Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Women Rewriting

From: Bob Toomey ( btoomey@javanet.com)
Date: 28 May 2000


James Rogers wrote:
>
> I'm not sure that I buy the notion of a "female" voice either. The
> writer who wrote women most truthfully, IMO, was good old D.H.
> Lawrence....

Among living writers, Larry McMurtry is no slouch in the female voice department. And James Tiptree, Jr. passed for male for years until her true identity as Alice Sheldon was finally uncovered. Lee Hoffman, the western writer, never wrote from a female viewpoint, and probably fooled most western fans into thinking she was male. Likewise, Leigh Brackett, in her hardboiled mysteries and SF, wrote convincing male viewpoint. Howard Hawks hired Brackett sight unseen to help Faulkner on the screenplay for THE BIG SLEEP because, based on her novel NO GOOD FROM A CORPSE, he thought she was a genuine tough guy. Craig Rice wrote "like a man" and so does Andre Norton. And if you want to read some tough SF, try ex-Marine Elizabeth Moon. And so on.

Writing isn't gender specific, and any writer worth his or her salt can fool any academic into thinking they're the opposite sex on any day of the week.

BobT

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