Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul made a few more enemies in a Royal Geographic Society interview. According to The Guardian, the novelist told an interviewer that he does not consider any female writer to be his equal.
Naipaul (pictured, via) remarked: “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me … My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don’t mean this in any unkind way.”
Angry readers have responded in the article’s comments section and on Twitter. The Guardian to create “The Naipaul Test,” analyzing readers’ ability to guess an author’s gender.
This quiz contains paragraphs from ten popular titles and from there, participants have to identify the author’s gender. What do you think?
In addition, the author singled out Pride & Prejudice author Jane Austen and claims her “sentimental sense of the world” marks her as inferior to him. (via Sarah Weinman)