This weekend I will mostly be reliving my American studies degree …

By reading THIS:

 

Which is a study of American female writers from colonial times to the present. It’s been getting some good reviews, notably here and here, and I have fond memories of Elaine Showalter’s excellent “Female Malady” which, despite focusing on British women and how their mental illnesses were treated, or mistreated, over the decades.

From what I’ve read in the reviews so far I like the fact Showalter appears to strike a balance between studying how their gender defined their writing in many ways but emphasising that legitimate criticism is legitimate criticism. I cannot stand it when a book is revered just because author is of a particular gender/race/sexuality, it’s patronising and does none of us any favours.

I don’t always believe in the argument ‘well you’re viewing it through a heterodox perspective and judging it through mainstream standards blah blah’, yes, this is valid in some cases – it irritates me beyond belief that ‘the great American novel’ does often seem to be ‘the great white male American novel about a middle aged white man acting out his midlife crisis through a text of almost hysterical masculinity, I’m looking at YOU Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Bret Easton Ellis ad nauseam – but sometimes a shit book is just a shit book, regardless of the background of the author.

In fact, as I was idly googling the book I found Salon’s article on the subject, which initiates discussion on this very issue – why no woman has (supposedly) written the great American novel (which, incidentally, has to yet to be written IMHO), how women form by predominate bulk of book buyers and now the novel may be dying out as more people turn to non-fiction, memoirs and the like.

Anyway I’ll start paging through it this weekend and let you know. I’m also wading through an excellent biography of Darwin as well at the moment so it should make for an interesting pairing 😉

And what are YOU reading?