{"id":2551,"date":"2022-11-22T11:25:56","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T11:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=2551"},"modified":"2022-11-22T11:27:20","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T11:27:20","slug":"chronicling-the-death-of-literary-criticism-the-women-writers-the-media-do-not-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2022\/11\/22\/chronicling-the-death-of-literary-criticism-the-women-writers-the-media-do-not-review\/","title":{"rendered":"CHRONICLING THE DEATH OF LITERARY CRITICISM: THE WOMEN WRITERS THE MEDIA DO NOT REVIEW"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back in August I wrote a post called \u201cChronicling the Death of Literature (II): The Writer as Influencer<\/a>\u201d in which I referred mainly to top-selling American author Colleen Hoover as the main example of the writer who succeeds despite lacking the support of the conventional media and thanks to the social media. I return to this topic today inspired by an article published a few days ago in El Pa\u00eds<\/em> by Bego\u00f1a G\u00f3mez Urs\u00e1iz, \u201cLas autoras hiperventas que apenas salen en los medios de comunicaci\u00f3n<\/a>\u201d [The hiper-selling women authors who hardly ever appear in the media]. This is illustrated with portraits of El\u00edsabet Benavent, Luz Gab\u00e1s, Alice Kellen and Megan Maxwell, the top-selling women Spanish authors (Kellen and Maxwell are pennames).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The subtitle of the article is \u201cThe hierarchies already smashed decades ago in the world of music and cinema persist in the book world, where a system prevails that keeps segregated best-sellers from literary fiction\u201d (my translation). There is a lot to unpack in this sentence. G\u00f3mez Urs\u00e1iz means that quality publications (newspapers, magazines) routinely review popular cinema and music, so that nobody is surprised if a superhero movie or Taylor Swift\u2019s newest album are reviewed. Reviewing is not limited, certainly, as it used to be decades ago, to arthouse cinema or classical\/cultured music, but this does not mean that the \u2018hierarchy\u2019 is totally gone in all artistic fields. Swift may reap many Grammys, but no summer blockbuster has reaped many Oscars (an award that is becoming increasingly irrelevant because of that). In fact, not even the Grammys are that open: Rosal\u00eda lost to Swift in this edition, and was awarded \u2018only\u2019 Latino Grammys. The Queen of Pop is the Queen of Pop, and she is an Anglophone native speaker. When superhero movies are reviewed, I\u2019ll add, they don\u2019t get the same respect as the latest film by any unknown director from Kazakhstan. I watch religiously La 2\u2019s D\u00edas de cine<\/em> every Friday and I know what I am talking about. I always end up choosing the films to watch by checking their ratings on IMDB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Returning to G\u00f3mez Urs\u00e1iz subtitle, she alludes to the \u2018system\u2019 that keeps best-sellers segregated from literary fiction. This is a classic error of the Spanish media: any best-selling book is automatically assumed to be non-literary commercial fiction, which makes it impossible to explain the high sales of some literary fiction. The journalist actually means that the Spanish media only review literary fiction (of the kind that might win a \u2018Nacional de Narrativa\u2019 or a Nobel prize), whereas genre fiction is generally ignored, with some exceptions mainly constituted by detective fiction and historical novels. In contrast, The Guardian<\/em>, for instance, reviews all types of genres, from the highly literary to children\u2019s fiction. For me the problem, then, is not that the Spanish media do not review best-selling fiction but that their literary critics do not know how to review genre fiction. G\u00f3mez Urs\u00e1iz misses reviews of, in essence, romance fiction; I miss reviews of science fiction and, in general, a capacity to explain why particular books succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            So, the gist of the matter is that the Spanish top-selling women writers are not being reviewed in the media because of the genres they practice and not really because they are women, as the journalist hints. Their best-selling male peers are reviewed because they usually practice genres that have passed the media\u2019s snobbish cut, though my impression is that the men who write romance or YA fiction face similar problems (I\u2019m thinking here of John Green). G\u00f3mez Urs\u00e1iz seems convinced that there is a prejudice against Benavent, Gab\u00e1s, Kellen, Maxwell and others because they are women writing for women and practising genres usually addressed to women, but although I do acknowledge that misogyny is part of the problem, I think that she fails to exert any critical judgement on their work. The more critical attention popular fiction accrues, the better its prose becomes, as it is known from the cases of detective fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, the gothic, and so on. The misogynistic prejudice has prevented much YA and romance from being taken seriously as objects of review, which means that nobody has pointed out to writers or readers how these novels could be improved. The writers, of course, do not work with an eye on the reviews (which usually makes authors take care of their standards) but to please an audience guided only by popular taste. And they are pleased indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Here I sound as horrifyingly snobbish as Babelia<\/em>\u2019s critic Domingo R\u00f3denas de Moya, a professor of Literature at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, whose opinions, quoted in G\u00f3mez Urs\u00e1iz\u2019s article are rather alarming. According to him, culture supplements in newspapers