The advance rave reviews and, especially, the Time magazine cover story on Jonathan Franzen have prompted an interesting backlash from other novelists.
Instead of being happy that a novel has been deemed worthy of the sort of press treatment accorded to movies or TV shows in 2010, Twitter and Facebook have been filled with barely supressed writer jealousy over the way that the mainstream media have been gushing over a novel that isn’t even in bookstores yet (“Freedom” goes on sale Tuesday).
Bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult (below) seems to be the one who is most upset about the situation. She is especially annoyed by the fact that The New York Times has already published two rave reviews of “Freedom.”
“It is my personal opinion that yes, the Times favors white male authors,” Picoult told the The NYTPicker blog.
“That isn’t to say someone else might get a good review — only that if you are white and male and living in Brooklyn you have better odds, or so it seems.”
Novelist and agent Jason Pinter wrote a wonderful piece for the Huffington Post earlier this week in which Picoult and another hugely popular novelist, Jennifer Weiner, vented their frustration over the way that commercial novelists — and commercial women novelists, in particular — are treated by the media.
Weiner is a terrific writer — and produces one of the best feeds on Twitter — and she wisely steers around attacking “white male authors” in favor of talking about the “double standard” faced by novelists such as herself.
“I think it’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book — in short, it’s something unworthy of a serious critic’s attention.”
Compounding the irony of this situation — when it comes to The New York Times, specifically — is the fact that the paper’s top reviewer (Michiko Kakutani) and major back-up reviewer (Janet Maslin) are both women.
Weiner: “The only mention my books have ever gotten from The Times have been occasional single sentence and, if I’m lucky, dependent clause in a Janet Maslin flyover piece: ‘Look! Here’s a bunch of books that have nothing in common but spring release dates and lady authors!’ I don’t write literary fiction — I write books that are entertaining, but are also, I hope well-
constructed and thoughtful and funny and have things to say about…life in America today. Do I think I should be getting all of the attention that Jonathan ‘Genius’ Franzen gets? Nope. Would I like to be taken at least as seriously as a Jonathan Tropper or a Nick Hornby? Absolutely.”
Perhaps the rising tension within the publishing industry — is the book dying? will devices like the Kindle and the nook really take off? what happens to the traditional business model when bookstores disappear? — is starting to get to even the most commercially successful novelists.
The writers are fighting among themselves rather than banding together to face the looming challenges.
Last week, one publishing industry executive speculated that a total switch to books-on-devices such as the Kindle would mean the end of the highly remunerative sales figures represented by the average reader who buys five or six paperbacks a year. Would those people, the exec asked, purchase a device that they would only use a few times a year?
