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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Milestone novels and the gender divide

  
 
Smoothly
14:27 / 06.04.06
I’m not a regular in Books, so apologies if something like this has been done before (I did a search on books and gender but I couldn’t find anything. If I didn’t look hard enough, mods, delete delete delete.)

Professor Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins of Queen Mary College London surveyed men and women about the novels that changed their lives, and found almost no cross-over between the genders. Articles here and here.

I found myself quite surprised by this, although colleagues think that study must have been commissioned by the department of stating the bleeding obvious. I’m not hugely shocked that the men’s list tended to be "all angst and Orwell", but I didn’t think of lots of the books as being almost exclusively male in terms of their ‘milestone’ impact.

There were other interesting differences too. For example, the research found that women preferred old, well-thumbed paperbacks, while men “had a slight fixation with the stiff covers of hardback books”. Also, that men generally showed much less interest in fiction than women. In fact, some men cited works of non-fiction in their lists, even though they were explicitly asked about fiction. And, as Professor Jardine says, "What I find extraordinary is the hold the male cultural establishment has over book prizes like the Booker, for instance, and in deciding what is the best. This is completely at odds with their lack of interest in fiction. On the other hand, the Orange prize for fiction [which honours women authors] is still regarded as ephemeral."

And this: "On the whole, men between the ages of 20 and 50 do not read fiction. This should have some impact on the book trade. There was a moment when car manufacturers realised that it was women who bought the family car, and the whole industry changed. We need fiction publishers - many of whom are women - to go through the same kind of recognition."

Anyway, I thought it was interesting and wondered what Barbeloid’s thought of this, and how their own lists of milestone novels compared with these.
 
 
matthew.
15:53 / 06.04.06
On the whole, men between the ages of 20 and 50 do not read fiction

Hasn't the publishing industry already figured that out already? It seems to me that "chick-lit" or "romancic suspense" or "romance" often tops the New York Times list of bestselling paperbacks. See here. On the other hand, notable "chick-lit" books do not make up the majority of the hardcover bestsellers, see here. On that link, one will notice Jackie Collins, an author primarily marketed at women, same with Danielle Steel. I was under the impression that the publishing industry already markets heavily at women.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
15:57 / 06.04.06
Without wanting to be snarky, I reckon the idea of "milestone novels" could do with a bit of a closer look. It seems to suggest that one text can effect a massive change in one's perceptions, principles, awareness &c- but surely it's the steady stream of regular different material that has a more pervasive impact?

Then again I'm not sure. It could be different strokes for different folks.
 
 
matthew.
16:42 / 06.04.06
I agree with Legba here. For me, there is no one book. There is only a collective of books I read that made an impact on me. And certainly Camus was not in that list of books for me

Also, I wonder if the book would be different for other English-speaking countries, such as Canada or Australia. In the second article, men mention Orwell as a literary mentor. In my experience, Orwell is not read as much in Canadian high schools as, say, Harper Lee or J.D. Salinger. I certainly read everything by Salinger and only two works by Orwell.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
17:07 / 06.04.06
The men's list was all angst and Orwell. Sort of puberty reading," she said. Argh! Look at those silly men with their silly books! They don't read proper books like us women! The only book I'm conscious of changing my life was 'The Meme Machine', and that was only for an afternoon. But if you want me to nominate good books instead... I'm interested as to whether any of the women (or the few men for that matter) really chose a life-changing book or whether they just chose one they really, really liked.
 
 
Loomis
08:08 / 07.04.06
I don’t know about the whole life-changing/milestone notion, but I agree with matt’s point that the literary industry already knows that women are bigger buyers of fiction. Especially when it comes to new releases. This is only anecdotal, but in my experience more men that I know are interested in catching up on the classics and buying up Penguin classics from second hand bookshops whereas more women that I know have a handle on new releases and buy more of their books new than secondhand. Maybe that has something to do with men buying into the notion of the literary canon and what they “should” have read. Perhaps it’s easier for men to support the notion of a tradition of great books written by men.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
16:40 / 07.04.06
I was a bit puzzled by The Hobbit's high score on the men's list - as a life-changing read, what would The Hobbit inspire you to do exactly? Move to Devon, grow a beard, switch to real ale, what? There can't be that many LARPers out there, surely.
 
