Know Your Enemy

"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."

In one fell swoop VS Naipaul dismisses women's fiction as "feminine tosh". Apparently, its crippling sentimentality is because a woman has a "narrow view of the world", and "she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too".

Depressingly sexist gibberish in the main, of course. But the suggestion that women's writing and men's writing are in some way distinctively different is nevertheless intriguing - intriguing enough for the Guardian to have put the theory to the test. I scored a paltry five out of ten and was ordered to read more male authors...

(Thanks to Cat for the link.)