A serious article that's funny!

[Faramir Jones]

A while ago, I came across a column written by Bidisha, a novelist and critic, in the UK newspaper The Guardian on Thursday, 22 May 2008. Her piece that day was entitled 'When Harry met sexism'; and she was attacking what she felt was the indifference of many to female speculative fiction writers. I cracked up when I read this passage:

Readers who rave about the scope of Lord of the Rings, in which a club of white men flee (a) a big burning vagina and (b) some black guys in hoods, are simply unaware of the awesome complexity of Katharine Kerr's Deverry sequence of Celtic fantasy novels. They hail William Gibson's prescience, oblivious to Marge Piercy's prophetic sci-fi masterpieces Body of Glass and Woman on the Edge of Time and Liz Williams's intelligent, knotty novels like Darkland.

Yes, readers, this female writer called the Eye of Sauron 'a big burning vagina'! And I thought that men were the ones accused of thinking about sex all the time!

For those who want to read all of the piece, here is the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...rypotter.women

What do people think?

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

Funny. Cue the comments missing the point that the Rings reference was a joke.

Her general theme is probably about right. What can you do, though? Some people still think women can't know anything about cars. In any case, I've read (or rather, started to read) too many bad books by male writers to be victim to such prejudice.

[Bêthberry]

I'm still laughing over her description of Alice:

Originally Posted by Bidisha

Critics ignore the tough heroines created by Tamora Pierce and Trudi Canavan, but acclaim Lewis Carroll's creepily pliable Alice, who obediently consumes whatever cupcakes and potions she finds in Wonderland.

That Alice, she's just such a tart.

But I am seriously surprised to see a Guardian article which modifies "complexity" with "awesome." That's like, just awesome criticism.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

I quite like this article, though my focus lies elsewhere.
I am more interested in the pop vs. classics discussion.
Especially academics are horrible when it comes to this, denouncing a work of art because it has a broad public appeal, yet they have no problem reading it themselves if it is more than 100 years old. . .

[Estelyn Telcontar]

The LotR reference is a classic case of Jackson trumping Tolkien - the image of the Eye is wittily described, yet has nothing whatsoever to do with the book. The latter gets bashed for something that it does not contain, but which is in the movie.

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I'm still laughing over her description of Alice:

.

Just say no they say, but often it's much more interesting to say "yes"

Anyway, the writer has a way with words yes, but it's always a bit irksome to read people with this kind of a feminist axe to grind, you know, the kind who sees penises everywhere, terrible oppressive penises. You can almost smell the sulphur...