It is telling that the unintelligent, so-called 'thinkpiece' in this week's New Yorker introduces Naoise Dolan's Exciting Times alongside Sally Rooney's Normal People as 'some likable books' then proceeds to denounce them both. Rife with condescension towards Irish women authors. https://twitter.com/drdawnmiranda/status/1295322141198553088

That the New Yorker article is written by a woman, staff writer Katy Waldman, demonstrates how insidious (often internalised) sexism is at work at the magazine (recall Ian Parker’s hatchet job attacking Edna O’Brien), and within the institution of literary criticism more broadly.

That Waldman promotes her piece on Twitter by stating, ‘lol I wrote about Sally Rooney,’ which she calls a ‘rhetorical trap’, shows that she & Parker think their 'method' is some kind of joke. Yet the fact that neither of them understand Irish humour is evident in their articles.

The utter incomprehension of, and inattention to, the nuances of Irish culture when reviewing Irish literature and profiling Irish writers are often byproducts of indolence and solipsism, which mark much of contemporary literary criticism of Irish writing from beyond its shores.

Such critics want to binge on Irish culture just so they can degrade it later. Of course, this is not a new phenomenon - it has a long history. But Irish literature & Irish writers should be met on their own terms, not through the critic's own hazy, received sense of 'Irishness'.

In other news, two exceptional new prose debuts by Irish women are out this month: @elainefeeney16's As You Were ( @HarvillSecker @PenguinIEBooks) & @DoireannNiG's A Ghost in the Throat ( @TrampPress). I highly recommend ordering both of these from your preferred indie bookshop!