process over the last 30 years. There are far less instances of a small publisher working on a personal basis with a writer and building them up. I have had many conversations with the owner of a publishing firm in Ireland and it is a different entity altogether from when he set his business up.

Literary fiction has always been the unloved cousin of popular fiction (I did not need the history lesson on Shakespeare as my academic history has that covered!). But nowadays, it is being squeezed as publishers need to cover their bottom line and the money is not in literary fiction. Jonathan Franzen is rare beast in modern writing as he was let work on a major work for more than 5 years. Many of the best and most important books in history have been worked on for over 5 years, but publishers and writers cannot afford to do that any more. To compare it to music again, great bands in the 60s, 70s and 80s would often spend years and years writing albums. Now it is unusual for a new band or singer to go 2 years without releasing new material. The only people allowed to that in music or literature are the established talent who do not care about making a name for themselves.

A young literary fiction author is relying on an extreme good fortune to get any attention. You need to avoid the purgatory of the slush pile. You have to find a publisher or agent who believes your book is good enough. Then if you are one of the rare few who gets published by a decent publisher, you need a massive stroke of good luck to get any sort of sales or publicity. You need an Oprah or Richard and Judy moment, or else to get nominated for an award. So that is why I don't think what I said is ridiculous. Do you think The Sound and the Fury would get published these days? How many lost classics are in a slush pile somewhere or how many authors gave up after 20 or 20 rejections from publishers focused on the bottom line? Why should they spend 4 years working with a young literary fiction writer who will sell 10,000 copies when a Dan Brown or even Jordan will sell millions? So it is definitely not the same as at any point in the past.

Edit: You also missed my basic point that modern lives are different. The people who may once have written would no longer write as their life experiences which fostered their imagination no longer exist. Creative people will still exist, just their lives are different. Instead they get 600 points in the Leaving, write TV shows or just lead ordinary lives etc. I also was referring to differences in modern childhood which means that young people do not receive the same experiences of reading and writing as children/teenagers as they once did. Reading and writing go hand in hand. But many kids do not read as much as their predecessors. Hence my reference to Margaret Atwood speaking of her youth.

coffee_cake

Valmont wrote: »

Incidentally, I was talking about this to a friend earlier and when they expressed a view similar to yours, I said I hoped that there was another Joyce or Nabokov walking around among us in the university. I looked around at the student protesters, the election posters ("vote me for chjair"), the woeful and hopelessly esoteric reading and seminar list (a resurgence of Adorno's ideas?) from the modern literature masters, the people cramming for their multiple choice exams, and I thought, well, probably not. You can probably tell I've become disillusioned with the higher education establishments..

Don't forget 'oh you KNOW what I meant' and 'how many essays did you learn off for English, I learned 3 to cover everything'

parker kent

Ficheall wrote: »

I've had a similar discussion irl before, and there weren't a whole pile of good female authors we could come up with.

But there are hundreds of great (not just good) female writers out there. It is not like they all write in the same style or about the same topics.

You must not have read enough of them yet, what else have you read? What type of books do you like? Have you read any of the suggestions on this thread, or from the list I linked?

Kinski

I was just reading a review recently - which can be found here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n18/elif-batuman/get-a-real-degree - of a book about the history of creative writing programmes in the US. Apparently the author of this study argues that, thanks to such courses, there is more good literature around than ever before, to which the reviewer responds:

the torture of walking into a bookshop these days: it’s not that you think the books will all be terrible; it’s that you know they’ll all have a certain degree of competent workmanship, that most will have about three genuinely beautiful or interesting sentences and no really bad ones, that many will have at least one convincing, well-observed character, and that nearly all will be bound up in a story that you can’t bring yourself to care about. All that great writing, trapped in mediocre books!

Having read a few guides to creative writing recently myself, it's a perspective I can sympathize with (though I should concede here that the two most recently published novels I've read were Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice and Cormac McCarthy's The Road, both by septuagenarians - this is how up to speed I am on the bright young things of fiction). It really seemed to me that the advice been given by these books - advice presumably echoed by literary editors - stands in contradiction to so much of what has been done in great fiction in the past. Imagine telling Melville that he had to lose those quotations at the start of Moby-Dick, to cut all the damn digressions and just stick to the action, and to pare his prose, use less adjectives...this is just what these creative writing books recommend! It all sounded to me like they wanted authors to produce fiction modelled after movies.

I remember reading a piece from the 1970s by novelist and critic John Gardner in which he lamented that while his generation of authors had always desired to write fiction, younger aspirants were now drawn to television and cinema - producing novels was not, he thought, a priority for them. I'm not sure whether or not this assessment was entirely fair, but I do think we live in a very visual culture, and perhaps if there is a dearth of great writers out there then that might offer at least a partial explanation. During the summer I went to see the big film of the moment, Inception, and I was struck by just how highly charged its imagery was. The movie flitted from chase sequences to zero gravity fight scenes, cutting constantly between dark city streets, snowscapes, and dreamworlds full of strange architecture. The whole movie seemed intoxicated with the visual possibilites available to it. So when I look at cinema, television, video games, and the whole advertising industry, I think we're expending a huge amount of creative (as well as financial) capital there - so much of our creative energy is going into those things, and that has to be a drain, and maybe not just on the creative people, but on the audience too. People often ask who has the time to read literature anymore, but the question might really be who has the headspace?

