With regard to Suzanne Moore’s column (G2, 11 February) on male authors, I would venture to suggest that most educated men do take women seriously. They would accept that, due to historic prejudice and an absence of equal opportunity, male authors have dominated literary output, and, while the situation has improved, there is still some way to go to achieve parity.
What we cannot take seriously are comments such as those made by Marian Keyes, and endorsed by Ms Moore, that male novelists are not worth reading as “their lives are so limited. It’s such a small and narrow experience.” Surely this depends more on the life experience of a particular author than on gender? This view displays the same prejudice that allowed early critics of some of the great Victorian female novelists to dismiss their work as produced by provincial women with little life experience.
David Lennie
Stockport, Greater Manchester
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