When Curtis Sittenfield published her NY Times Review of Melissa Bank's new book, I think everyone involved with "chick lit" finally had it. Here someone who profited from a cute pink and green cover that just screamed, "I'm a girl's book" was bashing an author who pretty much made it possible for Ms. Sittenfield to even get published.

Farrin Jacobs, an editor over at Red Dress Ink, had a piece in Publisher's Weekly in response to the review, and I thought it was great. So here it is:

Go, Girls
Chick lit can also be lit
by Farrin Jacobs
-- Publishers Weekly, 6/13/2005
Commercial women's fiction has always gotten a bad rap from those on theliterary-minded side of publishing. Believe me, I know. I've seen it from bothsides. Part of my job at the short-lived Inside.com was to compile bestsellerdata. I'd pull the New York Times list from the fax machine and immediatelybegin to calculate how few "real" books made it to the top 15 that week. Thecontinuous appearances of Nora Roberts and Mary Higgins Clark depressedme. Where was Mary and O'Neill, my favorite book of 2001? Where was Feastof Love?

Fast forward a few years: Now I'm an editor at Red Dress Ink, a chick-litimprint owned by Harlequin. When I took my current job, one of my biggestconcerns was that I would forever be branded as a romance editor and that I'dnever be able to wash off the commercial stain. I worried that potential futureemployers would pigeonhole me and feared that people might not believethat I like to read the New Yorkerand short story collections and... books bymen. I asked my former boss her opinion of all this, and her response wassomething along the lines of "Some of the smartest women I know editromance and commercial fiction."

Since then, I've come to love the genre and to understand that, as with anyform of entertainment, there's good chick lit and there's crappy chick lit.Still,I'm somewhat of a self-loathing chick-lit editor. When faced with an insult—likethe recent announcement of a collection called This Is Not Chick Lit, whoseeditor, Elizabeth Merrick, refers to "the evils of chick lit"—I defend thecategoryin the privacy of my own head or across the table at an agent lunch.But to publicly come to chick-lit's defense, something would really have to pissme off.

Enter Curtis Sittenfeld's review of Melissa Bank's The Wonder Spotin the June5 New York Times Book Review. From beginning to end, her critique smacksof a snobbery and disdain—aimed at Bank and chick-lit writers in general—that struck me as defensive. I recalled an article I had read about Sittenfeld'sdebut novel, Prep, that mentioned chick lit, and I wondered if the author'scomments reflected more a fear of being tainted with that label than any realfamiliarity with the hugely popular novels.

Her assertion that a book "simplycouldn't be chick lit" if the heroine ends up manless, for example, is just nottrue. Ever hear of Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada? Theprotagonist ends up without a man. Lesser known, but closer to my heartsince I edited it, is Fiona Gibson's Babyface, where the narrator ends up withno man (but two babies).No one should be surprised that Bank's second book is chick lit—after all, herdebut, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, helped establish the genre. And yet, Sittenfeld spends a large part of her review pressing her Bank-Is-Chick-Lit theory, starting by saying she hates to insult a writer by calling herbook chick lit, then proceeding to treat chick lit as the ugly cousin of RealWriting.

Chick-lit bashing is nothing new. Even the nice reviews often state theequivalent of "this is pretty good... for a chick-lit book," and women who write"serious fiction" have been pooh-poohing it for years. If women's fiction was seen as a pox on fiction in times past, it seems the pox now has a new, morespecific, strain. But distinguishing between "good novels" and chick lit, as ifthe two are mutually exclusive, is narrow-minded, at best, and just plainmean-spirited, at worst.The truth is, there's some really bad chick lit out there. Novels that hit everycliché. (Gay best friend? Check! Job in publishing? Check!). Novels bywomen who couldn't write their way out of the proverbial paper bag. Butguess what? The same can be said of many other kinds of books. Books bysmartypants women, stuffy men, octogenarian historians.... Here's the thing:chick lit in and of itself shouldn't be regarded as an insult or a crime. Therearegood novels that also happen to be chick lit. You really shouldn't judge a bookby its girly cover.