It's only ten a.m. on a Sunday morning and where usually I'd be slobbing about in my PJs, drinking cups of Tetley tea, and telling myself that it's okay to procrastinate during Benny-sleeping hours because, after all, it's Sunday, today I'm all fired up and ready to blog. The reason? This article in today's New York Times about the supposed "trouble" with book groups.
Titled "Fought Over Any Good Books Recently?" the piece starts out with a profile of Jocelyn Bowie, a woman who enthusiastically joined a bookgroup in her hometown of Bloomington, ID, only to find that, gasp, her group wanted to read Oprah picks and The Secret Life of Bees over literary classics like Emma. Ms. Bowie decided leave the group.
The Times piece then goes on to report the eternal wranglings, acrimony, and competing agendas going on in bookgroups across the country - from the woman who left her group because she could not talk politics, to others disullionsioned by too much talk of "poopy diapers and nap times” instead of book talk.
Another woman, we are told in the piece, left her book group because she "wanted to read more chick lit" and in response to this Esther Bushell ("a professional book-group facilitator who leads a dozen suburban New York groups and charges $250 to $300 a member annually for her services") made the comment, “I hate to sound ponderous, but I have a certain moral obligation. I don’t feel I can be paid for leading a discussion about ‘The Devil Wears Prada.’”
This last comment made me cringe, laugh a bitter laugh, and shake my head - as did most of the article. I'm sure it's true that there is acrimony among many book groups. I'm sure there are book groups who are paying facilitators (with "moral obligations"!) to come lead their discussions. I'm sure there are some groups who are more concerned with the quality of the scones baked by the host, than the books themselves. But not all book groups, surely?
The skewed and negative way bookgroups come across in the piece wasn't what bugged me most, however. What grated most of all was the article's implicit, but oh-so-familiar, denigration of women, women readers and women's fiction (for any of you reading this blog long enough will know I have a lot to say on this matter!). The image which heads the article depicts women throwing books at each other and within the piece we are told, I'm sure accurately, that most book groups are "all female." The subtext of the piece is that bookgroups are for women and thus they are plagued by "feminine" problems: bitchiness, competition over whose scones are best, "poopy diaper" talk, and a penchant for "fluffy" popular books written by sell-out women authors!
What the article fails to mention is that precisely because so many are all female, book groups offer great joy and community, fun and support. Women join book groups to read books they will enjoy. But they also join to be with their friends, to escape their families, the laundry, their kids, and the drone of a ball game for one night a month.
I had the good fortune of being invited to a book group last week. Ten women had read The Professors' Wives' Club and wanted me to come talk with them about it. They were the most fantastic group of thirty-something moms. They were bright, funny, engaged, kind, and between them they had a grand total of 36 kids at home! I asked them if they ever argued about the choice of books and they laughed and said "Of course." But it seems they always worked it out in the end. As a visitor, I wouldn't have known if there was acrimony behind the scenes, or whether someone was disgruntled by too much diaper-talk. But what I found last week was a group of women who had thoughtful and interesting things to say not just about my book but all books, and a group of women who relished their "night off" from the kids and who, most of all, enjoyed being together.
The story of their book group, and the many similar non-acrimonious, joyful book groups across the country, will never get written about in The Times. As highbrow at the NYT thinks it is, it can't help loving a scrappy, nails-out, hair- pulling bitch fight. And women supporting and enjoying each other over a book just aint a dirty bitch fight!
6 comments:
I wonder if the Times would do the same sort of piece about men getting together in bars, or wherever, to talk about sports? It does seem obvious that the article requires a implicit pretext that there is something inherently ridiculous or illegitimate about female comardeship, conditions under which it occurs, and the preoccupations of motherhood.
I've had nothing but good experiences with book groups. And they were all women.
Great post, very interesting and provocative~
Fabulous post as usual, Joanne.
I guess I've always been a bit of a feminist, but never more than since I've been a struggling writer. It seems so odd that an industry, which relies on female readers and writers for such a huge percentage of its existence, is so consistently demeaning and denigrating to women. Sigh.
Very well said. This piece bugged me so much that it had me running to my blog too! I was so mad at how it put down chick lit and popular womens fiction. Just horrible. Please stop by of you have a chance: http://kwanawrites.blogspot.com/2008/12/gone-clubbing.html
Sounds like the writer was just looking for something negative to write about, because that gets attention. Thing is, any time you get people together for a group there's likely to be some discord sometime. What about critique groups? Game nights? Or, simply, cliques? Sounds like the writer is trying to make a huge deal out of something that, well, *isn't*. After all, if book groups were so awful, why are they so popular?
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