A Resolution

Warning: this week's Feminist Sunday post will be 2/3 pure, undiluted rant and 1/3 a New Year's resolution I can get behind. It started with a post I read earlier this week on Blog of a Bookslut. Jessa Crispin talks about how she's never read some of the so-called great male authors:

It's not like if you decide not to read any John Updike, because it just sounds like being trapped in a car with a narcissist with his dick out, it's not like you run out of books. For a while I thought I should read everything, back when I was trying to be a book critic. So I read that dreadful Franzen, I read that dreadful Messud. I had opinions about Dale Peck reviews! God help me, why did I do that. And then I remembered again, that one could decide not to read things. (...) And I'm beginning to think that this stance of non-participation might be a more important one than, you know, this bores me I don't want to read it.

That post is written from the perspective of a critic/writer, but it resonated quite strongly with me, as a reader. I've come to a point where I feel I waste way too much energy reading and then hating on certain kinds of books, mostly books that belong to the "self-indulgent male narrator" genre. 2013 was particularly bad in this regard: this is the year when I read both Bukowski and Sabato. And it’s not like I picked them up randomly in a bookstore, having no clue what I’m going to find inside. I knew pretty well what to expect from both, and yet I subjected myself to them. I made myself go through hundreds of pages of boring narcissism, unengaging plotlines, and misogynistic drivel, simply because I thought that was something I needed to do in order to be able to participate in the conversation about them. I felt like a fraud dismissing Bukowski as “a slightly more successful Tucker Max” having read just a handful of short-stories; I felt it would be a moral and intellectual failure to throw Sabato across the room when his narrator opened with something along the lines of  “I killed a woman because I couldn’t possess her fully and I know you won’t understand, you limited reader, but I am compelled to tell you all about it anyway.” And, before that, there were Hemingway, and Miller, and Vonnegut. I read them all because, well, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do as a reader? Read the famous important writers, not cheat on high school reading, not abandon books that are deemed important?

The question that I should have asked myself is “deemed important by whom?” I used to accept the canon as the best that humanity has to offer, because I assumed that all of humanity contributed to its selection. The stories that I like to read are the ones that feel universal (one of my favorite books is Portrait of a Lady, and the reason I love it so much is that the circumstances of late 19th century England seem incidental to Isabel Archer’s characterization; even the circumstances of her being a woman seem inconsequential to her inner life), and I used to think that the canon simply collects the authors who have achieved this universality. But this, of course, cannot be true. The criteria for calling a book a "classic," the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow literature, the curricula, weren’t formed in an unhistorical frictionless vacuum. They were formed within and together with institutions; the books that are compulsory reading were chosen by the same authorities that devised racist admission criteria and sexist salary distribution. If we accept that academia and journalism are biased, we have to accept that the literary canon reflects those biases.

But even in circles (academic or not) where this is self-obvious, the admission is usually followed by attempts to broaden, finding things to read besides the canon, not instead of it. I am very grateful that these discussions happen at all (I'm glad I've discovered many new, exciting books in unexpected places, since I've been around as part of the internet community of readers). But this doesn't entirely solve my problem: the urge to read and engage with self-indulgent male narrators is still there. Even if criticizing and pointing out problematic aspects is useful in itself, at the end of the day, this means a lot of time and energy spent on books that aren't worth it. And it means subjecting myself to narratives that both capitalize on and inform the structures that oppress me, straight from the mouth of the oppressor.

Stepping out of your comfort zone, discovering new books and authors, and filling out the gaps are important goals. But I may never get to achieve them unless I stop wasting time and energy. This is why my resolution for 2014 isn't about what books I want to read, but about books I want to avoid. It doesn't matter if I'll miss out on a few good pages. In 2014, if I pick up a book and it starts along the lines of “I killed a woman because I couldn’t possess her fully...”, I will try to remind myself that it's ok to throw it hard against the wall. Unless it’s on my Kindle. Then I’ll simply delete it. I love my Kindle.

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"Feminist Sundays is a weekly meme created at Books and Reviews. The aim is simply to have a place and a time to talk about feminism and women’s issues. This is a place of tolerance, creativity, discussion, criticism and praise. Remember to keep in mind that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, although healthy discussion is encouraged." 

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