Jane Austen’s Guffaw

I wrote something for The Toronto Review of Books about the David Gilmour wretchedness that erupted yesterday:

Yesterday we learned from David Gilmour that being in conversation with “a young woman” means one doesn’t need to take one’s words seriously—but then Gilmour also taught us that literary “seriousness” is just for straight white dudes. Education’s great, eh? I can hear Jane Austen guffawing into a carefully hemmed sleeve in the sky. […] Hearing about Gilmour’s terrible perspective has at least given us a chance to push forward a better conversation about what it means to read well, honestly, widely, ethically, and about what it should mean to “teach literature.”

Full post is here.