Category: novels

Tim Dorsey, The Pope of Palm Beach

“The sun was going down behind the Big Burger when the alligator came flying in the drive-in window.” How’s that for an opening line? And it gets better.  (A feat worthy of great admiration, given that it’s his 22nd novel.) “Do you have any idea who I am?” “Yes, why?” Said Serge.  “Forgot your own …

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The Privilege of Men, Judith Mazzucco

The Privilege of Men by Judith Mazzucco starts as an unremarkable novel about the meat industry, but then WHAM! the metaphor in chapter 16—  At least I think, I hope, it’s a metaphor and not something that’s actually happening somewhere right now.  Though—and I’m not sure whether this is Mazzucco’s point or whether she’s ‘just’ …

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And here’s something else that would never happen to a man …

Jass has also set up a tumblr page for additions to Jane Smith’s “And here’s something else that would never happen to a man…” https://jass-richards.tumblr.com/

Jane Smith’s Translation Dictionary

An interesting thing about the novel (A philosopher, a psychologist, and an extraterrestrial walk into a chocolate bar…) is that one of the characters, Jane Smith, starts a ‘translation dictionary’ and the author, Jass Richards, has set up a tumblr page for people to add entries.  Cool. https://jassrichards.tumblr.com/    

Just out! A radfem novel!

JUST OUT from Lacuna! A philosopher, a psychologist, and an extraterrestrial walk into a chocolate bar…  a novel by Jass Richards It’s kinda an extended argument for radical feminism.  And very funny. Here’s the blurb: When a self-appointed independent activist and her office-temp-with-a-doctorate buddy embark on a quest for a chocolate bar (a bar that serves …

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Women Writing Science Fiction as Men — why bother?

I’ve just finished reading Mike Resnick’s collections Women Writing Science Fiction as Men and Men Writing Science Fiction as Women.  There were two rules for submissions to the anthologies: “First, each story had to be told in the first person of a man [woman]; and second, if changing the narrator from Victor to Victoria [or …

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A Postscript to Why Feminist Manuscripts Don’t Get Published

So here’s a query letter my friend Chris Wind sent to a publisher recently: Editor, [XYZ Publishers]: Feminist theorist Dale Spender wrote, in Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them, “We need to know how patriarchy works.  We need to know how women disappear….”   Indeed we do.  Where are all the straight-A …

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Why Feminist Manuscripts Aren’t Getting Published Today – McSweeney’s List

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/why-feminist-manuscripts-arent-getting-published-today  

from Joanna Russ’ The Female Man

excerpted from Joanna Russ’ The Female Man:   …I wept aloud, I wrung my hands, crying: I am a poet! I am Shelley! I am a genius! … Lady, your slip’s showing. … There is the vanity training, the obedience training, the self-effacement training, the deference training, the dependency training, the passivity training, the rivalry …

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A must read –

Just finishing Esme Dodderidge’s The New Gulliver – a must read!!!  (a subtle but thorough reversal…)