More on “The Weenie Roast” aka PW Top 10
December 3, 2009
Amy King has another longish post on “The Weenie Roast” (aka the Publishers Weekly Top 10, which I posted about twice before). I recommend reading both of Amy’s posts and considering the issue for yourself.
In her most recent entry, Amy gets at the heart of my disagreement. Funny thing is, I essentially agree with her on the basic notion that the PW list is suspect. But I can’t agree with two important points:
1) I won’t condemn the authors on the PW list or hyper-focus on their gender because of their inclusion in the list. Victor Lavalle’s novel Big Machine is a great read, male protagonist or no. Blake Bailey’s biography of John Cheever is entertaining and– judging from the lack of complaints– relatively accurate… a welcome entry even if it is, as Amy King so eloquently puts it, “all about a man.”
2) I don’t believe that authors of fiction have a single, required mission/responsibility as Amy King does. She writes:
“I dare say that very few of those books on the list will bear the responsibility I see writers as having: to be critics of the usual, old dominant ideals and to expose those ideals rather than simply transmitting them yet again. That involves telling stories unheard and bearing witness to injustices as well as ways of being that debunk these tireless violent notions of conquering lands and peoples or just the world in our immediate vicinities. Because frankly, those kinds of stories have been over-told and lead down a worn-out road far too often taken.”
No, the books on this list don’t bear that “responsibility” and thank God for that! There are a few straw (sorry) men in this single paragraph, the most relevant and obvious being that if a work of fiction doesn’t take on this social role, the story will be “over-told” and take a “worn-out road.” This simplistic notion is belied by examples of the books themselves, such as Lavalle’s funny, moving, sometimes surreal novel.
Incidental note: WILLA’s list isn’t much of an antidote, being as undifferentiated as it is. I can’t determine what the list is trying to accomplish, but if WILLA is really trying to make a selection of the best books of the year by women, it needs to avoid tokenism of its own, for example Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, a decidedly mediocre novel by an often outstanding author.
Tags:
Publishing, sexism
content rss
December 3rd, 2009 at 9:32 am
Flaws in the list aside, all I’ll say is if “the responsibility” of writers is “to be critics of the usual, old dominant ideals and to expose those ideals rather than simply transmitting them yet again” where does that leave a good number of writers (or even readers) who actually believe there is value in certain old, dominant ideals? Apparently Ms King believe all writers are (or should be) “progressive”.
December 4th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
I’m fairly certain I fall a fair bit to the left on a spectrum that would include the word progressive, but I’m old-fashioned too: I think the storytellers sole obligation is to the story, wherever their honest composition takes them. Nor do I believe, as King does, that these modes are all played out, a conservative aesthetic stance, but one that is at least based on reading work before deciding what I think about them.