 
ibis the being
19:11 / 07.04.06
I agree with the others that the concept of the list is a bit odd. My "milestone novels" would probably be those that I read an at impressionable (teen) age and had the strongest effect on me (in the sense of "wow this book is so awesome" and making me want to write) - most of which were assigned reading in high school English classes. That that list would resemble the men's in the study more than the women's anyway. Off the top of the head my top five "milestone novels" would be -

Lonesome Traveler - Kerouac
1984 - Orwell
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
The Outsider - Richard Wright
Germinal - Zola
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
22:41 / 07.04.06
I was a bit puzzled by The Hobbit's high score on the men's list - as a life-changing read, what would The Hobbit inspire you to do exactly? Move to Devon, grow a beard, switch to real ale, what? There can't be that many LARPers out there, surely.

In fact, how do any of the books on the list inspire anyone to do anything? The books on the list- many of them I would regard as great books btw, most I have read- don't really say much that any normal person needs to be told. War is bad (Catch 22, Slaughterhouse Five), the establishment is mean (1984, Heart of Darkness), being an awkward loner makes you totally awesome (The Outsider, Catcher') etc.
Incidentally, only two of the books on the list which I have read I read after the age of eighteen (Ulysses and Lolita). Is that the same for most board members? Is it also true for female 'lithers?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:37 / 07.04.06
Well I suppose some of the books on the guys list would seem to be about something to do with challenging authority, or, alternatively, exploring a new way of living, or at least seeing things.

Certainly, since I read 'Lolita' I've been moving from country to country, often as the mood takes me, but as often as not because of various frankly, er, complicated issues to do with the police and the social services.

And after reading High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, I just.... I so wanted to die.

And not in a good way either.
 
 
This Sunday
00:35 / 08.04.06
I wonder how one defines 'life changing' since you can't really know, a lot of times, how you'd end up later on, without the book.
Top five:

'Wuthering Heights' by Bronte
Which was possibly my favorite book when I was about nine/ten. The notion of Cathy and Heathcliff possibly destroyed any chance of me ending up gay or straight.

'Finnegans Wake' by Joyce
Another childhood favorite, which I thankfully got hold of long before anyone could insist I was too young and uneducated for it. Directly responsible, I'm sure, for my convictions that difficult writings are perfectly fine, that the greatest, widest audience is not always the best target, and that words should be foremost fun, writing filled with wit and impetus before anything else.

'Engima' by Milligan and some other people
Is a comic, instead of a proper novel, I suppose, but really, I read this when it came out, quickly forgot entirely about it, rediscovered it, and in retrospect nearly everything I'd written since it came out, had been, in fact, tainted by it.

The works of Byron and of Jack Kirby, which I devoured all through my youth and still remain entirely too fond of, have clearly flavoured both my writing and my life(style), much to the irritation of others.
 
 
Lenore of Babalon
03:19 / 08.04.06
This is an interesting topic to me since I tend to keep a running list of "Books That Shaped My Life" and enjoy frequent pleasant conversations on that subject. I separate these from just "Really Cool Books" as being books that changed my perceptions in extreme ways, ones where I can actually see a major change in my life path after reading them, or ones where I was directly inspired by them to actively change my life in some way (or any combination of these). The short list is something like this:

Teens: Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love", George Leonard's "The Ultimate Athlete", Haldeman's "The Forever War"

20's: A trio from Spinrad: "Little Heroes", "Child of Fortune", "The Void Captain's Tale"; Neal Stephenson's "The Big U", Mahabharata/Bhagavad-Gita and Ramayana, Grossinger's "The Alchemical Tradition in the Late 20th Century"

30's: Andre Gide's "Fruits of the Earth" and "New Fruits". Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age", WS Burroughs' "The Western Lands"

So far in the first 1/3 of my 40's I've read a number of wonderful books, but nothing stands out as life-changing. This may have something to do with what Daytripper said about not knowing how significant something is at the time - I've had time to reflect on books I read years ago and their influence on me, although some have left me feeling changed even while reading them. The majority were read in my 20's which makes sense in a way.

Another interesting thing about my list is that there's a lot of science fiction, and I'm really not a very big fan of scifi/fantasy at all. I prefer historical novels, a good creepy tale, or books that fit under whatever today's definition of "postmodern" is - not to mention a good hardboiled detective story when I'm feeling particularly decadent. But the ones listed and a few others (favourite books, but not "life-changing") are my "comfort books" - books I always make sure are not packed away, but close at hand in case I need them.

