Friday, January 06, 2006

Bookslut on Andre Norton

In a short post, the usually interesting Bookslut manages to be silly twice.

One: millions of people assume "Andre Norton" is a man because "Andre" is a man's name. The whole point of a pseudonym is to mislead people. This one worked quite well. I'm not sure what Adrienne Martini wanted; did she think Miss Norton was going to change her by-line in mid-career as some sort of feminist self-empowering statement? (If so, she greatly misunderstands Norton, both as a professional and as a woman.)

Two: oh, yes, let's pick on that horrible science fiction cover art again. Why on earth do books with dragons in them have to stick dragons all over the cover? And people with swords -- God, why can't they just have some tasteful photo of leaves and grass, like a real book? Feh. Jessa, you might not like those covers, but "millions of people" do, because they show what those books are about. And that's what a cover is supposed to do.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Um...that totally wasn't my point. I didn't expect Ms Norton to change her name, only her pseudonym indicated how women were first perceived in the SF/F field. And that most of her first readers were unaware of her gender.

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