Hmmm, not sure anymore what that has to do with the original topic...anyhow, both sexes are equally capable of writing rubbish.

Plowman

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parker kent

Kinski wrote: »

I remember reading a piece from the 1970s by novelist and critic John Gardner in which he lamented that while his generation of authors had always desired to write fiction, younger aspirants were now drawn to television and cinema - producing novels was not, he thought, a priority for them. I'm not sure whether or not this assessment was entirely fair, but I do think we live in a very visual culture, and perhaps if there is a dearth of great writers out there then that might offer at least a partial explanation. During the summer I went to see the big film of the moment, Inception, and I was struck by just how highly charged its imagery was. The movie flitted from chase sequences to zero gravity fight scenes, cutting constantly between dark city streets, snowscapes, and dreamworlds full of strange architecture. The whole movie seemed intoxicated with the visual possibilites available to it. So when I look at cinema, television, video games, and the whole advertising industry, I think we're expending a huge amount of creative (as well as financial) capital there - so much of our creative energy is going into those things, and that has to be a drain, and maybe not just on the creative people, but on the audience too. People often ask who has the time to read literature anymore, but the question might really be who has the headspace?

This is pretty similar to my point. Creative people are involved in different things nowadays. The written word is not the only way our most talented people can express themselves (not that I am saying that only literature existed, just that there are greater media exist now). It is like what happened to heavyweight boxing in America. Most of the great heavyweights were from a poor, Black background. Thankfully they now have more options available through education and other sports. So there are less people involved in boxing than in previous generations. The people who were great heavyweight boxers in the 1960s are now great American footballers, lawyers, teachers, soldiers etc. Any increase in options will mean a wider dispersal of brilliance.

Good point about the creative writing classes too. There is an element of "writing by numbers" to many books by contemporary writers. That does also link in with publishers and marketing people striving to create bestsellers, instead of great writing.

savina10

Was looking here for a pointer on a good read to counter balance the cabin fever in the freeze. Not sure how this happened but Alice Munro Too Much Happines fell off the book shelf.Cant remember reading it before, guess what was behind it...The Blind Assassin - Haven't seen that in a while.The perfect line up for the next two snow days. This thread has served well!

Queen-Mise

Plowman wrote: »

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I was referring to a point made by an earlier poster that there was a slow death of high culture. I was saying that this 'death' of high culture was an illusion. A crucial word to have missed from my argument.


It would not logically make sense that it is harder to publish a book now than at X point in the past. They are many more ways for an artists works to be shown to the public. It is not a modern problem alone that publishers and marketing people striving to create bestsellers, instead of great writing - this argument can be made at various points throughout history.


Of course women can be great writers also.


I was completely wrong on the meaning of the word academic - a mistake I won't make again.

Permabear

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Denerick

I agree and disagree with DF. I do believe that fantastic authors are at work but they fail to get the recognition they deserve. They either aren't getting published, or if they are, the editors have taken such an axe to their work that it isn't recognisable. Or they may only be selling a couple of thousand books to a few devoted fans. Golding only sold a couple of thousand copies of 'Lord of the Flies' initially, but it went on to be one of the great all time best sellers.

This nonsense that there hasn't been anything good written in the past 40 years is exactly that. The literary whirlpool is always in motion, its just sometimes difficult to detect it without the influence of perspective. Something we won't have until we're well into our 60s

parker kent

[QUOTE=Queen-Mise;69314141It would not logically make sense that it is harder to publish a book now than at X point in the past. They are many more ways for an artists works to be shown to the public. It is not a modern problem alone that publishers and marketing people striving to create bestsellers, instead of great writing - this argument can be made at various points throughout history. [/QUOTE]

It is more difficult. This is the first point in history where publishers are being affected by a recession or economic downturn. Publishers were always viewed as immune to economic difficulties as people historically turned to books as they were a cheap alternative to other entertainment forms. But people are not doing that any more. There are other ways to be entertained. Accordingly, publishers are competing with other forms of entertainment. Changes in the form and mode of publishing has caused changes in books throughout the history of books. Three volume novels in lending services caused a major change in how novels were written. The same thing is happening now.

Of course there has always been an argument that publishers want bestsellers and not great writing. But before they had a stable business model. Publishers don't have that any more. Commercial interests are making a much bigger impact than at any other point in history.

You mention other ways to get published, how many books published online will ever stand out amongst the millions of others published in the same way? Publishers are the gate keepers and function as a filtering agent between the crap and the great. Without that, we are over loaded and classics could conceivably exist but they would not get any attention.

It is also needs to be taken into consideration that the book industry as we know it is not that old. It is very difficult to make this argument in posts, it really needs a few thousand words, not a few hundred to convey to full range of reasons why it is difficult for any writer, male or female to create great literature.

