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Gertrude Stein: “Unreadable, Self-Indulgent And Excruciatingly Boring.”
Required Readings


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However, it also makes me question my own reading. Am I buying into the same types of prejudices if I generally avoid reading books by men? There are a handful of male authors I read. But, if I'm roaming a bookstore looking for something new, I pretty much only look at a book if the author is female. I don't really read romance novels or what's defined as chick-lit, so I'm talking about mostly what's shelved in the literature/mystery/science fiction(to a lesser extent) sections. I read a lot and have found that I just enjoy the voices of women writers more.
So, is my buying hurting the cause of gender equity even though my money goes to support female authors?
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The other thing is I read a lot of classics, so the gender parity isn't quite there. There's just a longer history of when male authors dominated. I don't know ANY 19th century American women writers (well, Allcot), but I generally don't like that period in literature.
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Jack Kerouac on the other hand...
Now there's a supposedly muscular, energetic, masculine writer whom I loathe.
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@missteenwordpower is your sexy Ms. Magoo.: Hemingway makes me want to punch HIM in the face. I've already suffered too much.
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@emilyanne: ME TOO! He's terrible!
Also, @everyone, it's interesting that the general consensus is that modernism is boring. I find that postmodernist lit is much more boring in that in following no rules it sometimes gets lost in itself. I'd take the fragmentation of modernism over the self-centeredness of postmodernism anyday.
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I'm laughing right now. I suppose that I'm mincing words - "action" and "energy" are two very different things, as you've pointed out. Even fleeing war with your pregnant girlfriend in a rowboat during a storm in A Farewell to Arms is kinda tedious.
For the record, though, I love Hemingway.
@Mama Penguino: Where did you obtain that tape?! That's almost as cool as Borroughs' "Thanksgiving Prayer", which is possibly my favorite reading ever.
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That apart I think Showalter's book looks interesting.
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It has a wonderful quote from my crush, Ian McEwan, saying: "When women stop reading, the novel will be dead."
Every piece of market research done by publishers, booksellers and outside organizations like PEN and NEA comes up with roughly that number (having worked in publishing for nearly 15 years, I'm very familiar with those studies).
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@interpretedworld: Hurrah! We need all the good women we can get!
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One look at the book cover design for a number of talented female writers says otherwise.
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That being said, at least in my experience, professors in writing programs aren't just pushing males as the guiding lights anymore, which is encouraging.
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I so wish I had gone to a college where professors weren't pushing men as the guiding lights. I think part of the reason I work primarily with women writers now is that I was so estrogen-deprived when I got my degree.
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On the other hand, her advice for budding writers was "Marry someone rich," so...
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@Khrushchev: Oh, dear. That is sad.
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I've noticed that the covers on the paperback versions of Alice Munro's most recent books have been pretty pink. I don't know why it bothers me, but it does.
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I didn't know that was the critical consensus re: Stein.
Good call, critical consensus!
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