Why advocating for female authors needs to transcend the fiction-trump-all trope. 

by Evan Kleekamp

A few weeks ago Riveter Columnist Emma Winsor Wood began a series of posts, aptly titled Women and Words, concerning the current gendered state of literary critical terminology, the rhetorical gap between men and women, and most recently the faltering category of “wifey” in contemporary literary production. In what follows, I hope to add a new dimension to Wood’s argument and perhaps aid in generating a solution at the root of the issue: getting both men and women to read and recognize female authors as well as see through the institutions that control our consumption of literature, and thus manipulate our agency as readers.

If we are going to advocate for female writers, we must spend more time promoting, analyzing, and reviewing their work. We need people, men and women, to know it exists and we do not need to disparage men in the process just as we should not need to frequently point out a female author is a woman to advance her work. If we are spending more time attacking male authors than promoting and sharing the work of our female constituents we are simply doing it wrong.

Fiction as a genre has a particular cult(ure) associated with its distribution. I would argue American fiction publishing culture follows “masculine” competitive logic (not that women should not be competitive or masculine!) that seeks to undermine readers, engender their interpretations, and distort their agency. Women are writing experimental novels, we just aren’t hearing about it. Wood’s article focuses on outdated, male-centric academic criticism and fails to mention non-academic reviewers who have anticipated, if not outright caused, the rise of female authors like Donna Tartt, Rachel Kushner, Nicola Griffith, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. None of these writers can be accused of writing “restrained” or “spare” novels (Tartt’s recent bestseller, The Goldfinch comprises a whopping 784 pages), nor can we reprimand lit programs focused on past historical developments within the literary world for failing to be ready for female authors (as the saying goes: old dog, new tricks. We need more women in academia. Don’t worry, they are coming); unfortunately, the advent of mainstream female authors is still recent in our globalized world, a world still dominated by privileged, masculine power structures (see: current state of publishing industry and growing use of business-oriented models at public universities). Wood’s use of counterexamples Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf serve as female versions of her male triumvirate; they are female writers often namedropped within academic circles by both male and female scholars who focus on Western, and typically white, middle-to-upper class authors. Case in point: Harold Bloom lists both Woolf and Joyce next to each other on his list, The Western Canon; Stein is also present. Phillis Wheatley and Adrienne Rich are not.

To return to the issue of terminology when dealing with authenticity, we should always be skeptical of ambiguous adjectives like “daring, intelligent, epic,” and/or “ambitious” when they describe literary works. Critics who use this language are flat out lazy or attempting to appeal to a lazy readership. And why wouldn’t they? Most book reviewers have an interest in selling books and maintaining a readership. If we want to add an ethical dimension to the conversation we must say the job of the critic is not to make qualifying judgments about a piece, but to generate a platform for the reader to approach and/or navigate a work. By disparaging writers like Joyce, Pynchon, and Foster Wallace, Wood does nothing to advance the cause of women writers or encourage women to read. It is true, academics are drawn to the magnum opus of these writers (scholarship on Foster Wallace skyrocketed directly after his death, literary academia is a system built on discovering the latest old talent). This narrative is already built into the system (a man dies and an attempt to resurrect him through articles soon follows). In fact, Wood’s critique might reveal more issues within academia’s marginalization of female writers and dependence on fractured male egos than account for the issues of terminology effecting women writers (we must remember women writers exist outside the academic canon). But why are we so focused on fiction anyway?

