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JMHO
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 06, 2003 - 12:04 pm: | 
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Hello all, not sure if I should have started a new thread or added onto the others in which other have categorized Morrison's lastest book, Love, as 'chick lit'. I just finished Love this week and from my understanding of chick lit, which admittedly isn't that deep, however, I wouldn't put Love in that category. I thought it went beyond writing primarily with a female audience in mind or having females as the primary characters.
I decided to surf the net and here's what I found.
from http://slate.msn.com/id/2090181/
The "chick lit" genre, as it is informally known, took off sometime in the mid-1990s, spurred by the success of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing. Today, chick lit books are a dime a dozen: Did You Get the Vibe? and Pushing 30 are out this fall, and several publishing houses have imprints—including Red Dress Ink and Strapless—solely dedicated to the project of finding and publishing fiction about lonely girls in the city (who tend to work in publishing).
from http://www.excelsis.cc/weblog/pavi/archives/000889.php
Like all genres, chick lit has its conventions. Its protagonists tend to be attractive women in their 20s or 30s; they're educated, self-aware and quick with a snarky retort or a wise aside; they live in New York, San Francisco or London; they work in publishing, advertising, media or entertainment; they lament their single status; their families appear every few chapters, Greek chorus-style, to shake their heads in synchronized dismay; in the end, a Cinderella ending makes everything right. Chick lit is marketed like the candy it is. The books are wrapped in brightly coloured covers with girly typography, often treated as a point-of-sale impulse purchase. Titles are often child's book simple, like See Jane Date or Run Catch Kiss.
Indeed, other books about female experience have been similarly compartmentalized. We've now got "Mum lit," exemplified by I Don't Know How She Does It. "Hen lit" is used to describe stories of female middle-age, such as Elizabeth Buchan's wry Revenge of the Middle Age Woman. "Latina lit," was coined with the success of Alisa Valdez Rodriguez's The Dirty Girls Social Club. "Bridezilla lit" serves up tales of women turning into monsters when planning their weddings, as in Laura Wolfe's Diary of a Mad Bride.
from http://www.wordspy.com/words/chicklit.asp
chick lit
noun. A literary genre that features books written by women and focusing on young, quirky, female protagonists. Also: chick-lit.
Example Citation:
"The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing is the 'chick lit' book of the moment, a loosely linked set of short stories centering on Jane Rosenal's romantic coming-of-age over 20 or so years."
—Nancy Pate, " 'Chick Lit' Can Be Funny and Serious," The Orlando Sentinel, June 27, 1999
Earliest Citation:
Anyway, I still adore his writing, and he's still my hero, but I'm really very sad to see Wolcott decrying postfem chick lit as mere "popularity-contest coquetry." (I think he's jealous.) He doesn't even like Cynthia Heimel or Julie Burchill, from what I can tell.
—Vicki Hengen, "Pictures perfect; rock gems; chick lit," The Boston Globe, May 22, 1996 There's also another sense to this phrase that means "books written by women or that appeal primarily to women" and so is the literary analogue to filmdom's chick flicks. Here's the earliest citation for this sense:
According to Peterson's Guides' fascinating fact book "Alma Mater," Harvard also offers "Modern Art and Abstraction" (known on campus as "Spots 'n' Dots") and "American Architecture Since 1700" (students simply call it "Gas Stations"). And at Princeton, if your transcript says you took "Music 103," someone will snicker and call it "Clapping for Credit." By the way, the very proper sounding "Female Literary Tradition" is known there as "chick lit."
—Warren Berry, "Now, Add a Degree of," Newsday, April 13, 1993
from http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/Entertainment/chicklit030830.html
The books feature everyday women in their 20s and 30s navigating their generation's challenges of balancing demanding careers with personal relationships.
Critics dismiss the books as nothing more than trendy beach reads. But the books appear to have staying power, now expanding into topics that move beyond the single life.
Recently, "bridal-" and "mommy lit" titles have become big hits, including Allison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It and Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic Ties the Knot.
The heroines may face new challenges, but the books maintain the same true-to-life narratives, along with some self-deprecating humor.
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 06, 2003 - 07:15 pm: |
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Interestng stuff, JMHO. |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 08, 2003 - 03:04 pm: |
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Very good, JMHO and correct. I am probably the only one in the world calling LOVE chick-lit---
LITERARY chick lit. In the same way that Hemingway's stories were all literary pulp fiction (they featured soldiers, gangsters, big game hunters, macho men, all the same types of guys one found in Argosy or Two Fisted Tales, or whatever. But his stories were written in a realistic or naturalistic form, with an attention to craft.
Would not Junior be a young, quirky, female protagonist? |
yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 09, 2003 - 07:58 pm: |
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CHris Hayden:
So you're labeling iterature based on its intended audience and the voices of the main characters?
It seems from JHMO's post that "chick lit" not literature with female POV's, but modernized, citified women struggling through their own matrix of the adormments of the modern world and the womanly desires of the old world. In this sense, "chick lit" has it's own formula and themes that are particular the category. This characterization doesn't represent "LOVE" at all. Terry McMillan fiction fits this profile. Beloved is also about women, but is it also "chick lit"?
Chris, the problem with your analysis is that most fiction could be characterized as female issue driven or male issues driven, but not all of this fiction is "chick lit." These labels have particular characteristics and elements enable one to distinguish the classifications.
