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just by criticizing the work of other women you are giving more hype to that female work's rather then concentration on how to get your work more popular among the people

So now Gould writes for More Intelligent Life...gah-reat

"it will remain true that carefully observed, quietly funny, romantic stories about friends, love, work and families will be marketed and reviewed as "chick lit" or "literary chick lit" if they are by women and as "coming of age stories" or "astute psychological realism" if they are by men."

I tend to disagree - I'd describe such books by men as "lightweight" and "laddish." Who needs more of this kind of thing (young, relatively wealthy, white people who live in NY) from anyone, man or woman. None of these kinds of books is going to hold up over time - I have to assume they'll all be showing their age in about 2 years and seem horribly dated in 10.

As theoretical schools of thought (such as feminism) become more and more imbedded in the upper levels of institutions (whether in academics or in publishing houses or in museums), there is increasing need for rising generations to look critically and ask what is still alive in the tenets of the movements and what is merely fodder for a party line.

This is a long response, because the issues Gould raises have preyed on me for a long while. Thus I have a couple of points:

I see Gould’s opening comments about the cocktail party as an example of an established figure using Feminism as a way of imposing an ideal onto a market reality-definition of womanhood. - - I think myself typical of a rising generation of women who want to be taken seriously by men and women regardless of my dress inclination towards coloured skirts, earrings and the like - - but I think that using difference – such as Gould lying on the bed – is an acknowledgment of inclinations (that whether by design, birth, or imprinting) add variety to the world - - yet, this new need to be feminine and Feminist is not truly understood and feeds into the spring-break-girls-gone-wild mentality of empowerment through a dubious display of sexual liberation.

Articles like Gould’s are important for this reason – what do we want out of liberation? How do we deal with the fact that art is both a mirror for and more often an ideal projection over reality – and once something is expressed – why tare it to pieces because it is not what we want of the world?

In short – do we provoke the status quo by reflecting it? I think the citric is right to be hard on another female author, if she feels the author exploits rather than engages popular tastes – and yet, exploiting trends has a place on best-selling bookshelves, just not as great literature.

Liking another woman or her work, and suppressing the instincts to fight for an accolade (or man) can take two forms: one feeds from insecurity and the second from a high standard held by women for women. In all walks of life, men often go soft on women just as women are want to dismiss male disagreeability – ‘boys will be boys’. This is a natural romanticization of gender otherness – it is part of what feeds raw attraction. And so while I disagree with the female critic taking down Mary McCarthy for Feminist reasons, I think that an arena of women with women criticism is necessary – because it is appraising from a similar specificity the rigours of artistic production; and thus is immune to the dismissal: that an outsider looking in does not understand all the facts.

I crave female perspectives and despite my great love for modern male writers, such as Italo Calvino, Elias Cannetti and so on, I feel periodically alienated by their perspectives – thus I need to dive into Muriel Spark like a traveller returning home - - thus I hope that seriousness is allotted to all, but that there is an arena of women who feel and understand the pressures of womanhood – there will always be need of a high standard held by women for woman - - and so rather than see it as in-fighting (which only furthers the hated Desperate Housewives stereotypes) I would hope that women combat insecurity in their criticism, but not degrade all woman-woman harshness as bitch-slapping.

Anyone who has spent time in an all-female environment knows (even if deep down) that the Olympic games gender-segregation being carried through to the publishing (or any competitive) arena for women is true. And isn’t this the result of feminist agendas? – for it reflects women’s desires to participate where men participate according to the strengths of their own specific conditions of experiencing being alive - - this is the bottom line of the gifts of Hayden White and the rest of the post-structuralist echelon (if they are in fact gifts, which still needs to similarly explored). Acting indigent to it is a strange understanding of what we want as intellectually active ‘women’ not pseudo-men or genderless beings – and even if we achieved genderless-ness, would we want it?

