response to the soviet union. he says he's dismayed. so i think it could have helped. you know, would he have won? i don't know. i think there's a lot of factors that led carter to lose. from him to the problems of the democratic party to reagan and a very strong campaign. but certainly the resolution of that would not have worked against carter if it had happened a couple months earlier, and it was really a painful resolution for him. literally, to watch and hear, to hear that they were on the tarmac in the final hours, and he has a conversation with reagan, and reagan, i mean, in his account doesn't really, you know, he's not very engaged at all in what was happening. t really frustrating -- it's really a us frustrating end to s presidency although maybe kind of a poignant one given what had happened. >> once again julian zelizer has given us a great talk and a great book. there's a lot more in the book. read about jimmy carter. thanks very much, dr. zelizer.

[applause] >> thank you. >> julian zelizer's "jimmy carter" is part of times books american presidents series. for more information visit american presidents series.com. >> elaine showalter, professor at princeton university, profiles american female writers from the 19th century through -- 17th century through today. ms. showalter recounts the writing careers of harriet beecher stowe and many others describing the objections that female writers had to face throughout history. this program is a little under an hour. >> back when i was a new ph.d. in 1970, i edited my first anthology. i don't even think barbara knows about it. this is it. this worn-out little red-covered

book. it was published by harcourt brace, and i think it was the first textbook for feminist criticism that had ever been published. i got to do it, i was a new ph.d., by was in my first assistant professorship job, and i felt a tremendous sense of responsibility doing this book to my projected readers. when i did it, putting together the list of texts that i wanted was really not very hard especially because in those days i didn't even know of that many. but i got a real shock when i sat down to write to copyright holders for permission to reprint the authors' work. i had wanted to include sylvia plath's celebrated poem "daddy." you probably all know that poem. and i wanted to include two other poems by plath. i was really going for broke. but when i wrote to hughes who was plath's executor and also

the sister of her estranged husband ted hughes and who was rumored to be somewhat of a ferocious person, to reprint daddy would cost me $100. i was paying out of the pittance i got for doing the book, and as a beginning assistant professor with two kids, i had not very much money of my own. and owen said that the other two poems i had asked for were $50 each. [laughter] that was the beginning of my literary career. and i will tell you that i settled for a $50 poem. [laughter] i struck a bargain, and i bought a poem called "les boss" which is really quite a long poem. it's a magnificent poem about 'emnity between two women which was a cheaper poem than "daddy" for reasons we can speculate

about. that was my introduction to the business of literary anthology and as an idealistic young scholar, it had never occurred to me that poems could be rated by their ticket price as well as by their quality. but that experience really changed my perceptions of literature forever. and from then on i really understood, i think, that literature has always been a business, that poems, stories, essays and novels are products in a marketplace as well as acts of the creative imagination, and that professional writers depend on their market value as well as their critical reception. in this new collection, i have two poems by sylvia plath, and i have to tell you i still can't afford "daddy." [laughter] you know, of course, at $100, boy, that was an unbelievable bargain. the if it had been in stock now, "daddy "has escalated. so i still can't pay for it, and

i've chosen two of plath's other poems written in the last few months before her suicide. and i realized that sometimes financial constraint forces you to look beyond the conventional and find something really wonderful. not all the time, but in this case. so fast forward to the present. in 2003 i signed a contract to write a jury of her peers which has many women writers in it, but it's a literary history more than an anthology. and my editor suggested to me that it would be a good idea to put together an anthology to go with it and to be published in paperback by vintage, and that's the book i'm talking about today. it was extremely welcome suggestion. i know that many of the works i talk about in "jury of peers "are out of print, they are very hard to find, and readers said to me, where can i get hold of these texts? now that i'm interested in them, i'm curious about them, where can i read them? and i knew from the beginning it

was a given i could not possibly include all the important work by american women writers since 1650 in a single volume. that i knew from the start. on the other hand, before this there has never been a single volume anthology of american women's writing from the beginning which seemed to me kind of, you know, staggering omission in the 21st century. and i knew that i wanted to make an anthology, waited to -- i wanted to put together a book that was portable, that was economical, that wasn't weighted down by all of the apparatus of a textbook, that brought together stories and poems and essays by american women writers, as many as possible that would reflect their diversity of summit and style -- subject and style, works that were beautiful or tragic or funny or inspiring or all of the above. and the anthology overall was intended to offer kind of mini

