{"id":211,"date":"2011-04-29T20:01:37","date_gmt":"2011-04-29T18:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=211"},"modified":"2011-04-29T20:01:37","modified_gmt":"2011-04-29T18:01:37","slug":"the-handsome-academic-and-the-woman-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2011\/04\/29\/the-handsome-academic-and-the-woman-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"THE HANDSOME ACADEMIC AND THE WOMAN WRITER"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tMy good friend Jos\u00e9 Francisco Fern\u00e1ndez S\u00e1nchez, from the University of Almer\u00eda, emails me to announce good news: the volume gathering together the complete short stories by Margaret Drabble, A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman<\/em>, is just out (see http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Day-Life-Smiling-Woman-Complete\/dp\/0547550405<\/a>). He\u2019s the proud, happy editor. Congratulations!! Jos\u00e9 Francisco includes in his message a link to a radio interview with Drabble, in which the volume\u2019s publication is discussed (http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/04\/24\/135611071\/stories-of-changing-english-life-in-smiling-woman<\/a>). A delighted Drabble explains that \u201cHe wrote to me and he said, \u2018I\u2019ve assembled all your stories\u2019 (…) and he edited the text, and he’d just done it out of pure love. (…). It was a bit like a fairy story, to find a handsome young man who really loved your work and wanted to see it in print.\u201d I must smile, for he is<\/em> handsome \u2013and this is a fact, not an opinion. And yes, I can imagine how she must have felt, getting this marvellous token of admiration for her talent…
\n\tHere\u2019s the funny thing: I dare not send the link with Drabble\u2019s praise of Jos\u00e9 Francisco to our national AEDEAN email list for I\u2019m not sure whether Drabble\u2019s sweet comment will be welcomed by our academic peers. Will they sneer? Will Jos\u00e9 Francisco\u2019s efforts be mocked by some envious academic, spurned by his or her idol? Ugly of me to suspect my own peers yes, I know, but I\u2019ve seen worse… Still, I feel that he deserves much praise for what Drabble reads, correctly, as an act of \u2018pure love.\u2019 So, here\u2019s my entry, to remind ourselves that what we do for academic reasons is often not so far from a fan\u2019s passionate dedication. And it is often shared by other fans, as you can see from the rapturous reviews the volume has got from a handful of admiring readers at Amazon.com.
\n\tOf course, what I\u2019m itching to say is that, inevitably, as a woman, I notice the gender issues raised by Drabble\u2019s grateful praise of Jos\u00e9 Francisco\u2019s homage. Fancy a male writer saying this of a female academic in our times… Yet, this is also the time when, finally, a male academic can kneel at the feet of a female writer and show truly felt admiration. This happens in the same week when, here in Spain, a fragile, 85-year-old Ana Mar\u00eda Matute is finally awarded the third Cervantes prize received by a woman writer in 35 years. No wonder Nuria Amat complained that women writers working in Spanish are still ninguneadas<\/em> (see http:\/\/www.uimp.es\/blogs\/prensa\/2009\/06\/23\/nuria-amat-critica-que-las-escritoras-hispanas-son-ocultadas-por-el-mercado-editor-la-academia-la-critica-y-los-lectores\/<\/a> ).
\n\tSo: handsome the man, yes, but even more handsome the gesture, the book. I just wish many other, male and female, academics would learn from the example and do more for the love of the women who write.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My good friend Jos\u00e9 Francisco Fern\u00e1ndez S\u00e1nchez, from the University of Almer\u00eda, emails me to announce good news: the volume gathering together the complete short stories by Margaret Drabble, A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, is just out (see http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Day-Life-Smiling-Woman-Complete\/dp\/0547550405). He\u2019s the proud, happy editor. Congratulations!! Jos\u00e9 Francisco includes in his message […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}