Clare Stephens

I don't publish books.

because it's unseemly for women.

And do you feel like you got that when you published your book at all?

Like that bucket of criticism that's personal as opposed to literary in nature?

there were blind spots.

Well, and the whole act of criticism is meant to be about taking the work on its own terms and then assessing its success on those terms.

So Bell Burden wrote a divorce memoir, and what worries me is I don't want...

women's writing to be relegated to this category of is not worthy of criticism and is not worthy of real informed and intelligent debate because that is an act of respect to say okay you wrote a divorce memoir let's assess it as a divorce memoir is it successful at what it set out to do yeah that's we want women's work to be assessed in that serious-minded way

I think women are better than this.

Go.

Men are not sitting around saying, I didn't like the new James Patterson airport thriller.

but maybe that's because I'm just really jealous of James Patterson, said no man ever.

Look, on the other hand, it did make me pause for a second because I was about to sort of throw at you, Holly, the idea that Famesick, as you mentioned before, Lena Dunham's memoir, got a near universal positive response.

It did.

But then I thought maybe that's because as a culture, we've already cut Lena Dunham down to what we perceive to be the right size.

And so at this point, she doesn't have that sort of cultural cachet.

She's certainly not at the height of her influence right now.

And maybe that makes everyone feel a little bit better about the fact that she also happened to write a superb book.

No, I get that.

I just want to be sure there's a danger in that, which is that if every woman says, well, I don't want to ever actually sort of engage critically with a work by a woman, what that means and what that results in is the sidelining of women's voices.