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engage me you cowards chernobyl, explain yourself do you not care if an author is a nazi
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Jan 11, 2020 03:59
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a lot of fascists are really good writers. Mishima rules. Junger is great
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Jan 11, 2020 05:37
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nankeen posted:engage me you cowards A lot of people today will agree with you. Myself, I don't see the point in ideologically vetting your reads ahead of time, with the possible exception of wanting to avoid buying anything in a way that benefits someone who is still alive and you think is a bad person. Why does it matter if random dead guy was a racist or some kind of criminal? Needing authors you'll read to be good people is a position without justification; expecting long-dead authors to fit 21st century morality is anachronistic. I'm not throwing out Patricia Highsmith because she seems to have been a horrible person to everyone she ever interacted with, or RE Howard because he had lousy views on race, or Wanda Wasilewska because she was a tankie that was fine with the Katyn massacre and worked to hide it. Why should I?
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Jan 11, 2020 05:59
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Consuming isn't condoning. If something speaks to you, it doesn't validate the fascist mindset simply because it was written by a fascist. There's something to be said about the power of having a window into the mind of someone who thinks in a radically different way from you, especially if what's being written has nothing (at least overtly) political about it. I think literature has a unique power in that it can unite you emotionally with people quite distant from you. I don't mean that in some kind of love-for-your-fellow-man kind of way, though that can be a consequence of reading literature; but instead that it allows you to empathize intimately but at a distance, and works to inform you not only of how they think, but of how you think as well. There's always a sort of background anxiety that I, at least, experience when thinking about reading someone who I know I'm at odds with ideologically, a kind of hissing apprehension that I might receive some kind of mind-worm and begin to agree with them on some level, as though if I peruse the work of a fascist and find myself nodding at something, appreciating their ideas and portrayals of power. Of course, in reality we generally don't have our opinions jostled so easily, although I'm sure all of us could point to something we've read that chilled us but was revelatory, and perhaps changed our entire mode of thinking, without having expected to be swayed when we went into it. I have a Mishima book on my shelf that I've owned for some time but haven't read, because I know very little else about him besides a vague notion that he's a fascist, and I'm not even sure what that means in the context of the man himself - I imagine the psychology of a Japanese fascist differs significantly from that of an American right wing that I'm more familiar with. I can feel that anxiety, justified or not, coloring my interpretation of the book and giving me the kind of prejudice that won't allow me to engage fairly with his work on its own terms. One might ask why one should bother to be fair to a fascist, but I am engaging with the man's art, not the man himself. For what it's worth, I'm reading Ulysses right now and every 25 pages or so I'll remember that Joyce wrote his wife passionate love letters about her farts, and I'll become conscious of the fact that while reading I am walking around in the mindspace of someone who has a fetish that gags me to think about. The difference here is that that moment of awareness seems to me a very absurd and amusing thing that adds another dimension to the writing, because the thoughts that produced these skillful words coexist in the same mind right next to the part of his brain occupied by his wife's rear end. So in this instance the coloration given by foreknowledge about the author added something; I'm not sure if I would have the same sort of reaction to a writer I knew was a fascist, which is why I've hesitated reading Mishima.
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Jan 11, 2020 08:50
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Ben Nerevarine posted:"Speculative fiction" works as an umbrella term but it's also worthless to someone like me who's often looking for entries in specific subgenres within science fiction for the most part. Heck, that term doesn't even get me to science fiction, and I'm not really interested in fantasy. There's nothing wrong per se with putting things in genres, the problem is with insisting they must be in one and only one strictly-defined genre, no overlap, no doubling-up, no ambiguity, and NONSTOP ARGUMENT about anything someone else put in the "wrong" genre. Xotl posted:A lot of people today will agree with you. Myself, I don't see the point in ideologically vetting your reads ahead of time, with the possible exception of wanting to avoid buying anything in a way that benefits someone who is still alive and you think is a bad person. Why does it matter if random dead guy was a racist or some kind of criminal? Needing authors you'll read to be good people is a position without justification; expecting long-dead authors to fit 21st century morality is anachronistic. I'm not throwing out Patricia Highsmith because she seems to have been a horrible person to everyone she ever interacted with, or RE Howard because he had lousy views on race, or Wanda Wasilewska because she was a tankie that was fine with the Katyn massacre and worked to hide it. Why should I? Yeah, same. I mind if my money's going to be going to a living Nazi or otherwise horrible person/cause. For example, I like William Mayne's children's fiction because I enjoy his prose, but he was also a convicted child molester, so I wouldn't buy anything new while he was alive. But I'll give a book by a dead poo poo a go to see if I like it or find it interesting. Heath posted:I'm not sure if I would have the same sort of reaction to a writer I knew was a fascist, which is why I've hesitated reading Mishima. I tried Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea as a teenager and only remember thinking it was about a boring whiny psychotic teenager, which... sounds pretty similar to the Western fascist infestation we've got going on, FWIW.
