kagablog

this excerpt from aryan kaganof’s sometimes it an’t easy being a gal was first published in the collection chick for a day (simon & schuster, usa, 2000)

social experiment or literature?, May 16, 2006

This review is from: Chick for a Day: What Would You Do If You Were One (Hardcover)

If you read all the ‘reviews’ above as well as the ‘reviews’ from the two literary review publishers at the top, you will see that no one really has an easy time with this book. I found it on the whole to be a kind of literary bordello since most of the writers couldn’t resist including a lot of sex. But the real merit of this book may be not on a literary level. It weighs heavier really as a kind of social experiment -asking males in a male-dominated world to take on a female identity. One mark of how seemingly universally awkward it was is that perhaps the author with the biggest reputation in the collection ends up having a dog perform sex on ‘herself’. Confusion or wild creativity? Art over editorial directive? Or wanting to one up the idea of a male taking on a female identity by exercizing the authorial consternation of trying to be even more outre? The majority of the offerings do reflect however that the authors were putting a lot of serious thought in to how to carry off the assignment well, with a high level of craft, and to deliver something satisfying. But this isn’t a book that is going to meet with an easy acceptance, not in the societies we currently occupy. The editor professes to see a largely comic bent to the writings. Kirkus’ review pompously says there is no profundity -like who bequeathed masterful profundity perception to Kirkus’ review? By playing the sex and joke cards more often than not, the authors reveal that they are more interested in pandering to what they perceive as the market for this kind of material, so I guess my biggest criticism would be that its weakness is mostly that the authors err on the side of wanting to be entertaining which does not by any means equal out to being good storytellers. Maybe the book can be said to fail on literary merits but it succeeds without much parallel in exposing an uneasiness that is all-pervasive about gender -who controls it, who gets to establish its valuations, who has a right to represent it and in what ways. So the stories may really be more like exercizes in literary discomfort, both on the parts of the authors and certainly the majority of the readers. If you are looking for insightful philosophy about gender this book is, for the most part, the wrong place, there is a torrent of that from academia. And it is that large and continuous output of theory, research, philosphy and social study without which this book most probably would not have been possible. So if you want to read this book do so to find out where we as a society can not quite seem to be comfortably. As both the controllers of our consumption of gender and as those who have to live gender out amongst ourselves. It is profound on that level. And the why of it is left as enough mystery to make this book art. It is out of print. That is just as much proof.

you can order the book here