What A Piece Of Literary Hypocrisy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                                              VS.

Lisa Halliday's book, "Asymmetry, was published on February 6 of this year.  Everyone went crazy over it, praising it to the skies, and now it has turned up on "The New York Times Ten Best Books Of 2018."  Now, I read Halliday's book when it came out, and was not impressed.  In fact, in detailing the character of Alice, who has a May-December relationship, with an elder male writer, named Ezra Blazer, I found myself asking, "Is she referencing Joyce Maynard and J. D. Salinger?"

This struck me as wrong.  Why cop Joyce's story?  Such things are what lawsuits are made of.

Then, THEN, I dug into Miss Halliday's past, to discover that the whole Ezra Blazer thing directly references the now forty plus author's brief romance, twenty years before, with Philip Roth!!!!!!!!!!!

What??????????  Philip Roth????????????

And everyone accepts and acclaims her. What hypocrisy.

I use that word, because, when Joyce Maynard's book came out, twenty years ago, I recall it being reviled by everyone from established critics to former Yale classmates.  So, it is OK to write about Roth, a scumbag himself as a human being, and not Salinger?  Why?

Halliday was in her twenties; Maynard was still in her teens.  She was underage.  Yet she is denigrated, and Halliday acclaimed.

Listen, I have had my issues with Joyce.  I was one of those who thought I, not she, should have been on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, back on April 23, 1972.  I too felt I could write about my peers, only in a more realistic, negative way.  I hadn't much good to say about them then, and I didn't when I was 40.  Has time mellowed me?  Somewhat!  And it has mellowed me with Joyce, because 'At Home' not only gave the Salinger story, but also the back story on how she emerged from childhood to write The Times piece that put her on the map at 18.

It was almost like Joyce was apologizing to us her age, who saw through that initial piece.  I accepted what she wrote as apology, and I feel she had the right to chronicle her experience with Salinger. It could not help, no matter how it turned out, being a life changer.

So, why denigrate one writer, and praise the other?  The hypocrisy of acceptance of Halliday's book over Maynard's speaks of a male sexist disdain that they should be allowed to keep their peccadilloes private.  I mean, had the authors chronicled lesbian affairs, would there been as much hypocrisy?  No, because it only comes from straight male writers who want to preserve their privacy, at the expense of others.  And the straight white male critics who support them.

Good for you, Lisa.  But, in the wake of her success, I think Joyce is owed an apology.

The unfortunate truth is I doubt she will ever get one.  Except from me!!!!!!!!!!!!