Friday open thread: returning to stories and finding them changed

[dolorosa_12]

Happy Friday, everyone! This week's prompt is inspired by conversations I've been having with various people in the comments of one of my recent posts, about revisiting personally beloved or critically acclaimed stories years later, and being surprised by past perceptions. The specific story is an epic fantasy doorstopper from the 2000s which I adored when I first read it in my early twenties (I have distinct memories of sharing my copies with catpuccino when we were housemates, and spending hours feverishly speculating about potential plot developments; I think I also still have one of the pairings from the series listed as an 'interest' on Dreamwidth, a holdover from importing my profile from Livejournal close to fifteen years ago without much alteration). Rereading the whole thing after my mum shipped my book collection over from Australia, I was horrified by the numerous unfortunate implications in the book.

So my prompt is: tell me about similar experiences, in which you returned to a story after some time (it can be any work of fiction, not just a book), and experienced it very differently to the first time around.

The other big one for me recently (again sparked by rereading my old books) is the numerous 1980s and 1990s collections of eerie short stories for children/teenagers that felt mildly creepy when I read them at the intended age, and I found downright terrifying when rereading them as a thirtysomething adult. Their authors had an absolute gift for evoking an atmosphere that was uncanny and weird and quirky to a child, overlayed across truly unsettling and horrifying implications that are much more visible to an adult. And that particular experience is really making me want to track down a secondhand copy of Victor Kelleher's Del-Del, one of the most terrifying books I have ever read, which frightened me so much when I read it at fifteen or so that I was afraid to be alone in the house or go to sleep at night — and which I haven't read since. I'm curious if I would still find it as scary!

In any case, what about you?

Comments

[lirazel]

The first thing that comes to mind is my teenage love for the first three Dune books and how I tried to reread the first one when the movie adaptation came out a few years ago and I was like, "Wow, Herbert thinks this book is so deep and it's really just not." The pretentious and self-satisfied aura of it went right over my head as a kid but was enough to make me set it down after a few chapters as an adult.

The flip side of this is books that I didn't enjoy in my early teen years that I think I would appreciate a lot as an adult. I need to reread The Scarlet Letter and see if I still hate it--I bet I wouldn't!

(I'm super fascinated by your experience with finding books more scary as an adult. The written word doesn't scare me--it can hold me in suspense or appall me, but I just...don't get scared reading books.)

[dolorosa_12]

Those kinds of shifting tastes are really interesting, aren't they — in both directions. As you say, it takes having a deeper understanding of literature, knowledge of the world, and life experience, and then your response to a story is very, very different.

I saw you saying in another post that you've never been scared by the written word, and that's very understandable. For me (and this goes for visual horror as well), what is explicitly depicted is never, ever as terrifying as my own mind filling in the blanks and imagining things, so I'm quite capable of being made terrified by the written word, or by visual horror which takes place mostly off-screen.

[lirazel]

Oh, I am often scared of visual horror that's mostly suggestion and not actually depicted! Maybe it's the music or the silence onscreen that does it? For some reason, it just doesn't work in a written medium!

[raven]

I don't know if this counts? But I adored the Anastasia Krupnik books (by Lois Lowry) as a kid, and coming back to them as an adult, I still adore them, only now I'm like... this was actually groundbreaking, though? These books were honestly brilliant, wildly ahead of their time, but I was a kid so I just thought they were good and fun!

[chestnut_pod]

Anastasia Krupnik, my beloved!! I had that illustrated cover with the big black-rimmed glasses…

[lokifan]

YES omgoddd

[author_by_night]

I'm curious, how do you think they were groundbreaking? I 100% read at least one of those books, but don't remember much about them. I do remember Anastasia staying with a family, and realizing they actually brought the bible to the beach. That seems like interesting religious commentary.

