{"id":417,"date":"2008-04-07T11:48:28","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T16:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2008\/04\/07\/judge-date-by-her-cover\/"},"modified":"2008-04-07T15:36:21","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T20:36:21","slug":"judge-date-by-her-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/04\/judge-date-by-her-cover\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Date by Her Cover"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here are three articles claiming with scant evidence that women are fiction and men non-fiction. The earliest comes from the March 24, 2008, edition of The New Yorker, which started out as possibly a look at where the two literatures<\/a> overlap in either memoir or false memoir. But near the end it dives into a Women\/Venus Men\/Mars dichotomy. That in turn got the attention of a Salon Broadsheet blog, as it seems to both reaffirm and contradict<\/a> the magazine’s author. Last, the always diverse weekly books essay in The New York Times discussed the old know-me-by-my-bookshelves trick of dating<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most of the men I know who read books, admittedly a small number, read fiction, going by conversation at get-togethers. The minority who prefer non-fiction go for history. Now, the women I know, including writers, are all over non-fiction but especially these three, how-to, self-help and spirituality or new-age, all tellingly neglected in the three articles above. I’ve heard mentions of history, science and current events as well but, in strong fourth place, memoir. In my crowd, both sexes enjoy poetry.<\/p>\n

Thus the claim that women prefer fiction and men non, is wish-fulfillment by these refined major media intellectual essayists. Here’s another theory: A lot of women fear possibly having been short-changed by college and life experiences in general and want to level the field with more and better knowledge through self-education. They don’t feel they have time to relax into made-up \/ let’s pretend \/ derring-do \/ boo-hoo escapism. Men do, which would prove this feminist point.<\/p>\n

I used to be a bachelor who checked out women’s bookshelves and cast judgments. I never did that to My Beloved when we dated; I was too smitten to think that mattered. It didn’t, but as it happens she had a shelf or two, mostly of the self-help order. For her part, she mocked my hundreds and hundreds of volumes. At rare times she does still.<\/p>\n

MB’s collection has grown tremendously but they’re generally in that top three, very few fours (memoir). While she loves movies and the better TV dramas, she sees no point in getting involved in the prose lives of other people if they don’t exist. After 15 years of marriage, as of last month, I realized something: We can converse in detail about books, because we read different ones. If both read Cormac McCarthy or Suze Orman, that can last only a sentence or two, right?<\/p>\n

Mostly I listen, though. Ask me about dollar-cost averaging! MB really sees no point in my telling her that Suzie Salmon’s dad just had a heart attack in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones<\/a>. Like The Constant Gardener or The Golden Compass, which I read or heard (as audio books), she always loves the film when it comes out. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are three articles claiming with scant evidence that women are fiction and men non-fiction. The earliest comes from the March 24, 2008, edition of The New Yorker, which started out as possibly a look at where the two literatures overlap in either memoir or false memoir. But near the end it dives into a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-of-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":77,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/03\/thanks-for-the-memoirs\/","url_meta":{"origin":417,"position":0},"title":"Thanks for the memoirs","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 11, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock \u00a0 Thursday, March 11, 2004. What does it say about a person when, first, they continue to carry on about years' old problems as if they were fresh and, second, they evidently feel a need to tell people about them? It's evidence perhaps of this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2059,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/07\/finally-a-book-list\/","url_meta":{"origin":417,"position":1},"title":"Finally, a Book List","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a list, a record, an accounting. Dull in some lights, if not pretentious, condescending and childish: Look at what I've been reading, Mommy!\u00a0But in recent years, I've heard of more people keeping lists of books they've read. I've enjoyed looking at them. Nick Hornby's is a feature in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mr. Boo Klist"","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4790,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2014\/04\/tall-lady-short-but-sound\/","url_meta":{"origin":417,"position":2},"title":"Tall Lady Short but Sound","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"It's unfair to say one feels let down by a free program. It's more unreasonable to feel let down by a non-performer's performance. Alas, several of us did; I asked around afterward. Writer Joyce Carol Oates, 75, still teaching at Princeton and other campuses, was fascinating for her 45 minutes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Joyce Carol Oates.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/JCOonline3-247x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":167,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/03\/freys-fatal-flaw\/","url_meta":{"origin":417,"position":3},"title":"Frey’s fatal flaw","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2006 Ben S. Pollock A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. This novel -- ingested via a CD set with not one but three narrators portraying the four principal roles -- from just last year is a good read. Besides wondering how the characters are getting along now, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":110,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/09\/falling-from-a-planes-easy\/","url_meta":{"origin":417,"position":4},"title":"Falling from a plane’s easy","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Book's as easy as falling out of a plane Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2005. I own a lot of books, hundreds, and have read nearly all of them. This isn't bragging, as I haven't read all that much since college, except for my first copy-desk stint\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/01\/difference-between-fiction-fact\/","url_meta":{"origin":417,"position":5},"title":"Difference between fiction, fact","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2006 Ben S. Pollock The difference between fiction and fact Friday 13 January 2006. I won't do them the favor of hyperlinking these memoirists, James Frey and JT LeRoy. But there's the names and here's a news search engine. Memoirs are autobiographies and factual. The books by these men\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}