cannon, a partial list -- couldn't be a full list, but a partial list of people who i think are the most significant women writers in the american literary tradition and to provide a kind of map of their relation to each ore and be to -- other and to american literature in general. so those are my aims. now, all of us know, i think, that today the anthology is a genre very much dominated by a few large and wealthy publishers who can afford to hire the knowledgeable editors and researchers required to put a good book together. and who have the bottomless pockets to pay the staggering permissions fees for reprinting work in copyright. most of the important and wide-ranging anthologies are aimed, of course, at the textbook market, mostly the college textbook market. they're multivolume works of over 5,000 pages. they have vast budgets, they

have vast sales, they have something of a student captive market, and we talk about there's been quite a discussion recently about the price of textbooks for college and university students. and over the past 15 years they have been getting bigger. they have been get withing more elaborate. they have been getting more expensive. they are packaged, now, with maps, pictures, teaching manuals, and in some cases audio and video supplements so you are buying, really, an entire experience when you buy one of these anthologies. now, that's not what i was trying to do or what i have done. i wanted to put together a book for the general reader as well as the undergraduate, and to do it without the enormous committees and the consultations of the big texts. so i started out by making a list of all the works i would like to include in a utopian publishing world. and then with the help of a grant from the melon foundation, i was able for a year to pay

three graduate assistants, two from princeton and one from harvard, to help me go through the libraries to see if there were works and writers i had overlooked. vintage had established a rough guideline, i'm going to let you in on all of the -- oops, there goes my earring. i was going to let you in on all of the statistics, financial statistics of putting anthology together. vintage had established a rough guideline of 1800 pages, and they were willing to pay about $20,000 in permissions fees which is probably about a tenth or less than what a big textbook publisher has available. this is huge business, the textbook anthology market. now, those are my parameters. 800 pages, $20,000. copyright law, some of you may know, is different in every country. the guidelines in the united states that i was given by my publisher were to get permission for everything published after

1922. they figured that would cover everything. canadian law is different, and i had to get some canadian rights as well. british law is also very different, but no british publisher was willing to put up the money to produce an anthology of american women writers. and i i think that's a shame. so that gives you a bit of the background. however, even with my realistic, even cynical view of the commercial and financial aspects of anthology publishing and with the encouragement and backup from my very patient and endlessly optimistic editor at vintage, diana, i was really unprepared for the nightmare of getting permissions. i cut my list to 100 writers, and i had to write for copyright permissions for 48 of them, 48 of them whose work was still

under copyright protection. i started a year before the publication date, and the year that followed -- a year ago, in other words -- was an education for me in bureaucracy, greed, control freakery, inefficiency, outright lying and the blindness of copyright holders to the circumstances of readership in the 21st century. i thought, naively, that many executors and copyright holders would be happy to have some long-forgotten story or poem by a writer that nobody had talked about in 30 years, 40 years, 50 years -- i would come and say, i'm going to reprint this, and it's going to be called the vintage week of american women -- isn't that wonderful? not a bit of it. they did not see this as an opportunity to find new audiences for their writers. there were a tiny number of exceptions. in fact, there were two exceptions.

[laughter] peter davis, the son of tess. >> hessing ger was happy to have his mother's work made available, and he was exceptionally generous in his terms. but overall, copyright holders made it as hard as possible for me to an thol eyes and reprint their writers' work. permission editors lost my letters until prodded by their bosses or by the aggrieved authors. when they miraculously located the letters in a matter of minutes. at one press the permission's editor was quite annoyed with me for continuing to pester her about a writer's work because she had many other responsibilities. true, i'm sure, because, you know, we know that publishers -- like everybody, every other business -- are being cut back. somebody has to handle the permissions, though, and i would think that in these days permission fees could be

centralized and standardize ad and handled -- and handled online. they're not. on their web sites, publishers say they will respond to written or e-mail queries in 2-6 weeks, and they warn you not to telephone you to follow up. in fact, several of the largest publishers took up to five months to reply to simple queries. in one case i never could get a reply from the copyright holder and just gave up. and when you read a review that says why isn't so and so in the book, i want you to know these are are some of the reasons why writer x does not make it into the book. back in the 1970s i thought $100 was a lot of money for a poem, even a great poem. but poems and stories have become more costly, like everything else. their price is held by the copyright holder. there is absolutely no standard, no convention. you charge what the market can bear. you charge what you think you

