What’s with the Canadian literature comment?

LP: I went to school in Canada and like to poke fun at it when I can. Don’t get me wrong–I love poutine, maple syrup, passive aggressive progressivism, and Margaret Atwood.

I love me some Maggie A. I think that comment says more about American haughtiness than it does about Canadian literaure :)

I love me some Maggie A. I think that comment says more about American haughtiness than it does about Canadian literature :)

Haf these people aren’t “literary”. As if the case with most of Flavorpill’s lists, only half of the list really makes it…..
Why don’t you guys just do a top 5 for once instead of top ten (or worse, those dreaded top 20′s one often sees on here)?

PS: I AM able to spell, just being elbowed currently by a real live diva! lol

truman capote is the definition of a literary diva.

To YKnot: Three of the authors are not, strictly speaking, literary. Half of ten is five, last time I checked.

To urban explorer: You’re right. Truman Capote is the first author that came to mind when I thought of literary divas/divos. Atwood, Oates, Hurston, and Baldwin hardly qualify.

And to Flavorwire: Rather curious that you’re dissing Canadian literature when they have Alice Munro (possibly the greatest living short story writer), Margaret Atwood (one of the best living novelists), Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence, Mordecai Richler, Rohinton Mistri, Thomas King, Michael Ondaatje, Leonard Cohen, Cory Doctorow, Malcolm Lowry, William Gibson, Yann Martel, Carol Shields, etc.

[...] is none other than self-proclaimed “reading junkie” Margaret Atwood. The Canadian literary diva reveals that “she [doesn't] like news too early in the day,” reads before bed even [...]

I’ll second the question about Canadian literature. Écriture féminine (east), the avant-garde (west), and desolation/intersections (prairies). Adding to Sabine’s list, read: Erin Moure, Gail Scott, Nicole Brossard, Lisa Robertson, Fred Wah, etc. etc. etc. if only to sway from your Canadian identity problematic.

Sure, MA does belong next to maple syrup on your list of Canadian stereotypes (much to her chagrin!). Nothing says “passive-aggressive” like a protagonist who places her hairy, teeth-filled tumor on her mantelpiece.

Joyce Carol Oates is the most transparent of divas listed. If ever literary, she was so at the start of her career. Now, long since the lost days, she pounds it out, numbers, numbers, another shot at the Pulitzer Prize.

I mean this by way of the Ernest Hemingway twilight Pulitzer track she has taken. Hemingway’s win for “The Old Man and the Sea” was a nod for his collected works and is a dreary man versus mammoth marlin versus nature novella that quickly turns into a reader versus can I slog through the rest of the tale. Unfortunately much of Oates’ latter work has become this Hemmingwayesque chore.

Oates’ memoir adds nothing to a life lived. Its subjective, plodding texts are inclusive of every cankering slight, life shift, the unfortunate death of a spouse and a sudden awareness, driven by self-pity, that the entire populated earth has experienced what Oates purports to have gone through. She is a singularly selfish being who engenders nearest to nil compassion. Leave the author to her niche, though indeed unrecognized by the larger awards, her short stories and the dentist to his legitimately earned memoir.

Fair enough- I’m Canadian as you may have guessed :)

I agree that Truman Capote was a diva, but more so, a sad diva going through the motions for effect or out of habit. “In Cold Blood” took every ounce of the young Capote away and I find it profoundly heartrending. He literally had to wait six years for killers Smith and Hickok to be hung and publish his work. Morally, right or wrong, he was portrayed as a vulture waiting on the trapdoor to swing. Why doesn’t his supposed “friend” Harper Lee at least put the effort into fleshing out Capote during this time period, the agony he must have felt? Some sort of an essay or a remembrance. It won’t happen because Harper Lee was and is about Harper Lee, sad, sad, her. Wake me up when she’s gone.

Am I missing something here? Much of what is described of these authors doesn’t seem like a diva behavior. For eg., how is Baldwin’s comment about him being smart “diva”? What the hell…

Amy Chua? This woman is perpetuating Asian stereotypes.

If there’s ever a FP diva commenter list, I’d start with this thread.

What about Anne Rice? George Sand? Barbara Cartland? Ayn Rand? Laura Riding, who became Laura (Riding) Jackson, for whom Robert Graves leapt out of a second story window? Oscar Wilde, from whom the very concept of a literary diva derives?

Hi, I am the author of the NAACP IMAGE AWARD nominated book, LITERARY DIVAS and the trademark owner of LITERARY DIVAS and its classifications which you infringe on here on Huffington Post. No one contacted me with permission to use my trademark for this article and I would like it to be removed for there is no reference to the creator, Heather Covington or my book or my trademark.