October 18th, 2007
One more thing - the Anne Enright backlash
Two days since her Booker win, there are still some people not happy with Anne Enright’s win. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, but then another kind of backlash concerning the writer has emerged.
Eleanor Birne has an excellent evaluation of The Gathering (be warned of spoilers if you haven’t read the book) in the current issue of the LRB. Recently, in the same publication Anne Enright wrote an essay about the McCann family and the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine. It was a 2,000 word piece, blunt and unflinching which trained a curious eye on a troubled family.
So it’s odd to see the Irish Indo knock out a byline-free piece of about 20 lines, taking isolated quotes from the piece and using them out of context in an attempt at a cheap story and to put the boot into Enright. My mother told me James Whale did the same on the newspaper round up on Sky News earlier, but then at least he’s a reactionary idiot whose views nobody takes seriously.
A recent commenter on this post where I linked to the McCann essay probably found their way to this blog as a result of one of the above. So I urge people to read the essay in full - instead of the three extracted quotes - and make up their own mind.
Right, I’m banning myself from the computer for the sake of my wrist…
October 18th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Sinéad
First of all: stop typing.
Secondly, the anti-Enright commentaries have been fascinating to me (although I imagine not so to her) since her win on Tuesday. I think it might be something more than what Sarah noted earlier today on GUBU (i.e. disappointment that the predicted victor was unsuccessful) and actually something a bit more deep seated: the book is dark and blunt and painfal and so unescapably female. I would wager that if you gave that book to someone without telling them the author or that she was female they would immediately know - from the tone, the emotion, the expression, the standpoint - that this was a woman’s voice with all the attendant guilt (of not minding her brother, her children, her husband, herself). I don’t know any men who’ve read it but all the women I know who have read the book are struck by its femaleness (not, may I add, its femininity of which (in conventional senses) there is very little). The femaleness - and the fact that its not ‘feminine’ - I think might have a fairly significant role to play in the backlash against it. But it’s only an inkling….
October 18th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Also - people shouldn’t read the LBR piece if they haven’t finished the book yet!!!
October 18th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Duly amended with a spoiler warning - and that’s for the lengthy post. Totally agree re femaleness V femininity. Won’t type any more as much as I’d like to.
October 18th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I came to your blog today specifically to see how you felt about this as it has frustrated me no end. I read that essay after you had originally posted it and I thought it was thought provoking and insightful. Now the Daily Mail and Sky News are bashing Enright quoting her as taking ‘part in the “international sport” of disliking Gerry and Kate McCann.’
Seriously annoying.
October 18th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I thought Eileen Battersby’s piece in yesterday’s Irish Times was pretty petty and begrudging. She could at least have waited a day like everyone else.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
That’s really shoddy, sleazy stuff from the Indo. The LRB article (which is indeed excellent)has been available for several weeks now, and yet our correspondent starts with “THERE was surprise last night…..” and finishes with “Her views came to light as reports in Portugal claimed…..” as if to make clear that s/he had never heard of Enright until 48 hours ago.
More reason to pay no attention to literary prizes and their attendant journalistic padding. Better to just read the books and leave it at that, I always think.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Sinead, I’m so sorry to hear your wrist is still not getting any better. Poor you; you must be well sick of it by now.
Like Fiona, the Enright backlash is amazing to me and I’m bemused by it all. Why so vicious? Why so clearly twisted? I saw the Indo piece today and thought that even though those quotes were out of context, Anne Enright still came across as a sensible woman, which possibly defeated the purpose a bit. Haven’t seen what Sky have done to it but I can only imagine. It’s hard not to feel a bit sensitve about all of this because I’m trying to come up with reasons as to why there would be such a harsh backlash against Enright and the only one I can seem to think of is that she is a woman and the book is definitely dealing with some very heavy female themes. That or else cos she’s a paddy, but I don’t recall any of this kind of carry-on when Doyle and Banville won. Am I being touchy?
October 18th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
In the Indo’s writer calling Enright’s article ‘a surprise’, can we also deduce that s/he had not heard of the LRB until 48 hours ago?
October 18th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
From the essay, on a more positive note, this parenthesis is the kind of parenthesis Martin Amis wishes he could still construct.
And I had physically to resist the urge to go out to my own car and open the boot to check (get in there now, sweetheart, and curl up into a ball).
October 18th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
The Indo’s website has a comments field on the article in question.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/enright-reveals-dislike–of-the-mccanns-1198835.html
October 18th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
I just posted a comment, but apparently it has to be “approved”.
Expect to never see it.
October 18th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
If you think the Irish Indo is bad, wait until Sunday to see what gems of lit crit the Sindo will come up with.
By the way, Sinead, sorry to inform you, but (vis-a-vis your great comments on the Guardian blog), Emma Donoghue is now very definitely writing chicklit. I’ve just finished the new novel, and saw her read from it lately, and disposable is not the word. She herself admits she wanted to turn to chicklit, and clearly thought it would be easy to knock out a nice little fable of love in the 21st century. Dreadful stuff, so shoddy that she was actually editing it (adding lines, chopping others) as she read it aloud on this occasion.
So sorry about your wrist. I second Twenty on the head-typing suggestion.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:13 am
While the McCann piece was deliberately provocative it was also amusing (if that’s the right word) and refreshing. Everyone has media-informed opinions about the McCanns (whether they want to admit it or not) and the public fascination with child abduction/murders definitely has a ghoulish quality to it.