can get away with. there is no correlation to length or even to the fame of the writer or the classic nature of the work. in other words, you might expect to pay a lot of money for stories that have been reprinted, a classic story. you can be charged as much for a ten-line poem by a poet that nobody has ever heard of at all. and there seems to be no sense among executors that there's a difference here or that there might be some kind of discussion, do these people ever get together and talk to each other about what they are selling. so they ask for exorbitant sums for lesser works. radical authors, which i have quite a number represented whether they were completely radical left wing or feminist or other were just as demanding and uncompromising as those with a much more commercial and main street bet. in fact, there's a scholar named carrie nelson who was a left-wing academic editor himself, and he's edited an anthology of modern american

poetry. and he has written that trying to reprint work by radical writers is the real source of the expression in the red. [laughter] okay? now, kerry nelson, who i know and whose experience with the permission process which he's described in a very funny article, was very similar to mine. he actually enjoyed bargaining with publishers. he liked making them offers they could not refuse. his publisher, oxford university press, did all the core response. in my case, i did it all myself. and kerry checked in at the end in a sort of good cop/bad cop routine threatening to drop the writers altogether if the publishers did not come through and cut their fees. i did a little bit of bargaining. i don't enjoy it all that much, but i did it. i, you know, womaned up and i did it. but many publishers took so long to reply that the book had actually gone to press before i even heard back from them. and two negotiations were

concluded on the final day, the last possible minute before the book was set in print. even an important writer cannot always control copyright permission, i wanted to include and i did include joyce carol oates' wonderful short story, "golden gloves." it is a short story by a woman writer about a boxer. i wanted the anthology to include counterintuitive examples of women's writing. women write about everything, they are not limited to feminine subjects. and i wrote away to try and find out who had the copyright, and after many months of silence, i appealed to joyce hearse who was an old -- herself who was an old friend and a supporter of this anthology. she was really very glad i wanted to reprint this story. it has never been an thol eyesed before. but it turns out that the copyright on "golden gloves" was held by a former publisher she had left many, many years ago, and the rights had never

reverted to her. she appealed to them to be merciful which is to say, you know, charge me a very low sum for the story. but, of course, they didn't. they charged a whopping fee which we paid, and in many cases i've had this experience myself as an academic writer and so has my husband and other people i know and a lot of literary writers i know, the writers themselves never get paid on these copyright royalties from the publisher. so this is -- there's a kind of a limbo land. not in every case, but in some cases where these royalties go, who is in control of these rights. in addition to, you know, just the financial hassles, many of the agents, secretaries and other representatives of various writers insisted that they could, should look at my head notes to the selection of the writer. they wanted to critique it, they wanted to make sure that it was all okay. several of them wanted to know,

and they wanted xeroxed copies of the writer who would come before them and the writer who would come after them in the book. [laughter] the book is actually arranged by the writer's date of birth, so, you know, i didn't have a lot of flexibility on that. there were writers and their agents who demanded revisions of my head note, who objected to critical statements that i made about them. in one case they complained that i had not given sufficient space and detail to the author's political causes and sent a long list of things that they would like included. finally, i had to drop 20 of my original 100 writers because they were too expensive or too demanding or too controlling in their requests. and i think none of you will be surprised to hear that once i had agreed to the fee and signed the contract, these same publishers and executors wasted no time at all in sending out their bills.

that they were very speedy about. so putting together a literary anthology demands a lot of tough and painful editorial decisions. i did not, i had made a decision that i would not include excerpts of novels published after 1900. some of the american novels published before 1900, they're very long, they're not that readable by modern authors, and yet you want to have some sense of them represented. but 20th century and after, i didn't think this was appropriate. but i did want to include some of our major women novelists. now, toni morrison, to mention one as someone who has said in an early review of the book, why isn't toni morrison in the book? okay. toni morrison has published one short story. itit came out in 1983. if there's any anthology of american women writing, that story will be in it because it is the short story by toni morrison, and it's a pretty good story. but it's long, it is very

expensive, as you can imagine. and i had to choose between including that and including maybe five other pieces. by other women writers. marilyn robinson, another contemporary woman novelist who i admire tremendously, has also published only one short story in the paris review, and she did not want to have it reprinted. i think it's quite good. but she didn't want it to come to light again. a number of my favorite contemporary writers have stories that were both very long and very expensive, and i certainly have been aware for a long time if you look at literary anthologies, especially the deal with the contemporary period, they will often have a great deal of poetry in them. maybe one poem per poet, and that's because poetry's cheaper, and you can get a lot more writers in if you just use a poem. it isn't always cheaper, but it tends to be cheaper than fiction.