I wonder if the prevalence of scifi books as really significant life-changers has to do with the fact that the rules are different - that they might be seen as more philosophical in nature? Another common thread I just noticed is the number of picaresque novels in my list. That might explain a lot......
 
 
matthew.
03:20 / 08.04.06
Fascinating to see Zola's Germinal on anybody's "milestone" list. My own personal milestone novels are far more... popular:
The World According to Garp by John Irving.
The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
and finally, the most important one, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

I think that these books held a lot of sway over me because as an adolescent male, I certainly remembered the sex and violence bits. Now that I'm a bit older, I can definitely see that some of them are deeper and more complex than their violent and sexy bits would imply.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
19:20 / 08.04.06
Phex: Incidentally, only two of the books on the list which I have read I read after the age of eighteen (Ulysses and Lolita). Is that the same for most board members? Is it also true for female 'lithers?

I read 10 of the 20 books on the list after I was eighteen. So in this case the answer to your last question is 'no'!

My 'milestone book' would probably be Room With A View, because much of it functions as a superb example of how not to live a life. Since reading it I have tended to think about what Lucy Honeychurch would do in any given situation and try to avoid that course of action.
 
 
Daemon est Deus Inversus
17:14 / 09.04.06
Like Daytripper, "Wuthering Heights" was a great favorite when I was 11 0r 12. Like Cathy, I felt that I would not be comfortable in Paradise. The book stayed with me: I've never had ths slightest interest in a woman without a strong streak of Cathy Earnshaw in her. Afterwards, sister Charlorre's snide remarks in the preface to the posthumous second edition about beings 'relentless and impacable,' 'lost and fallen,' in the midst of 'perverted passion and passionate perversity,' only convinced me that anything less was counterfeit. Edgar Linton, in his extraordinary weakness, and negligence, comes out much worse than Heathcliff. Lockwood, in his non-being, provides an excellent contrast.
 
 
This Sunday
19:02 / 09.04.06
One of the above articles makes the extrapolation that using books - or, more properly, fictional narratives - as a guide for real life situations, is the tendency of women, but not men. Which, is interesting to me, since I was just having a conversation about it, the other night.

My friend was posing much the same, and I was insisting it wasn't true because I (and at least two other men I know) very much have a habit of dealing with a crisis or concern in life by finding the nearest similar situation in a fiction and using that as a springboard.

There was an early 'MegaTokyo' strip based on this notion... by a guy, about a guy... reading girls' comics in a bookshop.

'The Lord of the Rings' and its insistence we listen to bumbling old people who appear to be frequently wrong but are always right because they are old and bearded (and not at all any kind of dark race of orc-thingy) would not serve well in this area, but 'Ada, or Ardor', 'The End of the Affair', or even oh, 'Shibuya District, Maruyama Neighborhood: After School'... this is the difference between, I think, a reaffirmation like Tokien or Hornby provide, and a moving-forward.

Does anybody read '1984' for something relevant, or does it exist as a reaffirming artifact, to confirm for us various sufferings, loneliness, the pressures of authority and urges of submissive belonging and singular determination,so on and so on?

'Lolita' is, read straight, certainly that sort of reaffirmation, since that's HH's whole gig; we are being sold his revision and collusion. So, too, 'Heart of Darkness' serves as reminder, more than anything. These two, however, unlike, I think, most of that list from the article, stand some distanced rereadings, specifically because they are conscious of their first-nature, and actually communicate (poor, poor Mona Dahl, alas!) beyond and around it.

Is this why I can't bother ever finishing 'American Psycho' in one go? Am I entirely barking up a nonexistent tree for the hint of a squirrel who doesn't give a damn?

And, in y'all's experience, is this truly something women do more than men?
 
