Finding women who can write is complicated at the London Review of Books
by Kathryn Heyman
Some recent correspondence on the gender balance of the London Review of Books.
Dear Nicholas and Subscription team
Thanks for your recent letter expressing your concern for me in the form of a suggestion that I might have forgotten to renew my subscription.
I had planned a simple, quiet lapse, but as you have raised the question, let me assure you that I have not forgotten to renew.
Indeed, I would dearly love to renew my subscription, however, based on the tedious regularity with which you ignore female writers and female reviewers, I have to assume that my lady-money is quite simply not welcome in the man-cave of LRB.
With each issue my husband and I play the hilarious poker game “Guess the Ladies”, whereby contestants must take a punt on the number of female contributors to the LRB, or reviews of books written by women. The percentages are fascinating. It’s not hard, just open any issue and count the names – 16 men, 4 women, that sort of thing – give it a try, it’s a great game once you get the hang of it. Recently the game has extended to an advanced version whereby we compare your statistics to the Cambridge University Alumni Magazine. We would have assumed the LRB might be a teensy bit less conservative than the Alumni mag (recent features include a piece on old chairs) but, no, you win. And, congratulations – you also win the metaphorical arm wrestle in our household; we both give up. We can no longer tolerate the tedium with which we are able to predict the outcomes of our gender game. We have made the astonishing decision to create a life and an environment in which men and women have equal power, equal status, equal space. This is clearly not a world which the LRB chooses to inhabit.
If at some point you choose to step into the terrifying world of gender equality, do let us know.
Dr Kathryn Heyman
Dear Kathryn Heyman,Many thanks for taking the time to let us know why you’ve decided to give up on the LRB. We’re very sorry to see you go, but respect your reasons. If you were interested, I’d be glad to discuss with you, perhaps in an email exchange, why it may be that women are underrepresented in the paper. I think they’re complicated; actually, as complicated as it gets. However, there’s no question that despite the distress it causes us that the proportion of women in the paper remains so stubbornly low, the efforts we’ve made to change the situation have been hopelessly unsuccessful. We’ll continue to try – the issue is on our minds constantly – in the hope that eventually you’ll feel ready to consider subscribing again. Best wishes,
Paul
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS28 Little Russell StreetLondon WC1A 2HN
Dear Paul
Firstly, apologies for the mass of appalling typos.
Secondly, I’m sorry, but I just can’t see what on earth you mean: efforts to change the situation? Really, Paul, with respect, it isn’t that hard. I could give you a list – off the top of my head – of scores of eminent established female novelists and non-fiction writers who are not being reviewed. I could give you a similar list of emerging female writers. So, what’s the problem? Are your reviewers allergic to lady-words? Or is your problem finding female reviewers (because only women will review women?)I’m sure you are aware of the facts in the publishing industry: more women write books, more women read books. Your pages are a shocking inverse to the reality.
I’m sorry, but as someone with (I assume) a nodding acquaintance with Aristotle, you know that we only know someone’s intentions through their actions. If this really causes you and your colleagues actual distress, change it. If you are genuine about not knowing how to do this, I am happy to call you and explain how.
Best wishes
Kathryn Heyman
Go for it! I used to subscribe purely for the personal ads, but even those become predictable after a while. I used to be asked to review for them occasionally, and I don’t think I was that bad at it, but there has been silence from the editors for a long time now…
Brilliant. Letter’s in the post: so, (pace Richard Hamilton) Paul, just what is it about today’s hormones you find so different, so unappealing?
I let my subscription quietly lapse about three years ago. They still gently and regularly write to suggest I might have forgotten them. Bless.
Much enjoyed this correspondence. Perhaps the editorial teams of the LRB and the Today programme could go on an away day together to ponder the problem.
That’s a beautiful idea, Sarah.
Maybe he needs a binder full of women.
Super comment.
Daisie, will you marry me? That was AWESOME.
My wife plays the same game, and I’ve long been trying to persuade her that the invariable outcome, and the fury it provokes, should be reason enough to do like you with her subscription. And, she would add, the LRB’s manifest attitudes to race reveal a similar refusal on the part of the editors to seriously consider their own prejudices. It seems to me of a piece with the smug superiority implied by the design of the “paper” and the lazy editing of its articles, and made plain by their occasional responses to readers’ letters.
PS excellent letters!
Thank you thank you Kathryn Heyman. It’s needed saying for years, and I’ve often wanted to write, shout & protest myself. The LRB seems to be run a little like Thatcher’s cabinet: a coterie of adoring & fearful males in awe of the lone woman with power (er, money). Shame they can’t seem to organise a Bloomsbury coup. (Perhaps we should storm the palace ourselves…) I salute you, Kathryn!
A fantastic letter, perhaps itself an example to the editors that we females can indeed manage to occasionally string some words together.
Fantastic. Well done. He acts as if it is beyond his control, which is maddening.
