Nothing book related but I watched hacks on your recommendation and absolutely loved it. Just amazing and touching and so funny. Anyway will now go watch season 2 x
I've just finished reading Kingsley Amis's Letters which are compelling in a slightly repellent way. Yes, there is a frustrating dearth of emerging male writers currently, absolutely for the reasons you cite (also the majority of editors are women - the robust male editors who published McEwen, Martin Amis etc have retired. I've heard publicists saying that a debut male novelist wearing a suit will not draw the eye on This Morning... Graham Norton, Robert Webb, Richard Coles and Richard Osman can write a bit but it's their celebrity that ensured their deals. (I mention them because they don't have any truck with ghostwriters). I'm currently representing two debut male novelists who are both over 60 - which may also be tricky, but I firmly believe in their talent. And another one who has written his third after a ten year hiatus. Sigh...
" I just think women, oppressed for a billion years, are just much more likely to go for those odds, for this treatment, whereas men don’t put up with that horseshit and many budding male authors go and work in tech. If they are extremely motivated, they might write a book on the side"
I loved those Deborah Levy memoirs, and I haven’t got on with her fiction so far either. A few years ago I used to mainly read books by men, something that seemed to naturally happen in adulthood after university, and when I realised I made a deliberate effort to read women for a year and then it kind of balanced out, but you’re right, lately all the major books that seem to cross my path are by women. Exception to this was Lean Fall Stand by John McGregor, which I thought was very good. Ostensibly a story about an accident in the Antarctic, it moves into other territory too, and actually he writes very well about a long marriage from a female point of view, without the, you know, “she admired her figure in the mirror in her taut blouse and pondered the state of her marriage etc etc”. Also I’ve just read Fight Night by Miriam Toews and I think she’s brilliant and odd and funny.
Nothing book related but I watched hacks on your recommendation and absolutely loved it. Just amazing and touching and so funny. Anyway will now go watch season 2 x
I've just finished reading Kingsley Amis's Letters which are compelling in a slightly repellent way. Yes, there is a frustrating dearth of emerging male writers currently, absolutely for the reasons you cite (also the majority of editors are women - the robust male editors who published McEwen, Martin Amis etc have retired. I've heard publicists saying that a debut male novelist wearing a suit will not draw the eye on This Morning... Graham Norton, Robert Webb, Richard Coles and Richard Osman can write a bit but it's their celebrity that ensured their deals. (I mention them because they don't have any truck with ghostwriters). I'm currently representing two debut male novelists who are both over 60 - which may also be tricky, but I firmly believe in their talent. And another one who has written his third after a ten year hiatus. Sigh...
" I just think women, oppressed for a billion years, are just much more likely to go for those odds, for this treatment, whereas men don’t put up with that horseshit and many budding male authors go and work in tech. If they are extremely motivated, they might write a book on the side"
THIS THIS THIS!
Lucky Jim - laugh out loud snort fest - LOVE it
I loved those Deborah Levy memoirs, and I haven’t got on with her fiction so far either. A few years ago I used to mainly read books by men, something that seemed to naturally happen in adulthood after university, and when I realised I made a deliberate effort to read women for a year and then it kind of balanced out, but you’re right, lately all the major books that seem to cross my path are by women. Exception to this was Lean Fall Stand by John McGregor, which I thought was very good. Ostensibly a story about an accident in the Antarctic, it moves into other territory too, and actually he writes very well about a long marriage from a female point of view, without the, you know, “she admired her figure in the mirror in her taut blouse and pondered the state of her marriage etc etc”. Also I’ve just read Fight Night by Miriam Toews and I think she’s brilliant and odd and funny.