Grace Reading Series

In the calendar year of 2004, The New Yorker printed 702 articles. Of this total, 147, or 21%, were written by women (above).

67% of the 2004 reviews written by women were in the fields of fashion, television, or dance (above). No male authors wrote a review on these subjects:

Most issues of the New Yorker feature four brief book reviews. 74% of the books reviewed were by men (above). It's even worse for nonfiction: 81% of the books reviewed were by men:

This week, though, we thought we'd send a shout out to Deborah Treisman. Under her direction, the publication of short fiction at the New Yorker has--gasp!--become relatively balanced between men and women authors.

Break out the champagne before you skip town, and share a toast with us:

In 2004, 43% of the short stories at the New Yorker were written by women.Thank you, Deborah. (Under Deborah's predecessor, Bill Buford, women represented only 30% of New Yorker short stories, according to the New York Times.)

As you can see, the rest of the story at the New Yorker, however, is more of a stuff-yourself-until-you-numb-the-pain kind of a situation.

Grace Report Card:
Deborah Treisman: A
New Yorker overall: C-

And we promise: as soon as we get through our January juice fasts, we'll get cracking on the 2005 stats.

Methodology: Grace Research and Events Editor Sara Zuiderveen measured the New Yorker's column inches for the entire year for this project! Her databases would make you swoon: deepest thanks of all to Sara.

Sara notes:

"Removing the short stories from the equation, the difference in printed inches between men and women in the New Yorker jumps to 26,254, or 2,187 feet--nearly 1000 feet taller than our nearest phallic landmark, the Empire State Building."

More statistics on percentages of women writers over in Miss Grace's Remedial Math Class.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 02:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's Saturday and I am so with-flu and very grateful that I have Season Two of Deadwood on tape here to suck me away from my email and my body, in fact. There are books to read, but focus is eluding me.

What I want to know about Deadwood:

A: How much money do they spend on historical accuracy? A lot, right?

B: Why, then, for the opening credits, could they not find a full & luscious 19th-century whore breast in all of Los Angeles not constructed of silicone?

Deep thoughts. That is why you love me. Also, there is a review from PW of Girly up at Amazon. It's really dark! Girly is actually kind of funny, I think, but you know what Tori Amos says:

"Okay," she says, straightening her back. "I've always said that one of the best things I ever did was play kooky for the British. They wanted that and they went for it hook, line and sinker. On one hand you have to be aware that in order to stay around so long, people need to have some kind of characterisation, or you come and go because you're not that intriguing anymore.

"At the same time there is a sexist side to all this, which you don't usually hear me say because I don't bite that bullet. But there are guys - and I'm not going to mention names, but they're surrounding us at this moment - who write emotional music, and they're seen as these deep, dark poets. And yet, we ladies need therapy. If I was a guy, people would be saying I'm deep, dark and hot."

I'm off--to make a new playlist on my itunes: Damien Rice and the GoGos. Yum.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 02:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It is with great pleasure that I post Anne Ishii's 7th Finger in the Throat Report. She used to post them over at Vertical but now we get to host them here at Grace. --Elizabeth

Finger In The Throat Report #7: The Lovely World of Richi-san, by Allan R. Bosworth. (Harper&Row, NY: 1958)

Come one, come all, down to my digestive system, as I consume this very lovely work of asianica, which I am using to coin a new genre of fiction: Phonetic Asianica, or Phonetica for short.

Phonetica is self-explanatory. It's when a writer chooses to represent his/her characters phonetically. When Yummee from Fan Tan says she likes being pushed around, it reads "I rike-ee beeng pushed alound." When the complimentary hooker in Lost in Translation visits Bill Murray's hotel room, and wants to convey a desire to have her pantyhose ripped off her legs, it reads: "Lip it! Lip my hose!"

Funny? Yes. Relatable? oh, I'm sorry, rerataber? iyessss. Always applopliate? Possibry not.

The Lovely World of Richi-san is crème de la crème when it comes to Phonetica. The entire novel is written either in phonetica, or in romanized Japanese with abundant translation. In other words, za noveru ees litten een phonetica or een roumanizudo japaneezu wissu tappuri no honyaku (abundant translation). So when blessed with such educational fare, I feel too much time spent on the story is a bit of a waste, when we can revel in the diarogue. The rovery rovery diarogue. Nonetheless a synopsis is in order.

