Literary Feuds of 2013

Posted by Rachel Arons - The New Yorker

As 2013 draws to a close, we give you our second-annual look at the scuffles, controversies, and feisty debates that have helped keep the literary world lively over the past year. Among this year’s conflicts, presented here in rough chronological order, a few themes emerge: clashes over the function of online literary criticism, questions about gender and literature, and struggles over who controls an artist’s legacy and fortune. 
A few of the items show what happens when closed-mindedness leads to controversy; others stand as proof that people are still engaged and passionate about the state of literature. In several instances, Page-Turner decided to enter the fray.

Claire Messud and likeability. When Claire Messud’s book “The Woman Upstairs” came out, in the spring, Publishers Weekly asked her whether she would want to be “friends” with her novel’s protagonist, Nora, an angry and frustrated schoolteacher, whose outlook the interviewer called “grim.” “For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that?” Messud replied. “Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? … If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities.” Messud’s response—she later said on a New York Times Book Review podcast that she found the question “gendered”—prompted debates about the role of likeability in fiction, and the double standard by which female protagonists’ personalities are judged. 
Page-Turner held a forum on the issue, gathering thoughts from Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Rivka Galchen, and other writers about the relationship between likeability and literary merit. “I have no problem with liking a character,” said Donald Antrim. “But if that’s the reason I’m reading, I’ll put the book down.”
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