When I was on Radio Cambridgeshire someone called Bob text in to say that FEN sounded like 'just another book belittling men'. I wasn't satisfied with my answer at the time and it's taken me a few days to come up with an answer I am happy with. Here is it:
FEN is not a book about men. It is a book about women. And, because of this, it is true that the male characters have become secondary to the female. This is intentional and there to highlight a few things
Firstly that as a woman/girl living in the world and watching TV/films and reading as many books as possible it is sometimes hard to find representation where a woman is more than the wife or mother of a male character.
The books that we study and hold up as the pillars of achievement are books about white straight men. And we read them and we are happy to do so. We understand that there are many white straight men in the world.
and because we have spent a lot of our lives reading books about men it does not seem ridiculous to think that perhaps we could write a book about women and have men read it without immediately noting that there are not enough men in it.
And if this is belittlement then we have been being belittled for a long long time and if I have to hear anymore about how great Kerouac is or asked if I've read Infinite Jest then I don't know what I'll do.
Secondly I would like to say that, Bob, if you only want to read books about people who look and sound like you then you might be living at the wrong time.
Because I have enormous hope that more and more the literature we hold up as our greatest achievement will be written by people of color and people of all sexualities and genders. And I think you might enjoy reading it if you try.
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