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The Naipaul test: Can you tell an author's sex?
The Naipaul test: Can you tell an author's sex?
In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society this week, during which VS Naipaul provoked fury by suggesting that women writers are 'sentimental' and 'unequal to me', he also claimed that 'I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.' Do you?
To take the test, go here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/quiz/2011/jun/02/naipaul-test-author-s-sex-quiz
To read Naipul's comments, go here:
VS Naipaul finds no woman writer his literary match – not even Jane Austen
Nobel laureate says there is no female author whom he considers his equal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/02/vs-naipaul-jane-austen-women-writers
"The one thing a writer has to have is balls." Norman Mailer
What say you?
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Jun/11/2011, 2:00 pm
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Re: The Naipaul test: Can you tell an author's sex?
"She is not a complete master of a house"??? What a moron. I can hang drywall, change my own oil, and pull the engine and trans from a Ford F-series pick-up. Can he?
And I am indeed the master of my own house, though I will admit to proudly writing "feminine" poetry and liking it.
P.S. Got 80% on that silly quiz but I also think N. Sparks is a silly formuleic writer whose feminine trash I would never read. Not that I'm opinionated or anything. LOL.
Liz
Last edited by elizabeth anne, Jun/11/2011, 5:05 pm
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Jun/11/2011, 5:01 pm
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Re: The Naipaul test: Can you tell an author's sex?
Well, I got 4 right out of 10, which makes me 60% wrong, which fails me and rather proves my Donald/Tonya point. Thanks, Kat. Feel like adminestering the test to my postmodernist friends still wanting to kill off the author?
Tere
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Jun/11/2011, 11:04 pm
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Re: The Naipaul test: Can you tell an author's sex?
Hi guys,
Sorry to have been so long getting back to this thread. I think I only got about 4 right, too, when I took the quiz. As I recall, I got most of the men right but missed on the women. Maybe that I would have done better to use the Gender Genie, instead of guessing:
http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php
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Jun/27/2011, 12:14 pm
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Re: The Naipaul test: Can you tell an author's sex?
As a brief aside, I almost feel sorry for Naipaul or any other writer possessed of the same notion. It is what such an attitude makes them miss out on. I've mentioned this before in different places but the two writers from whom I have learned, if not the most, certainly the most essential, from are women: Collete and Anais Nin. Certainly I've learned from men writers. Flaubert, Montaigne, Catullus, L. Cohen, T,S, Eliot come immediately to mind. From Collete I learned how to get inside the emotional life with narrative. From Anais Nin I learned how to, what?, how to draw down atmosphere, so to speak. It has made all the difference.
Tere
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Jun/29/2011, 1:27 pm
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Re: The Naipaul test: Can you tell an author's sex?
I got half of them right. So I guess that proves I can't really tell the difference. But that doesn't mean that Naipul can't either. I suspect he's got some special talents. He's had a feud going with another writer, not sure if the other guy is Black or Indian -- actually with several writers from the Third World -- because he has generally been dismissive of the Third World and seems to be protective of England's Colonial Heritage. I suspect that is why he's been richly rewarded and given a knighthood or something. I wonder if there has been as much of a dust-up about his position on the Third World as there is about this alleged misogyny? His background is sub-continent Indian from Trinidad, but his attitude is very pro-England, very pro-First World, at least that is what his reviewers say. He is a reknowned a-hole, but he is definitely a great writer. He joins a great line of a-holes who were great writers, among them Hemingway and it seems, Jack London. Zak
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Jul/9/2011, 10:31 am
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Re: The Naipaul test: Can you tell an author's sex?
Good perspective, Zak. Always good input from you.
Tere
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Jul/9/2011, 1:50 pm
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