Have you got Franzenfreude? I hadn’t heard of it until last week — in fact, I don’t think it technically existed until last week, but you give a thing a name and suddenly everyone’s got it.
Schadenfreude is taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. Franzenfreude, explains author Jennifer Weiner, who coined the phrase, is ‘taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen’.
Prompted by the fuss over Franzen’s latest novel, Freedom, and his much-trumpeted appearance on the cover of Time, Weiner and fellow female author Jodi Picoult have made a fair bit of noise about what they see as the preferential treatment given to male writers by critics and the media establishment in general. Why is it, asked Weiner, that women are regularly criticised for writing about family rather than big serious topics, but when Franzen writes about family, his book is described as being ‘about America’?
It’s an old argument, but it is one that persists. Are women writers still seen as lightweight in comparison to male writers? Are they judged by different measures (Lionel Shriver has written an interesting piece in response to the Franzenfreude fuss, about how difficult it can be to persuade publishers to market her books as gritty and serious, because they don’t want to scare off the female market. Anecdotally, I’ve heard this from other writers too.)
What do you think? Are books by women judged less favourably? And which contemporary female writers do you think are worthy of the cover of Time? Here are five off the top of my head — (not all American, but all due their own cover in my opinion)
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