James Salter finally gets some attention; readers disturbed by the sex.
It’s disconcerting to be told that your favorite writer is a male chauvinist who embodies retrograde sexual politics, treats women poorly and describes them as meals.
It makes us think: Are we a female male chauvinist? Are our sexual politics retrograde? This is a very useful exercise. We acknowledge that we expect men to try and take charge. Try is the operative term. (Our friend asked an interesting question recently: When was the last time you obeyed a man?)
When we read Salter, we see male characters who are products of their times, imperfect beings made compelling by their flaws. Should we expect fictional creations to be fair and respectful at all times, to think righteously and stay within the bounds of political correctness? Is it Salter’s or any writer’s obligation to meet contemporary standards of how to live? We regard fiction as an alternate universe where characters are free to be exactly what they are. It would be a tragedy to police it.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
July 5th, 2013 at 08:39
“When we read Salter, we see male characters who are products of their times, imperfect beings made compelling by their flaws. Should we expect fictional creations to be fair and respectful at all times, to think righteously and stay within the bounds of political correctness? Is it Salter’s or any writer’s obligation to meet contemporary standards of how to live? We regard fiction as an alternate universe where characters are free to be exactly what they are. It would be a tragedy to police it.”
Carl Sagan said that we shouldn’t judge a man by the standards of a later epoch. It was in the book Cosmos and he was referring to a scientist that he respected who turned out to be a racist (I think).
Anyway, I also think that some (a lot?) of men are products of an earlier epoch despite having been born to contemporary times. As long as they don’t fuck up the world by going nuclear on each other, they can yak up on anything as long as women are brave enough to put them down when they say things that are basically bull****.
I used to be worried that female writers will eventually go like Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. But as I grew older, I turned to believing that their suicides were probably due to depression and not because they were putting words on paper.