Francine Prose On Women Writers and V. S. Naipaul

I’m still asked surprisingly often about “Scent of a Woman’s Ink,” which Harper’s Magazine published more than a decade ago — an essay in which I tried to understand why and how the work of women writers was not taken as seriously (or read the same way) as that of men. I tell people that I was lucky enough to find quotes from male critics and writers (such as one from Norman Mailer about always being able to “sniff out the ink of the women,” from which I took my title) that were written before men learned it wasn’t acceptable to say such things.

But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Because the recent controversy about the Guardian interview in which V. S. Naipaul claimed that no woman was his equal and that he too could instantly sniff out that telltale estrogenic ink has made it clear (in case it needed clarification) that “before” is “now.”

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