derivative work

Yet another instance of boys-read-boys makes the news. This time, Dave Itzkoff’s new “It’s All Geek To Me” column in the NYT. My partner thought I’d be excited — and I was — to see science fiction getting a column in the NYT. Alas, though, it’s only a boy-reads-boys column.

The first column (March 5, “It’s All Geek to Me,” NYT) reviewed a boy and compared the prestige of science fiction boy writers to non-science fiction boy writers (lesser) and compared the reviewed boy to two other boys in one sentence. (“[I]t is entirely possible that Marusek never set out to be the John Updike of the Asimov set.”)

Boys Cited, 7:

1. Walter Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz
2. Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man
3. David Marusek, Counting Heads & “We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy”
4. Khaled Hossein, The Kite Runner (self-described as “an epic tale of fathers and sons” — this actually looks potentially interesting even tho the father-son thing is incredibly overexposed)
5. A Million Little Pieces (male literary fraud James Frey)
6. Isaac Asimov
7. John Updike

Women Cited, 1:

• Oprah, I presume, although she doesn’t actually get mentioned by name: “Whether you read books because you have a genuine, lifelong passion for literature or because a feisty woman in Chicago tells you to …” (I’ve never quite understood why some people pooh-pooh Oprah’s book club. A, she promotes reading, so some people read who might otherwise not; B, she does some selection that folks might otherwise not have time to do. If you don’t like her selection of books, don’t read them. But from what I understand, the “book club” is a hell of a lot more informative & engaging to the audience than Jon Stewart’s or similar talk show promotional tour interviews with authors.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 7:23 pm and is tagged sexism boys read boys, commentary, media diversity, NYT, Oprah, sexism, sf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. 1,139 views.