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July 17, 2008 9:44 AM
Janelle Brown on Jezebel
Not long after we featured the interview with Janelle Brown (and I'm talking hours, because it was only yesterday), I read an interview with her on Jezebel.
In response to "Because your novel has female protagonists and a baby blue cover, it seems that some people have categorized it as chick lit, which felt reductive to me", Janelle said:
It is reductive! It’s also dismissive. “Chick lit” is a catch all for everything that’s not “hard” literature written by a woman. It implies that the male experience is universal, while the female experience is something only other women would be interested in. Even Joyce Carol Oates’ last book got the disembodied female head cover treatment! I understand where the term comes from – [books about] female protagonists looking for love in the big city – but my book has nothing to do with finding a man. Companies know that women are really the only ones who still buy books, which is good, but there has to be a better way to market them.
A few things. First of all, chick lit books aren't necessarily books about "finding a man". Marian Keyes is surely the Queen of chick lit and her books aren't about finding a man.
I can't find the Joyce Carol Oates book to which Brown refers - none of the covers look even remotely chick lit to me - but anyway the chick lit cover trend isn't a "disembodied female head", it's the opposite: a beheaded female body. (I'm not sure which of those sounds more unpleasant.)
As for the last sentence and "there has to be a better way to market them", well I wish there was too, but if there was a better way, the publishers would be doing it. Publishing is a business after all.
But the thing that bugged me most about this - and this may well just be me reading it from behind the chip on my shoulder (which is murder on the neck) was the tone seemed to be that, rather than being "just" a chick lit author as people may have though, Janelle Brown is, in fact, a serious, literary writer. But nothing she says about chick lit is anything new; in fact, we printed something very similar written by Megan Crane on this blog not long ago.
I suppose I just get annoyed at the idea that chick lit writers are dumbed down, antifeminist, and unaware of the inherent problems with the term "chick lit", while "serious" writers gain credibility by criticising it.
Or, like I said, it might just be me.
Oh and I just want to add that I'm not having a go at Janelle Brown, who seems very nice, just this whole "chick lit" versus "serious fiction" thing that really gets my goat.
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Posted by Aigua Media on July 17, 2008 in Interviews | Permalink
Comments
It wasn't just you. I saw that and the comments that followed the piece and both really irritated me. I wanted to say something but I'm supposed to be concentrating on writing a novel that's two months late right now, not getting into flame wars online! I love Jezebel, but for a site that's supposed to be "pro-women," it can be hit or miss sometimes. Somehow they missed the point that by bashing Chick Lit (some of which, admittedly, isn't that great--but you can't dismiss a whole genre because of a few bad books) they are bashing both the women who like it and the women who write it...and that's a whole lot of women. And bashing women isn't what Jezebel is supposed to be about. I'm going to consider it an out of character blip and ignore. I mean they raved about "Clan of the Cave Bear" last week, so this truly was a bit odd for them.
Posted by: Meg Cabot | July 17, 2008 3:34 PM
Well put, Meg! Personally, I think it is amazing that ten years after Bridget Jones's Diary was released people are still squabbling over the "chick lit" term. Those who read it aren't going to stop any time soon just because a few people can't get over the supposedly derogatory term. We who read it know exactly what we're going to get from it. That's why we keep buying it. I wish these supposed "literary" people would just stop whining about it already.
Posted by: Lucie Simone | July 17, 2008 3:57 PM
The majority of the comments on Jezebel were more geared towards the fact that this genre has been marketed and pushed on them simply because they have vaginas. A number of commenters, myself included, rave about the "chick-lit" authors we do enjoy any time a post on the subject does come up, and we offer recs to "indoctrinate" anyone who seems to be wholly dismissing the genre for shallow reasons.
I think the commenters were calling for marketers/publishers to stop only pushing the genre from the "SATC-love-and-labels-angle" and push the idea of a great story (that doesn't have to be so "literary").
I mean if the popularity of Fine Line Series on Jezebel demonstrates anything, we read things that aren't "literary"...when it's worth reading (and whatever values as worthy is up to the reader.)
Posted by: Neka | July 18, 2008 2:55 AM
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