Over the last few months, literary writers seem to be making a point of declaring how much more they love newspaper book reviewers than bloggers—or, at least, those are the authors that get quoted most often by newspaper reporters—so when I met Aoibheann Sweeney (pronounced “even”) for lunch Monday, I was delighted to find that she holds the exact opposite view. We’d been talking about the ambivalent treatment her debut novel, Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking, had gotten in this upcoming weekend’s NYTBR, as opposed to the enthusiastic reactions she’d been getting from readers online, when she sighed, “There’s something so alive about bloggers; it’s like they’re writing as soon as they can put the book down, instead of trying to come up with something polished that makes them look smart.” A capsule review in another New York outlet had left her similarly cold: “Why would I even want somebody to make a 200-word article out of my book?” (It should be noted, though, that they love her in Cleveland, without reservations.)
Sweeney first started writing Among Other Things when she was a book editor in the mid-’90s, at the beginning of a boom period in gay publishing. “I really thought of it as a gay book,” she says, and confesses that she was thrilled when Penguin Press bought the manuscript “because I had a huge crush on Ann Godoff.” But—and this may help explain the unsure critical reaction—it’s a gay novel that doesn’t particularly make a big deal out of being a gay novel; the emotional and sexual blossoming of Miranda, the protagonist, is treated subtly enough that the significance is allowed to sneak up on the reader, and the queerness of other characters is handled utterly matter-of-factly. And, too, there’s the fact that, Sweeney’s own outness—her August readings are at the Park Slope B&N and Bluestockings, so she clearly knows her demographic—and her enthusiasm for the book’s themes aside, Among Other Things has clearly been positioned as a literary work for general audiences; we joked about how the line in the flap copy about how Miranda’s move to New York City would “open up her world in ways she cannot begin to imagine” was like some sort of coded message from the golden age of closeted gay literature.
Then, Sweeney raised the more serious question of why gay male writers seemed able to easily work their way into the literary mainstream without toning down their identity, while similarly “out” lesbian writers were classified as “alternative.” The counter-example of Alison Bechdel came up, particularly because she and Sweeney explore similar themes in their work, but, then again, we mused, would Fun Home have gotten as much attention from the general press if it had been a prose memoir rather than a comic book? “Still,” Sweeney said, “I’d really love it if Alison Bechdel read my book and liked it.” I’d lay good odds on that happening sometime soon.