Two articles in the New York Times, and news of a (new to me) portrait of Jane Austen, continue to shed light on the author most recently known as “not as good a writer as V.S. Naipaul.” The portrait is interesting; I had only ever seem the one of her by her sister Cassandra. This one makes her look quite stylish and almost modern, almost a Gibson girl. Is it just me, or is it Read more…
Should parents censor their children’s reading? That’s one of the questions brought up by the storm over the Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Meghan Cox Gurdon on the current fashion in YA lit. Gurdon’s review of the genre, called Darkness Too Visible, called out publishers and writers for — in my reading of it — both sensationalizing and normalizing pathological behavior. “If you think it matters what is inside a young person’s mind, surely Read more…
Two recent news controversies have come up surround women and writing. In one, famed author V.S. Naipaul opined that women write feminine tosh, and no female writer is his equal. From the Guardian: The author, who was born in Trinidad, said this was because of women’s “sentimentality, the narrow view of the world”. “And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too,” Read more…