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Initialed Authors
Jan. 31st, 2009 01:07 pmI'm always intrigued by authors who choose to be published using only their initials, and in the last month selected 2, one fantasy and one crime, partly to see if they could guess their gender and partly to speculate wildly on why they made their choice.
GM Ford conveniently had the first 2 books of a series available and I quickly ran into trouble. The women characters were harridans out to prevent the happiness of men, with the exception of the central femme. Who turned out to be just a kitten really, and solely motivated by the luv of her man. Ugh. I moved on to skim-reading after the first 2 chapters and the first chapter of the second book and had to stop. I was actually praying for the author to be male because the thought of being in the psyche of a woman that self-loathing was just so horrid. Phew - he was. Avoid.
The other was the fantasy - KJ Bishop. I quickly got the sense of Jeff Vandermeer intrigueyness (I've written it, therefore it's a word) , with that sense of steadily increasing warpedness, but more engaging and with less victimy leads. It felt female. When I got to the line "It seemed no man could conceive of her as prey," no shadow of a doubt remained.
Now confirmed on the interwebs, so I'm feeling both the smugness which comes of being right and the sadness that I still struggle with finding male authors readable. Terry Pratchett is wonderful, I haven't given up on Jasper Fforde and Philip Pullman. Elmore Leonard was fab. Erm. That's all I can bring to mind for novelists. I used to like John Irving and Piers Anthony and Jack Vance but was turned off all of them by their inability to portray a woman as a character rather than an adjunct and/or object . I do find likeable male writers scattered around in other forms - television particularly, theatre too. Mike Leigh and William Goldman in films.
But some recommendations for male novelists (any genre) that prove me wrong and get rid of this sour taste in my mouth would be wonderful.
P.S. The Bishop book is The Etched City. It is scrumptious and moreish - and a first novel! Fab.
PPS I got rather distracted from the speculation as to why. But interested in others' thoughts.
GM Ford conveniently had the first 2 books of a series available and I quickly ran into trouble. The women characters were harridans out to prevent the happiness of men, with the exception of the central femme. Who turned out to be just a kitten really, and solely motivated by the luv of her man. Ugh. I moved on to skim-reading after the first 2 chapters and the first chapter of the second book and had to stop. I was actually praying for the author to be male because the thought of being in the psyche of a woman that self-loathing was just so horrid. Phew - he was. Avoid.
The other was the fantasy - KJ Bishop. I quickly got the sense of Jeff Vandermeer intrigueyness (I've written it, therefore it's a word) , with that sense of steadily increasing warpedness, but more engaging and with less victimy leads. It felt female. When I got to the line "It seemed no man could conceive of her as prey," no shadow of a doubt remained.
Now confirmed on the interwebs, so I'm feeling both the smugness which comes of being right and the sadness that I still struggle with finding male authors readable. Terry Pratchett is wonderful, I haven't given up on Jasper Fforde and Philip Pullman. Elmore Leonard was fab. Erm. That's all I can bring to mind for novelists. I used to like John Irving and Piers Anthony and Jack Vance but was turned off all of them by their inability to portray a woman as a character rather than an adjunct and/or object . I do find likeable male writers scattered around in other forms - television particularly, theatre too. Mike Leigh and William Goldman in films.
But some recommendations for male novelists (any genre) that prove me wrong and get rid of this sour taste in my mouth would be wonderful.
P.S. The Bishop book is The Etched City. It is scrumptious and moreish - and a first novel! Fab.
PPS I got rather distracted from the speculation as to why. But interested in others' thoughts.
