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Who Was Aristotle’s Daughter?
Novelist Annabel Lyon on why she wanted to give voice to a Greek girl whose famous father was a screaming misogynist.
In November 2009, I met Margaret Atwood. This was at a grand party, the pinnacle of the Canadian literary-awards season—the Scotiabank Giller Prize gala, where I was a nominee. Someone introduced us, and as I shook her hand I remember thinking, that voice! That hair! I said, “It’s nice to meet you.”
She said, “Aristotle was a shit, wasn’t he?”
In September of that year, I had published a novel called The Golden Mean. It was a strange novel, using a raunchy, contemporary North American dialect to tell the story of Aristotle and his teenage student, Alexander not-yet-the-Great. The novel startled a lot of readers, upsetting their expectations of what the ancient world could sound like, what a young Canadian woman should be writing about, and what they themselves might want to read.
Reactions to the novel were gender-driven from the start. When my agent first shopped the manuscript around, I was told that it wouldn’t sell because historical fiction was read by “book-club ladies” who wanted “a heroine and a love story.” Bless Random House of Canada and my editor there, Anne Collins, the only Canadian publisher willing to take a chance on this very unromantic, male novel. (It went on to become a Canadian bestseller and was translated into 14 languages.)
I received a rejection from a British publisher who objected that I “wrote like a man.” (How, I wondered, did they reject their male authors?) People asked me repeatedly how I “managed” to write from a male point of view. The cover of the Canadian edition, which feature a naked man slumped over on a white horse, caused a minor scandal when it was banned in the BC Ferries bookshops. The story of that censorship went viral and was picked up as far away as South Africa and Iran, where the cover was displayed uncensored but the author photo of me in a V-neck was blacked out from the throat down.
In November 2009, I met Margaret Atwood. This was at a grand party, the pinnacle of the Canadian literary-awards season—the Scotiabank Giller Prize gala, where I was a nominee. Someone introduced us, and as I shook her hand I remember thinking, that voice! That hair! I said, “It’s nice to meet you.”
She said, “Aristotle was a shit, wasn’t he?”
In September of that year, I had published a novel called The Golden Mean. It was a strange novel, using a raunchy, contemporary North American dialect to tell the story of Aristotle and his teenage student, Alexander not-yet-the-Great. The novel startled a lot of readers, upsetting their expectations of what the ancient world could sound like, what a young Canadian woman should be writing about, and what they themselves might want to read.
Reactions to the novel were gender-driven from the start. When my agent first shopped the manuscript around, I was told that it wouldn’t sell because historical fiction was read by “book-club ladies” who wanted “a heroine and a love story.” Bless Random House of Canada and my editor there, Anne Collins, the only Canadian publisher willing to take a chance on this very unromantic, male novel. (It went on to become a Canadian bestseller and was translated into 14 languages.)
I received a rejection from a British publisher who objected that I “wrote like a man.” (How, I wondered, did they reject their male authors?) People asked me repeatedly how I “managed” to write from a male point of view. The cover of the Canadian edition, which feature a naked man slumped over on a white horse, caused a minor scandal when it was banned in the BC Ferries bookshops. The story of that censorship went viral and was picked up as far away as South Africa and Iran, where the cover was displayed uncensored but the author photo of me in a V-neck was blacked out from the throat down.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/2013/06/04/who-was-aristotle-s-daughter-annabel-lyon-s-the-sweet-girl.html
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