The Bibliographic Battle of the Sexes that got underway this weekend already has seen the initial sortie by Esquire magazine and the subsequent retaliation by the online Joyland Publishers. The fight was engaged when Esquire featured an article, "The 75 Books Every Man Should Read," which cited a single female author, Flannery O'Connor in its list. This outraged Joyland and prompted the following:
This really does imply that men don’t/can’t/shouldn’t read women and we were pretty sure that wasn’t the case among readers. We were also sure that part of the editorial reason for making such a list this way was to generate a response, so here it is. Over Memorial Day weekend we asked Joyland readers, editors, and contributors to come up with a list of "75 Books By Women All Men Should Read." We received over 250 suggestions in two hours.
The Esquire list of 75 can be found here.
Joyland Publishers list of 250 can be found here.
The bibliophilic Twitterati have been tweeting like mad all weekend, from Publisher's Weekly to independent booksellers. Roxane Gay of HTML Giant writes of the Esquire list in "The Well-Read Man,"
What’s troubling though, is the implication that men should only read literature written by men, that men don’t need to bother with books written by women, and of course, that the only great books are those written by men.
[snip]
If this most recent list of great books was the only instance where women were woefully underrepresented and where the wrong message about great writing was being sent, that would be one thing. Such is not the case. We keep having this conversation over and over and over again. Editors continue compiling these lists of great literature that completely ignore great literature by women as if books by women were never written, as if that literature doesn’t matter, as it that literature is somehow less deserving of an audience than the same old books trotted out every time we talk about great books.
Gay's is a rather blistering article (and a really juicy read!) that concludes -- besides that the list is insulting to male readers -- that
We don’t know who made this list or how the Esquire staff came up with the books they included but we do know they aren’t very well read.
OUCH!
The larger issue is, of course, the same as Virginia Woolf explicated in her seminal essay "A Room of One's Own," delivered to the Arts Society at Newnham and the Odtaa at Girton, Cambridge University, in 1928 and later published in 1929. And that is "— a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. . ." She further develops her theme of the devalued fiction by women and of women writers in an anecdote about trying to gain access to "a famous library" on the campus in order to see the MS of Thackery's so-called perfect novel, Esmond.
— but here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.
That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep for ever. Never will I wake those echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again, I vowed as I descended the steps in anger.
This introduces an extensive argument that delineates the history of money, tradition, investment, building, and endowment of hallowed halls of learning and intellectual refuge -- for men only -- in contrast to the paucity -- really, the near non-existence -- of any such for women. Is it any wonder, then, she directs to her listeners, that men produce the most works and receive the most recognition for them? Under such a long-standing system, how could it be otherwise?
With Esquire's list, we see that the world Woolf decried in England appears to persist in America today. At least, there can be little doubt that that is the impetus behind the responses to its seemingly misogynistic list.
Of course, there's only one place for this diary to go, and that is. . . Make your own list.
If you're male, make a list of 10 books (5 by men, 5 by women) every woman should read.
If you're female, make a list of 10 books (5 by men, 5 by women) every man should read.
And if you identify independently of the two traditional gender designates, make a list of 10 books to be read by your gender ID demographic.
Then everyone make a list of 6 books that everyone should read, 3 female authors, 3 male authors.
Once that's done, everyone please put down your weapons and pick up a book.