Où sont les femmes?

The VIDA stats are out. Naturlich they are grim. Here are the choices:

1) Boil your head and despair

2) Figure out who in The Atlantic precisely is so unable to locate more than 4 women reviewers & Harpers who can only locate 3 & have a whip round to get them a GPS.

or wonder whether readers should vote on the matter that this magazine refuses to afford women writers any critical authority on literature by, well, unsubscribing.

3) Remember that print is a dying medium, the stats are, I assume, based on print and pay no heed to the blogs this publications operate, where perhaps women prevail and are more prolific.

4) Question whether 3) is true and recognize my optimism about these publications blogs is likely blindingly delusional.

5) The obvious option is be ambitious, write more, but this is difficult to resolve in a year where I wrote a novel that was reviewed by NONE of those publications. (Obviously my novel had the company of a great deal of other novels in this regard).

6) Remind myself that the mainstream is the mainstream is the mainstream is the mainstream and unto the mainstream it shall remain. Also literary culture is conservative. But there’s plenty space outside the mainstream. Acres of space for all sorts of cross polination. It’s a matter of taking up some of it.