 
Daemon est Deus Inversus
22:41 / 09.04.06
When I was 17, I read D.A.F. Sade's "Juliette." He proposed a theory that, absent Divinity, there can be no immortal part of ourselves; and, thus, we are no more capable of human community than matching chairs in a dining room set. By extension, of course, there is no free will (no more than an engine has free will). Then, Saint-Fond's philosophy (he's the only major Sadean character who's not an atheist) that God is a destructive, anabolic force who creates only that things should wither and die (which, really, isn't so much different than the Old Testament God). Ultimately, I rejected his elaborate philosophical system, but it made me question every single accepted truth ever since. (Besides, some of the passages, the one about a hefty woman "flogging the apostolic buttocks" while Juliette is being anally deflowered by an elderly archbishop is my favorite, are hillarious).
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
06:06 / 10.04.06
Albert Angelo, and Housemother Normal by B.S. Johnson.

certainly perspective-shifting. The former has two physical holes cut in the pages (a concrete type of foreshadowing), as well as a number of other structural somersaults, without ever losing the sensitive, witty voice of the narrator.

the latter takes the ridiculous and renders it sublime.

neither of which I had thought possible without falling into theorhetical, yawn-inducing, smug-at-one's-own-cleverness authorial tones.

and his initials are BS.

--not jack
 
 
elene
07:55 / 10.04.06
I picked up Greg Bear's Queen of Angels while travelling around Spain in the early '90s and I think it ripped the top off my mind, or at least the hidden part of it, which eventually led to me facing up to a lot of things I didn't want too. It was certainly a milestone book for me.

Queen of Angels is science fiction.

I'm going to provide a very inadequate summary of the book's plot, for anyone who knows that this is not their thing and to remind those who have read it. I think everyone else ought to read it rather than this summary. I hope this is enough to show how it might work.



SPOILERS!



Queen of Angels is science fiction, set in the year 2048, a not very distant future. It's a world deeply changed not only technically, but also psychologically and socially by nanotechnology. One can alter almost everything about oneself in this future, and society sometimes expects that one will alter a great deal of one's personality.

There are three main classes: the high naturals, the therapied and the untherapied. Since psychiatrists can now wander through a virtual reality called the patient's "Country of the Mind," it seems that nothing more is hidden. A balanced and well integrated personality is something one can be proven to possess, and something one can attain through therapy. Those who need no therapy to attain this ideal balance are most prized, those who refuse therapy they are seen to need are largely excluded from the better districts, jobs and company.

Queen of Angels consists of four partially interwoven stories dealing with change, becoming and dissolution. Pain is the centre of experience.

Emmanuel Goldsmith, a high natural and a great writer, inexplicably slaughters a group of young admirers. He is pursued by Mary Choi, a detective and again a natural, who has greatly transformed her body using nanotechnology to enhance her abilities. This is unusual, she is exotic. She is protected by the quality of her mind but people are afraid and jealous of her.

Richard Fettle, untherapied but a friend of Goldsmith, has great problems coming to terms with the action of his friend. In a way Fettle, and many other writers, have justified their needing to remain untherapied through Goldsmith. Now they are forced to reconsider their situation.

Martin Burke, the designer of the psychotherapeutic technique of direct mind-to-mind interaction in the Country of the Mind, is, for political reasons, as one of the architects of this new world, in disgrace but is nevertheless given the opportunity to explore Goldsmith's mind through the influence of the parents of one of his victims. This is a very dangerous undertaking that Burke greatly underestimates.

Jill, the artificial intelligence of a space probe sent to explore the Alpha Centauri system, finds life on one of that system's worlds and with this - in great internal conflict - achieves self-awareness, as does the twin monitoring her on Earth.
 
 
ibis the being
22:56 / 17.04.06
Fascinating to see Zola's Germinal on anybody's "milestone" list.

Well, as I say, it was assigned reading. Not that I didn't read outside of English class, more that I loved English class and dove wholeheartedly into the required reading. I identified so closely with Etienne (that was the name of the protagonist in Germinal, right?), I was completely hooked on the novel. In Anna Karenina, I identified with Lev more than any other character... I suppose there's another thread just in looking at why we identify with the characters we do, but I was strongly attracted to protagonists who felt somehow alienated from their families/communities/societies and who were analyzing and evaluating their places in the world - that condition, of course, closely mirroring the experience of being a teenager for a lot of people, including me.
 
 
foolish fat finger
23:17 / 17.04.06
all my life-changing books have been non-fiction. is that unusual? I don't know. for instance I read 'the primal scream', which inspired me to do primal therapy. I sure didn't read 'the beach' and become inspired to become a wayward traveller in Thailand who gets influenced to find a secret island full of happy vibes depicted on a map drawn by a dying man in a hot hotel room and who eventually finds he has to abandon the idyllic community he has bonded with because of dangerous encounters with native dope-growers...

or is that just me?
 
  
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