Friday, June 03, 2011

Feminine Tosh?



That's the opinion of the Nobel-price winning author V.S. Naipaul on women writers:
Nobel-prize winning author V.S. Naipaul claims that there is no woman writer who could serve as as his literary match. Described by some as “the greatest living writer of English prose,” the Trinidad-born Naipaul sparked controversy in an interview at the Royal Geographic Society this week, saying the work of female writers, even famed and beloved author Jane Austen, is inferior. The 78-year-old said he couldn’t share Austen’s ” sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world.”
Naipaul believes that women writers are “quite different” and says he can read a paragraph and know instantly whether it was written by a woman or not. He added: “And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too.”
What a Catch-22 there! Women are sentimental creatures not even in charge of their own houses. So no wonder they are second-rate writers.

Jane Austen's sense of the world is sentimental?
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

We met Dr. Hall in such deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.

In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete: being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry.

Naipaul is a sexist. And a pretty poor reader, it seems.