Nathalie Sarraute: A Life Between

lrb.co.uk

4 points·flannery··4 comments

> 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.

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’?

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?

Substituting an issue that is inarguably trivial does not produce an equivalent argument.

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