Women and men in the TLS

There are some issues on which, as a normally cautious interviewee, I have always felt strongly - and been happy to talk about to anyone.

One of those is the need for newspapers to have writers whose interests are close to those of all its readers.

Sometimes, especially at The Times in the 1980s and 1990s, it was necessary to promote some brilliant women writers and editors, against recommendations from male colleagues, in order to make it more likely that this need was fulfilled,

At the TLS, while rejecting  50-50 quotas for books and reviewers, I take very seriously the idea that congruence between our writers, readers and subjects is likely to be better than the  opposite - not just in gender but in other respects too.

So when a reporter from The Guardian caught me on Friday morning to discuss a new American survey on women writers, reviewers and literary editors  I was happy to talk.

In some ideas of  ideal worlds there would be equal numbers of men and women writing, reading and reviewing books.

If that is an ideal, it is still, like most ideals, still unfulfilled.

I expected, as I told the Guardian, that, if any idealist were counting, the TLS would be judged better than others. Without going into details of the London and New York reviews of books, this turned out from the reporter's story to be the case.

I also knew, from past attempts to understand this issue, that a big problem was the base figure against which the choice of books for books for review should be judged. If the TLS is the main British reviewer of books on philosophy, eighteenth century literature, nineteeenth century history, ktl, how hard should we try to redress any already existing gender imbalance in writing on those subjects?

TLS readers would not, I think, wish us to stray very far from our more important commitment to seek out what was best and commission the best pieces that we can.

The Guardian reporter said that women read more books than men - and that this might be an issue too.

I repeated that it would be useful to know  the number of books written by men and women that were in the areas likely to be reviewed by the NYRB , LRB and TLS. There were many popular genres, romantic and certain kinds of historical fiction, for example, that had long  been dominated by women writers and readers, which were not much reviewed and would distort a proper comparison. I could - and probably should - have said that there were other genres, little reviewed, that are similarly dominated by men.

As a result, there have been complaints today: was I suggesting that books written and read by women were somewhow inferior?

No,  It should not need saying. It feels very strange  that I should have to be saying  that 'no' at all.   

  

  

 

    

 

 

Comments

[Clayton Burns]

Instinctively, one might think that by far the best criticism of two of the greatest short novels in English ("The Turn of the Screw" and "The Scarlet Letter") would be by women.

The third great short novel ("Heart of Darkness") is too distinctly male to count.

One might (intuitively) have thought that it would have been a sensitive woman who would have pointed out the impossibility of Harold Bloom's reading of Emily Dickinson's "The Tint I cannot take--is best--" (in "The Western Canon").

Surely some woman has come forward to prove that the theme of male renunciation in "Sailing to Byzantium" is bogus? The sound symbolism of that lyric is replete with references to Maud Gonne.

For some reason, they would prefer to keep quiet about most of these subjects. Or their contributions are not superior to male ramblings.

Even the greatest story or tale:

[F. Scott Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited will be free with The Daily Telegraph on Saturday, February 5, and The Beast In the Jungle by Henry James will be free inside The Sunday Telegraph on February 6.]

"The Beast in the Jungle." It must be ideal for a feminine reading.

[Cath Nichols]

Well, if they are short of women reviewers they could try approaching the universities that offer postgraduate English and Creative Writing courses. Perhaps even run a competition...? Literary agents and publishers seem to pay attention to unis.
Having just completed a PhD that was 50% critical and 50% creative I expect I could rustle up an accessible yet meaty book review for TLS. Interestingly the majority of Creative Writing PhD students at Lancaster are female. But possibly we're all so busy doing our research and writing, teaching first year students and, er, running homes?! that maybe we don't have the time to be touting for work at the TLS. Whereas, pardon me, perhaps the male cohort do. [Let's also mention Oxbridge and London-centric under our breath too.]

[LH]

You have to go all the way back to Woolf to give the TLS the barest whiff of a female presence?

I think that says it all.