i didn't want to go that route, and i didn't want to have a lot of short fiction if i could. and i will mention, by the way, that i have been cut from an anthology myself as a critic. around 2000 the norton anthology of criticism and theory came out, and the editors had to cut 300 pages at the last minute. and "the new york times" wrote this up. this is what happens when you're working with norton. "the new york times" wrote it up and, i think, published it on the front page. and they noted that along with russo and george elliot, elaine showalter had been dropped from the book. [laughter] one of my, one of my proudest moments. [laughter] although my princeton students reacted to this as if i had been hosed from an elite eating club. they were most distressed and, you know, felt that it was a shameful experience for me to be exposed in that way. anyway, an anthology is about the art of the possible like

politics, like other things in washington. nonetheless, i'm really very happy with the way this book turned out, and i'm excited to think that readers will be able to find astonishing work, moving work, funny work by writers who will be new to them but who i feel should be recognized as important figures in american literary history. and i hope they'll also be able to recognize some of the genres and styles that are characteristic of america women's writing. for example, the fable oral gory, a form used by american women writers from the 18th century to the present including writers as diverse as katherine sedgwick, edith wharton, alice dunbar nelson, mary austin, shirley jackson, i could go on and on. and i want to conclude by reading one of these fables. it's quite short. called "she unnames them."

how many of you know this piece? yes, my daughter. okay. [laughter] otherwise, this will be something new to you, and be i hope you'll like it. it's set in the garden of eden. it is told by a very rebellious eve, and it reflects very much of the time. it reflects the concern, the fascination of feminists in the 1980s with escaping from patriarchal language, the idea that our language is a language invented by men and, therefore, controls what we can express and creating a new way of speaking and writing. so "she unnames them." most of them accepted namelessness with the perfect indifference with which they had so long accepted and ignored their names. whales and dolphins, seals and sea otters consented with particular grace and alacrity sliding into anonymity as into

their element. a faction of yaks, however, protested. they said yak sounds right and that almost everyone who knew they existed called them that. unlike the ubiquitous creatures such as rats and fleas who had been called by hundreds of thousands of different names, the yaks could truly say, they said, they had a name. they discussed the matter all summer. the council's elderly female finally agreed that though the name might be useful for others, it was so redundant from a yak point of view that they never spoke it themselves and might just as well dispense with it. after they presented the argument in this light to the bulls, a full consensus was delayed only by the onset of severe early blizzards. soon after the beginning of the thaw, their agreement was reached, and the designation "yak" was returned to the donor. among the domestic animals, few

horses had cared what anybody called them. cattle, sheep, swine, mules and goats along with chickens, geese and turkeys all agreed enthusiastically to give their names back to the people to whom, as they put it, they belonged. i assume they mean the names belong, not the animals. a couple of problems did come up with pests. the cats, of course, steadfastly denied ever having had any name. [laughter] other than those self-given, unspoken, inevery my-personal names which is as the poet named elliot says they spent long hours daily contemplating. it was with the dogs and with some parrots, love birds, ravens and mynas that the trouble arose. these verbally-talented individuals insisted that their names were important to them and flatly refused to part with them. but as soon as they understood that the issue was press icily one of individual -- precisely

one of individual choice and that anybody who wanted to be called rover or polly or even birdie in the personal sense was perfectly free to do so. not one of them had the least objection to parting with the lower case or, as regard to german creatures, upper case generic appalachians, poodle, parrot, dog or bird. and all of the qualifiers that had trailed along behind them for 200 years like tin cans tied to a tail. the insect parted with their names in vast clouds and swarms of ephemeral syllables buzzing and singing and humming and fritting and crawling and tunneling away. as to the fish of the sea, their names dispersed from them in silence throughout the oceans like faint, dark blurs of cuddle fish ink and drifted off on the currents without a trace. none were left now to unname. and yet how close i felt to them when i saw one of them swim or

fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin or stalk me in the night or go along beside me for a while in the day. they seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier. so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. and the attraction that many of us felt, the desire to smell one another's smells, feel or rub or caress one another's scales or skin or feathers or fur, taste one another's blood or flesh, keep one another warm, that attraction was now all one with the fear, and the hunter could not be told from the hunted, nor the eater from the food. this is more or less the effect i had been after. it was somewhat more powerful than i had anticipated, but i could not now in all conscious make an exception for myself. so i resolutely put anxiety

away, went to adam and said, you and your father lent me this. gave it to me, actually. it's been really useful. but it doesn't exactly seem to fit very well lately. but thanks very much, it's really been very useful. it's hard to give pack a gift without -- back a gift without sounding peevish or ungrateful, and i didn't want to leave him with that impression of me. he was not paying much attention, as it happened, and said only put it down over there, okay? and went on with what he was doing. one of my reasons for doing what i did was talk was getting us nowhere, but all the same, i felt a little let down. i'd been prepare today defend my decision, and i thought perhaps he might be upset and want to talk. i fiddled around a little, but he continued to do what he was doing and to take no notice of anything else. so at last i said, good-bye, dear. i hope the garden key turns up. he was fitting parts together and said without looking around,

okay, dear. when's dinner? i'm not sure, i said. i'm going now. i hesitated and finally said, with them, you know, and went on out. i had only just then realized how hard it would have been to explain myself. i could not chatter away as i used to do, taking it all for granted. my words now must be as slow, as new, as single, as tentative as the steps i took going down the path away from the house between the dark-branched, tall dancers motionless against the winter shining. so i want to leave you with a question about this fable. does the speaker give back the name of eve or the name woman? and what difference would it mange if it was either one? in -- make if it was either one?

and now if you all have any questions or comments, i'd be very happy to hear them. [applause] ..

i'm not the only person he said this. anyone who's done an anthology like this will tell you what got me to the commissions. it tells me that the internet is made for. why can't these be handled online? why can't it be standardized? wiki be there some kind of commission that gets together and settles on the state and make it easy to get this done. it's very old-fashioned now. >> i want to start my whole teaching career over again. emily dickinson found it so hard to print anything of emily dickinson. they were all out of copyright.

>> now, i think all of emily dickens and this is really what it comes down to it. and i think it's fascinating because the readers this is that what you think about. when you're looking at a budget and you are faced with cindy several thousand dollars to these works and you get a chance for these are for less. there was a fascinating in commerce and art. these are hard decisions to make. it is a system to become entrenched. you don't get the one in the newberry award. >> some of them they think she wrote earlier than others.

i mean, a harvard with the people who wrote to me and said very plainly we can have these funds are nothing. the third question is fair to people who are very generous. who is the other one? >> cynthia bozic was incredibly generous. she was very kind. and indeed she wrote kind of an attendant to her essay but i've coded in the book. and cynthia bozic has struggled in her career. she doesn't like to be called a woman or hasn't liked to be called a woman writer because said she was growing up with her essay suggests being a woman writer was accepting inferiority. i think she's kind of got over that now. she was incredibly kind and efficient and helpful and supportive.

but i'm obviously not going to name names, but i was just amazed by people who i thought would be helpful in understanding and happy to have this -- it's not the writers fault in most cases. if the people who control the rights. and literature is a very complicated series of strata. went to get into that round come you get in the legal and financial aspects that is out of control of the writer. >> thank you for other work he did on this. it is wonderful. >> sure. [inaudible] >> -- expect that it would have to be very expensive. >> well, it's an interesting question because even a very short time ago we assumed that it was. whether it was assumed that this was so because it wasn't as good as it proclaimed fan, which was

what scholars believed in many women believe themselves or whether after the feminist movement it was assumed that women have a totally different nature in a way to look at the world and their books to a different topics in a different style. and even as ursula quan speculated different language. i think we're past that now the 21st century. women writers are writers. they are women like they are americans and american anthology. sometimes you might recognize the theme that you think is feminine or american, but other times he won't. and i think that's a really good thing. it's a step towards freedom. i'm all in favor of that. on the other hand, would women writers level the nexus of market, when opinion writers are reviewed, those stereotypes still come into play. and you'll see it every week.

