It’s the beginning of book award season, and everyone knows what that means: debates about gender politics. An article by Vit Wagner in Saturday’s Toronto Star mused about whether women would dominate this season’s Canadian prize shortlists, and named big books by former Scotiabank Giller Prize“nominated authors such as Camilla Gibb and Alissa York. Wagner writes:

Last year, 10 of the 12 books longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize were written by women “ even if, granted, the eventual winner was Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man. Beyond that, four of the five Governor General’s Award finalists, including winner Kate Pullinger’s The Mistress of Nothing, were by women. The Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, which included three female finalists, was won by Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean “ the only book to be nominated for all three prizes. The past three winners of the Amazon First Novel Award have all been women.

It should be noted that Wagner’s “even if” is not insignificant, given that the two men longlisted for the Giller last year (the other being Colin McAdam), both made it to the shortlist, and MacIntyre went on to win. Furthermore, if Wagner were to expand the scope of his survey, he would discover that since the Giller Prize’s inception, only five out of 16 winners have been female (that’s five books, four authors: Alice Munro won twice). Over the same period, only five women have won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and six have won each of the Man Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award. Not a great record by any means.

A.S. Byatt argues that people don’t like women who write challenging books. At the Edinburgh Literary Festival, the Booker Prize“winning author said: “If you are trying to think, there are always reviewers who take the attitude that it’s like a dog standing on its hind legs, as Samuel Johnson put it: it would be better if you didn’t do it.” This is the same author who famously decried the very existence of the Orange Prize (a prize devoted exclusively to fiction by women) as “sexist.”

For his part, Wagner draws a distinction between fiction, which he sees as the domain of women, and non-fiction, which he sees as the provenance of men. This despite the fact that one of the marquee non-fiction titles this fall is Charlotte Gray’s book on the Klondike gold rush, and that Margaret MacMillan is the lead editor on Penguin Canada’s new History of Canada Series. Then again, Wagner doesn’t seem entirely convinced of his own argument: he provides a list of 10 big fall fiction titles, four of which are by men.

In the States, one of this year’s most towering contenders for award recognition has to be Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Freedom, which has already received not one but two glowing reviews in The New York Times. Why all the attention from the paper of record? Let’s ask Jodi Picoult: “NYT raved about Franzen’s new book. Is anyone shocked? Would love to see the NYT rave about authors who aren’t white male literary darlings.” So read Picoult’s now-notorious Twitter update of Aug. 16. Don’t buy that? Talk to Jennifer Weiner about Carl Hiaasen. On the same day that Picoult tweeted about Franzen, Weiner had this to say: “Carl Hiaasen doesn’t have to chose between getting a Times review and being a bestseller. Why should I? Oh, right. #girlparts.”

This seems like little more than sour grapes, especially given that a negative NYT review of Franzen’s 2006 memoir, The Discomfort Zone, by Michiko Kakutani (the reviewer who prompted Picoult’s tweet) inspired Franzen to call her “the stupidest person in New York City.” It’s hard to see how such a comment could make Franzen anybody’s “literary darling.” (Norman Mailer also famously said that Kakutani was biased against white males, but this comment can be disregarded by considering the source.) Perhaps both Picoult and Weiner should consider that they write lousy novels. But no matter: they’re both laughing all the way to the bank. In the meantime, their Twitter chatter continues to fan the flames of what appears to be a never-ending debate.

Time will tell what this year’s shortlists bring; to date, books that have received stellar word of mouth here in Canada include Kathleen Winter’s Annabel, York’s Fauna, and Caroline Adderson’s The Sky is Falling. While we wait, it’s perhaps wise to bear in mind A.J. Somerset’s comment about women writing men and vice versa:

The secret of writing the other sex is to discard the idea that it is really so alien. It’s in that idea that we find the dessicated, wooden clichés of gender: men are from Mars, women do not reason, etc. These will not lead you to a rounded, human character.

As with writing, so too with reading.