Enright seems to me to be merely attempting an honest dissection of the reactions (particularly her own) such a story provokes. The tabloids will probably spin this into a “Booker Winner Slams Maddie’s Grieivng Parents” frenzy of (completely phoney) moral outrage before giving the public what they want: Page after page of sensational speculation and ghoulish detail.
It’s an artist’s job to burst such balloons.
October 19th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Did the same thing not happen with DBC Pierre after his win? I think journalists just look for a story after a relative unknown shoots to stardom. They start doing background checks and try to make a story out of anything. Agreed in this case it seems particularly ridiculous…
October 19th, 2007 at 7:59 am
“It was also noted that although the article appeared two weeks ago, there was not a whiff of controversy about it until Enright won the Booker on Tuesday night.
At that point, someone dug up the most controversial quotes and put them together out of context into a report that would be as damaging as possible for Enright.”
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/awardwinning-author-says-timing-of-article-unfortunate-1199555.html
A quote from John Spain in today’s (19/10) Independent. No question of them pointing the finger at themselves though is there? You’d think from the tone of this that yesterday’s article had appeared in the Sun, some such downmarket tabloid, and not in their own newspaper, on the front page, without a byline. Shameful stuff.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Beyond John Spain’s control, I’d imagine.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Had to laugh when I read that Indo article, defending Enright from a British backlash whilst ignoring their own tabloid journalism informed by good old fashioned Irish begrudgery.
By the way, like Edel I cannot recall any anti-Irish backlash against previous winners, yet the Indo references “vitriolic” campaigns against Banville?
October 19th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
actually, had a closer look at that piece just now, and John Spain should have known better. I thought at first that he might have been curtailed by the Indo eds in terms of pointing out that the “backlash” happened in his own paper, but the tone of the whole article is off. Reeks of small-mindedness. The LRB is a “literary magazine in London”? What, like some lesser-known fanzine printed in some avid reader’s bedroom? FFS.
October 19th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Unfortunately this just seems to be the price one pays for visible success in a field like this. Developing a very public profile = becoming public property. Probably one of the serious downsides of achievement on this level. I can only imagine the deluded self-righteousness that will be visited upon Enright.
However, I can’t really see this as any concerted campaign of bigotry against irish writers, female writers, booker non-favourites or even Enright in particular, it’s just the more sensationalist aspects of the fourth estate unleashed.
The (mis)representation of her text out of context is pretty standard practice in generating this sort of shoddy journalism. I’d guess she’s well able for it. Toibin said “Anne Enright writes crisp, sharp sentences and she is afraid of nothing.” I hope so.
October 19th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
So glad you named it, Sinead. I began to suspect this was happening early on from the title of Sam Jordison’s Guardian Blog “Anne Enright: the conservative choice”, the tone of his blog and many of the comments that came after.
I haven’t read The Gathering yet, but I have read her short stories and articles, and the last thing I would associate with her writing is “conservative”. And since reading a few excerpts online, I realise that this book is supremely challenging - on many levels. And one obvious level is that this book can be acutely unsettling for men in general.
Its not so much that she writes from a female standpoint (as another poster wrote, which of course she does) but that she has emphatically overstepped the mark - the imperceptible boundaries - of what women are permitted to say about their experience.
SO I would hazard a guess that the subtext of some of the sniping and passive aggressive stance - that’s been apparent in both the Guardian blog and various articles since her win - has something to do with the uncomfortable nature of her writing, especially for men.
October 20th, 2007 at 1:39 am
I’m not going to veture an opinion on the Booker win. I haven’t read The Gathering so have no place to.
However, have you considered a voice-parser to translate speech to text?
October 20th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
I’ve read the Guardian blog and detect some chauvinism. I detect some unease too about the literary standards and preferences of judging panels. It would help if after selecting winners they would publish their personal views.
October 20th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Don’t know whether you’ve seen this Gareth, but its a pretty scrupulous account - of the process that went on behind closed doors - by one of the judges:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2194957,00.html
October 21st, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Thanks for that, dc. Yes, it shows that Booker the judges went through an exhaustive process of discussion before voting. I’d hope something like this article (or official group statement} would appear after other big prize announcements. I meant to add that the Guardian blog shows that in Britain and Ireland there is a big healthy reading public ready to comment passionately about books they read. I wish journos would stick to discussing Enright’s novel and not that LRB article about something unrelated.
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I saw that journalists were stalking her while she was giving a reading at Queens and demanding for her to answer to the article on the McCanns. Disgraceful.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I hope your wrist gets better. How terrible for you.
I’d love to go and check out that link to the gathering write-up by Anne Enright except that I am reading that book this month for the book club I’m in here in Wicklow.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Why is anyone surprised by the indo piece? They’re just stirring the pot in the vain hope of selling more of their raggy paper. It is what the Indo does. I coined a phrase recently ‘indo-truth’ which basically covers anything printed in that paper. Might be truth, might not be, will be sure to be a mix of both.
Poor old gal, I hope your wrist gets better soon.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I sometimes have to leave my computer because of problems with my wrist too..
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Links to a few good articles responding to the venomous sniping at Enright’s LRB piece about the McCanns:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/10/22/do2203.xml
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/time-to-start-accepting-the-callousness-of-human-nature-1200554.html
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/article3088152.ece