[raven]

So I don’t know if you remember the concept, but Anastasia is about 12 or 13, the daughter of a Harvard academic and an artist, with a brother Sam who’s a precocious toddler, and all the stories are basically domestic happenings in Anastasia’s life. What gets me, always, is that they’re very political in their way - Anastasia lives in a world of intelligent, liberal adults who are trying to raise her well, and there is a lot of about class and privilege in there as she slowly discovers eg. that a Black friend’s life options might be different from hers, but it’s all done with a kind of wit and subtlety that I’ve seen few people manage. Another thing is that Anastasia is turning into a horny teenager quickly and the narrative has such kindness and space for that, as well as it being completely hilarious. It treats it without judgement or shame, just as a part of incoming adulthood. One book, Anastasia on her Own, is a full-on balls-to-the-wall comedy feminist satire, which Lowry can only do because the adults are real people with their own hilarious problems that also have depth and inferiority. And it’s so notable to me that queerness exists in this world, this quiet suburban 1970s world, there are gay people, Anastasia has a crush on her teacher, it’s all ok, and allowed and fine. Taken all together, i think the series is remarkable, and these books are nearly fifty years old.

[author_by_night]

I love all of that! It is very remarkable that it was all there.

[dolorosa_12]

It definitely counts — that was exactly the sort of revised opinion I was looking for! It's also really making me want to revisit those books — I really enjoyed them as a child, but I don't think I read them more than once (certainly not in adulthood), and my sister was the one who owned them, not me. I suspect they've disappeared several house moves ago, unfortunately, so tracking down my own copies might prove difficult.

[charlottenewtons]

There are a lot of horror stories that I read as a child which disturb me far more now I think about them as an adult.

I remember first watching the later seasons of Buffy as a teenager and not really enjoying them then appreciating them a lot more when I watched it again in my 20s.

[dolorosa_12]

I think — although it sounds counterintuitive — that in some ways children are less easy to scare if the point of the horror relies on a certain degree of life experience, or if it's a metaphor for real world horrors.

I'm still not a huge fan of season 7 of Buffy (I think it has one really good episode, some interesting ideas and moments, and then a lot of stuff that wildly misses the mark), and while I appreciate what season 6 was trying to do, I find a lot of it so actively uncomfortable to watch because it's too close to my own experiences. But I can definitely understand how you came to change your mind on those later seasons — it makes a lot of sense.

[charlottenewtons]

I also dislike season 7, that's one thing I haven't changed my mind on. I liked season 6 more the second time around but still didn't think a lot of it worked and I can understand finding it uncomfortable. Generally I wasn't keen on all of the post high school seasons the first time I watched them - an 'it's different therefore sucks' kind of mentality. Funnily enough now I don't have a lot of time for high school set teen shows.

[author_by_night]

- I was just thinking about this yesterday, when I watched a clip from Parks and Rec. There is a character who's a porn star on the show, which is the joke. That she's a porn star who thinks she's "just like" the main character, Leslie. In this particular clip, she's in a group of feminists and antifeminists, and even the feminist characters are appalled by her career. At the time I found it funny, but I find it rather judgmental and reductive now that we're talking about respecting (fully consenting) sex workers and body positivity.

- Xander from Buffy seems like such a Nice Guy now.

- I was watching a video essay about a children's historical fiction series I grew up with, American Girl, specifically Kirsten Larson. Kirsten Larson is an immigrant from Sweden. On the one hand, I fully believe this book is one of the reasons I became so interested in immigration and genealogy. On the other hand, revisiting the book through the essay, there are... problems. They try to incorporate an indigenous character, but in a way that is not great, and the depiction of non-English speaking immigrants is inaccurate and problematic. In one of her books, it's Kirsten's life goal to learn English. She would have lived in a Swedish-speaking community and might have only learned enough English to survive if she ventured outside of it. People have this idea that immigrants came over to speak English and be as American as possible as soon as possible, when that has never been the reality.

[dolorosa_12]

Quite a bit of Parks and Rec really didn't age well — Buffy likewise. Overall I think both still have a lot to recommend them, and Buffy is still really formative for me, but as time moves on, values change, and older works of fiction remain a product of their times.

Those American Girl books sound well meaning but misguided.

[author_by_night]

Oh, I still love both! :) I think Buffy in particular added a lot to the conversation, even if we wouldn't necessarily see things the same way now. Both Leslie and Buffy kick ass. But I think they'd be written a little differently in today's world.

On the flip side, it's nice to escape into the optimism of Parks and Rec.Yeah, it's a bittersweet optimism because they clearly envisioned a very different political landscape, but I like that world. So.

[got_quiet]

The Thieves' World series will always be this for me. I got into it when I was in around 5th grade or so, really loved it, but even then knew it was of slightly uneven quality and was on the darker side. Still it was one of the first titles where I was a bit of a lore hound. I reread some parts decades later and what felt kind of weird turned out to be almost unreadable, the unfortunate implications of one of the characters only being able to get off via rape finally actually hit me, and then I went further in the series and hit the straight-up pedophilia.

