Excerpt from an Interview with Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction LXXI
The Paris Review, Inc., Vol 20, No. 74
Interviewer
What are the disadvantages, if any, of being a woman writer?
Didion
When I was starting to write-- in the late '50's, early 60's-- there was a kind of
social tradition [myth] in which male novelists could operate. Hard drinkers, bad livers. Wives, wars, big fish, Africa, Paris, no second acts. A man who wrote novels had a role in the world, and he could play that role and do whatever he wanted behind it. A woman who wrote novels had no particular role. Women who wrote novels were quite often perceived as
invalids [myth]. Carson McCuller, Jane Bowles. Flannery O'Connor of course. Novels by women tended to be described, even by their publishers, as sensitive...I just tended my own garden, didn't pay much attention, behaved-- I suppose-- deviously. I mean I didn't actually let too many people know what I was doing.
Photo of Jane Bowles
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