[…] a letter posted on her blog, the Australian novelist Kathryn Heyman responds to a subscription renewal notice she received from […]
Difficult to know whether to weep or laugh at preposterous justification. Maybe a mass boycott would work.
[…] a letter posted on her blog, the Australian novelist Kathryn Heyman responds to a subscription renewal notice she received from […]
Maybe we are unwilling to work for paltry fees? Though I don’t see that that would be a gender issue . . .
‘I’d be glad to discuss with you, perhaps in an email exchange, why it may be that women are underrepresented in the paper. I think they’re complicated; actually, as complicated as it gets. ‘. What – women are as complicated as it gets?
I stopped subscribing 20 years ago for precisely this reason; I took it up again three years ago and see no change. It would be interesting to see the comissioning editors of the LRB explain exactly why they think they have this problem.
i liked this a lot – and would like it even more with a top ten of women novelists/and their best novels to go and read right now.
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Well said Katharine. I sent a letter along these lines to the LRB a decade ago and didn’t even get a reply. They deserve to go under.
You didn’t get a reply to your letter so you want the magazine to go under? That is petty and vindictive, isn’t it? I do hope this hasn’t been eating you up for the whole decade.
Woooah there Cassie! That’s quite a big leap, isn’t it? The story I spoke of in The Guardian – the story of Parsifal – is from the Holy Grail legend; essentially, Parsifal asks the king about his wound because he is able to express concern. I’m not quite seeing where I said ‘I want the magazine to go under’ – either implicitly or actively. On the contrary, I want the journal to measure up to exacting standards.
Contrary to my concerns being ‘silly’ (thanks for that, by the way – I’ve always thought very highly of you, too), I believe that the role of literature in our culture is to call us to our best selves. By ‘us’, I mean us humans. Men and women. As for my choice of journals – you’re right that this is an issue across many journals, although the Australian Review of Books is an exception.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Hi Kathryn
You misunderstood me. I didn’t for a moment suggest YOU want the LRB to go under. I fully understood your reference to the Parsifal legend. I was responding to Amanda Craig’s comment:
“Well said Katharine. I sent a letter along these lines to the LRB a decade ago and didn’t even get a reply. They deserve to go under.”
Doesn’t my comment appear under her comment? It does on my screen. I withdraw the term ‘silly’, which I agree was neither fair nor apposite. But what I wanted to emphasise is that by refusing to read magazines that continue to sideline many women writers you are hurting yourself most, because they do have some brilliant women contributers. By pulling out you are not changing the culture at the LRB; in fact all that has happened is they’ve lost one subscriber, which in a way means you are contributing to their going under!
It’s good hear that the Australian Book Review at least has parity of the sexes.
Cassie
ps There is no ‘reply’ button under your comment, so this is going to appear in the wrong place, I’m afraid.
Yes, sorry, Cassi – I read the post without seeing the context! And as I’ve said repeatedly, I want it journals like the LRB to succeed – but I can’t bear the regular insult to my blood pressure, currently. There are other journals doing good work and I hope that the LRB will step up to the 21st century.
Excellent letters – why is it so complicated and what is so sensitive that it would need to be discussed privately?
Women?
Wonderful!
I’m tired of the word ‘chick-lit’ being used for almost any work written by a woman. Most sci-fi/fantasy is written by men and for men and is the equivalent light fiction.
I genuinely think that there’s a growing movement of women reading what other women write developing, and that male-controlled areas of literature are losing ground. This is very much because of the opportunities provided by the chance to publish online, outside the controlled traditional means of publishing. I’m not talking just about novels. I’m talking about everything. I’ve read many great blogs and websites set up by women.
Let the women’s writing revolution commence!
Ducky, there are lots of extremely talented women who write SF, more each year. Perhaps you should explore a few of these women: Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Pat Murphy, Karen Joy Fowler, Kelly Link, Joanna Russ, Nicola Griffith, Joan Slonziewski, Pat Cadigan, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Vonda McIntyre, and many, many others!
Really, Ducky? You seem to have a bad case of ignorance and prejudice going there; perhaps the tips provided by Amy Thomson (who is too modest to mention that she’s the 1994 winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of science fiction and a damned good writer herself) could give you some clues.
Thank you Kathryn, for saying what needs to be said, eloquently, forcefully and politely! I’m don’t think I’d have managed to be so restrained. I, too, didn’t renew my subscription. It was just so unrepresentative of the contemporary literary scene. Out of 9 biographies, all with major publishers, only once have I ever got a paragraph in the LRB, but then – I mainly write about women….
Thanks Kathleen! Interestingly, I’ve had a few messages (really only two, but one recurring) from people who though I was impolite. At least they didn’t tell me I was being hysterical and offer me Valium and a nice lie down..
though I think I needed one after reading the rest of the LRB’s correspondence.