have the mission to guide demanding readers and, so, if these readers come across a review of a novel by, for instance, El\u00edsabet Benavent, they might wrongly assume \u201cthis is literature, and in my opinion it is not. Those books must be dealt in the pages of newspapers as what they are, phenomena of cultural sociology\u201d. This means that only the sociologist can explain the success of Benavent, Gab\u00e1s, Kellen or Maxwell, when it is really up to us, academic literary critics, to do our job and explain why certain genres attract readers, what kinds of readers they are and whether they apply any critical judgement to what they read. My main worry is how critics defending R\u00f3denas\u2019s same position have failed to educate the reading public for them to demand more sophisticated prose, though perhaps the case is that very few people read Babelia<\/em> and similar supplements. For me, the main problem is not at all what the authors narrate but how they narrate it. I did try to read Gab\u00e1s\u2019s Palmeras en la nieve<\/em> but although I cared very much for her plot, I couldn\u2019t stand her corny prose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I have narrated here, however, my own problems to read Moby Dick<\/em>, and I\u2019d like to approach the issue I am discussing from this other angle: form. Naturally, when we read we pay attention simultaneously to two aspects: content and form. If the content is exciting we may accept as readers limitations in form (including style); this is usually the case in the top-selling fiction that literary critics do not review, from your basic formula novel to the authors I have mentioned here. When content and form are balanced, by which I mean that the excitement of reading is not spoiled by bad dialogue or purple prose, then you reach that middlebrow level at which the media start paying attention, whether this is genre fiction or general realist fiction, from Stephen King to Arturo P\u00e9rez Reverte, from Hillary Mantel to Sally Rooney. The more demanding literary critics, like R\u00f3denas, are mostly interested, however, in the novels whose form is far more visible than its content; only that explains that Modernist fiction like Ulysses<\/em> still fascinates and that postmodern monstrosities like Gravity\u2019s Rainbow<\/em> are considered masterpieces. In Moby Dick<\/em> the form overwhelms the content, which almost kills the joy of reading for the story. In the novels by the women novelists mentioned here all the energy is focused on the storytelling, which far less care for the form. Readers who just don\u2019t care too much for form are pleased enough and, it seems, entertained, which is the whole point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The media literary critics should make a note of this because they are being bypassed by the social media, from which the majority of readers get the information on books. I have mentioned many times here how I check GoodReads before I begin a book, as I read it, and when I finish it. I do write reviews of academic work because I still think that they are necessary, but when it comes to fiction I just think that reading one person\u2019s opinion is too limited. GoodReads carries readers\u2019 reviews of all types but, on the whole, I find that ratings are reliable. You can be sure that a 4-star book is fine, provided you are interested in the subject matter of the book in question. If you don\u2019t like love stories you won\u2019t care for a romance novel, no matter how highly valued this is. As for literary fiction, one thing I find is that readers are usually very honest about its merits because they are not thinking of posterity, or the history of literature, but about whether a book is worth reading. Masterpieces I teach in class as the best fiction inherited from the past often receive damning reviews in GoodReads; books that should sink into oblivion are praised to the skies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            So, to conclude, it\u2019s funny that newspapers like El Pa\u00eds<\/em> reflect on the best-selling women novelists in Spain but still fail to reflect on the increasingly absurd role that newspapers\u2019 cultural supplements are playing today, in a world dominated by social media. Correcting R\u00f3denas, what sociologists should examine is how the literary critic of his type still has any authority (or simply power to guide others) in the world of social media. I am not saying that the media and academia should make no effort to judge quality, whatever that means, and offer guidance to as many readers as possible. What I am saying is that we are, and have always been, part of a much larger world of opinion, expressed in sales for centuries and in the social media in the 21st<\/sup> century. Get used to it. And give these novelists a try, they might have something interesting to say even to us, academic snobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in August I wrote a post called \u201cChronicling the Death of Literature (II): The Writer as Influencer\u201d in which I referred mainly to top-selling American author Colleen Hoover as the main example of the writer who succeeds despite lacking the support of the conventional media and thanks to the social media. I return to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[799,22],"tags":[804,801,800,803,806,805],"class_list":["post-2551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-criticism","category-literary-studies","tag-alice-keller","tag-babelia","tag-el-pais","tag-elisabet-benavent","tag-luz-gabas","tag-meghan-maxwell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551","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=2551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2552,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551\/revisions\/2552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}