On the day Alice Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Slate culture writer Stephen Metcalf tweeted, "On Slate, Elizabeth Gilbert defends EPL by intimating sexism within the lit establishment. Minutes later, Alice Munro wins the Nobel Prize." Although I normally nod along with anything Metcalf says, this comment made me throw a little shade his way. One prize -- weighty and Scandinavian though it may be -- does not negate the very real sexism still prevalent in the literary world. This is like arguing that Meryl Streep's continued appearance on Oscar night accurately represents the ease with which aging women find work in Hollywood. One example does not, in fact, disprove all other counterexamples. And, as fellow Canadian Margaret Atwood noted, Munro was herself the victim of the literary establishment's dickishness when her early fiction was criticized for being too domestic, too small, and, obviously, too female.
