This week, a bookseller working at Waterstones in Uxbridge said on social media that, while they had never had a female customer say “I don’t read books written by men”, male customers tell them they don’t read women at least once or twice a month. This, predictably, led to a cacophony of “not all men”s, and the original point was somewhat lost. It’s certainly true that there are male readers out there who read women: my father, for one, loves Ursula K Le Guin and James Tiptree Jr (aka Alice Bradley Sheldon), has read The Golden Notebook and greatly admires the work of Gitta Sereny. (He also introduced me to the poetry of Hera Lindsay Bird.) Several of my male friends read women, too. I remember a few years back being pathetically impressed when my friend, a neuroscientist, said his favourite author was Virginia Woolf.
So, I’m aware such readers exist. But the fact remains that many men continue to be put off by a female name on a book cover, especially if that cover looks cutesy or at all feminine – just look at the books of Elena Ferrante, one of the greatest novelists writing today. As Groff said, male novelists and critics too rarely cite women writers as influences. What we consider “great literature” continues to be shaped by men, because too many men only consider other men to be worthy competitors (and indeed, maybe such novelists aren’t so much interested in learning about humanity as they are in learning about other male novelists, so that they can then strive to better them).
Much has been made of the notion that the era of the “Great White Male Novelist” is coming to a close. Readers are crying out for new voices, but I remain unconvinced they’ll get the attention they deserve. The privileged do not relinquish their power so easily; they’ll continue to read and recommend one another, glad-handing those that fit the mould, offering those vital leg-ups that are elusive not just to female authors, but authors from other backgrounds, too. I overheard at a party recently that if you don’t have a quote from a male novelist on your novel then it won’t do well. While I doubt such a generalisation is completely true, it did strike fear into this first-time novelist. (All my endorsements are from – brilliant – women.)
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