The Jeanettites

[steepholm]

Listening to Radio 4's A Good Read, I found myself drifting from what the speakers had to say about the three books under review - Jeanette Winterson's memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, David Malouf's novel Remembering Babylon and Andre Agassi's autobiography, Open - and listening to how they were referring to the authors.

Jeanette Winterson was first up, and I couldn't help but notice that the reviewers, led by Val McDermid, consistently referred to her as "Jeanette". This is the kind of thing I have to cure my students of, so I suppose my hackles are in a state of constant readiness. Were they being sexist and patronising? Or was it simply a reflection of the personal nature of the genre?

David Malouf's novel was next, and I was listening out to hear if anyone would have the chutzpah to refer to him as "David". As far as I remember, however, no one referred to him at all. They stuck to the text.

Then came Agassi. This too was a memoir (albeit a ghost-written one), but unlike Jeanette Winterson, Agassi was generally referred to simply by his surname, or as "Andre Agassi". At one point McDermid imagined addressing him - "Oh come on, Andre!" Otherwise, familiar first-name-only reference was absent.

What do we make of this? What would Lord David Cecil do?

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

A combo of belittlement and infantilisation perhaps?

Another typical day at the office......

Sigh :o(

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Are Val McDermid and Jeanette Winterson friends / acquaintances in real life? And does it matter?

I admit that I always struggle with this one when writing about books: referring to the author by full name every time seems cumbersome, but surname only seems brusque, and given name only, even when it's someone I know, over-intimate...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, is the answer to your first question. I didn't get that impression from the way McDermid spoke about her, but it's a small world so they may well have met. And, indeed, the others may simply have followed her lead. But literary critics have a long track record in referring to female writers by their first names where they would never dream of doing so with their male counterparts. Does it matter? Cumulatively, yes, I'd say it does.

I have no problem at all in referring to writers by their surname. In fact I'd feel very odd indeed talking about "William" rather than "Shakespeare", in however biographical a context! To my mind, context is all, and if it's a writer I know well personally they'll still get the surname treatment if I'm talking about their work. As Deryck Guyler used to say on Sykes: "Helmet off, Corky. Helmet on, Constable Turnbull." In a book review programme, the helmet is unambiguously on.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of a seminar with one of my English professors in college, in which he asked which authors you really shouldn't have an English degree if you hadn't read, and one of the students slapped a complete Shakespeare at his side and said, "Well, there's Bill."

"Yes, old Bill, of course. Who else?"

I said, "Well, I suppose one really has to say Jack, too."

"Milton, d'you mean?"

"Yes, 'fraid so."

"I was hoping you meant Keats, but I suppose you're right."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It could have been worse. It could have been Kerouac.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

But Kerouac really was called Jack, which rather spoils it. (Wikipedia says it was short for Jean-Louis. I'd no idea.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're right (and C. S. Lewis would be disqualified on the same basis). I was just appalled at the thought of a world in which you couldn't get an English degree without having read The Dharma Bums.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I was just about to mention Lewis!

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I just read that as The Dharma BURNS. Right up there with "Karma's a bitch."

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I recently published a pamphlet for which a couple of blurbs had been solicited, both from people I know personally. One (a man) referred to me as Surname, the other (a woman) as Firstname. The latter is a friend, the former more of an online acquaintance, so, that made sense more in terms of how they think of their connection to me than in gender terms perhaps. The publisher wanted them consistent, and asked me if I preferred "public school" or "comprehensive"? (I went with "public school".) I think sometimes people are still uncomfortable with referring to women by surname alone: historically, I suppose, because referring to a woman by her surname alone indicates that she's a social inferior, usually a servant, whereas it's a marker of equality and relative intimacy between men of the same class? Is there also a sense maybe that it's "masculinizing" -- the stereotype of a butch games mistress or some sort of institutional warden roaring at her charges? The fear of lesbianism does seem to come into it somewhere, when makes the Jeanette Winterson example particularly piquant. My students are forever talking about Emily, Sylvia and Adrienne, but sometimes also about Walt and Ted and Allen (it's usually only the writers who excite affection or controversy who get the firstname treatment). I had a very interesting case once in an essay about Langston Hughes which made fairly standard anti-racist points, but referred throughout to Langston, while white contemporaries and critics were referred to by surname.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think all the things you mention are involved, and interconnectedly so - which makes it hard to pick out a single instance such as this and say "This is sexist!" and leave it at that.

Your publisher's distinction seems wrong-headed, though. I don't see the first-name habit as a function of class in any straightforward way. At my comprehensive boys frequently referred to each other by their surnames; girls hardly at all; nor was there much cross-sex reference of that kind. But I wouldn't be surprised if things have changed anyway: we're a far more familiar society now. You just know that Dave and Barack are on first-name terms; I wouldn't be so sure that Winnie and Franklin were.

Personally, I quite like formality and courtliness, just as I like baroque music, if I don't have to have it all the time. But also, in a blurb of all places you don't want any hint that the opinion being offered is coloured by personal friendship.