Digested bits: The Lovely World of Richi-san is a first-person account of the author Allan Bosworth's years in occupied Japan as a navy-man. He ends up moving into the Asano home, where he's called Papa-san, and he teaches the Asano's English. Richi-san, is the attractive divorced daughter, and the only family member who already knows a little Engrish, which is not to be confused with Bosworth's English. The book is a string of anecdotes revolving around language gaffes.

Bosworth's politics and manner are polite, but in keeping with the Cold War, are also anti-communist and paternalistic. The penultimate chapter on General MacArthur is especially precious. Why don't we dive into regurgitation and have a look at the rovery diarogue?

"What did you family think of MacArthur?" (Bosworth)

"Oh, Papa-san, Makassa verree fine man! Verree kindness to Japanese people!...we understand he's heart. Verree good heart, Papa-san!"

The conversation about MacArthur gets pretty sophisticated, and I almost started stroking my chin in intellectual bemusement, until I read:

The early days (of the Occupation) must have been high and colorful, flushed with victory and purpose…The Marines were landing armed to the teeth and traditionally alert for snipers or kamikaze attack. They moved up the beach toward a crowd of curious Japanese, and an attractive o-josan (he really could just say lady, but nooooo, he has to pull out his fancy-pants japanese) stepped out and called in passable English, "Rieutenant, you want to make rabu? You want jig-jig?" (I don't know what jig-jig is, but I definitely want some.) And the lieutenant, in his best command voice, shouted, "Sergeant, take over!"

Yeah, the US Marines came into the Japanese shore fearing their lives, and got pussy handed to them on a platter. Nice. And as I mentioned earlier, this is Cold War times, so it's not timely without a little jab at Red China:

When and if Red China ever overtakes Japan…with its overpowering weight of millions (the Chinese people are going to come to Japan and sit on them!), then – if China is still Red – may God help us all…

And in case you didn't get it the first time, Bosworth reiterates:

It is very fortunate for us, I think, that the Japanese hate Communism with a passion.

This statement is simply a lie. Read any historian's work on this period, and it is acknowledged across the board that communism was extremely popular in Japan, especially in the provinces, where Bosworth was supposed to have spent a large amount of time.

But I digress. The diarogue! The grorious rovery diarogue!

"What put on, Papa-san? Panties put on?" (Richi-san)

"I'm sorree, Papa-san – I'm forget! I'm meaning sracks, not panties." (Me never wear sracks or panties Papa-san!)

My favorite scene is the one I'm about to vomit, when Richi-san explains to Bosworth that a hentai (pervert) recently came through the neighborhood and stole a woman's lingerie that she hung out on to dry.

"Hentai, Papa-san!" she said. "Bad man!"

"Maybe like crazy," Richi-san said. She pronounced it ku-razy. And I had learned another unusual word, under unusual circumstances. (Is he talking about the word "ku-razy" or "hentai"?) But it was not one I could use. (I don't know man. I was close to calling you a hentai with that whole bit about women and panties and slacks, Papa-san.)

What I love about this scene, is Bosworth's feigned ignorance of the concept of a pervert. As if in the States, men, possibly named Tom, had never, oh I don't know, peeped into rooms where woman undressed.

In any case, this hentai doesn't want to bog you down with an over-long FITT report, so I shall end it with Bosworth's invocation of Lafcadio Hearn, the world's first Asian fetishist (and I say that with no judgment. I promise.):

Accepting as partly true the statement that woman everywhere is what man has made her, we might say that this statement is more true of the Japanese woman than of any other…The type could not have been created in any society shaped on modern lines…it has no more in common with the humanity of this 20th century of ours…than has the life depicted upon old Greek vases. Its charm is the charm of a varnished world – a charm strange, alluring, indescribable as the perfume of some flower of which the species became extinct in our Occident before the modern languages were born.

It took a whole fist of manmade women fingers to puke up The Lovely World of Richi-san, and I'm happy to say I've become a charm strange and alluring since. My vomitous perfume comes from a flower that is definitely not extinct, my friend.

--ANNE ISHII

(check back on Fridays for more FITTs!)

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 03:38 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Annie Proulx, what a name, what a writer. I liked her first book Heart Songs and Other Stories, and while I never saw the other movie, I'm sure as shootin' gawn see this one. A fabulous review of Brokeback Mountain (via the fabulous Maud Newton).

