Male or Female please
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How long is Canada going to be stuck in this rut? By rut I mean the continued pushing of a now outdated preoccupation with the identity of the artists -- at the expense of what they actually do. Kruk elicits some interesting material from a few of the writers -- Timothy Findley in particular speaks of writing -- but generally speaking the interviews spiral downhill. Kruk has an obsession with gender and she grills each artist on how gender affects writing -- whether or not they say they want to talk about it. She asks what gender writing is, how gender influences style, and on and on and on. It really gets dull pretty quickly. If I want to pursue gender studies I'll go to that section in the bookstore or on my bookshelf. There are some terrific writers and thinkers on the subject. But if I pick up a book on writing, I want to read about writing. What I don't want to read is someone's generalized opinion on whether writing by women is more concerned with feelings or the body than is men's writing. Each interview is grossly marred by such discussion, and what could have been a terrific book turned in to a muddle with very little interest -- that is unless you love hearing whether someone is Male or Female and whether their writing is Male or Female.
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