Kathryn, did you get a response to your second letter? I really would like to know what he was talking about.
Kathryn, you’re fabulous!
Brilliant! they should really change their name to The London Man’s Review of Books by Uncomplicated Men
I’m glad I don’t live with a Paul.
“I need you to do your fair share of chores.”
“I take the garbage out!”
Actually, I think it’s a cunning plot to correspond with, and perhaps meet women. It can’t be a business plan, as he would know that survey after survey shows that women read more and buy more books and, oddly enough, like to read all kinds of books by different sorts of people, and oh yes, and about 50% of them are women! Not to mention that there are so many great women writers and reviewers….but please.excuse me while I try and work out why it’s so complicated. I may be gone for some time…….
Lovely. Thank you Kathryn.
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
Kathryn, I too would love to know what the secret complications are that can only be addressed in private e-mails! Keep us updated.
I completely support equal power, equal status, and equal identity for men and women. The preponderance of female writers in _English House and Garden_ is prima facie evidence of shocking, systemic, simple, sexist discrimination against men.
Kathryn, bravo. I barely touched the surface with publishing and editing figures in the poetry world in introductory essay to my anthology “Women’s Work”, half of which is polemic on this very subject.
The history of that anthology being reviewed (or not) was instructive too. I could say I was shocked by some editor’s comments on the idea of reviewing except I wasn’t really. Actually I’d been warned about editing such a book. Curiously enough I’ve had little luck selling anthology ideas about anything that wasn’t women based and indeed a certain ghettoization was another point of discussion in the essay.
Some years after WW came out a letter was written to Poetry Review about figures in that journal which earned an entirely dismissive and offensive response from the then editor. I have noticed this debate to have become more prominent since that time and one hopes not just among the already converted. (Btw, the LRB is one of the few poetry journals in the UK to consistently decline my work. Of course it may just be that my work isn’t any good or they just don’t like it but the rejection always comes with a nice note encouraging me to send again, or saying “almost” or some such thing.)
Excellent. well done!
Clearly ‘Guess the Ladies’ is an entertaining game and one I might play occasionally myself now you’ve explained the rules. But I do prefer, upon receiving the LRB, to scan the contents page and then settle down to read those articles that look interesting or the ones written by my favourite writers such as Jenny Diski and Andrew O’Hagen, irrespective of what sex they are.
I think that, while gender equality is important, it is a silly reason for not renewing your subscription. All you’ve done is denied yourself the pleasure of reading future articles by such excellent writers as Hilary Mantel, Marina Warner and Margaret Beard, among others. But perhaps you never went beyond the contents page each month anyway.
Now, which of the literary magazines are you turning to instead? The TLS? New York Review of Books? The 2010-2012 Vida surveys you mention in your Guardian article show that these and most of the other mags – New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Paris Review, etc – have more or less the same disparity in representation of the sexes. So I’m really not sure why you have singled out the LRB for your disapproval.
Excellent letter, Kathryn. I’ve just emailed my millionth request to review for the LRB (a specific title! About a subject i might have some expertise in!). I’m not holding my breath but I’m sure I’m not the only woman reviewer out there to have repeatedly suggested titles to review, so I’m not sure what their struggle’ is. I have a PhD, I’ve published two books with a third on the way, reviewed for almost everybody over the last 15 years….
PS I was once almost commissioned – I met one of their editors on a press trip, then emailed him to ask if I could review the new biography about Lucia Joyce (my PhD was on Joyce and feminist theory, and I’ve published academic articles on the subject). He was agreeable – then told me I couldn’t do it as one of their ‘regulars’ wanted it instead – Terry Eagleton.
Oh, that’s so interesting Lesley! For Books Sake have just posted a storify (is that a thing?) on Twitter, highlighting key responses and comments around this discussion. LRB have repeatedly said “We wish more women would get in touch with us.” So you might want to refer them back to their own comments!
Lesley, I sympathise. But if you were the LRB editors would you rather publish a review by someone who has reliably written articles for you for the past ten years, has written upward of 30 books and no doubt hundreds of articles of literary criticism, is a professor of English at a top university and is regarded as one of the best contemporary literary critics or one by someone with a PhD who left academia seven years ago? Regardless of sex. Just asking.
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I’ve been playing the same ‘count the women’ game for years and the LRB still comes out worse than most other things I read. Indeed I seem to remember a correspondence on that very subject in the LRB’s letter column back in the late 1980s. Apparently it has got no less complicated over the last 20 years or so. Who’d have thought?
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You go girl! Belgian chocolate, laced with acid. Uber proud to have you represent us Kathryn.But maybe we girls could make Paul’s struggle to help us that bit easier if we just stopped writing books on shopping and manicures! Then maybe Paul and his mates would
take us more seriously.
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Well done for bringing it up and taking a stand. Great letters – I didn’t think they were rude at all, just well written.
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