The thing is I still love a lot about the series, but now need to put even more caveats up than I used to when I was a kid when I talk about it.

[senmut]

OMG, Thieves World. FLASHBACK!

Asprin and Abbey were regular con-minglers, and I loved listening to them and other authors talking about the anthologies that were so popular in the 90s.

But I did not enjoy my last attempt to read a TW book.

[got_quiet]

Hah, I'm not surprised you didn't enjoy it at all. I liked Asprin's other series' a lot too, and it had fewer of the massive issues TW had, so it would have been very cool to hear them talk about their experience!

[dolorosa_12]

I've not heard of this series, but from what you're describing, yikes.

[senmut]

Friday by Heinlein.

I loved her so much on first read as a pre-teen.

Then I read so much commentary and critique of the writer and that book in particular.

Trying to re-read it? I was looking at the holes, and it is a very Joss Whedon moment of 'women are monsters if they don't have kids'.

[dolorosa_12]

it is a very Joss Whedon moment of 'women are monsters if they don't have kids'.

I hated that bit in the MCU. Hated. I now can't remember which film it was, but I remember I was watching it in the cinema with my husband, and our friend notasapleasure, and she and I just turned to each other, appalled and disbelieving at what we had just heard.

I can imagine it would have been a shock to encounter that when returning to Friday as well — like being punched in the face.

[trepkos]

I re-read "the Great Gem of Rikkenberg"; as an 11 year old, I was totally in love with one of the characters and invented a fantasy based on it, which I think I might have written down. Re-reading it, I didn't see anything in it to spark such flights of fancy! Very disappointing!

[dolorosa_12]

That's definitely a risk when returning to beloved fiction of childhood, sadly!

[tsuki_no_bara]

i got one - nevernever by will shetterly, which was cobbled together from two separate stories in two different anthologies, with some connective tissue to make everything make sense. i read it the first time a long time ago and it was... disappointing, let's say, when i reread it as a much older person. it's just not that well written, altho i'm willing to blame that on the fact that i know it was stitched together from two separate stories and because i remember one of them really well i can see the stitches. it's ya from before ya was really a thing and i highly doubt it would pass muster with today's ya fans, plus there's a thankfully brief but clunky and very afterschool-special conversation about safe sex between the main character and the girl he likes. the best i can say about it is that i can see why the younger me was so taken with it. it has also made me kind of gunshy about rereading other things i loved from that particular period in my life.

...what was the epic fantasy doorstopper from the 2000s?

[dolorosa_12]

Weirdly, most of the YA from when I was a child and teenager still holds up really well, both as YA, and as works of fiction in general. But it's very different from today's YA. Nevernever sounds ... not great.

The epic fantasy doorstopper is Jennifer Fallon's four book Tide Lords series. It's basically about invulnerable, unkillable, millennia-old immortals (when I say 'unkillable,' I really mean it — one character survives having his head cut off and simply grows another head, for example), who spend their lives in endless, pointless conflicts with one another over both past petty grievances and larger scale political machinations for power. And it's about the mortal characters who have the misfortune to get swept up in their wake. The idea itself is fine, but wow are there some major flaws in the execution!

[hunningham]

Jane of Lantren Hill by L.M.Montgomery

It's a Cinderella story; Jane is the unwanted unloved grandchild, bullied by her cruel & vicious grandmother. But she finds love, and family, and friends and happiness. I really enjoyed it first time I read it.

Reading it as an adult - I was appalled by the emotional cruelty and (truly believable) spite shown by the grandmother, and how little anyone does to help. Jane's mother is good on sympathy but little practical help. Yes, there is a happy ending, and it's a great kid's book but I found myself grinding my teeth and saying "This is no way to treat a child."

Also Anne of Green Gables - a couple write to the orphanage saying "please send us an orphan" and the orphanage despatch one orphan by return post. Like ordering a doohickey from Amazon. As a child this seemed perfectly reasonable and now it's horrifying.

[dolorosa_12]

There's a lot of appalling treatment of children (bullying, emotional abuse, neglect) in beloved classic children's fiction, which I think we just accept as child readers, but, as you say, is horrifying to encounter as an adult.