Chick-lit author Jessica Rudd asks: why is there no such thing as ‘dick lit’?

The terms ‘chick lit’ to refer to popular fiction written by women has a sneering quality to it. But why? Why are stories about women written by women given such short shrift by the literati? I’ve never understood the idea that popular is a dirty word and neither does Jessica Rudd, enthusiastic reader and writer of chick lit who recently spoke on this exact subject at the  Brisbane Writers’ Festival with authors Rebecca Sparrow and Anita Heiss.

After the rapturous reception she received when I posted this interview with Jessica (watch it here), I asked her to write something for Mamamia (PS – I just finished Campaign Ruby and LOVED it – the girl is talented as well as lovely):

“My name is Jessica and I like chick lit. I read it and write it—unashamedly so. I read books I can identify with, books that aren’t a chore, books I can’t put down even when its midnight and I have a conference call at eight.There’s something I hadn’t grasped before I self-declared as belonging to this genre: chick lit or “women’s fiction” is to literary types what Dairy Milk is to chocoholics. It’s commercial. You have to emphasise the second syllable so as to pooh-pooh it properly. Commercial.

I don’t mind that so much. In fact, I’d much prefer my work to be devoured by many than nibbled by few. I write to be read. If people are going to spend money on something I write I want them to get bang for their buck. I want them to laugh out loud on the train on the way to work and get stared at by the Sudoku junkies.

What bothers me is that we don’t celebrate the kind of fiction vast numbers love to read. When did enjoying literature that speaks to us become a guilty pleasure? For heaven’s sake, it’s not porn (even if there are saucy bits).

 

Campaign Ruby is the story of a bright young Brit who loses her job in the financial crisis, gets maggot on Yarra Valley pinot and buys herself a non-refundable ticket to Melbourne where she gets a gig as a campaign worker for the upcoming federal election. It’s full of references to life as a twenty-something in the noughties—it has blokes, bags, booze, ballots, bosses and brain.There’s nothing new about what I do. A lady by the name of Jane Austen kicked things off a while back. She wrote about the women of her time and the things that mattered to them. When I read Emma I read the story of a vain and well-intentioned do-gooder so focu

sed on fixing her the people around her that she fails to fix herself. She is the kind of character who transcends generations. Each time I read it, I cringe with her when the guy she’s trying to set up with her best friend hits on her and I cringe at her when she lashes a kind and harmless geek with her harsh tongue.

Austen’s books document how women think, behave and endure. They worked then and still work because we—the reader—can feel their presence.

Two things make these books classics. First and foremost, it’s the vivid writing. Emma, Harriet and Mr Knightly leap off Austen’s pages like one of those novelty Magic Eye books. Second, they provide invaluable insight into time, place and the things that really matter to a protagonist and her contemporaries. In Emma I can hear the rustle of petticoats against taffeta and understand the pressured quest for a loving husband with sound financials.

When my grandchildren read Confessions of a Shopaholic they will be able to smell Becky’s new-handbag leather and feel the heart-stopping anxiety and self-loathing that comes with every bill marked ‘final notice’. They will roll their eyes and say to me, ‘grandma, what’s a letter box?’

Sophie Kinsella, Candace Bushnell, Helen Fielding, Marian Keyes—they all write the lives of contemporary women and their books will be thumbed for generations to come.

Herein lies the answer. I reckon if these were the stories of men—and dare I say written by men—they wouldn’t be tagged as frivolous.

Nick Earls is one of my favourite writers. His stuff makes me chuckle with and feel for his characters. Shane Maloney is another. Murray Whelan is an accident-prone, dry, cynic who—despite a haphazard approach to his work in politics—always manages to land on his feet.

These are blokes who write blokes but their work is not sneered at by the la-di-das. As friend and fellow-author Anita Heiss put it, we don’t call books by men and about men ‘dick lit’, even if they are commercial.

This brings me to a side issue. A lot of dudes feel funny about reading my work and that’s my fault. I didn’t realise calling it chick lit would cause men at signings to tell me they are buying it for their wives but still want me to make it out to Gary.

Somehow we’ve created a world in which it’s okay for women to dig a good action flick, but for a bloke to voluntarily buy a ticket to Sex and the City 2 puts his sexuality in doubt (as opposed to his taste in films, which would be perfectly justifiable).

I digress.

Chick lit is commercial for a reason. People buy what they like to read—I certainly do. I don’t want to spend forty bucks on a great lump of bound paper that’s going to bore me senseless until it graduates un-read from bedside table to bookshelf where it will sit until Christmas when I dust it off, scan it for dog-ears, wrap it up and chuck it under the tree with a gift tag.

Of course there are books I like to read that don’t have mass-market appeal. These are rare and precious treats, books I don’t always have time for but when I do, they hit the spot. These treasures are like 75% cocoa hand-rolled truffles. In a little black dress at a swanky wine bar with a glass of champagne, the truffle is glamorous, rich and sophisticated.

But most days, when I’m exhausted and fed up, nothing comforts the soul quite so much as my decade-old flannies, the couch, my West Wing box set and Milo sprinkled over a deep bowl of vanilla ice-cream.

And what’s wrong with that?”