the post is very good about this very aware. "the new york times" is not so good. a lot of other places not so good. so as to a scandalous ones that come when i sit down to write and just writer come up when i'm publishing reviewed i am a woman writer. and i think that sums it up pretty well of what you both think a woman writer might be. [inaudible] >> well, as i said, i think of as a male view to begin with, but women internalize it. there have been earlier anthologies of women's writing, not american women writing, but but anthology settlements writing collectively. in every dish and there always some women writers who refuse to be in the boat. now, you try to compare this as you imagine an anthology of black writing or american raining. can you imagine cnn will be in that, you know? is because women writers had a

segment that they were women and would appear in the context of others. i will say in this anthology, nobody told me they would be in it, which is a kind of progress, i hope the kind of progress. yeah, rachel. >> i think we are all still struggling with marginality, though. women's groups and blacks and whites i think on this i identify with this as part of my nature. at the same time, where ecological society. and i think there is a lack still. [inaudible] >> yeah, ask whether there is still -- whether there is still a sense of marginality for women writers. unlike other minority writers,

they feel they are not quite representative of the whole, that theirs is a marginal view, a sub you somehow and they can't speak for the entire culture. [inaudible] >> now, i think that most women like the idea of being identified now is women. i think there's up right now that there wasn't before, but i think that what we haven't achieved is a balance, you know, i have a woman but i'm also part part of the society and sort of got balance. i think there is a lag with the critics. >> i think you're absolutely

right. and it's particularly problematic for american writersbecause he had this fantasy called the great american novel, the gan. and it has always been assumed that a great american novel must be about mail experience, so women are just somehow excluded from that category. and in the past decade we've had a number of famous writers who died, salinger, lol and so on. and every time the great american male writer died, there's a whole spate of articles. who is going to take the lowest place like suicide in writing the great american novel? there'll be a list of 20 young writers, male aged untreated writers and one woman stuck on the end. and it's very frustrating because the assumption is somehow that the female experience is not the american

experience in that the great american experience is going to be reflect it in the novel. and it's really hard for women writers to contest it. there was each amended flak recently about jonathan franzen whose novel was picked up a number of critics, mostly male critics but not entirely and just hide since this is another gan, great american novel. his father considers women write about. it's about families, domestic life. and some women writers said you know, women just don't get this kind of attention. they don't get this kind of focus. it hasn't happened yet. and it's usually -- that exclusion is usually attributed to the subject matter. it clearly isn't. it's really about gender. it's really when a man writes about the family, that is a content. when it's a woman writing about the family, it's checklists.

>> you talked about how it's perceived in america and the book is american authors. is it different or women authors treated differently in europe or asia? >> absolutely. it's different country by country. i won't go through one by one, but in england when he started to do my following work on the english novel. and where you live part of the time, have for many years, in england there's a different sense. not that english writers are totally happy or british women are totally happy with it either, but it is not the same tradition or hope of the great novel, the great english novel. and in addition, if you look at the literary tradition in great britain, there are a number of women who help form this. jane austen, church eliot did

someone come, so it's extremely hard to come in at this point and say women aren't capable of doing that when they created the. i think the expectations are different. if you look at 19th 19th century literature and the united states, most people when i asked questions, can identify two american women writers than it can century. emily dickinson and harriet beecher stowe. dickinson is except that, on fellow i once taught a course at rutgers with the male colleague. we were doing whitman and dickinson. and when he said that comes to dickinson i can't read those little itty-bitty poems. there's still a few throwbacks. but harriet beecher stowe entered american literary history as the best sailor, he hoped fiction writer, somebody who wrote important fiction and had a huge historical impact, but not as an artist.

one of the things i tried to do in my book is sort of contest that attitude. we don't have an american jane austen. we don't have a 19th century woman novelist who at have the same status, so i think that has to be challenged with to say there are all these women writers producing artistically significant work to just never got the attention that they deserved and we need to dismantle that. so i think if you read reviews in england now, they won't be quite the same in balance that there is an american viewing, and their are a lot more venues for book reviewing in great britain and the united states. to get a lot far voices on each publication and you hear this dwindling. thanks. >> hi, i had two questions, both related to which you mention the new addressing that lady's question.

