Lady Business

OMG Sebastian Faulks show on BBC2 about books, just blargh (ok unfair he made some good points and some I did NOT agree with, but he get's a blargh for being involved in a project that let Martin Amis run his mouth in such an offensive way).

Have you read Birdsong? Such awful sex, a I can only assume ‘comedy’/satirical name for his hero that makes the heroism of war he’s trying to put across impossible to take seriously...why is this book on so many best of lists? It’s because it’s about war isn’t it, so it MUST be profound. He is one of the few authors where I know he is too concerned with pushing the ONE TRUE version of masculinity for me to be able to read his books. Sorry - deviation. I will get on reading this tomorrow - more - OH WHAT? THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM HIS NEW BOOK?! RAGE!

D’y’know what I think? Ok so ignoring how wrong Faulks is about JE being a lady whose whole story is leading to just fulfillment by marriage, authors like Faulks who subscribe to the idea that heros can’t be focused on the emotional life and wants to make this derogatory distinction between heroines and female heros (wtf?) based on heroines being all about emotion and female heros being about getting what they want and making an impression on the world are being really conventional. They can’t break free from the moulds laid down by authors from history about what makes a man, what makes a hero (a certain kind of character type defined by masculine stereotypes) and this results in them being not only socially conventional (which some people might frame as no bad thing - not me) but also artistically conventional (which tons of artists would be like ‘Oh conventional art is THE worst’ about). They can’t break from what are essentially rules and character types carved out hundreds of years ago. And these are the guys who are apparently our time’s greatest literary writers, even though authors now are the literary generation following on from/contributing to a huge movement to modernism?

And I know that if I were presenting this issue on my own blog I would have to be making better arguments and including stuff like ‘but let me explain why not breaking from character types isn’t always bad art’ and ‘but at the same time we might want to think ‘bout how claiming lit-fic as such a progressive category of writing, while the big boys cling to such traditional and outdated ideas might be an artistic contradiction’ but I’m hoping y’all know me well enough to know I am all about the contradictions and not setting general rules with no exception clauses so I will leave it here.