Emperor Franzen vs. Girl Power

Jonathan Franzen’s novel “Freedom” does what most current fiction fails to do: encourages dialogue and an intelligent, albeit vicious, examination of the current status quo—and all of this before the book even officially went on sale. In anticipation of his new novel, which hit shelves Tuesday, Franzen received quite a bit of press: two glowing reviews in the New York Times, the cover of Time Magazine (the first living American author to grace the cover in over 10 years), coverage on countless online journals, rags, blogs (Perez Hilton included) and the attention of President Obama, who was given an advanced copy to take on holiday.

Now, number one New York Times bestselling authors, Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner, have come out like pit bulls, lambasting the Times and the literary media for its elitist, and arguably segregationist, stance on good versus bad literature (“NYT raved about Franzen’s new book. Is anyone shocked? Would love to see the NYT rave about authors who aren’t white male literary darlings,” Picoult tweeted Aug. 16). While a few of Picoult’s novels have been tepidly reviewed by The Grey Lady, Weiner has been consistently snubbed despite ranking at the top of the newspaper’s own list. In an exclusive interview with The Huffington Post, Weiner cites the possible grounds for such obvious dismissals: “I write books that are entertaining, but are also, I hope, well-constructed and thoughtful and funny and have things to say about men and women and families and children and life in America today... I think it’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book.”

Of the 15 books currently listed on the New York Times Sunday Book Review homepage, 11 are by men while only four are the work of a female writer. Thirteen are authored by Caucasians; a mere two are by individuals of color. These numbers are no coincidence, and it suggests that the Times tastes are as bland and parched as white rice. One might even argue that the Times, and other similar literary powerhouses, only cover people of color when they write about the ghettos and barrios found in the works of writers such as Junot Díaz or Edwidge Danticat.

What’s at work here is the symptomatic narcissism found in literary circles, the devaluation of non-MFA card carrying readers and the reviewers own shallow and pathetic need to see their reflection staring back at them from between the covers of a book. When Oprah decided to pick Franzen’s “The Corrections” for her infamous book club, Franzen expressed unease while being interviewed on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” “I worry—I’m sorry that it’s, uh—I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience and I’ve heard more than one reader in signing lines now at bookstores say, ‘If I hadn’t heard you, I would have been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women. I would never touch it.’” Well of course! Oprah’s audience is comprised by nothing more than a slew of tittering, empty-headed housewives—so empty-headed, in fact, they had no ability to comprehend other Book Club selections like Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” and more recently, Uwem Akpan’s “Say You’re One of Them.”

Neither Picoult nor Weiner argues that they are publishing literary fiction, or that their aim is to write for the same critical audience that worships Franzen—that is not the point. In an age where women should no longer have to write under assumed names, as 19th century novelist Mary Anne Evans (aka George Eliot) did, why must female writers choose between critical and commercial attention, or black writers be squeezed together on a back shelf titled “African-American” literature? The white male experience is consistently viewed as the universal experience, but reviewers and readers alike must hold themselves accountable and recognize diversity and human variation—stepping, every once in a while, outside of our own comfort zones. All literature might not be great literature, but recognizing a wide spectrum of authors is a necessary duty for reviewers; readers deserve literary diversity.

Thomas Gebremedhin is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Friday.