Miriam Gershow is an Oregon author whose debut novel, The Local News, is about a teenager coping with the sudden disappearance of her brother (Paul Constant reviews it in this week’s Mercury). The book received a generally positive review from Janet Maslin in the New York Times—but with friends like these…
Ms. Gershow has been a teacher at the University of Oregon, where some students’ online ratings of her sound like a continuation of Lydia’s high school nightmare. Being regarded as neither popular nor hot seems to be territory that Ms. Gershow knows well, maybe in the classroom and certainly on the pages of her unusually credible and precise novel. But these real-life disadvantages become assets in giving “The Local News” its strong verisimilitude, even in its graceless touches.
Yes, you read that correctly: Maslin implies that that Gershow writes well about an unpopular, unattractive character because Gershow is herself unpopular and unattractive (a conclusion that’s presumably based on Gershow’s rating on ratemyprofessor.com?). Putting aside the sheer cattiness of the remark, since when is it appropriate for critics to just assume fiction authors are writing directly from their own experiences? Inferring autobiographical references in fictional texts does not constitute criticism as I understand it. Eugh. This is even grosser than the literary media’s obsessive Marisha Pessl/hot-or-not debate a few years back.
Tell Gershow how nice and pretty she is tonight at Powell’s on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne, 7:30 pm
(thanks to my roommate Sarah for drawing my attention to the Times review. And full disclosure: I’ve met Gershow twice, briefly; I think she may have slept on my futon.)