Chick-Lit Debate Continues after Comments from Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner

The chick-lit debate has been rampant for awhile now, and writer and editor of NPR's entertainment and pop-culture blog, Linda Holmes, has some strong views. “Here’s an idea,” Holmes says. “If you’re going to try to report on the fact that a couple of women who write books have tried to start a discussion of whether the mega-response to Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is symptomatic of a too-narrow view of interesting fiction, it might be a good idea to stay away from the formless and dismissive term ‘chick lit’ in discussing them.”

Holmes talks about how novels written by women that talk about family and relationships “are dismissed as ‘chick lit,’” but when a man writes a novel about the same topics, they are accorded much more respect, EW reports.

Comments like these and others were sparked by the recent tweets of authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner. Picoult tweeted, “NYT raved about Franzen’s new book. Is anyone shocked? Would love to see the NYT rave about authors who aren’t white male literary darlings.”

The Times snarkily responded, saying anyone who agreed with Weiner “should meet in front of Jennifer’s TV during Oprah,” insinuating that women do nothing other than “eat bonbons and watch Oprah” in the afternoons.

The fact of the matter is, "the NYT absolutely does have a bias towards white male authors,” Tina Jordan, writer for Ew’s Shelf Life points out. “Look and see how many men in the last year got both daily and Sunday reviews — and then compare how many women were accorded that honor... Would we demean brash, action-packed adventure novels by calling them ‘d--- lit’? No, we would not.”