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As crappy as Time magazine sometimes makes me feel,
I admit I love them for it. I have been subscribing
for probably more than fifty years without a single
year missed and admit they may have brainwashed me.
The
question is, could something published on April 1 be
an April’s Fool joke? I am hoping so, but I’m
gullible (read that trusting!) enough to believe an
impossibly truth.
It
seems “American Writer A. N. Devers was at a rare-book
fair when she noticed an old Joan Didion title selling
for $25.” She also “noticed a Cormac McCarthy
novel was selling for $600.” Ahem. McCarthy is
a contemporary writer just like Didion. Both are recognizable
names by a large segment of the population. (Just in
case you didn’t notice, McCarthy is a guy and,
well, Didon is not!)
I
am not pretending this is a scientific comparison, study,
treatise, dissertation, or anything else that shouts
“intelligent” or “trusted resource.”
I don’t need to do that to let you know I was
immediately disgusted. Honestly, I was ticked with Time,
too. The headline read, “A bookstore that’s
turning a page for women in literature.” Good
news indeed, but it seemed a tad too mild under the
circumstances.
Of
course I was glad to hear that the experience inspired
Devers to open her own bookstore. It’s called
the Second Shelf and is “tucked away in a quiet
courtyard off the busy streets of London’s Soho.”
Another slight? It sounds tired. It sounds lonesome.
It sounds anything but high-powered. And the supposition
is, women (and the owners) should be satisfied with
that. I mean, it isn’t as highly trafficked as
any retailer or feminist might like, but it carries
women’s work—almost exclusively. I’m
trying not to be “histerical” here. Devers
is “trying to correct a historical imbalance that
has allowed women’s literary achievements to be
eclipsed.” Devers says that, like other artistic
and news media, this history of literature is similar—that
the men who lead most any industry “focus on themselves.”
What
Deers says is true. But it doesn’t make it right.
And it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t rant a bit—or
a lot! Am I the only one? Time reports that titles by
women published in 2018 are priced 45% lower than books
by men.
To
take this one step further, I am a constant consumer
of a certain kind of media that should be the most likely
to do more on this topic, but I haven’t heard
a peep from NBC, National Geographic, Smithsonian…sigh!
That
is in spite of the fact the Women’s History Month
made March a time to project the idea that greater attention
should be paid to women in literature (and other arenas)
with the reading lists, etc.
Well,
yeah!
PS:
It is amazing that Time published obituaries on the
opposite page from this article on a women’s bookstore.
W.S. Merwine, a renowned poet, was featured, and Birch
Bayh, a politician I remember from long ago were eulogized
on that page (no women!). Time did mention that Bayh
called for gender equality even back then. See, that’s
one of the reasons that I keep forgiving Time. It’s
not much, but it’s a gesture. And…like everyone
else, I have been trained to be grateful for even the
gentlest nod . . .
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