Studies have shown that women buy more books than men, which helps explain the growing popularity of the eight-year-old genre called “chick lit” – novels about women in their twenties and thirties juggling romantic and familial relationships, and careers.
But some female writers hate the term, believing it has undermined literary novels by America’s leading women writers.
The result of the controversy is that two new collections of short stories are premiering this month, causing a war of words among female writers.
Last year, Random House announced that they would publish a compilation of short stories called “This is NOT Chick Lit,” featuring “America’s best women writers.” But that did not sit well with chick-lit author Lauren Baratz-Logsted (“The Thin Pink Line”) (“A Little Change of Face”), who found the idea snobbish.
Baratz-Logsted sent a proposal for a competing collection called “This IS Chick Lit” to BenBella Books in Texas. BenBella publishes popular anthologies including the “Smartpop” series with essays about aspects of pop culture (like The Matrix and Desperate Housewives).
BenBella accepted Baratz-Logsted’s proposal for a competing chick-lit anthology, and suddenly, a literary catfight was born. On Aug. 25, the collection Baratz-Logsted edited, “This is Chick-Lit,” entered stores. It features 18 female authors including the Reporter’s editor Caren Lissner, who has published two “chick lit” novels, as well as former Hoboken resident Heather Swain. It also includes popular authors Jennifer Coburn, Harley Jane Kozak, and Cara Lockwood.
Smart chick-lit
Lissner’s books have been praised in reviews as “smart chick-lit.” Her humorous first novel, Carrie Pilby, was published by Red Dress Ink in 2003 to rave reviews. It concerns a 19-year-old genius who graduates from college early and doesn’t know how to fit into the real world.
Baratz-Logsted, another Red Dress Ink author, asked Lissner to contribute to her anthology last year. Lissner’s contribution is a satirical short story called “The Database.” It takes place in 2015, when all single people must enter a database upon turning 21, and answer 1,500 personal questions. The mandatory database matches people up across the country in order to decrease loneliness and to slow the spread of disease. However, one woman resists.
Heather Swain’s story, “Café con Leche Crush,” deals with postpartum stress. She published the novels Eliot’s Banana and Luscious Lemon (Pocket Books) and is the editor of “Before: Short Stories about Pregnancy.” About Luscious Lemon, a reviewer at Booklist wrote, “Swain deals with the powerful emotions of pregnancy and miscarriage with seriousness, sensitivity, grace, and humor.”
Swain grew up in Indiana, but lived in Hoboken with her husband Dan from 1999 to 2000, on Fourth Street near Grand.
“We moved over there after subletting in the West Village for six months mostly because we liked the vibe of Hoboken,” Swain said last week. “The whole small town thing appeals to us Midwesterners. Now we live in Brooklyn and I still dream about Dom’s Bread!”
Chick-lit rumble
Since the popularity of Helen Fielding’s best-selling novel Bridget Jones’s Diary (1998) and Melissa Bank’s short story collection The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing (1999), a debate has raged over whether the term “chick-lit” itself is derogatory.
Last year, novelist Curtis Sittenfeld (who is female, despite the name) wrote a New York Times review of Melissa Bank’s new novel The Wonder Spot, and concluded that it was chick-lit and that it should have been a little better. Several female authors complained that Sittenfeld’s review was snobbish. Bank herself said she considered the term “chick-lit” degrading.
But the books have been studied in a literary way as well, having been traced back to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Harvard will offer a course this fall called “Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1122: The Romance: From Jane Austen to Chick Lit.”
The University of Texas also will offer a chick-lit course this fall. In an on-line essay last year, Baratz-Logsted complained about the competing “This is NOT Chick Lit” compilation, saying, “It’s interesting to me that these women are defining their collection with a title that declares what it is not, bitch-slapping the subgenre of chick-lit while at the same time exploiting those two much-maligned words in an attention-grabbling bid.”
Lissner said last week that she doesn’t consider the term “chick-lit” derogatory.
“It’s a marketing term,” she said. “So many books are competing for the reader’s attention, that if you can categorize them a certain way, you get them noticed by readers better. And then readers can decide if they like them. Some “chick-lit” books tend toward the literary, and others toward entertainment. Personally, I think the best books do both.”
Lissner added, “It’s very hard to get published, and the genre helped a lot of female writers get into print when their work would have been overlooked. Yes, it resulted in a glut of the books, and some are better than others – but you can find good and bad in any artistic genre.”
What’s next
Lissner, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 and started working at the Reporter in 1994, is currently finishing a mainstream novel and a collection of short stories.
Lissner offers tips for writers to get published on her website, which is www.carenlissner.com. She can also be contacted there.
She has, in the past, taught memoir writing at the Secaucus Public Library and in New York. This Is Chick-Lit is available at all major bookstores, and on amazon.com and bn.com. There is also a discussion board and more information at www.thisischicklit.com.