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Jan 11, 2020 13:58
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Runcible Cat posted:I tried Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea as a teenager and only remember thinking it was about a boring whiny psychotic teenager, which... sounds pretty similar to the Western fascist infestation we've got going on, FWIW. it takes a lot for me to think something in this thread is impressively stupid
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Jan 11, 2020 14:34
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I mean usually I'm all for ripping on people who think books with no explosions are 'boring' but who on Earth didn't have dumb opinions as a teen
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Jan 11, 2020 16:17
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chernobyl i am still very annoyed at you saying the social and psychological background of an author is irrelevant to the work. barthes was a crazy person. life of the author is the way to go imagine contemplating the works of one of my favourite speculative fiction authors, ligotti, without letting yourself believe that somewhere behind the book there is a troubled man who is inexplicably, desperately obsessed with puppets to return to mishima, yes the work stands alone but nobody could argue it's not enriched by the knowledge that mishima was both a japanese fascist and a closeted gay man who ended up committing ritual suicide because the emperor told him to calm the gently caress down nankeen fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Jan 13, 2020 |
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Jan 13, 2020 00:28
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reading one hundred years of solitude and picturing the writer as a young white liberal arts major from seattle
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Jan 13, 2020 00:34
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you goons have this thing going on where i know you want to discuss your favourite works, you want to reach new understandings and find new ways of looking at old texts that carries their relevance through into the 21st century, but you also don't want to be reminded in any way of high school english class
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Jan 13, 2020 02:10
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nankeen posted:reading one hundred years of solitude and picturing the writer as a young white liberal arts major from seattle "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" reboot looking a little too topical
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Jan 13, 2020 02:13
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nankeen posted:chernobyl i am still very annoyed at you saying the social and psychological background of an author is irrelevant to the work. barthes was a crazy person. life of the author is the way to go Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jan 13, 2020 |
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Jan 13, 2020 04:24
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I once chatted with someone who absolutely couldn't wrap his head around the idea that I could have bought Ezra Pound's Cantos at a library sale without being a fascist myself.
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Jan 13, 2020 04:28
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Mrenda posted:I'm not coming from a limited brain space perspective on this, like good prose, and sci-fi and fantasy literally can't exist in one mind, but I do very much get a feeling of, "Why?" If you're capable of writing the type of detailed, deep probes into minds and humanity that should make up the best of lit fic, why would you want to add extra trappings to it? It's that one screenshot of a Brony going "I never considered how bad the Holocaust was until somebody photoshopped Pinkie Pie into Auschwitz." There's several generations of people who've consumed almost nothing but nerd media for their entire lives and struggle to relate/talk about things without framing it as such ("Mayor Pete is a Hufflepuff!"), and in turn when they create things it's projected through that same lens. Just look at how they struggle to discuss their own media without resorting to tvtropes buzzwords or going "it's Firefly meets Game of Thrones but Steampunk!" Ernest Cline and Ready Player One are the endgame of the "nerd identity movement."
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Jan 13, 2020 08:07
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I think he was more ridiculing the mentality that you can't read Ender's Game because you might get homophobia on yourself.
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Jan 13, 2020 11:22
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nankeen posted:imagine contemplating the works of one of my favourite speculative fiction authors, ligotti, without letting yourself believe that somewhere behind the book there is a troubled man who is inexplicably, desperately obsessed with puppets ligotti's obsession with puppets is hardly inexplicable it'[s basically what do puppets symbolise 101
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Jan 13, 2020 11:55
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this discussion came about because a sci fi author is a terf and apparently that causes certain themes in their book to be viewed differently. now im never going to read this book and you can;t make me, but if the themes require some kind of external knowledge of the person to show themselves then tehyre not very good themes. you could never know who mishima was or what he did and if you pick up the temple of the golden pavilion and read it you are going to come out knowing that the author was obsessed with beauty and death and death as beauty and beauty as death and you're either already a fascist and you think that's cool, or youre not a fascist and you think thats cool but not really how the world should be run. if we suddenly found out nabokov was 100% an actual child rapist, would that change how we read lolita? we might feel pretty gross about it but i'd argue it wouldn't actually change the text as a whole, because it stands alone from nabokov in that regard, its themes are cohesive enough that revelations about the author cant really shake them. it would still be an extremely good and rewarding thing to read. the more shallow a book is, the more the reading of that book becomes an implicit agreement with its ideology and that of its author, because whyever else would you be reading it?
