all? GN: Oh, now, tush. I didn't even raise the topic or make the generic claim or argue that well-defined gender roles are a recent creation of largely female writers, though I don't doubt there is a vast scholarly literature on it. I argued you Pope because you quoted me Pope. I argue Shakeshaft because I like Shakeshaft. Even though I do carry the putrescent world view of a mind raised in the San Fernando Valley. Plus, I don't let my little head *worry* about achieving a *correct* interpretation of Shakeshaft, one that was better or more PC than when I was 20. I did pretty well when I was 20. In my living room is a reproduction of the Hubble Deep field (North), the telescopes first charting of some 1,500 galaxies averaging some 200 billiion stars each at about 13 billion light year's distance. 1. I will never understand that. 2. I will never understand Shakeshaft. 3. But I enjoy trying. Therefore, it doesn't bother me that my reconstructed Bach is not what Bach heard. It's Bach nonetheless.
Margaret:
My problem is that men's depictions of women, with very few exceptions, ring out with all the believability of a lead bell. I think there are credible reasons put forward by feminist critics to explain and account for this discrepancy, but i don't believe that feminism creates it.
GN: I don't speculate about list member's motives or problems because that prepares the way for ad hominem trashing. Your problem is what it is. My problem, were I to think about this somewhat further, is not that men are poorly depicting women or women poorly depicting men or whatever, but that most of what is written (speaking about novels) is garbage and to treat it in the least bit seriously gives it a dignity which it does not merit. It's not just that the gender representations are bad; it's that everything is bad, the character's situation, his analysis of it, what he does, where he goes, what he thinks.
There is a more serious issue than how people are gonadially represented. That issue is how intelligent people are represented. I find that there is systematic misrepresentation of what goes in smart people's heads by dumb writers. That does not mean you can't have a powerful or even brilliant work about average and dumb people, like the movie A Simple Plan or the play Of Mice and Men. What I'm saying is that when purportedly smart people are being represented they are being represented by people who haven't a foggiest clue of what it is to be smart. Now Hamlet, now there's a class act. It's not that the play is a brilliant play about an ordinary fellow in bad circumstances; no; Hamlet is an absolutely first rate brilliantly insightful character brilliantly represented. So that the play is a brilliant play about a brilliant man, as opposed to A Simple Plan, which is a (possibly brilliant, and at the very least, very good) movie about an Average Man, His Wife, and Several Dumb Fucks.
Now, no one seems to be talking about the systematic misreprensation and underrepresentation of smart people in literature, because if the truth were known, I find interesting people the most interesting ones to read about, as a general rule. And when I read bad literature I get neither interesting people nor even dumb people in a particularly interesting situation.
The obsession about gender/gonadial representation is off the mark because it leads us perilously close to this situation, i.e., where not-so-bright people criticizing not-so-bright authors for their not-very-realistic depictions of females or males, or alternatively praise other not-so-bright authors for their depictions because some capricious interaction between self and other has set off a light bulb which says, "Ah this is right." This is enough to make one want to scream.
So to say that "these days" writing by "most men about women" is not as good as "most women about men" is one of those statements which leaves me plumb astonied. Because how could one ever tell, given that most of what men write about men is crap and most of what women write about women is crap, too. It follows that there will never be a shortage of bad writing by men about women and by women about men. But to make generalizations about men generally which does not start, as it ought, with the agreed condition that most writing by both sexes will rarely rise above the imbecilic is to miss the point utterly, for imbecility is the only generalization with which we are safe (Which, btw, is Pope's point). And to make the claim that amongst this sea of drek it is possible to discern a trend, that the crap written by women is more realistic about men (in the opinion of some women) than the crap written by men is about women (in the opinion of some men?) is to compound the fundamentals with a highly questionable claim.
And what about the Jesus literature? There's a lot of pot boiler novels out there by this crowd for this crowd. Are Jesus redemption novels included in this claim, ie, Jesus women writing about men is better than Jesus men writing about women? It ought to hold true. Or are we saying that since this genre is junk that we discount it? So we are saying that "good novels by men" are not as good as "good novels by women"? But if good novels by men cannot depict women then are they really good novels? Are we to say that men can't write, or that when we pick up a good novel by a man, that we should expect good male characters only, and twiddle our thumbswhile waiting for the women characters to get off stage so we can go back to the "real" part of the novel?
Now, if I said, "I read women's novels for their depiction of women, because I know they cannot possibly depict a man, as a general rule, so I just read the women's parts and wait for the men to clear out of the scene" would I not be dismissed as a fatuous ass? And wouldn't I deserve it?
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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