February 24, 2009

Minor spheres

Laura Miller comes up with a brilliant term when reviewing Elaine Showalter's history of American women writers: GLANS, or "Great Literary American Novel Syndrome". Equally pleasurable is the phrase "cult of the he-man novelist as personified by Ernest Hemingway." Ah, don't we love irreverence served cleverly for the cause of feminism!

Women writing about family and relationships is still regarded as minor literature, yes, and writing the spiritual is seen with even more suspicion and disdain. Perhaps because the spiritual is marginalized merely as anti-intellectual in many of our lives.

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