A trio of links
Jun. 6th, 2012 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Last night, this popped up on my Livejournal friends page, via Jo Walton, whose book Among Others is reviewed there. It's a review by Ursula Le Guin of several books, and it's a good example of the rather rocky relationship I have with Le Guin: I love her books, and yet I find her a frustratingly wrong reviewer and critic. 'Wrong' might be too strong a word; 'wrong in her approach' is perhaps better. So she writes things like this:
Since publishers are feeling terribly unsafe these days, and since YA is a big, solid market, and fantasy is a big, solid part of it, publishers feel safe publishing fantasy as YA. And so writers of fantasy may find they’re expected to have kid protagonists and discouraged from writing about adults. Harry whatshisname and the teenie werewolves and the young gladiators have locked the fantasy/YA combo tight, at least for now. Retro macho “epics” of war-and-violence with nominally adult protagonists may escape the YA label, as they reach teen-agers through tie-ins, games, movies.
It's pretty obvious which books she means, and while I have no problem with her disliking Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games or A Song of Ice and Fire, and while I also feel genre boundaries can be somewhat arbitrary and an impediment to reading, and that adults can get things out of books with child protagonists and children can get things out of books with adult protagonists, the things they are getting are different. There is a fundamental difference in how you read a book as a child, and how you read it as an adult. (For a good example, I read Wuthering Heights when I was 14 and again when I was 22 and it was as if I had read two different books.) You have to take into account all these things, like how a person sees the world and his or her place in it, because they do have an effect on your perception of, and reaction to, a particular story. I do think there are some books which have a more powerful effect if you read them at a certain age. (I feel, for example, that ages 12-16, which is what I was when I read the His Dark Materials trilogy, was exactly the right age range to be for that particular story. Victor Kelleher's books, on the other hand, while ostensibly aimed at teenagers, seem to me all the more powerful when read with adult eyes.) And some authors are better than others at capturing the way teenagers think, the way they see the world, the things they dream about and fear. Yes, the YA label is a marketing decision, but sometimes genre distinctions are meaningful. The important thing is to work out what you like, and ignore the genre labels when you need to.
One author who seems to me to be particularly in touch with the feelings and thoughts of her teenage self is Foz Meadows. I really like this interview she did with Tansy Rayner Roberts.
[M]y own experiences as a teenager make me somewhat less than neutral on the subject of both school and the ever-present love triangle. I find it incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible, to write about high school as a background event rather than politically, as an institution to be challenged or subverted, because of the amount of effort I expended as a student arguing against curricula, grading, subject structure, the allocation of resources, conformity and scare tactics. Similarly, and while I have no objection to other people enjoying them, I have a pathological skepticism of romanticised love triangles, because as a teenager, I was in a love triangle – and believe me, the experience was anything but romantic. The combination of unrequited love angst and profound frustration at the institutional mechanics of education left me severely depressed, routinely insomniac (my last year of school, I survived on an average of four to six hours sleep a night, six days a week), flirting with self harm and regularly contemplating suicide. Somehow, I managed to get through it, but it’s not an experience I’d wish on anyone – and as a consequence, I don’t think I’m capable of writing about school, or love triangles, or especially the two in combination, in any sort of neutral or romantic way.
Finally, There Is No Alternative has written a good post about the perils of criticising A Song of Ice and Fire online. It was in response to an article by Laurie Penny on the series, but I've observed it happening several other times, and it always follows a similar pattern. As TINA writes,
Sadly, I have not yet seen any refutation of Laurie’s points which doesn’t itself indulge in the fundamental attribution error of considering her understanding “superficial”, rather than the brevity of her piece to require superficiality, or which doesn’t simply set up straw women to tilt at, claiming that Laurie wanted to watch “Sweden with wizards“, rather than maybe considering whether it might be possible to address those themes with just a little less triggering rape culture and normative violence. Pointing out that these things are still damaging of themselves is not the same as calling for censorship.