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 02:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We got a page-a-day calendar for xmas last year; we stopped tearing the pages off on September 1st. Just like that, September 1st. The cartoons sometimes made me laugh, but what I liked was the ritual of the tearing, letting the paper float out of my hand and into the trash. If I did nothing else that day, at least I had made that gesture.

I have found a replacement, a bit of wisdom and poetry that makes me laugh and makes me appreciate the absurdities of the everyday.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 10:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I'm listening to my favorite station and feeling a bit sore about the gums after my trip to the dentist. Needle coming at me, drill coming at me, it's not like this is not all happening on my face. I'm thinking of Steve Martin as the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, remembering ALL of the lines, ALL of the choreography. But my dentist is a woman, soft spoken, a real one-two with the drill. I like having a woman dentist, a woman doctor. I keep finding these smart, kind, gracious women who answer my questions right before I ask them.

If you are feeling like you want an informed voice in your ear, check out Sara Zuiderveen's review on Miss Grace.

“We carry maps we believe are true: our parents’ relationship, what it says in the baby books, the landscape of our own childhood. These maps are approximate at best, dangerously misleading at worst.” Mothers and Other Monsters, as an intelligent and often playful examination of our social maps, succeeds wonderfully not only in prodding reevaluation of the directions we navigate by, but also the nature of the destination itself.

Maureen McHugh also has a blog about her battle with Hodgkin's disease.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 10:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Just got back from the dentist and my lower lip feels as big as a plate and is benumbed. Which makes me think about the numbness and pain of loss (sure it does). I was swept away by Louise Erdrich's beautiful new novel about grieving, The Painted Drum, as you can see in this review on Miss Grace:

The texture, gesture, and innateness of lyrical writing are the blood and bone of The Painted Drum. Erdrich’s metaphors interpret memory through storytelling and therefore inhabit language at its most concrete. She has respect for the way things are. When Faye Travers remarks “Whenever you leave cleared land, or a path, or a road, when you step from someplace carved out, plowed, or traced by a human and pass into the woods, you must leave something of yourself behind. It is that sudden loss, I think, even more than the difficulty of walking through undergrowth that keeps people firmly fixed to paths,” Erdrich tricks us into simple wisdom. Loss is always sudden. Loss means that life must die to create more life. Suffering keeps people firmly fixed to paths.

Apparently, Ms. Erdrich has an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, which I intend to check out when I'm there over the holidays.

And I'll leave you with a few more words of wisdom from the great mother herself before I go off and try to drink cafe au lait without dribbling down the front of my green hoodie, an interview:

Toni Morrison talks about finding a writer who gives one "permission" to write, someone who breaks down the barriers and allows you the self-confidence to write. Did you have any "permission-giving" writers when you first started to write?

Erdrich: Morrison was one of mine. She spoke about being a mother, and she always spoke about it as a great boon to her as a writer. Previous to that I don't think I'd read anything positive. There were few mothers writing, very few mothers who would talk about the benefits. Kay Boyle was one person for whom being a mother and a writer were passionately integral. Grace Paley, she's very funny about it. She claims to have neglected her children, because it was the only way she could get things done.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 09:33 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

November recommendations are up on Miss Grace. Whenever I find another woman who reads seriously and who seriously reads, I jump immediately into swapping must-reads.

Some amazing and recent-ish short story collections from women over the past few years that you might consider picking up at your local bookstore: Judy Budnitz's Nice Big American Baby (paperback comes out in February); Heidi Jon Schmidt's Darling; Lily Tuck's Limbo and Other Places I Have Lived. And, mais bien sur, Aimee Bender, whose books combine the absurd with that frisson of the relatable. Have a look at Eryn Loeb's review on Miss Grace of Bender's exquisite new collection Willful Creatures:

Bender seems particularly transfixed by mortality in these pages. Through stories like "Death Watch" and "Job's Job," we get the sense that Bender is looking for some kind of ultimate meaning, but the searching doesn't feel heavy-handed. Although the two characters featured in these stories are plainly dealing with life or death situations, the dilemmas that face the characters in her other stories feel no less immediate. The intimate complexities of relationships are treated with reverence, even as she exposes their secrets. The final story in the book reads like a prayer.

