Was a Question About Women and the ‘Great American Novel\' Sexist?

Maura Casey, a Times reader and a former member of The Times editorial board, was one of the readers who was unhappy with a question posed Sunday in the Book Review's weekly Bookends feature: “Where Is the Great American Novel by a Woman?”

Actually, she was more than unhappy, more like downright angry. She wrote to me about it, saying she found it “specious, condescending, sexist, and to be making an assumption that is utterly uncalled for.” (The assumption is that there is no Great American Novel written by a woman.)

She added:

Can we please pause and remember that the last American who won a Nobel Prize in Literature was Toni Morrison, a member of the Female Persuasion? How about Harper Lee, whose “To Kill a Mockingbird” has been a must-read for 50 years?

Who dreams up such drivel as this question? Is the Book Review an adolescent male treehouse, complete with a sign saying, “No Girls Allowed” complete, of course, with a backward “s”?

Finally, substitute “Where is the Great American Novel by a Black?” and the question is exposed for its flawed and insulting assumption. But somehow it's O.K. for the paper of record and the oldest book review in America to dis half of humanity.

I talked Monday morning about this with Pamela Paul, who this year was appointed the Book Review's second female editor.

Ms. Paul told me that the question was posed because it was provocative, not because the Book Review endorses the idea that no woman has written the Great American Novel.

“It is a question that people ask,” Ms. Paul said. “People seem to think of the great American novel as somehow male, so the question was meant to challenge that.”

She said she does not believe that the same question arises about black authors, or at least she hasn't heard it discussed, but she freely admitted that none of this was based on empirical evidence.

As it happens, both of the authors who take on the “Bookends” question â€" Jennifer Szalai and Mohsin Hamid - challenge the relevancy of the Great America Novel altogether. Many of the readers in the online comments do, too.

And Ms. Szalai noted that John William De Forest, a 19th-century novelist and one of the first to use the phrase, “praised only one book for having ‘a national breadth to the picture, truthful outlining of character, natural speaking and plenty of strong feeling': ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin,' by Harriet Beecher Stowe.”

Mr. Hamid suggested that a glance at one's bookshelves might answer the question with titles by authors like Barbara Kingsolver and Ursula K. Le Guin.

As for the broader question of whether the Book Review is a boys club, Ms. Paul noted that her staff members are actually more female than male at the moment. Since taking over as editor in April, she has made a point of making the Book Review more inclusive and diverse, and is doing so effectively.

“I'm trying to find books and reviewers that are reflective of our readership,” she said. “We have a global audience now, and in general we are trying to be very broad.”

Here's my take: The question has provoked some interesting discussion and two good answers by the writers. But there could still have been a lively discussion - without feeding a faulty assumption - if the question had been phrased differently. Here's my (admittedly inelegant) stab at it: “Who Are the Top Women Contenders for Great American Novelist?”