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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Books / The Ladies Is the Detective a Misogynist?

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 12:27 PM

Slog Tipper Vlad alerts us to a New Yorker blog post (I still feel weird writing those four words one after the other) about Jessica Mann, a mystery book reviewer who has vowed to not review books that she feels glorify violence against women. The Guardian interviewed Mann:

She said that when a female corpse recently appeared on the jacket of a crime-writing colleague's new book, the author pointed out to her publisher that the victim in the story was actually a man. Mann said the publisher replied: "Never mind that. Dead, brutalised women sell books, dead men don't. Nor do dead children or geriatrics."

But the thing that doesn't exactly make sense, Mann points out, is that the worst offenders of the hot dead girl trend are female authors. Mann suggests that this is because "girls grow up knowing that being female is 'synonymous with being prey'." Speaking anecdotally from my experience as a bookseller, more women buy mystery novels than men, too.

When I read mystery fiction, I generally find that in the uninspired, more formulaic examples of the genre, the detective (or the police officer or the baking granny or the cat lady or whoever is solving the mystery) is the least interesting part of the book. The author often makes the victim the centerpiece of the book, so that in at least one way, their series has a different, if very passive, protagonist every time. So is this a case of the reader identifying with the corpse? Is the idea of being avenged at play here, and a morbid curiosity about victimization?

(Awesome cover image of a woman being brutalized by a gorilla as a clown fights for her honor from The Fiction Mags Index.)

Comments (10) RSS

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Your last two statements could very well be the case, but let's not ignore what's really important here; I think what's being depicted is a gorilla coming to the defense of a woman held hostage by a clown.

Posted by Dougsf on October 27, 2009 at 12:42 PM

No, the clown just discovered his gorilla lover has been having an affair with the woman.

Posted by seandr on October 27, 2009 at 12:56 PM

Sadly, most of what makes a book sell is marketing.

And dead men don't help, but dead women do.

Especially if you can get a lurid cover.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 27, 2009 at 1:09 PM

Colonel Mustard, in the Library, with a candlestick.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty

on October 27, 2009 at 1:11 PM

Also, how could such a pun-laden series with a cover like that have completely avoided a story name like Big Top Betrayal or The Greatest Foe on Earth or Family Circus.

Posted by Dougsf on October 27, 2009 at 1:13 PM

Will doesn't know anything about what makes books sell.

A major theme in a lot of crime fiction is the impossibly tough, impossibly sad, impossibly weary but warm old warrior detective avenging the honor of women who have been wronged. There's no way to wrong a woman worse than to mangle her body in a million different tortuous ways; the worse it is, the sadder and meaner our protagonist will get. People who read crime novels eat this shit up like candy. They're getting a vicarious thrill from the justifiable revenge.

Posted by Fnarf

on October 27, 2009 at 1:17 PM

Yes, The New Yorker's mascot is a quaint 19th century character. But other than that, what is it about them having a blog? They've been one of the earliest publications to move online, in a several big ways. There are scarcely any blog posts at the Stranger older than The New Yorker's. So anyway.

Weird comment on your part, Paul.

Posted by elenchos on October 27, 2009 at 2:19 PM

@6 - right. I'll just conveniently forget all those trips to the ABA and the literary conferences I was a guest or guest of honor or on a panel at, Fnarf.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 27, 2009 at 3:07 PM

Guest of honor. That's a good one. Was that a CANADIAN guest of honor, Willie Boy? I refer, of course, to your hilarious past posts here referencing a mythological "Canadian edition" of the book "Creating Defensible Space", which mysteriously doesn't exist in the National Library of Canada, and, also mysteriously, argues the exact opposite of the real, actual book "Creating Defensible Space". Your bookish history around here is well-known.

You also don't know the name of the bookstore that's two blocks from your house.

Guest of honor, pffft. I've been to the ABA a couple of times, too, Will, but unlike you I know what's going on around me. Only a total jackass could say something like "most of what makes a book sell is marketing". It's a palpably false statement. Like everything that's ever dribbled out of your keyboard. Fuckhead.

Posted by Fnarf

on October 27, 2009 at 3:18 PM

read Dustin Long's "Icelander" yay!

Posted by jenzwick on October 27, 2009 at 9:02 PM