Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul has done it again. The author who has courted controversies in the past for his remarks is back in the limelight, this time for claiming that there is no woman author who matches his literary standards. Though his comment triggered a debate in the literary circles, most book lovers are amused by the author's latest comment.
“V.S. Naipaul is losing a lot of ground as a respected author by making such statements. Such a degree of male chauvinism isn't something you expect from an author of such repute,” says Jahnvi Menon, editor from a publishing house.
The author also claimed that text or paragraphs also reveal the gender of the author as most female writers have a distinct style in their writing. It is mostly ‘sentimentality' or ‘feminist tosh.' “It is difficult to figure out the sex of the writer except when there is too much description. It's not sentimentality but the way things are usually described that make you realise or assume that the author is a man or a woman,” says media executive Payal Tewari. Software engineer Apala Mitra points out that authors like George Eliot, Charlotte and Emily Bronte wrote under a pen name and nobody could make the distinction whether the writer was male or female. Besides, women authors like Agatha Christie and Daphne Du Maurier are admired and widely read because of the element of mystery and suspense in their stories.
“Much before the Harry Potter series by J K Rowling took the world by storm, it was Enid Blyton who was holding the fort. Her books were part of growing years for many generations. Ayn Rand, with her stunning philosophy impacted our mind space. In fact, not many were aware that Ayn Rand was a woman,” says Vidya who works for a media house.
“I have read grisly murder mysteries and adventure thrillers and found that they were written by women. You cannot generalise. Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew both created by the same man and each issue was written by a ghost-writer,” says Vedika Roy, PR manager.
Though the writing style and portrayal of various characters are handled differently by male and female authors, one cannot ignore that some of the immortal literary characters have come from female writers. “Look at Margaret Mitchell's Rhett Butler, Emily Bronte's Heathcliff or J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, despite being a female writer their works have immortalised and popularised these male characters,” points out Apala Mitra.
“I love authors like Virginia Woolf, Mahashweta Devi and Ismat Chughtai not because of their feminism but because of the frank portrayal of human nature which can put to shame any man worth his salt,” admits Payal Tewari. She adds that the diversity offered by female authors can definitely not be brushed aside by a whimsical comment of an author.