- EB

I want to draw a distinction between girls and women. Women are people who think about other people as a form of balancing their own self-absorption. They are people who have experienced both pleasure and pain. They are functional citizens of our world. Then there are girls, like this girl, who is writing this essay, and who has now (by my count) spent five years promising herself -- and by extension us -- that she isn't going to do this anymore, isn't going to tell everyone everything about her intellectual innards. I met the writer once briefly at a party. I was seeing a guy who knew her. I'd like to say that she seemed pleasant enough but she didn't. She seemed troubled, like she had built herself a little cage and forgotten where she put the door. There are several things I think about her, but I'll only say that I feel sorry.

Imagine that.

Who would think it.

Just remember, everyone wants universal brotherhood, but, no one is his right mind, wants universal sisterhood.

The problem begins when people read a book, and upon not liking it decide to, rather than merely lay the book aside, obsess over how such a personal offense to their sensibility ever was published at all. The meddling machine is set in motion.

Now the reader becomes so concerned about controlling media representations that they consciously plot to gain control of representations and misrepresentations of femaleness (or some other "ness"). Given hard work and good fortune they may actually succeed in thoroughly politicizing, or sectionalizing, or crony-izing, literature to such a truly and satisfyingly suffocating extent that misrepresentations will be the only representations in literature. Getting an honest "representation" out of an agenda-carrier is about as likely as getting a photograph out of a paintbrush.

Literature is not a mirror. Or, rather, it is not your mirror.

This is junk. The writer asserts that "only a handful of women’s writing voices are heard", but if you replace "women" with "men", the sentence remains just as true. No doubt in certain areas women are published less than men, but in other areas women are ahead. If there are fewer women published in so-called "literary" fiction (and I'm not sure there are), maybe this desire to rigorously enforce the "sisterhood" line is the cause. Less identity politics, more individuality, that's what's needed.

From the toss-off comment at the party to the critique veiled as setting a wrong right...stop already. The only bad thing here is this tepid essay. Like the moronic phrase lately issued primarily by women "I'm not judging but..." it's just another case of a woman trying to look earnestly truly decent and humane while sniping in a passive agressive way. First, there is nothing wrong with criticizing a book - for pity's sake, if it sucks, it sucks. But this need to have everyone think you are fair and just and yet - a far better writer and no doubt more intuitive and yet somehow, sensitive and concerned...yawn. Wake up, my fellow women, this is getting old.

"woman are bad"?

genius ironic joke or just ironic joke?

Read A Fortunate Age before you spout off condemning nonsense about it. It's an ambitious, smart, expansive novel that has six main characters and covers the better part of a decade. It has more in common with Galsworthy and Wharton than contemporary fiction. Harping on that one plot point--which is intentionally modeled directly on The Group--does the book a disservice. And no more far fetched than how one character dies. It's unexpected as a device in a novel, but it happens all the time in life.

Also, Gould is absolutely right, some critics are clouded by jealousy and chide overly ambitious writers who happen to be women. And more should be discussed about it.

Now you're just talking out of your ass. The book is not chick lit. And the idea of it being "more" literary is laughable. It's a straight literary novel, and if you'd paid attention, you'd see it wasn't marketed or targeted solely for women at all by the publisher, and if you knew anything about writers, you'd know no one thinks in those mercenary terms. She simply wrote the book she wanted to read, over six years, with no hope other than to finish it.

There's also another irony that Gould missed--I recall Rakoff has reviewed books a long time, and after a few minutes on lexis-nexis, it looks as if she was equally generous and enthusiastic to writers of both genders. She wrote a story on Franzen championing The Corrections before anyone. Her book has more in common with Franzen's book than any dumbass tv show.

I will say more firmly that if she were a man, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Of course, the idiots would then be screeching the same things they did with Keith Gessen or Kunkel, et al, even Franzen. Go look at their Amazon pages and see for yourself.

It is a bit different on-line. You never can tell who is doing the writing until they show you a video or meet them in person. That happens, of course, and you can still frequently tell the difference between men and women... but anyway.

This doesn't strike me as much more than a tactic that's just as common on the male side of things - wanting to stir up controversy, gain attention, and profit from that. It is an old, tried and true tactic, and I haven't seen many mental or social tricks that women will never do... just with different probabilities.

What good would universal sisterhood do? Would we have to read more critical essays about the predicament of universal sisterhood?