when you said the female out there, you're defending by a male author. can that be attributable to gender discrimination? that's my first question. the second one is that of curiosity, publisher wise, male writers versus enough writers. probably a bad question, but is it d., 6040, what are the percentages like? 50/50, 6040? >> i can't answer very precisely your questions about how many. it depends on what you are looking at. "the new york times" -- there have been studies in "the new york times" book review, which is still the dominant reviewing form in the united states until all the other ones can't close down. very recently there is a study

done of "the new york times" and the viewers for predominantly male. i am quite touching about that in my opinion because the last several issues on the cover that had to reviews like women. they started making up for that as hard as they could. in other places they will be equal or even more women. i don't think it's really standardized. also, i couldn't really answer about the portions of male and female writers. it is my view they are roughly equal. and what i do know and i know barbara would confirm this army is that women are the majority of the consumers of fiction in this country, whether it's by men or women. women by the vast majority of novels, poems, by any writer, male or female. and when the great carla cohen was with us, she set about politics & prose, people come

the front door and it's like the wedding. the bride and groom say. the mentors history in sociology and the women turned toward this section. there've been lots of studies that show that. but that the difference of what their rights and discrimination, i don't like the word discrimination as such. i think stereotypes received opinion. i don't think this day and age -- i think people would feel uncomfortable if they thought they were discriminated, but they are expressing attitude that are very ingrained and very hard to elimination. and they have to be made aware of that. every now and then you could a woman writer publish under a male pseudonym. i was very common in europe. and bruce asked about other traditions. american women writers have very rarely used their pseudonyms for us in europe oliver europe this was common to get equal

treatment from the writers and critics. when it does happen, people are just confounded. they just can't believe it. i mean, they start reading the work they think is by a man. he reacts with any particular way of its unveiled as the work by women they don't know what to say. there's that. one thing i talk about is her work in the anthology as well as they woman named alec sheldon who lived in the washington area and burrowed under the name of james chapter junior. she started to read in the 1970s. were not talking about the dark ages. she wanted to write science fiction. i look sheldon had that in the army during world war ii. she is one who joined the women's army corps. she had a phd in biochemistry and that she had worked for the cia. she was also the daughter of the safari traveler.

so she been all over the world and hunted wild animals and so on. the science fiction started to come out by james at two junior, who is this macho heroic wonderful writer artist she or when all the awards that she can get in science fiction. everybody was saying this is just the best there's ever been and never saw the speculation. this is somebody who clearly has been a spy, clearly as a scientist, clearly a military man and clearly an adventurous man. and eventually james junior was outed as a woman. know when that happened, i look sheldon said that's a huge relief. i do not do that anymore. nobody wanted to be the work. and if melodramatic to say he eventually committed suicide. i don't want to say this is a cause-and-effect. so i think that they are is a

persistent attitude about what kind of work and his signature is really what we're talking about. some imagination, not scale, a man's name or woman's name. that's why in europe having a lot of writers publish under their initials p. d. james, mystery writers particularly. they're gender-neutral and people don't necessarily know whether it's a man or woman. by the time they sever, it's too late to say they changed their mind. i think all of these things make a big difference. >> we've got time for one more quick question. >> if nobody has a question, this is my last question. [laughter] is more readers are women, i

don't know whether if you conducted the pool and us women, women -- >> i don't think would he very conclusive. i will ask the women in this room -- i think probably most of you are like me, did you read books about voice? how many did i read books about voice and your little? you didn't? you didn't read the hardy boys or huck finn or anything like that? and if you ask the boys, the men in this room how many would your little boys did you read books about girls? not me. even the great american girl spoke of all-time, little women, which is a book where they will ask the governors, probably the

therapy lens, what was your favorite children's book like some of the women will say little women. never been cited by a man. well, men don't read little man either. no way. [laughter] no way. they're not going to do it. and the thing is to read about e-mail experience is an amazing and therefore stigmatizing to read about male experience is expanding and positive for a woman. so women will read with happiness work by both men and women. [inaudible] >> she did write under a pseudonym for so many years. i think it was contraband, the one defining here.

