Comments on: The Great Literary Penis Embargo of 2010

By: Virginia

Virginia — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 15:28:46 +0000

Love your attitude, love what you’re calling it, and love reading books by women. YES!

By: Kevin Fenton

Kevin Fenton — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 13:22:50 +0000

Jodi: You might want to check out Death Is Not An Option by Suzanne Rivecca. (Disclosure: former writing group member and fellow Minn MFA.) Also the memoirist Mary Karr and film critic Pauline Kael. Cruddy reminded me that Reeling is an awesome cultural history of the 70s.

I can understand how inertia and affinity become bias. In the 90s, I ran a literary magazine called Two Cities. The designer of Two Cities was Black and he gave me a list of suggested contributors, most of whom were also Black. Neither of us were prejudiced but he thought of certain writers because of who he knew and I thought of other writers because of who I knew. Once you get those reflexive short lists mixed up a little, things get a lot more fair and, frankly, more interesting.

By: Jodi

Jodi — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 01:13:30 +0000

Thank you, thank you very much.

By: UH

UH — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 01:04:46 +0000

“Over there you?ll find a Peter”

Heh.

By: margosita

margosita — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 15:59:20 +0000

This is a great post. I do love hearing why people read what they read. And I also think it is interesting to acknowledge the ways in which we might fail or find bias in our reading habits. Also, the fact that you kept fipping the pages, even when you knew what would happen wasn’t “good,” is always a good sign.