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~ By Melina Kantor
Hello Fellow Chick Lit Fans,
Happy Friday!
We hope it’s been a good week.
Here are a few of the chick lit / writing industry related stories floating around the Internet this week:
There was the “Is the Chick Lit Train Running Out of Steam” article in the Irish Independent that explored the decline of chick lit sales, and also discussed male authors writing chick lit under female pen names. According to the article:
Chick lit has turned into a kind of giant self-destructive and self-perpetuating dying star whose gravitational pull is taking down everything in its path, polluting the world with a landfill of pink high-heels and purple maribou feathers, spreading out from fiction and taking in film and theatre in its wake, with the likes of Girls Night Out and Sex And The City (does anyone even remember how good the TV series was?).
The article also raises another hot button issue:
While you can’t blame a man for wanting a piece of the sales success that chick lit enjoys, women may also be dangerously close to returning to the time where they wrote under male names just so their work will be judged on an equal footing. It is a serious issue.
However, with more men writing as women and women writing as men, perhaps there will be a neutralising effect on the issue of gender.
Thoughts?
When I came across this article at http://www.salon.com about the death of chick lit, I had to wonder – If chick lit is in fact dead, why are there still so many articles written about it? Why is the genre so controversial? What do you think of this theory?
Because chick lit (whatever it is — or was) provoked so many ideologically fraught arguments about the values placed on women’s vs. men’s tastes, high- vs. lowbrow culture, comedy vs. drama and so on, it’s tempting to read particular significance into its decline. As the first species of popular fiction to treat its heroines’ professional aspirations as seriously as their romantic prospects, chick lit flourished at a time when ambitious young women poured into a robust job market, seeking both love and success, often with a heaping serving of pricey commodities on the side.
Wait a minute here. They aren’t saying that women aren’t seeking love and career success anymore, are they? Or maybe they’re saying it’s not such a new idea so books with those themes are less popular? I’m not sure what to think.
Like road trip movies? Just for fun, check out this conversation between Kristan Higgins and debut author Ruthie Knox. Just make sure you heed the warning: “Warning: Make sure you’re not eating as you read this. We would feel really bad if you choked.”
And, lastly, what are your thoughts about The New York Times referring to Jodi Kantor’s book, “The Obamas,” as “chick nonfiction?”
As always, if you have any links to share, leave a comment and let us know.
Here’s to a fabulous weekend of reading and writing! 🙂
Melina writes contemporary women’s fiction with a pinch of oregano and a dash of chutzpah. She recently returned from a two month trip to Crete and Israel, where she visited family and friends did her best to turn her travels into research and inspiration for her writing. You can visit her at http://melinakantor.com.
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