Three things caught my attention this morning that I felt were worth sharing, just because it's Friday. First, something to splutter at – a delightful piece in the Mirror laying into the Orange prize and women writers, or "broads", as the author Derek Mcgovern so delightfully calls them.
He's trying to tread a narrow line between funny and offensive, I think, and ends up missing it altogether and landing feet-first in the offensive camp. "Men don't want to read what women write – we just want to read what they charge," he says. "The best novelists through the ages have always managed to keep the suspense up – women can't even keep the toilet seat up. They are, though, undeniable experts on fiction – just ask them their age, weight, or number of lovers." My mind is well and truly boggling – this is so ridiculous I don't even know where to start, and I feel really that to start anywhere would be to do him the service of thinking what he says is worth anything. I do like the fact that "additional reporting" was provided by John Shaw – did he come up with the facts or the rampant misogyny?
Anyway, on to more outrage, this time not mine but (the excellent) Neil Gaiman's, who's taking on the hordes of angry fans who've been harassing fantasy author George RR Martin to finish his latest magnum opus. Gaiman entered the fray when one of his readers asked him if it was "unrealistic to think that by not writing the next chapter Martin is letting me down", and if "by blogging about your work and life [as Martin does] you have more of a responsibility to deliver on your commitments?"
Martin, points out Gaiman succinctly, "is not your bitch". "This is a useful thing to know, perhaps a useful thing to point out when you find yourself thinking that possibly George is, indeed, your bitch, and should be out there typing what you want to read right now." Go Neil.
George RR provides a nice link to my third point of interest; just take a look at his wondrous beard here and see if you don't think it's a shame he couldn't be included in this ranking of poets by beard weight.
First drawn up in the early 20th century, we are told (how nice if it were true) the league ranges from the weedy attempts of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Beard Type: Italian false goatee – but just look at those scary eyes), to Henry David Thoreau's strange beneath-the-chin look, Walt Whitman's bushy beauty (Beard type: Hibernator) and John Burroughs's Claus-esque chin covering. This is a marvellous way to rank writers, and it should be extended across the genres as a critical tool.
