41 books sexist prof David Gilmour should read

[ismnotwasm]

Canadian novelist and professor David Gilmour ran into some trouble when he told interviewer Emily Keeler, “I’m not interested in teaching books by women.” He went on to explain that he simply didn’t love women writers enough to teach them. The one woman writer who did meet with Gilmour’s approval, Virginia Woolf, was too sophisticated for his students. He preferred the prose of the manliest of men — Hemingway, Roth, Fitzgerald, Elmore Leonard, Chekhov. There’s an unforgettable bit about eating menstrual pads — what would we do without Philip Roth?

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Gilmour’s preferences, to which he is entitled, suggest that excellence is a singular proposition. They suggest that the measure of excellence remains gender, reinforcing the desperately dated notion of white heterosexual male literary superiority.

Conversations pointing out that he is sexist are rather pointless. The sky is also blue. Today David Gilmour is the whipping boy but he is one of many people, within the academy and beyond, who have rigid, sexist ideas about what best represents modern fiction. We shouldn’t indulge in the convenient notion that he is an outlier, or a lingering remnant of the old guard.

Gilmour’s comfort in expressing his preferences so confidently, and his wide-eyed surprise at the negative response to them, are indicative of the literary culture that has, for so long, held up a singular standard. We return to this problem over and over again. There is a direct line between a syllabus like the one Gilmour might use to teach modern fiction and the table of contents of many major magazines publishing today. All the counting we do and the calls for diversity are sincere attempts, however futile, to change this calcified culture. Gilmour isn’t the problem here. Rather, we need to continue to focus our attention on the systems that produced him and those who think like him — the system that failed Gilmour so completely that he seemingly cannot fathom loving a woman writer enough to teach her work. He doesn’t deserve our outrage. He demands our pity.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/26/41_books_sexist_prof_david_gilmour_should_read/

[niyad]

1. k and r--a most interesting last paragraph

[redqueen]

2. It's so much more than just the literary culture...

Thanks for posting this.

[seabeyond]

3. well, i am a huge reader. a couple books a week, at least. there are only a handful of male writers

i will read now. too many go to sexism and misogyny as entertainment. of course, i recognize it easily and am turned off immediately. i stop reading. i am weary of today male authors. they too work so hard at defining the new and much needed improvement of the male masculinity that is so offensive.

too many books, too little time.

but then the best of the authors are the men that can right a book of women being people, and no agenda in reinforcing the creepy role conditions.

this is just one branch of our entertainment that is chalk full of misogyny.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. This is the issue:

Gilmour isn’t the problem here. Rather, we need to continue to focus our attention on the systems that produced him and those who think like him — the system that failed Gilmour so completely that he seemingly cannot fathom loving a woman writer enough to teach her work. He doesn’t deserve our outrage. He demands our pity.

HOW do we solve this bigger problem? That is the question in my mind.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. I need to think on this some more: It is not so much that he prefers a male writer and that it is

his focus as a teacher. I am fine with that. It is his thinking that only men (white men?) can be the BEST. That is what I take issue with and where I see room for an argument/discussion/conversation.

[ismnotwasm]

6. That's why I liked this article

Rather than others taking him to task; yes it's a appalling POV, but he is a symptom of a rot in the literary world, not the problem itself. He brought it to light with what he probably thought was a perfectly acceptable thing to say (although there have been enough feminist deconstruction's of, say, Hemingway, I'm not entirely convinced of his "wide-eyed innocence)

[Tuesday Afternoon]

7. well, see I have a problem wrapping my brain around how to go about this because

(surprise. surprise) Hemmingway is one of my Favorite Authors ... but, so is also Jane Austen. They have very different styles and why would I even want to compare/contrast and argue who is the better writer? Why can I not enjoy them both for what they wrote?

Who is the Better Writer and why?

I don't know.

[ismnotwasm]

8. See, it's different tastes

I got tired of Hemmingway, yet I love Steinback and have never been a huge Austin fan--(although I got an enormous kick out of "Pride, Prejudice and Zombies&quot , but I do like the Bronte sisters and I adore "Wuthering Heights"--recently I became a fan of Thomas Pynchon--who is by no means a feminist author, although his few female characters get their power from sex, and sexuality he'll slyly point out that's they are reduced to getting their power from their sexuality.

As a Sci-Fi fan I had to wait for female authors to reveal themselves or for me to become aware of them (Heinlein is another author I got tired of) and what literary lights were waiting there. Atwood, Butler, LeGuin, to name the ones people are most familiar with.

Literature I think, has more than a gender problem, it has a snob problem.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

9. yes, It is the Snob and not so much a gender issue. I also adore the Brontes as well as Mark Twain .

I just can not reduce literature in this way. If one wants to focus on Male authors, I have no problem with that. However, if one wants to make the blanket statement that Great Literature comes ONLY from Male Authors then That is different but, would I want to waste my time arguing the subject with such a person? No, I myself would not want to argue it and would prefer to focus my energy on a different aspect of misogyny in our (the world's) society.

[seabeyond]

10. there is definitely the snob factor.i think more so than any gender issue, when i have heard

people talk authors and books, i hear the snob factor way more. and just the better reader is that of the male writer. absolutely. good point