Reading Tinsley and Kaestle’s piece, I was reminded of a debate that broke out within the literary blogosphere at the end of this past summer. Franzenfreude, as it was later termed, was oriented around the idea that male authors command more respect and are granted greater visibility than their female peers. The debate, well-covered here (http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/behind-the-franzenfreude) and here (http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/08/all-the-sad-young-literary-women/61821/), was complicated by a multitude of factors, including but certainly not limited to demographics of readers, sales, ulterior commercial motives and ingrained gender and social biases.
The Tinsley/Kaestle essay touches on this briefly on the third page, mentioning the derogatory connotation of the term “escapist” reading, before describing the usefulness of escape for a number of different individuals from varied backgrounds. Tinsley and Kaestle focus on female readers, but explore what they call “a great diversity of books.” The debate over Franzenfreude was mired in the issue of diversity, but two ideas stand out to me. The first, that Female authors face more hardship than their male peers. The second is more thorny to me: if women are the dominant consumers of literature, then what does that mean for “diversity?” Certainly escapist reading is a positive action, no matter the text, and female authors deserve more equitable treatment than they currently receive, but are there other imbalances these critics and commentators are overlooking? Should men be instructed to read for an escape? Should women, rather than champion their own, work towards representation for other minority authors, be they queer, immigrant or colored? What must we do to better represent, as Michelle Dean at the Awl put it, “the collective American experience?”
To try and condense my thoughts into a simpler form, what I’m asking, essentially, is how do our various biases affect our attitudes towards reading, literature, curriculums, cannons? There’s no correct answer here, just a variety of experiences and perspectives. Thoughts?
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