My silly prejudices about certain types of authors

I stayed last night in a hotel room that had a curated set of literature for visitors to enjoy during their stay. I was spending only one night there so I picked a short book by an author that I had heard of but by whom I had never read anything. It was some sort of a play, either live or radio one, about a woman going to surgery.

First I felt uncomfortable about the language (it was from the fifties) - it seemed to me that no person would ever talk that way. Soon, however, I got used to it, and was able to focus on the story itself. And then I could hardly put it down.

Events like this make me feel so stupid about myself. I know I have a prejudice against authors of my own nationality and female authors of any nationality, and I know I've been proven wrong about both those prejudices, yet, still, I find myself assuming that just because this author is from the same country as me, it's probably not good. (Furthermore, I often don't even consider reading a book if it has a woman's name on the cover.)

I have this presumption that my fellow countrymen can never be as good as Dostoevsky. And that women can never write as well as men.

...well, there's the author whose play I mentioned in the beginning. He and I share nationality. But that is all!

...also, well, I suppose Emily Brontë is all right, too, despite being a woman. But that's it!

...except that one of my all-time favorite authors is both a woman and of my nationality. F*ck. But she's the grandiose exception, I'm sure!

I have to concede. My prejudices are stupid and probably only exist to cater to my subconscious need to appear as an unusual person. I actually expect Frankenstein to be a masterpiece. (Though definitely not Dostoevsky level.)

RK