After searching through more blogs I came across some anger towards Maureen Dowd’s article titled “Heels over Hemingway” which was published in the New York Times on February 10, 2007.
In her article Dowd bashes Chick Lit and it’s presence in the bookstore claiming it’s hiding the good literature.
“Looking for Mr. Goodbunny” by Kathleen O’Reilly sits atop George Orwell’s “1984.” “Mine Are Spectacular!” by Janice Kaplan and Lynn Schnurnberger hovers over “Ulysses.” Sophie Kinsella’s “Shopaholic” series cuddles up to Rudyard Kipling.
Later on in her article she says she had taken home several of these pink ‘novels’ and then compared the stories to those of real life Very Important People.
I took home three dozen of the working women romances. They can lull you into a hypnotic state with their simple life lessons — one heroine emulated Doris Day, another Audrey Hepburn, one was the spitting image of Carolyn Bessette, another Charlize Theron.
But then bashed them when saying
…but they’re a long way from Becky Sharp and Elizabeth Bennet. They’re all chick and no lit.
I then decided to check out Maureen’s critics and found:
Dowd doesn’t like books with pink covers, and the best thing about our free world is that she doesn’t have to buy or read them. -Krozser
…how come it counts as journalism to walk around a bookshop mouthing off ignorantly about a genre you know nothing about, grabbing three dozen of them to take home, flip through, and then mock in your newspaper column? -Larbalestier
and the sarcastic Kyra Davis explained that
there’s no denying that Dowd was right on the money when she cautioned her readers not to put chick lit books in the same category as the books of Jane Austen. Austen’s books weren’t just about her characters; they were about the times those characters lived in. When we read Pride and Prejudice, we are treated to a new perspective on the societal norms and expectations of nineteenth-century women. But chick lit is completely different. How could a novel about a single, thirty-something woman struggling in her career and worried about her weight be in any way reflective of a time in which obesity has become an epidemic and women are working longer hours and marrying later in life than ever before? The very idea that these books have any cultural significance is preposterous!
Chick Lit is a battlefield.
Posted by murphkel2003 