These women with their wry, wise, reverential short fiction just absolutely rock the genre. Talk to me of these women, bend my ear, and I will buy a round of whatever they're having.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 08:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I talked to the lovely Tahree Lane from the Toledo Blade for this article on chick lit that ran yesterday:

Women who write literary fiction see their work assigned a back seat at bookstores to chick lit, which goes to the front of the class, she said. In April, Merrick drew the ire of many chick-lit scribes when it was announced she would edit a collection entitled, This is Not Chick Lit: A Collection of Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers, to be published in 2006.

"I think it's wonderful that we have more content about women's lives than we did 10 years ago," said Merrick. "But there's so much more going in women's lives than what's frequently portrayed [in chick lit]."

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 01:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's Rachel's birthday and she interviewed me over at Gothamist, what a sweetie she is.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 10:46 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yo! The suave, sophisticated, kind, and most generously talented writer Lamar Herrin hits New York! Check him out this instant at Coliseum Books.

He's quite a great dude. He takes his time and says what he means. And he's lanky.

Elizabeth and I had him as a workshop leader back in the day. Back when we were wide-eyed sassy women wrters. Well, she was sassy. I was quiet. But we were totally simile sisters hanging with Lamar! And, you know, it was true that the women in the class used more similes than the men...And why was that?

To be revisted. Go see Lamar.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 09:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Boozhoo from the West Coast! Emberly here. May I say that San Francisco was as gray as a newspaper on Sunday? So off to the movies. We saw: Shop Girl. Steve Martin. Claire Danes. Adapted from Steve Martin's book of the same name. Steve Martin, lonely rich old bachelor, pulls in a girl in her late 20's. Right-o. Nothing new there.

But one look at the minimalist furniture chez Martin, the floor to ceiling windows, and, oh, be still my heart, the stainless steel in the kitchen and I knew I was in the grips of the ultimate male fantasy. I know men are the new women, but all those gratuitous shots of slim, long-legged tables, the creamy marble, the up-to-the-second electronics...Steve Martin is a dirty, dirty old man.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 09:50 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Have you checked out our Remedial Math page? Women writers deserve to be paid for their work: this means they deserve bylines, they deserve critical attention, they deserve tenure track jobs, etc., and they are not receiving these things in any kind of fair proportion.

I don't think there's much ethereal or philosophical to discuss here: it's just about the numbers, plus that simple and no longer radical concept of equal pay for equal work.

I think that until you start counting bylines you just don't quite notice the major imbalance.

So try it today: how many women and how many men did the New Yorker give bylines to this week?

The weird thing about counting is that women's presence somehow hovers around 20-25 percent across the board, from the New Yorker down through the upstart lit magazines. It's often worse at Harpers and the New York Review of Books--the more hoity-toity, the more boys school.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 02:10 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Hey--it's not you, it's me--I'm just kind of in this phase and I need a little space so I am going to catch you in a couple weeks.

Yes, that is me over there at Bookslut but I swear honey we are just friends.

Emberly will be here tomorrow! A little West Coast love while I'm gone. And Anne Ishii is going to be bringing us her ever popular F.I.T.T. (that's Finger in the Throat) Book Reports here on Fridays. They used to be up at the Vertical blog but they have gone missing (now that is heartbreaking).

Anyway, see you back here November 21.

xoxo

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 10:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Hey dudes. I totally broke the I O and P keys on my laptop with my awesome blue nails so now I had the nails taken off but am still kind of impaired with the whole typing thing. I am going to the genius bar at mac to get them to fix it in the wee hours--they are open until midnight--and THAT is the kind of service we are paying New York rent for. Anyway--more from BELLY's creator Lisa Selin Davis, inspirational road warrior:

The phoenix is a symbol a renewal—big bird rising from the ashes and all. And every time I come to the city that is its namesake, I am struck by its ability to renew, or to reinvent, itself. Since last I was here, a whole new slew of “renovated” lofts has risen up along University Avenue, these ones decorated with corrugated metal and concrete slabs painted in various day-glow shades. As always, this ugliness of this place takes my breath away: it’s so ugly, I almost like it. Almost.

