Write like a man?

Here’s a bracing Washington Post essay by Julianna Baggott (who writes as N.E. Body). Interesting to contemplate:

The key to literary success? Be a man — or write like one.

By Julianna Baggott
Wednesday, December 30, 2009; A13

This fall, Publishers Weekly named the top 100 books of 2009. How many female writers were in the top 10? Zero. How many on the entire list? Twenty-nine.

I wish I were scandalized, or at least surprised. I’m not. I understand the invisible prejudice — from the inside out. I’m a woman, but I’ve been a sexist, too.

In my grad school thesis, written at 23, you’ll find young men coming of age, old men haunted by war, Oedipus complexes galore. If I’d learned nothing else, it was this: If you want to be a great writer, be a man. If you can’t be a man, write like one.

No one told me this outright. But I was told to worship Chekhov, Cheever, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Carver, Marquez, O’Brien. . . . This was the dawn of political correctness. Women were listed as concessions. In the middle of my master’s, a female writer took center stage with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award — E. Annie Proulx. Ah, there was a catch. She was writing about men and therefore like a man.

I ran out of things to say about men, however, and began my career writing about women. When I started as a poet, I was told — many times — not to write about motherhood because it would be perceived as weak. I didn’t listen.

Read the rest.