Another issue to bring up about Wood’s critique is that it only focuses on one kind of writing. Meanwhile, all types of female authors are struggling to receive attention. If publishers and academics are interested in finding the hero of the literary fantasy world and exclude women in that process, good for them. We don’t need them. Consider this: our obsession with fiction writers might be responsible for this type of exclusionary thinking. We also can’t fall for this rationale that bigger is better when women who write slim books need support and recognition too. Focusing on academia is not a way to fix a broken system if academia is the proliferation of the broken system itself. As consumers of literature, we need to set the script, not the academics. This might mean we need to stop consuming any piece of up-and-coming, sensationalized trash they throw our way because we need to let it be heard loud and clear, we do not want to be force-fed. If we let these figureheads guide our interpretation of women’s writing then of course we will feel awkward when words like “elegant” or “subtle” are used to subversively condense women’s writing into a more accessible, easy to understand category (because women must be understood). Historically speaking, I completely agree with Wood’s assessment, “[a]s girls, we are taught from an early age that it is unattractive to occupy too much space.” This is a social issue that is reflected in women’s writing. However, I don’t think it should serve as a justification to accidentally criticize female writers operating under enormous cultural pressure to not write, to not be intelligent, and to not be independent (see: anything by Fox News on women, ever) when they produce works than can be described as minimal or sparse, when in fact these works tend to pack massive artistic achievement into relatively few pages and undermine the phallic notion that bigger means better or rarified means intelligent (I urge everyone to read Vanessa Place’s short conceptual work, Statement of Facts, which can be read in full here. Trigger warning: Place uses direct language lifted straight from court briefings, she has no intention of softening the issues she seeks to discuss). By privileging fiction, we are enacting the same disempowering strategy used to cut journalists, poets, memoirists, and other writers away from being recognized as authors.

We need to give these people attention because attention leads to funding. Writing a novel is difficult enough when you have the time, energy, and funds available to do so. Being a mother, a college student, financial struggle, or even a successful career outside of literature can complicate the process of writing. To only celebrate or seek out authors like Tartt, who according the NY Times  “is unmarried,” and “has no children,” (read: the ability to sit down and write a large, labyrinthine novel), without crediting authors of minimalist works like Maggie Nelson or Jenny Boully, both of whom teach in collegiate academic settings and are currently raising children while producing new work, belittles the “ambitious” nature of their work to point of being moot. Isn’t the act of writing itself is ambitious? Writers like Nelson and Boully also open up new ground for women who want to start families and continue pursuing a career in writing not by arguing, but by simply doing it.

Continuing with this same thread of thought, I want to openly question why authors like Nelson and Boully, or even experimental writers like Anne Carson with a devoted academic following, are not reaching the same number of readers as novelists like Tartt or Adichie. I have a sneaking suspicion it has a lot to do, once again, with the false divisions crated by the literary establishment (read: the cult(ure) of fiction). Add another frightening twist: Nelson and Boully are generating works that hybridize fiction and nonfiction (specifically memoir) with formal elements typically associated with poetry (lyricism, fragment, verse). Because these works often make claims surrounding truth they are often attacked for supposed inaccuracies (I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala), for disclosing too many details and condoning perverse behavior (Kathryn Harrison’s The Kiss), or even discussing trauma, memoir’s “defining subject” according to autobiography scholar Leigh Gilmore. I’m sure many women can identify in part with a phrase found in Gilmore’s Limit-Cases: Trauma, Self-Representation, and Jurisdictions of Identity: “When the contest is waged over who can tell the truth, the risk of being accused of lying (or malingering, or inflating, or whining) threatens the writer into continued silence.” What we don’t want is for women to remain silent, and we don’t want to reinforce that silence by privileging one form of literary expression over another. But this is exactly what has happened in the world of big fiction, someone else is writing the script and defining the agency of not only women, but also authorship as a whole. The last thing we need is for authors to receive critical attention for only saying the things the literary establishment wants us to hear.

What remains absent in Wood’s critique of terminology used to assess fiction is a critique of fiction itself, a genre generated, if not defined, by fantasy. The ability to create a large-scale, labyrinthine work of fiction is contingent on having access to a privileged socio-economic position where a person is being paid, or having their cost of living absorbed, to write a novel. A critique of gender should always be aware of economic undercurrents and if we are to follow through with Wood’s meanderings we should arrive at a point when we are realistic about the situation of American fiction: massive novels might just display more than just gender preference, they also exude privilege. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t applaud these works or that we won’t see a gargantuan, experimental novel written by a woman, but a return to precise, economic writing should not be lauded as a failure in gender equality. It might just mean less fraternizing with the American novel.

Evan Kleekamp is a bookseller and writer living in the Midwest. He plans to attend Columbia College in Chicago this fall to pursue a MFA in poetry.

Editor’s note: Kleekamp’s analysis is important because it shows that discussions about women’s writing and the way it’s received and critiqued should be of interest to everyone. Moving forward, we hope to establish our online presence as a platform for discussion about female writers and writing, a discussion we want both men and women to feel welcome to participate in.