cohu's blog

“So what does it actually mean to write like a woman, or a man for that matter? Sadly, absolutely nothing. Men actually write “women’s books” all the time, but they’re certainly never labelled as such. When male writers write about relationships, family and the domestic sphere, fiction or non, they’re considered groundbreaking and often celebrated for it. While female-authored works are disdainfully labelled “diary-like” or “confessional,” male writers get “courageous” and “candid” for their epic family sagas and autobiographical musings. Take for example Esquire magazine’s recent list of “the greatest works of literature ever published,” a list for male readers that included, without acknowledgment, 74 men and only one female author. Lists like this reveal that it’s not actually the topic of writing the status quo rejects, but rather the sex of the person penning it. We tend to only respect a woman’s writing when she writes what’s not expected of her, yet we don’t apply the same rule to male writers.”

via Write like a man: The unspoken rule for avoiding the pink cover | Afterword | National Post.

Everyone loves to hate Eat Pray Love. The New Yorker did a looong review of the movie version which basically consisted of many paraphrases of “AVOID THIS CRAP”. They already slammed the book version when it came out, as far as I remember, so why did they even bother discussing the movie? Did they think a Hollywood adaptation with Julia Roberts would give the material more intellectual depth? The Slate Audio Book Club devoted a show to Gilbert’s book, too, and again, they hated it to varying degrees.

I read the book, found it a bit vapid and disappointing (in the sense that I felt Gilbert could not really convey her own psychological and/or spiritual breakthroughs). The woman seemed nice enough, though, and isn’t it the point of a memoir – a book about yourself, after all! – to be egocentric, that is, centered on yourself, your own problems, however irrelevant to the world at large they may be?

Yes, it’s about a white upper middle class woman who has a midlife crisis. She gets over it by taking time off, traveling, and doing some “spiritual” stuff somewhere in Asia. Then she meets a guy, he proposes, The End. It didn’t contain big philosophical revelations (most books don’t.) Yet some of the criticism was just completely over the top. How dare this woman, who is, after all, just a white upper middle class woman from America, talk about herself at that length? Everyone knows white upper middle class women from America are the epitome of BORING and IRRELEVANT!!!1!1 And how dare people find her interesting and buy her book and turn it into a bestseller!??

People, ignore the superficial writings of these People Who Cannot Know The World Because They Have Ovaries. Listen to the neurotic, egocentric, self-absorbed rants of white upper middle class men, instead – the sages and savants of our age. Read whyJonathan Safran Foer worries about sausage, ponder Jonathan Franzens take on dysfunctional families (My parents forced me to finish the rutabaga and that’s why I like sniffing furniture!), or let yourself be enlightened by the philosophical insights of Lester Burnham: “I have lost something. I’m not exactly sure what it is but I know I didn’t always feel this… sedated. But you know what? It’s never too late to get it back.” –  That’s some real, deep wisdom right there, man.

Is it just a coincidence that on the exact day Arthur Sulzberger admits that some time in the future, the NYT will have to give up its print edition – the NYT features a long article on how newspapers can be used successfully to fend off weeds?

…ist vorbei. Zumindest in Cohus Haushalt, habe alles Brauchbare bei Momox verscherbelt und den Rest weggeworfen. Wenn das nur bei Büchern auch so einfach wäre…einige Schmuckstücke ausgenommen, die dann in einer schönen Vitrine ihren Platz fänden, gefällt mir die Vorstellung, irgendwann alles Gedruckte auf einem Kindle o.ä. unterzubringen und mich von den Billyregalen zu verabschieden. Unter deutschen Geisteswissenschaftlern und Bildungsbürgern darf man das ja kaum sagen, aber: Ich finde Bücher nicht soooo toll. Ihren Inhalt natürlich schon, manchmal.