Book reviewer quits over 'increasing sexist violence'
By Amy Willis
Published: 2:59PM GMT 25 Oct 2009 in The Telegraph UK.
The author claims she is is fed up with increasing levels of "sadistic misogyny" in crime fiction and says authors are simply jumping on the bandwagon to get a bestseller.
"Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims' sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit as young women are imprisoned, bound, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or burned alive," she told the Observer.
Authors must be free to write and publishers to publish. But critics must be free to say when they have had enough. So however many more outpourings of sadistic misogyny are crammed on to the bandwagon, no more will be reviewed by me," she added.
And the most disturbing plots are by female authors, she says.
"The trend cannot be attributed to an anti-feminist backlash because the most inventive fiction of this kind is written by women," she claims.
Natasha Cooper, former chair of the Crime Writer' Association, agrees with Ms Mann. She says women do this so they are taken seriously as authors.
"There is a general feeling that women writers are less important than male writers and what can save and propel them on to the bestseller list is if they produce at least one novel with very graphic violence in it to establish their credibility and prove they are not girly," she said.
The British market for crime fiction is worth more than £116m a year, with almost 21 million books sold.
Women account for more than 60 per cent of the readership with females over 55 the most avid readers.
Published: 2:59PM GMT 25 Oct 2009 in The Telegraph UK.
The author claims she is is fed up with increasing levels of "sadistic misogyny" in crime fiction and says authors are simply jumping on the bandwagon to get a bestseller.
"Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims' sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit as young women are imprisoned, bound, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or burned alive," she told the Observer.
Authors must be free to write and publishers to publish. But critics must be free to say when they have had enough. So however many more outpourings of sadistic misogyny are crammed on to the bandwagon, no more will be reviewed by me," she added.
And the most disturbing plots are by female authors, she says.
"The trend cannot be attributed to an anti-feminist backlash because the most inventive fiction of this kind is written by women," she claims.
Natasha Cooper, former chair of the Crime Writer' Association, agrees with Ms Mann. She says women do this so they are taken seriously as authors.
"There is a general feeling that women writers are less important than male writers and what can save and propel them on to the bestseller list is if they produce at least one novel with very graphic violence in it to establish their credibility and prove they are not girly," she said.
The British market for crime fiction is worth more than £116m a year, with almost 21 million books sold.
Women account for more than 60 per cent of the readership with females over 55 the most avid readers.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by I. J. Parker on
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Absolutely not. Conflict has nothing to do with suffering. You just dreamed that up. And perfrectly good novels can bewritten without dealing to any noticeable degree with the subject of suffering. Did you mean emotion?
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Permalink Reply by Jon Loomis on -
Name one great story in which there's no suffering.
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Permalink Reply by Donna Carrick on -
Oh Ha Ha - er, I hope no one noticed those missing reviewers!
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Permalink Reply by Benjamin Sobieck on -
Gladiator performances, hangings, guillotinings and burnings fell out of taste, which is why they are (mostly) never seen anymore. The demand changed, so the supply changed.
Sure, the point of demand-meets-supply isn't always pretty. But it adheres to the golden rule of any market: give people what they want.
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Permalink Reply by Donna Carrick on
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Just weighing in on the whole hot issue -- and it does seem to be a hot issue, doesn't it? Let's forget about gender for a moment. Let's forget about whether a man wrote it or a woman, and whether the violence was directed at a man or a woman. We are crime writers. Therefore, our art circles around violence. The only question is one of degrees.
As an artist, I need to be free to write what moves me and what I think I can sell. I don't think my work is gratuitously violent, or that it targets women in particular, but hey, characters die. It's never good when good characters bite the bullet.
Kid-related exploitation -- unacceptable. As for anything else, write away. People who want to will read it. Others won't.
It's like the old joke with the punch line "We've already established what kind of girl you are. Now we're only concerned about price..." We've already established that our art dabbles in the darker side of the human element. Now it's all about the degrees we find acceptable, as readers, reviewers and writers.
That's my 2 cents, for what it's worth.
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Permalink Reply by Thomas Grant Bruso on -
Kid-related exploitation -- unacceptable. As for anything else, write away. People who want to will read it. Others won't.
Animal-related exploration as well, Donna. I cannot bear to read, watch or hear about somebody harming an innocent dog or kitten, or what have you, in a work of fiction, or in real life either. Unacceptable. Turns me off. Fires me up.
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Permalink Reply by Steve Mosby on -
You guys are nuts! In the nicest possible way...
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Permalink Reply by Thomas Grant Bruso on
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Thank you.
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Permalink Reply by Donna Carrick on
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Hey, Steve! I suspect one has to be a little 'nuts' to call himself a writer! Ha. We can all be nuts together, at least. There are a lot of lonely nuts out there with no 'Space' to visit. ;=)
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Permalink Reply by Thomas Grant Bruso on
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LOL. I meant, animal-exploitation. It was early-morning when I wrote it. Forgive me.
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Permalink Reply by minervaK on -
OK, Devil's advocate, here: if you want to be free to write whatever you want, what about writers who want to write about maiming and killing kids and animals? Where does the 'free speech' line end and the public indecency line begin? Why is it not OK to kill a kid but OK to cut off a woman's privates, rape her, mangle her, refer to her as sub-human, and throw her body in the garbage?
Yes, our work is about violence. And yes, people die, women as well as men. But there is a line where the violence becomes about something other than the story -- a pandering to the public's (or the writer's!) taste for 'violence porn.' For female characters, this line is crossed much more easily and acceptably than for male characters. The public will read about a female rape and not be much disturbed, but a child or male rape makes people shudder.
Gah. I'm turning into Susan B. Anthony over here. Enough.
MK
www.minervakoenig.com
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