
Nathalie Sarraute: A Life Between - flannery
https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n17/toril-moi/it-isn-t-your-home
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himinlomax
> Surely Virginia Woolf’s analysis applies here: in a sexist society, the
> arbiters of taste simply can’t help thinking that books dealing with war are
> more important than a book that ‘deals with the feelings of women in a
> drawing room’.

Am I missing something here? Books about war are also more important than
books about facial hair grooming. Still sexist? I don't get it.

~~~
lfischer
I don’t know the context of Virginia Woolf’s comment, but in the case of
fiction, I don’t think that a book about war is necessarily more important
than one about facial hair grooming. Even in non-fiction, is a shallow and
sensationalistic book about war necessarily ‘important’?

~~~
himinlomax
If you know nothing else about a book, it seems a pretty fair bet that one
about war is more important than one about beards.

Let me put another way. You need to rebuild civilization from nothing. There's
two books left from the pile of rubles and you can only save one before the
whole thing collapses. One appears to be about war, the other teaches the best
method to maintain the most handsome old school handlebar moustache.

The question is, are you serious about this civilization thing or are you just
out of your mind?