The three of us were on some midday news show earlier in the day, sitting right next to the blond weather girl who stood before the green screen and told the world that it would be sunny and 80 in Phoenix—as always. The interviewer had a sheet of paper with our names on it, and copies of our books, and asked all of us the same question: what does it take to be a novelist? Perseverance, said Vicky. Perseverance, said Karen. And when Scott the interviewer turned to me, I said, “Oh, yes, it takes a certain amount of sticktoitiveness, but there are also a number of good books that never make it to the shelves, so there’s a certain amount of luck involved as well.” What? Luck? Why did I say that? I guess I’m not so good at thinking on my feet, or thinking in an admiral chair in front of blinding lights on TV. I like radio the best. I wish the folks from NPR wanted to talk to us. Lenny, come on: it’s not too late.

I went to graduate school here, at Arizona State, and for some undisclosed reason, I was never funded. Almost everyone was funded, but I wasn’t (the year after I left, they received a $10 million gift, so that now all grad students are funded, making $20,000 a year to write stuff down on paper—more than many of us make now). One of the reasons I wanted to go on this tour—something I really looked forward to—was my homecoming. I looked forward to, well, metaphorically sticking my tongue out at my old colleagues and professors—even the ones I liked—and showing them what I could do despite their lack of support. And while the reading was fairly well attended, not one person from ASU shows up. Okay: one person, but someone who arrived at the program after I finished, and he is the only one. We read outside, directly below the flight path, and eventually, I just tried to work the rumble of the engine into the near-rape scene that I read, pretending a plane soars over Belly as he presses an innocent girl into the ground. It’s all part of my homecoming, to read the most disturbing scene I can by the fake lake, in front of the steakhouse, to none of my old colleagues.

Ironically, it is homecoming this weekend. In fact, the English department has planned a series of readings for “published graduates” to celebrate. Um, does Little, Brown count as publishing? I am confused.

In the end, I think we all found the tour worth it. It was probably more worth it for my tourmates, what with the room service in the fancy hotels and all, but each of us got much more press together than we would have individually. And I did make some new friends, lovely writers, both of them. The main thing, though, is that, more than renewal, I got a little bit of closure. I have five more readings this year, and then, I think, I will put BELLY to bed. The last of my readings are happening just as some other things are ending—the school year, my relationship—and I hope that I can rise from the ashes more successfully than the city of Phoenix.

--LISA SELIN DAVIS

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 03:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I seriously have forgotten how to blog. I keep writing these treatises. If I were more organized I would write an article about this and be done with it.

So the chick lit discussion is brewing and bubbling up again this week, with that dear old media perception of a catfight should one woman disagree with another, as well as (I think this part is hilarious but people do seem to take the argument seriously) accusations that any criticism of chick lit is anti-feminist.

Anyway! Rebecca Traister's got a long piece in Salon today, largely delineating the history of fluffy romance novels not being taken seriously. Towards the end I think she gets to something essential:

Margaret Atwood has herself claimed to have written the first chick-lit novel, 1969's "The Edible Woman." When pressed by an interviewer about how hers is better than what's out there now, Atwood responded, "Well, some chick-lit books are better than others. I thought Bridget Jones was quite a howl. There's good, bad and mediocre in everything ... So ... if it's about young women we're not supposed to take it seriously?" . . .

This fear [of not being taken seriously] is valid, especially in a cultural atmosphere in which "women's magazine" is a derogatory term but Esquire routinely wins National Magazine Awards, in which Weisberger and Bushnell merit a combined review but a first novel by a man about a single guy in his 20s looking for love and professional fulfillment gets lauded in a full-cover review on the front of the New York Times Book Review.

It's not enough to knock on the door of an agency or a publishing house or the New Yorker or wherever to try to request that our hordes of serious women writers be taken more seriously: I'm ready to find the authors and get the books out there to the audience that doesn't need a big ol' blog explanation of why chick lit is mostly very boring to read. There IS that audience, and they are being left behind. Fine. I will do something about that. It is going to take me awhile and sometimes the electric bill is not going to get paid but it is easier and more efficient to create that community of readers this way than by asking huge corporations politely, crankily, whatever, to do it for us.

It's exciting: fuck "the fear is valid." It's not a fear: it's an unfair, predictable, often pedestrian reality that women aren't taken seriously. More importantly this reality provides an ample space to create something new and fabulous.

Anyway, I have some distribution issues and some website stuff and this and that to try to get together today so I am bowing out of the debate for the day at least. I do not know how to blog and run a business at the same time but you will see me do it--especially next week! Big excitement to come.

More from our gorgeous punk rocker Lisa Selin Davis on her last night of the First Fiction Tour soon.

xxo

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 01:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)