I say this as someone who actually reads and enjoys the ASoIaF books: nothing should be free of criticism. It's hard when people criticise your favourite things, because it feels like they are criticising you, personally. But saying that there is a lot of (gratuitous) rape in ASoIaF is not the same as accusing its fans of being rapists, and saying that when you take away the backstabbing and intrigue, the story is basically the standard swords-and-sorcery epic about the need for a just ruler is not the same as saying its fans are simplistic or conservative. ASoIaF fans need to stop reacting as if someone's taken away their favourite toys every time the series is criticised online.
Since publishers are feeling terribly unsafe these days, and since YA is a big, solid market, and fantasy is a big, solid part of it, publishers feel safe publishing fantasy as YA. And so writers of fantasy may find they’re expected to have kid protagonists and discouraged from writing about adults. Harry whatshisname and the teenie werewolves and the young gladiators have locked the fantasy/YA combo tight, at least for now. Retro macho “epics” of war-and-violence with nominally adult protagonists may escape the YA label, as they reach teen-agers through tie-ins, games, movies.
It's pretty obvious which books she means, and while I have no problem with her disliking Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games or A Song of Ice and Fire, and while I also feel genre boundaries can be somewhat arbitrary and an impediment to reading, and that adults can get things out of books with child protagonists and children can get things out of books with adult protagonists, the things they are getting are different. There is a fundamental difference in how you read a book as a child, and how you read it as an adult. (For a good example, I read Wuthering Heights when I was 14 and again when I was 22 and it was as if I had read two different books.) You have to take into account all these things, like how a person sees the world and his or her place in it, because they do have an effect on your perception of, and reaction to, a particular story. I do think there are some books which have a more powerful effect if you read them at a certain age. (I feel, for example, that ages 12-16, which is what I was when I read the His Dark Materials trilogy, was exactly the right age range to be for that particular story. Victor Kelleher's books, on the other hand, while ostensibly aimed at teenagers, seem to me all the more powerful when read with adult eyes.) And some authors are better than others at capturing the way teenagers think, the way they see the world, the things they dream about and fear. Yes, the YA label is a marketing decision, but sometimes genre distinctions are meaningful. The important thing is to work out what you like, and ignore the genre labels when you need to.
One author who seems to me to be particularly in touch with the feelings and thoughts of her teenage self is Foz Meadows. I really like this interview she did with Tansy Rayner Roberts.
[M]y own experiences as a teenager make me somewhat less than neutral on the subject of both school and the ever-present love triangle. I find it incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible, to write about high school as a background event rather than politically, as an institution to be challenged or subverted, because of the amount of effort I expended as a student arguing against curricula, grading, subject structure, the allocation of resources, conformity and scare tactics. Similarly, and while I have no objection to other people enjoying them, I have a pathological skepticism of romanticised love triangles, because as a teenager, I was in a love triangle – and believe me, the experience was anything but romantic. The combination of unrequited love angst and profound frustration at the institutional mechanics of education left me severely depressed, routinely insomniac (my last year of school, I survived on an average of four to six hours sleep a night, six days a week), flirting with self harm and regularly contemplating suicide. Somehow, I managed to get through it, but it’s not an experience I’d wish on anyone – and as a consequence, I don’t think I’m capable of writing about school, or love triangles, or especially the two in combination, in any sort of neutral or romantic way.
Finally, There Is No Alternative has written a good post about the perils of criticising A Song of Ice and Fire online. It was in response to an article by Laurie Penny on the series, but I've observed it happening several other times, and it always follows a similar pattern. As TINA writes,
Sadly, I have not yet seen any refutation of Laurie’s points which doesn’t itself indulge in the fundamental attribution error of considering her understanding “superficial”, rather than the brevity of her piece to require superficiality, or which doesn’t simply set up straw women to tilt at, claiming that Laurie wanted to watch “Sweden with wizards“, rather than maybe considering whether it might be possible to address those themes with just a little less triggering rape culture and normative violence. Pointing out that these things are still damaging of themselves is not the same as calling for censorship.
I say this as someone who actually reads and enjoys the ASoIaF books: nothing should be free of criticism. It's hard when people criticise your favourite things, because it feels like they are criticising you, personally. But saying that there is a lot of (gratuitous) rape in ASoIaF is not the same as accusing its fans of being rapists, and saying that when you take away the backstabbing and intrigue, the story is basically the standard swords-and-sorcery epic about the need for a just ruler is not the same as saying its fans are simplistic or conservative. ASoIaF fans need to stop reacting as if someone's taken away their favourite toys every time the series is criticised online.
