If you don’t read women, I won’t read you

I love the New York Times Book Review — it’s the first section I go for each Sunday and the only one (besides Real Estate) that I’m sure to read all the way through.

Maybe not all the way through. I often only skim the “By the Book” interview. It’s a litmus test: it lets me know whether or not this is an author I might want to spend some more time with.

The authors are typically asked questions about what they are currently reading or which authors they love and think everyone should read. If the interviewee is a man, I quickly look through his answers to see if he mentions any women or authors of color.

If he doesn’t, I don’t bother to read any more of the interview.

Because if an author is alive in the 21st fucking century and isn’t reading anyone except white males, I’m not gonna bother with him. Chances are, I probably wouldn’t love his work anyway.

It might surprise you to know that it’s actually pretty common for these public intellectuals and artists to fail to acknowledge the writing of anyone who is not a white man. (I can’t help but wonder: why doesn’t their agent or manager or best friend gently suggest that they at least pretend to like/have read a non-white male author? Or at least forward him Rebecca Solnit’s “80 Books No Woman Should Read”)? Look, I have a limited amount of time and attention, and if he can’t be bothered to even pretend to be interested in the experiences of people unlike himself as rendered by people somewhat like me, then he has not earned that time and attention.

Honestly, I’m not asking for an author to provide a Women’s Lit 101 syllabus. I’m really just asking for the mention of one, maybe two, female authors. Is that really so hard?

Recently, author André Aciman appeared in “By the Book” and came off sounding like a real jerk. Aciman only mentions two female authors (Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes), and does so in order to trash Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, remarking that “I’m not even sure it’s well written.”

While I find Aciman’s dismissal of Woolf arrogant and perhaps an indication of his own failings, I’m also struck by the ways in which the interview was edited down. If I were Aciman, I’d actually be pretty pissed off, because in the “expanded version” of the interview online, he favorably notes several female authors he’s been reading. I wonder why these sections were dropped from the print edition — perhaps because the omission makes the subtitle declaring that Aciman would “demote Mrs. Dalloway from the canon” more controversial?

And that is a controversial claim, for many reasons, not the least of which is that Woolf’s masterpiece is centrally concerned not only with the seismic cultural changes of the early 20th century, but with an “ordinary” woman’s experiences of the world. Aciman, though, doesn’t “find it particularly gripping or interesting.”

What would be hilarious if it weren’t so irritating is how Aciman describes great literature in one of his early answers: describing Francesco Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, Aciman explains that Pessoa’s work is like that of Proust, Joyce, Montaigne, and Thucydides in that they all “address the way the human mind reads — or better yet, can’t help misreading — the world. So, basically it’s about me.” (My italics).

I suppose I can’t convince Aciman to like Mrs. Dalloway, although I think if he looked hard enough, he might find that it too is “basically about” him. That is, Mrs. Dalloway is about humans, even if it’s written from a female perspective.

And while Aciman’s work is itself concerned with the experiences of marginalized folks, this interview — at least its print version — is emblematic of just how casually the work of non-white, non-male authors may be dismissed or omitted altogether.

We need to ask more of ourselves and our ostensible allies. Make it a point to read and amplify the work of people who might be underrepresented in these conversations. And we need to be clear about our expectations. If you don’t read women or people of color, I won’t read you.