_Granta_ 163, "Best Young British Novelists 5"; Merve Emre, "The Critic and Her Publics" podcast

A SURPRISING NUMBER from Granta's 2023 roundup of the best young British novelists: in the twenty author photos, only five of the novelists are looking right at the camera. All were taken by Alice Zoo, so perhaps it's just a stylistic idiosyncrasy of hers, or maybe it's a new trend. If you are an up and coming new novelist, don't look at the camera. Adds mystery.

A less surprising number: of the twenty best young British novelists, fifteen are women. That surprised me when I first made the count, but on thinking about it, I realized a couple of things.

(1) This has been going on for a while. In 1983 and 1993 there were six women and fourteen men, then eight women and twelve men in 2003. The balance shifted in 2013, with twelve women and eight men, and the 2023 count fits the historical trend. 

(2) And that trend reflects who is actually publishing fiction. For a while now, I've been noticing that the "new fiction" displays in libraries and bookstores have two or three new novels by women for every new one by a man. At least that's true in literary fiction--in the genres, thriller, mystery, fantasy, science fiction, it's closer to fifty-fifty. But women are producing quite a bit more literary fiction than men are, so it's to be expected that 75% of the best young novelists are women.

I'll tell you what I was not expecting, though. Merve Emre's podcast "The Critic and Her Publics" includes her conversations with the "best and most prominent critics working today," as she announces in her introduction to each episode. I've enjoyed every episode--she's had eleven great people on, e.g., Andrea Long Chu, Anahid Nersessian, Christine Smallwood, Lauren Michele Jackson--but, as hinted in the title's pronoun, every one of them was a woman. That 75% of the best young novelists are women makes sense...but none of the "best and most prominent" critics are men? That doesn't sound right.

All of Emre's guests were worth hearing, and there are lots of great women critics who weren't even included; I would love to hear Emre talk with Amia Srinivasan, Ange Mlinko, Meghan O'Gieblyn, Patricia Lockwood, Stephanie Burt, Anna Weiner, or Emily Witt if the podcast continues. 

But no men? Not even one? Martin Filler ? (Too old?) Fintan O'Toole? (Too old and too Irish?) Ta-Nehisi Coates? George Scialabba? (Also too old?) Joshua Cohen? Terrance Hayes? Tom McCarthy? Peter Orner? Mark Greif? 

I mean, women may be doing most of today's best criticism, yes. But not all of it.