Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [138]
Some author—I can’t remember who—said that fiction is born from a disordered mind’s desire to create order. I think that my fixation with “found families” comes from that place. Life is messy; the family you’re born into doesn’t always function the way you wish it would, but when you grow up you get to pick the people who you’ll spend your life with. That idea’s always comforted me, and I think it’s one that resonates with readers, who might identify with Annie, and her rivalry with her sister, or Bettina and Jules, who each wind up parenting their own parents, or India, whose family failed her so completely. There was something so satisfying about a scenario in which all of the women get a second chance, to build a better family, and I liked exploring the choices that each one of them made.
When you begin crafting a character, what tends to come first for you—their name? Personality? Physical attributes?
Usually, it’s knowing how they sound that comes first. I start hearing their voices. Then I figure out their names. Then—belatedly and badly—I come up with their physical attributes. Then my first readers point out that every woman in the book is tall and blond. Then I go back and fix it.
In the past year, you have been an outspoken critic of the New York Times Book Review for what you see as their bias towards covering “literary” versus “commercial” fiction, as well as their tendency towards reviewing books by male authors more frequently than those by women. How related are these two issues, in your mind? In the ten years since you published your first novel, have you seen any changes in the way that commercial fiction or female authors are covered by major review outlets?
Ah, yes. My ill-advised quest for equality in book reviewing, which began with a guy who does interviews about what kind of hand-sewn shirts he prefers calling me a fake populist, peaked when a quote-unquote literary novelist said I had no right to be reviewed because I “churn out” a book every year and sell them at Target (shocking!), and ended with the editor of a highbrow publishing house making fun of my made-up German in the New York Times. What a fun-filled few months it was.
Honestly, it seemed like such a basic thing to point out: the Timesreviews bestselling mysteries and thrillers and genre books that men read and write. Shouldn’t the paper of record cover genre fiction written by and for women, too? Turns out, the answer is “no!” And also, the answer is “ur boox suck!” And that was just what I was hearing from my family. Being a standard-bearer? Not a lot of fun.
All kidding aside, there’s two issues. One is that genre fiction by women does not get the attention that genre fiction by men does. The second, in my mind related concern, is that literary fiction by women does not get the attention that literary fiction by men does. A woman can write a brilliant literary book, get two great reviews, and maybe, like Mona Simpson, get profiled in the Times’ Styles section, where much will be made about her apparel and her hairstyle. A man can write a brilliant literary book, and the double review is only the beginning—there’s the long, loving magazine profile (the Sunday TimesMagazine rarely writes up female authors, and, when it does, instead of the warm embrace, they are held at arm’s length—“The Strange Fiction of Suzanne Collins,” anyone?), the op-ed pieces and book reviews he’ll be asked to contribute, the talk shows and magazine covers he’ll end up on.
After Jodi Picoult and I raised the issue, Slate ran the numbers and found that of the 545 books reviewed between June 29, 2008 and August 27, 2010, 62 percent were by men. Of the 101 books in that period that were reviewed twice, a whopping 71 percent were written by men. A few months later, an organization named VIDA did a study revealing that the ratio of men to women published was even worse in literary magazines and quarterlies like The New Republic and The Paris Review (edited by Mr. Made-to-Measure. Who was quickly profiled in the Times).