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 01:17 am (UTC)There is a fundamental difference in how you read a book as a child, and how you read it as an adult. I think this was evidenced today on fandomsecrets with the Giver secret. It also makes me think of the last book I read - The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy. I first read it in 6th grade/age 11 because a friend's mom was having trouble getting through it and wanted to know if I (the "smart friend") could get through it. It was interesting to compare what I remembered and what I'd forgotten in the intervening 16 years (and what I just plain missed the first time since I was 11).
I've yet to wade into ASOIAF, in either book or TV form, though obviously it's pretty impossible not to know of its existence at this point. It's on my list of things-to-read/watch-at-some-point-that-is-not-now. :P
It's hard when people criticise your favourite things, because it feels like they are criticising you, personally. This is such a true statement and one that I know objectively to be true, even though it's very difficult to remember in the midst of having a favorite thing criticized.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 01:41 pm (UTC)The story I always tell to illustrate how you read a book differently at different ages is Of Nightingales That Weep, by Katherine Paterson. It was one of my favourite books when I was 9-10, and it was definitely aimed at a YA age range, although I think when it was written there wasn't really a separate YA literary demographic. Anyway, in the book, the main character has sex. It's not written explicitly, it just fades to black and then she wakes up the next day and finds that the guy has left her a 'morning after poem'. When I read this as a nine-year-old, I had no idea that that is what had happened (who knows what I thought the 'morning after poem' came after). But it was just so outside my frame of reference that it passed me by. And I read that book so many times in those years that I could probably recite it off by heart! Years later, when I went back and read it as an adult, I was astonished that I hadn't noticed that. (It is stuff like this that gives me little patience with the censors who think that this kind of stuff is harmful in books aimed at children/teenagers. They won't see things unless they interest them.)
ASoIaF is a...complicated series. I feel uncomfortable recommending it, even though I read and enjoy it, because it is so problematic on so many levels.
In terms of taking criticism of your favourite things personally, I've been there. When I was 16, a book-reviewer in a newspaper wrote a critical (although ultimately positive) review of The Amber Spyglass, the third book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. At that point, I basically lived, breathed and dreamed HDM, so anything other than gushing, fawning praise was going to sound negative to me. I wrote this incredibly pompous letter to the reviewer, correcting her on supposed factual errors and accusing her of having not read the book. She, for some unfathomable reason, didn't respond by laughing her head off, but instead wrote back saying that if I felt she hadn't done a good job, why didn't I try to do it myself. Ever since, I've been a newspaper book-reviewer. And it taught me a very valuable lesson about subjectivity. I still think of writing that letter, and cringe, though.
Sorry for the deluge of nostalgic reminiscences.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 05:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 03:20 pm (UTC)Apart from that, the only thing I've heard about the fandom is mostly about westeros.org, and the grossly offensive things I've seen from there have made me never want to touch the fandom from twenty miles in a hazmat suit. That is the only part of the fandom I criticize, because I know there are perfectly decent people out there who like those books, and that's fine. But man, I judge that whole site and everyone in it. I can definitely see them converging to tear apart anybody who says "mean things" about their precious books. Uhg.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 05:01 pm (UTC)I judge that whole site and everyone in it. I can definitely see them converging to tear apart anybody who says "mean things" about their precious books.
The first time I remember it happening was when Sady Doyle did a sort of epic smackdown of the series for the rapeyness and misogyny and racism, and this bunch of irate fans flooded her blog to tell her she Just Wasn't Getting It with regard to GRRM's unparalleled genius. And they were the nice ones. The others were...well, I think you can imagine what they were saying to a well-known feminist blogger who dared to criticise a popular male author.
It's probably the literature student in me, but the implication that you have to switch your brain off in order to enjoy something as a True Fan™ really bothers me. Like the stuff you like, and by all means read/watch it uncritically if you prefer, but behaving like a spoilt toddler when someone does criticise it is, well, childish.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 05:03 pm (UTC)