Interestingly, it seems that your labels tells us more about you than the actual novel. |
JMHO
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 09, 2003 - 08:49 pm: |
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Yukio, yes I would definitely say that McMillan would fit into this mold. I would also add E J Dickey and E Lynn Harris to this group ... there's a bunch more. |
Madame X
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 08:37 am: |
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I think we can safely say that "chick-lit" at least in the AA community is as formulatic (is that a word?) as romance. Lots of drama - whether it be baby mamma, u slept w/my man or chasing after my teenage daughter type of drama - u gotta throw some designer names around and sprinkle in some old school tunes w/some new ones -- also - people never lool like themselves - they always look like a celebrity --" He look like a short Kobe Bryant" "She was a dark skinned Vivica Fox."
Some authors put out a better quality of chick lit -- while others put out trash. |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 10:59 am: |
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Yukio:
A person's utterances, as you well know, always tell other people about them. I am an open book--here for all the world to see.
I have time and again qualified my characterization of LOVE as chick-lit by saying it was high toned, quality chick-lit just like Hemingway's fiction was high toned, quality pulp fiction.
It seems that you cannot get around this--which says something about you--not good or bad, mind you, it just does.
I have appropriated the term, chick lit for my own purposes as people have appropriated the term Uncle Tom to mean a subservient, cringing cowardly type of black person--which, if you have read Uncle Tom's Cabin, you know Uncle Tom was not.
BELOVED is such chicklit I cannot even read it all the way through. I keep saying, "Why is she meandering like this?" Apparently it does not meander to women readers. That it has struck a chord in women I know who cannot even explain the story tells me that it possibly communicates to women on a deep and almost instinctive and spiritual level that it does not reach in many men.
It may seem odd to you but I had no such trouble with THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR, which was almost like automatic writing, or POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY by Alice Walker. Nor did I have that trouble with Sapphire's AMERICAN DREAMS. I am still trying to figure this out. |
yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 01:07 pm: |
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Chris H:
I'm around and beyond it, my friend...lmao! Indeed you have qualified your position and appropriated the term, but one would suspect or at least hope that you would acknowledge the actual definition of the term, "chick lit," and engage it based upon the actual literary classification, besides your own. It seems that only what you think counts.
Why would it seem odd to me if you liked Alice Walker's work. I think you're a sexist, but we all are....clearly you don't understand my position.
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 02:17 pm: |
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I contend that there is no such thing as high-toned chic lit, Chris. "Chic lit" is a flippant slang term that immediately identifies what to expect from the book. The appropiate term for high-toned "chick lit" is "woman's literature". Chick-Lit was a phrase that was coined when all the sister girl books started coming out. |
JMHO
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 02:27 pm: |
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Chris wrote:
BELOVED is such chicklit I cannot even read it all the way through. I keep saying, "Why is she meandering like this?" Apparently it does not meander to women readers. That it has struck a chord in women I know who cannot even explain the story tells me that it possibly communicates to women on a deep and almost instinctive and spiritual level that it does not reach in many men.
Chris, you want to label Love (and now even Beloved) as "chick lit" but you haven't even solidfiy a defintion for the term other to state that the work is written with females primarily in mind and lacking a lot of "manly" activities woven into the storylines. If that's your qualifiications of a "chick lit" novel, that's fine but get your behind off your shoulder because others have a different understanding and application of the term, "chick lit." |
Critic's Corner
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 05:26 pm: |
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BELOVED...is one of the most "asexual" books I have ever read.
Has nothing to do with the male or female sex. Has everything to do with human worth based on RACE and the (question) of the love for ones children, which was expressed in the book from POV of both sexes.
A human being, deemed unworthy of the right to provide a free world for its own offspring...loved those offspring enough to go INSANE.
I thought Sethe was the most courageous character I'd read in literature in a long time--made all the more courageous by the fact that she was "unsympathetic" to the reader.
BELOVED is hardly "chick-lit" and Morrison deserved the NOBEL PRIZE that the book caused her to get.
Any English Professor could tell you Hayden that there isn't a single sentence that gets meandered in that excellently written tome.
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JusttheFacts
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 05:33 pm: |
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When I think of 'chick lit' I think of books that are written primarily by non-AA authors. When I think of 'our' books (ie relationship, sistergirl books) those are the terms that come to mine but rarely chick lit. The only book I 've read that even comes close to AA chick lit is Baggage Claim by David Talbert. The tone of that book is very different from the tone of a Terry McMillian or even an Eric Jerome Dickey book where the primary focus is on female characters. As far as Toni Morrison and chick lit, that's a good one and got a few laughs from me. |
yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 11, 2003 - 11:38 am: |
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Cynique:
Precisely! And the fact that Chris likes to label literature, one would hope that he could differentiate between "chick lit" and women's literature. One could even go as far as to say that "chick lit" is a subgenre or classification of women's literature.... |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 11, 2003 - 12:58 pm: |
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All:
I may not be able to define chick lit--but I know it when I see it! |
yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 11, 2003 - 02:58 pm: |
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Chris Hayden, it seems that anything with a female point of view is "chick lit." This is not accurate, but hey...this is a silly conversation, for LOVE is much more interesting to talk about! |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 11, 2003 - 04:24 pm: |
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Yukio:
We are talking about LOVE.
Maybe it is the chick-lit label. Maybe this is the problem. It sounds too much like "chick chick" or "chicklet". Makes the book sound like a cheap, candy coated gum.
Perhaps we should call it something else. "X", perhaps. Or the Book Formerly Known as LOVE.
BFKAL. |
yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 15, 2003 - 09:14 am: |
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We talked about LOVE indirectly, primarily through an ambiguous label, "chick lit." |
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