Well, more shots are being fired as we speak. (Disclaimer: I love love love Jennifer Weiner. If she asked me to babysit for her child, I probably would, even though I cannot stand children. And I haven't read Prep or The Wonder Spot.)
Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of Prep, has written a review of Melissa Bank's sophomore effort, The Wonder Spot. An incredibly cattty, awful-for-women everywhere, review. Bank's first novel, The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, is sort of the first book to begin the ChickLit deluge in America. (Bridget Jones' and Girl's Guide being the first two books to really launch the genre.) It's been a long time since she'd published it, and I think the world was ready for the next book. So out it comes--and Jennifer Weiner wrote a very nice, very well-rounded review of it for Entertainment Weekly--and it is what it is. Which, I think, is ChickLit. But that's okay! ChickLit is good!
Unless you're Curtis Sittenfeld, that is. Please read Weiner's response to Sittenfeld's review. It expresses the horror that I feel about the situation. I can't understand why someone would want to position themselves with the big boys (all those pretentious men who write *ahem* "literary fiction"), a group of men who, I'm sorry, probably feel pretty superior to the "little women" who write ChickLit. Curtis Sittenfeld, less you be confused by the name, is a woman. I'm not saying she has to love every book written by a woman, but I am saying that it is really unfair of her to diss a book just because it might be (nebulously) categorized as ChickLit.
This is just one more example of women being catty to women, in order to prove to men that she is worthy of running with the big dogs. It's fucked up. I really was thinking about reading Prep. I still might. But I'm pretty sure I cannot come away from it with a good opinion. It's Sittenfeld's fault, really. (And honestly, I didn't even like Banks' first book that much. I just bristle at the implication that if your book is "classified" by some suit in an office as chicklit, you're not a serious author.)
I know that a book review is an impression by one person about a book, and that no author is required to have a favorable opinion of another. This just reeks of something else to me.
Despite my best intentions, I followed the link to Ms. In Her Shoes' site. My only impression, having not read anything by her, Bank, or Sittenfield? The lady doth protest too much. I felt like the only way her review of the review made sense was if it was intentionally ridiculously meta. I mean, responding to cattiness with cattiness had to have been an intentional, ironic twist, right?
Also, a cursory peek at amazon.com for the cover art of these books reveals the neither Prep nor Bank's book have hot pink on the cover, which bodes well for them. I believe it was Shakespeare, or perhaps Chaucer, who said: "Those who have sandwiched their words between hot pink covers have doomed them to eternal irrelevance."
Posted by: Tim | June 08, 2005 at 10:04 AM
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, Prep has a hot pink belt on the cover. But I don't think that's what makes a book irrelevant.
Posted by: Manogirl | June 08, 2005 at 11:20 AM
I stand corrected. The belt is indeed hot pink. Based on this scientific study, I would say Melissa Bank is your clear winner.
Posted by: Tim | June 08, 2005 at 11:25 AM