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Jan 13, 2020 12:17
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nankeen posted:like i'd hope nobody would read mishima's ravings and think "if i could just reproduce this in 2020 america......." Reproduce what in 2020 America? The yearnings of a young man in a patriarchal society still unaware that he is gay? The conflicts caused by the decay of the aristocratic landowning class? The trampling of a pregnant Japanese girl’s stomach? His work seems to be devoid of whatever it is you’re accusing him of.
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Jan 13, 2020 13:52
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And in any case, the original post was talking about getting "upset about the social politics of genre authors", not claiming that an author's beliefs don't inform their work or that knowing about the author isn't relevant for a deeper study of their work.
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Jan 13, 2020 16:42
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Reproduce what in 2020 America? The yearnings of a young man in a patriarchal society still unaware that he is gay? The conflicts caused by the decay of the aristocratic landowning class? The trampling of a pregnant Japanese girl’s stomach? His work seems to be devoid of whatever it is you’re accusing him of.
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Jan 13, 2020 16:49
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Sham bam bamina! posted:The Internet said that he was fascist, so how could he have written anything but Mein Kampf? The author of Minecraft is fascist? I’ll be damned
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Jan 13, 2020 20:17
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I think he was more ridiculing the mentality that you can't read Ender's Game because you might get homophobia on yourself. this is it yea
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Jan 13, 2020 22:06
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lol sorry everyone i'm perpetually stoned
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Jan 14, 2020 00:45
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nankeen posted:lol sorry everyone i'm perpetually stoned The genres blazin'
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Jan 14, 2020 00:56
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nankeen posted:lol sorry everyone i'm perpetually stoned lies When I am stoned there is no way I could follow Ligotti's thing at a level beyond "wow dude relax a little maybe y'all wound up"
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Jan 14, 2020 05:22
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nankeen posted:lol sorry everyone i'm perpetually stoned In your defense I'm probably grabbing Ligotti so thanks for that at least.
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Jan 14, 2020 08:33
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I need to get back to Teatro Grottesco, but the description of the pepperoni-and-mayonnaise snack in the first story just put me straight off. Now that's horror
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Jan 14, 2020 08:36
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ligotti is my spirit animal
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Jan 14, 2020 09:46
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This isn't quite genre, but I'm watching the American Dirt controversy with a combination of amusement and contempt. I have to confess I have not read the novel, but I do not understand why anyone is so surprised that the publishing industry is now publishing mediocre woke-bait to get money when that is the marketing strategy used successfully by the fantasy publishers for the last five years or so. I don't particularly care that a white lady wrote a book about Mexican immigrants (God forbid we try to empathize with people who don't look like us) but it's clear that this was published to cash in on the immigration controversy rather than by artistic merit. I suppose I could look into it if the thread really wants, but I still have that horrible woke horse book I've been avoiding. Have some Vonnegut instead. Slaughterhouse Five posted:"Jesus-if only Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good. Bonus points for the scene where Billy Pilgrim wanders into the porn store because they have Kilgore Trout's sci-fi in the window, and all the lonely masturbators call him a pervert for buying sci-fi books instead of porn.
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Jan 31, 2020 07:38
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Vonnegut is good and thus should not be discussed in this thread
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Jan 31, 2020 17:23
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derp posted:Vonnegut is good and thus should not be discussed in this thread Such a goon thing to say. Criticism isn’t necessarily negative. The thread doesn’t do it much but we certainly could discuss things like why LeGuin and Vonnegut are good instead of just why Sanderson is trash. But to be fair laughing at awful stuff is in some ways more fun.
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Jan 31, 2020 17:46
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derp posted:Vonnegut is good and thus should not be discussed in this thread He's a genre author.
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Jan 31, 2020 17:56
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if you are interested in a takedown of American Dirt just read this one https://wearyourvoicemag.com/entertainment-culture/jeanine-cummins-exploits-migrants-pain-american-dirt
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Jan 31, 2020 18:03
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quote:After a few days, an editor responded. She wrote that though my takedown of Dirt was “spectacular,” I lacked the fame to pen something so “negative.” She offered to reconsider if I changed my wording, if I wrote “something redeeming.” 
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Jan 31, 2020 18:17
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derp posted:Vonnegut is good and thus should not be discussed in this thread I'm quoting Vonnegut saying the same poo poo we are lol.
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Jan 31, 2020 20:32
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Personally, there isn't enough hours in the day to read all the good poo poo out there, so not reading shitheads at least culls the queue somewhat.
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Feb 1, 2020 00:31
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my bony fealty posted:if you are interested in a takedown of American Dirt just read this one this is unreadable
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Feb 1, 2020 02:42
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chernobyl kinsman posted:this is unreadable
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Feb 1, 2020 02:44
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chernobyl kinsman posted:this is unreadable She's doing a bit to mock the book's writer
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Feb 1, 2020 03:12
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Lol 650, man.
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Feb 1, 2020 04:19
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