Jennifer Egan has been one busy little lady. She won the Pulitzer Prize for A Visit from the Goon Squad, she has been interviewed in practically every publication known to man and she’s sparked a little debate over the merits of Chick Lit vs. Fiction.
In the Wall Street Journal she was interviewed about her writing style.
My process for fiction and nonfiction are really different. When I’m writing fiction I don’t like writing at a desk. I’ll often write at this [gingham easy] chair that I got at Ikea. It’s awful, there are pen marks all over it. If I’m writing original stuff and not editing I often use a lap desk and I write on legal pads. Anything that involves typing or businessy stuff, I’ll do at the desk. The actual creation is always by hand, away from the computer.
She was also interviewed about winning the Pulitzer.
It’s absolutely nutty to win something like this. I feel weird. I wish I had something more articulate to say. It seems so fantastical, like I’ve exited from real life. I found out 20 minutes ago. I was just sitting down to lunch in a restaurant and my phone rang. I burst into tears and told the waitress I had received a piece of news and that I had to leave. She told me she was sorry and I said “no, it’s good!” I went straight home. It’s unreal.
And then came the debate about chick lit. In her Wall Street Journal interview, Egan said this about female writers:
My focus is less on the need for women to trumpet their own achievements than to shoot high and achieve a lot. What I want to see is young, ambitious writers. And there are tons of them. Look at The Tiger’s Wife. There was that scandal with the Harvard student who was found to have plagiarized. But she had plagiarized very derivative, banal stuff. This is your big first move? These are your models?…My advice for young female writers would be to shoot high and not cower.
Jennifer is referring to Kaavya Viswanathan and her plagiarism of Meg Cabot, Sophie Kinsella and Megan McCafferty. Here is more from the Wall Street Journal.
Chief among the offended was the oft-outspoken author Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes), who was also a prominent voice of the aforementioned Franzen backlash. A tweet from Weiner shortly after the WSJ piece ran: “And there goes my chance to be happy that a lady won the big prize. Thanks, Jenny Egan. You’re a model of graciousness.” Following Weiner’s lead, devout fans of chick-lit sounded off; over at The Frisky, in an essay titled “In Defense of Chick Lit,” Jamie Beckman, who opens her essay declaring that Egan was “one of her favorite authors of all time,” expresses doubt that she’ll ever recommend Egan’s work to a friend again.
In Jamie Beckman’s piece, IN DEFENSE OF CHICK LIT, she argues that now is the time for Egan to lift up other female writers, not generalize and classify them according to the genre in which they write. Beckman closes her piece with a quote and some simple commentary on how she views the Egan/Chick Lit Debate.
“A rising tide should lift all boats,” a friend of mine told me last night when we were talking about this topic. That’s all I’m asking for from Egan. You won a much-deserved Pulitzer. Now’s the time to advocate for your fellow writers, not step on other women as you make your way to the podium.
