by Doctor Science
From Andrew Sullivan, I learn that Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs, was asked by Annasue McCleave Wilson of Publisher’s Weekly, about the protagonist of the book:
I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.
Messud exploded:
For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? … If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities.
The New Yorker wrote:
This critical double standard—that tormented, foul-mouthed, or perverse male characters are celebrated, while their female counterparts are primly dismissed as unlikeable—has been pointed out many times before. But Messud’s comments seemed an occasion to examine the question again.
As a reader of fanfiction, I spend a great deal of time thinking about stories, discussing stories, and comparing my reactions to a story to other readers’ (or viewers’) reactions. It’s disconcerting to read the responses from Donald Antrim, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Rivka Galchen, and Tessa Hadley — all writers of Serious Literary Fiction — who are clearly operating in a different critical landscape with different assumptions than I’m used to. Everything seems so much more tidy and certain where they are for both writers and readers, while I keep thinking “What do you mean we, Kemo Sabe?”