>> exactly, some of those are racy. >> they didn't know. and there's some things in the book that were written. i put in some girly things by women that are quite violent, not about what you'd expect since the 19th century women as an indication. i mean, they are very interesting, but an indication that women could write anything, but their expect it to read in a certain way. and you know, scoring, the contents of male writers towards their female competitors, which is what they were well into the 20th century was just extraordinary. i mean, we are talking hawthorne to hemingway, absolute contempt. and that's because often the women were selling them. you can never neglect. look for the money. you can't look like that as a

factor, but there's many other factors as well. >> welcome the thank you also much for coming. it's very nice of you to come out on the stormy night and i really appreciate it very much. [applause] >> author elaine showalter discussing her book, "the vintage book of american writers" at politics & prose bookstore here in washington d.c. is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see? e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. or twitter us at twitter.com/booktv. >> it's presidents' day weekend and tv is featuring three days of programming from 8:00 a.m. on saturday to 8:00 a.m. on tuesday. for a full listing of programs visit the tv.org and click on schedule. >> well come on february 16 at

this year, the borders bookstore group declared bankruptcy. joining us on booktv to discuss the impact of the banks reps the is sarah weinman, the publisher of marketplace. how did bank robbers get to the place of bankruptcy? >> guest: it's been a long time coming. particularly the last three years in particular. they've also gone through a number of management changes, especially at the top they've gone through something like four ceos in the past four years. but the story can also date back to the beginning of the 21st century i suppose. things like their website to amazon in 2001 and they didn't reclaim it until 2008. her e-book strategy was never a same level of the candle or barnes & noble with the note. it just always seemed to orders

without breaking a few steps behind every other retailer and combining all these additional fact yours that is then i guess impacting the publish industry. the print side in combination with various managerial mismanagement. it really didn't come as a particular surprise that borders declare chapter 11. >> you've mentioned the amazon connection. what exactly did orders do with amazon and in your view what kind of mistake was that? >> well, to reiterate in 2001, when borders had had its own website, but instead of running their e-commerce, selling books directly themselves, they passed that to amazon. so essentially they are giving up revenue to their competitor in order to essentially make certain things easier. but in doing something of a devil's bargain because they didn't own their own on my

property. so by the time they change directions, they had new ceo who says this is not a very good idea. but reclaiming its in 2008 by then, amazon had dirty introduced the kindle. the note was already into work and so it would be introduced until 2009. there is additional you readers. they just never were able to catch up in terms of appropriate market share. >> so what happens to the borders e-book reader? >> well, cobo says any e-books that have been bought through borders website are perfectly safe. but it's also interesting that cobo's other partner in australia, which instantly franchises the borders fame for various books have also declared encrypts the over the air.

i'm hopeful that the assertions are indeed true, but i think it'll be interesting to see if in fact the people but in reclaim them and so on and so for. >> borders has about 642 a box stores across the country. how many are they closing? >> they are closing 200 the going out of business sales are in fact going on sale tomorrow. i've lived the liquidation sales will be 20% to 40% off and those are already going to be in the works. they've actually already started shutting down the cafés as a superstore and they will be very apparent walking into those chores that have been designated for closure all around the country, that shall see that going out of business sale sign and be able to get books, cds, dvds and other appropriate merchandise at these prices. >> why is that barnes & noble has been able to maintain its

big talk strategy? is it all about e-books? >> i don't believe it's all about the e-books. i think it may come down to this, which is that barnes & noble certainly most recently a run at the top by people who value books more than anything else. with respect to borders, especially because it's been such a turn of management changes, they brought in people from outside companies who have experience in general retail who may have not realized it does not necessarily translate into the boat business. the book business is very quirky and not always the best that with respect to what public companies in particular need. excepting and commanding higher processes. 1% is about average. you're lucky if you get up to 3%. the less a result, this sort of

uncomfortable fit operated by people who aren't as experienced without the book business works probably added to borders troubles. the mac sarah weinman, when you look at the brooks and mortars, what do you see with what has happened? >> it's interesting you say that because i'm starting to believe more and more that we may also be witnessing the end, which essentially started in the late 80s and early 90s when borders expanded, when barnes & noble expanded and we started seeing these massive superstores that stallone. some of them were part of malls, but most were entities he could drive up to and park your car go when be part of the greater experience of just browsing for books. in hindsight, i do wonder if perhaps we were fooling ourselves that this could last as long as it di