Bananasuit on Weiner & Weiners, or: Why Lady Writers Love to Hate on Shteyngart

I wish I could parse the following out for all you lazy hipsters, but I think I'm going to go down a few PBRs instead. Several months ago, chick lit authors Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult picked a fight with male literary darlings Gary Shteyngart and Jonathan Franzen. This blogger does a nice job describing the feud, or you can also read about it at HuffPo.

In a nutshell, Weiner complained in this feminist tweet: "NYT sexist, unfair, loves Gary Shteyngart, hates chick lit, ignores romance. And now, to go weep into my royalty statement." (Interestingly enough, Weiner and Shteyngart now appear to be bff on Twitter.)

And our March author, Miranda July, has the same complaint about twee male filmmakers: "All those men [like Noah Baumbach and Wes Anderson] are also personal. I don’t mind that, but I do mind that it’s not really questioned, whereas I or another woman is looked at as so self-obsessed. Men are just not being judged in the same way. They’re never going to be annoying in the same way." (Thanks, Richard, for pointing us to the source article!)

And so I pose the feminist dilemma to you, PBR bookclub: are chick lit, or "twee", female artists getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop when they create personal art? First: crack open your PBR. And now: discuss!