Enkidu

Where exactly is the James Joyce of today? You'd have us believe that he is scribbling away in a garret somewhere, unrecognized and unappreciated. I think that's nothing but a myth.

I don't know much about literature (to the point that it was your posts that convinced me to buy Finnegan's Wake actually, I love it!), but wouldn't J.M. Coetzee be a great modern writer?

Permabear

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Grievous

PandyAndy wrote: »

Ayn Rand.

Started reading 'Atlas Shrugged' a while ago.

Don't see what an authors gender has got to do with anything either.

She is probably not the best example, as she wasn't a very good writer; her characters were dull and she had a habit of over-writing things.

Also, her characters where mere vessels for her REFUTED/DISMISSED Objectivist Philosophy. Objectivism/Randism promotes SELFISHNESS and comtemporary Philosophers had plenty of fun tearing her work asunder and exposing all it's inherent flaws.

To the OP:
Yes, there are plenty of amazing female writers out there. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.
Ever heard of Flannery O Connor? Carson Mccullers? Jane Austen?

Cavehill Red

Scuid Mhór wrote: »

I heard J.K. Rowling wrote some okay books...

Really? Because I'm only aware of that turgid, derivative public school genre crap she's famous for.

Enkidu

Thanks for the detailed response.

donegalfella wrote: »

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It's an extremely interesting read (as you obviously know). At first I tried to read it by stopping everytime I didn't get something and trying to figure it out. This didn't seem to be working for me, so I then tried to just read it as if I was just listening to somebody talk. I don't get everything he says (and that's when I know I'm missing something), but in the sections where I know enough of the languages and phrases he is using to follow it, it's incredible.

Personally, I would regard Coetzee as a good writer, but not a great one.

This is the sentence I want to discuss in more detail.
What, in your mind, distinguishes a good writer from a great writer?

I'm also afraid I may be going off-topic, so I should say Barbara Kingsolver is quite a good writer.

Grievous

Enkidu wrote: »

What, in your mind, distinguishes a good writer from a great writer?

Could be a host of things: Style, ideas, influence, quality of subject matter, innovation, experimenting, how well one characterizes his subjects in his work, and much more.

Take Ernest Hemmingway for example: Writers were aping his STYLE (Short compact sentences, Stoic characters) 30 and 40 years after his death, heck there are plenty of people who probably still do it. Aping sounds too rude, Influenced is the correct term.

Or John Steinbeck, his Grapes Of Wrath novel is still held in AWE by writers all over the world. I remember reading in Stephen King's On Writing how he would never write anything as perfect or expertly constructed like Grapes Of Wrath but he has come to terms with that and is not going to beat himself up over it for the rest of his life.

Or take John Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, writers who are not only famous for their works of fiction, but for creating their own Philosophies and using their novels to distill their ideas down and fit them into the characters organically and say something thought-provoking.

Another Nobel Prize winner is Winston Churchill, He isn't famous for just his elegant prose, but his detailed and carefully thought out historically writings such as his works on the History Of WWII and his History Of The English Speaking Peoples. Both excellent muliti-Volumned books.

Jorge Borges? The man had more imagination and ideas in a ten page story than most writers today could fit into a thousand page thome.

I would also add a writers use and understanding of Symbolism, allusion and subtext. It is never a surprize that the best writers are always the ones who are the best read. To Para-phrase Ray Bradbury.........you get these people out there trying to write novels when they don't even know how to write short stories, or have read many novels.

nompere

Grievous wrote: »

Take Ernest Hemmingway

Is he the fellow who runs the fish restaurant in Clontarf?

Grievous

nompere wrote: »

Is he the fellow who runs the fish restaurant in Clontarf?

Yeah, I hear the Marlin and Rope burns are tasty as hell.

H. Flashman

lol at the person who said Celia Ahern


To the OP if you want to know if women can write just read some Robin Hobb

metrovelvet

donegalfella wrote: »

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Ithink it's also because society has become so fragmented it's very difficult to 'speak' to the great public at large like one used to and that extends though the arts.

Also the internet... Im sure without it I'd be reading a hell of a lot more than I do now.

emeraldstar

metrovelvet wrote: »

Also the internet... Im sure without it I'd be reading a hell of a lot more than I do now.

Yup, my laptop has been broken for the past year or so and I don't have internet in my current house, so I'm just flying through books at the moment, more than I ever have done. However I'll have a new laptop in a couple of weeks, so, although I don't want it to, I know that my reading is going to stop completely and I won't be able to help it

Permabear

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parker kent

donegalfella wrote: »

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I would not really agree with that. I am pretty certain that there are books from our era that will be read in the future. There are far less people interested in whether a concept was new or revolutionary than there are people who like reading a well-written book. As an example (and since the thread is about female writers), look at how Jane Austen has survived. Her books are timeless and universal. That is an important element in deciding whether a book is read.

Your criteria to decide good writers from great writers is not something I agree with either. It is certainly one element in deciding greatness, but invention of a new concept does not necessarily equal greatness in my view.

--Kaiser--

feelingstressed wrote: »

Enid Blython

One of the worst writers I have ever encountered

Permabear

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