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I take it back, chernobyl kinsman. 
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Feb 3, 2020 08:55
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pile of brown posted:It means the same thing as choosing to buy free range eggs at the farmers market instead of mass farmed eggs because you are self aware of your consumption. oh for fucks sake Lex Neville fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Feb 3, 2020 |
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Feb 3, 2020 09:08
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pile of brown posted:It means the same thing as choosing to buy free range eggs at the farmers market instead of mass farmed eggs because you are self aware of your consumption. good grief
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Feb 3, 2020 09:19
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pile of brown posted:It means the same thing as choosing to buy free range eggs at the farmers market instead of mass farmed eggs because you are self aware of your consumption. You're describing purchasing a product, thus contributing to the success of that product. That's only true of a troublesome book if you buy it new, rather than acquiring it second hand, out of copyright, or via piracy, and assuming that the author is alive. Your scenario is also a case of one thing at the expense of the other in a tightly limited set, but with books you're not directly excluding one or two more virtuous rivals by buying The Diaries of Lord Evilton: literature is too large a world for that. Your analogy doesn't work because reading isn't necessarily a physically consumptive choice, and definitely isn't a binary one. Sure, you've only got so much time in the day and all that, but that's an argument to read good books over bad, not books about goodness or by the virtuous over books about badness or by the wicked (however you're defining those things). Xotl fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Feb 3, 2020 |
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Feb 3, 2020 09:32
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Old people who watch soap operas think the greatest virtue of all in drama is "it happens in real life too" and believe that overrules all criticism. Anyway something reminded me of that
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Feb 3, 2020 10:21
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pile of brown posted:It means the same thing as choosing to buy free range eggs at the farmers market instead of mass farmed eggs because you are self aware of your consumption. if you buy eggs at all you are doing more to immiserate the world than poor beautiful yukio mishima ever did
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Feb 3, 2020 12:02
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what's a general's aide here or there, after all
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Feb 3, 2020 12:16
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Heath posted:Even in the specific case of Mishima, history has borne out that for whatever bad ideas Mishima had about the conduct of his country, he was never a credible threat to anything. His ideals lead him to a definitive dead end, but his art survives him. That seems to be the case for all talented fascist writers, who were invariably self-sabotaging losers of the highest order in their non-literary lives
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Feb 3, 2020 13:33
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I do think supporting a book like American Dirt by buying a copy supports a market for white people telling the stories of others, and often doing so very badly and clumsily. It would probably be better to commercially support a Mexican-American author telling those same stories because they would probably do a better job, and there is an ongoing problem in the world that has existed for some time where colonialist cultures (aka white people) get to tell the stories of other cultures and tell the people of those cultures who they are and what their story is. I can't remember his name but there's a writer who has a whole career of like going to places and writing about the people there and he writes from a very white kind of anthropologist type who goes and observes the natives and acts like they are loving idiots and their behavior makes no sense. Yet somehow he's done very well financially his whole life. Oh, also he's just a bad writer. But the actual act of reading it is almost entirely divorced from that. It's not like the bad writer white lady gets psychic power from you reading her work.
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Feb 3, 2020 14:10
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I think Mexicans, as a people of 150 million, can probably survive on their own and don't need this mollycoddling about "appropriating their stories", and the real issue is that Oprah viewers want to read misery porn where people and whole cultures are reduced to cardboard cutouts. It's less offensive to Mexicans or POC or whoever, and more to the culture that consistently chooses this dreg and fails to produce meaningful literature
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Feb 3, 2020 14:28
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Ras Het posted:I think Mexicans, as a people of 150 million, can probably survive on their own and don't need this mollycoddling about "appropriating their stories", and the real issue is that Oprah viewers want to read misery porn where people and whole cultures are reduced to cardboard cutouts. It's less offensive to Mexicans or POC or whoever, and more to the culture that consistently chooses this dreg and fails to produce meaningful literature Honestly, going and squatting on someone else’s literary territory without permission because you can’t or won’t find fertile material in your own background in order to enrich your self is the perfect encapsulation of the Mexican immigrant experience when you really think about it. Being subjected to all this hatred and bigotry for her efforts to make a better life for herself and her family is just enhancing the legitimacy of her work.
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Feb 3, 2020 15:25
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:Honestly, going and squatting on someone else’s literary territory without permission because you can’t or won’t find fertile material in your own background in order to enrich your self is the perfect encapsulation of the Mexican immigrant experience when you really think about it. What the gently caress.
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Feb 3, 2020 15:33
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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Dumpster Fire of the Genres: Critical Looks Sci-Fi and Fantasy
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Feb 3, 2020 15:37
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That novel sounds like it follows in the tradition of Orientalism and euro-westerns and that general fake exoticism. Where you have a description of exotic cultures written by white people who consider talking to anybody who as ever even been in that location to be a sin against literature. I used to get recommended a lot of the old stuff by people who really hated S/F. And thus I do expect that people will recommend American Dirt as intrinsically superior to SF pulp.
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Feb 3, 2020 17:13
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lost in postation posted:That seems to be the case for all talented fascist writers, who were invariably self-sabotaging losers of the highest order in their non-literary lives They really seem to follow a pattern. Like Evola who liked taking walks during bombing raids, and who got hit by a fragment a few months before WWII ended and was paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.
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Feb 3, 2020 17:24
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VictualSquid posted:That novel sounds like it follows in the tradition of Orientalism and euro-westerns and that general fake exoticism. Can you provide examples of the orientalist literature you've been recommended that you feel ought to be consigned to the trash heap because of their orientalism
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Feb 3, 2020 17:26
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Ras Het posted:Can you provide examples of the orientalist literature you've been recommended that you feel ought to be consigned to the trash heap because of their orientalism this strikes me as a trick question but I'm curious to hear the answer
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Feb 3, 2020 17:34
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pile of brown posted:It means the same thing as choosing to buy free range eggs at the farmers market instead of mass farmed eggs because you are self aware of your consumption. not...really?
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Feb 3, 2020 18:26
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It's also worth noting that people in real life are not one dimensional cardboard cutouts like the wizards in all the books you read. Someone who was Fascist did not spend every waking moment thinking solely about fascism and how to turn everyone around them fascist. It might not have been even the number 2 or 3 thing they thought about. People have lots of interests and ideas, and their politics (or racism, or bigotry, whatever) are not necessarily their number one personal attribute and sole focus of their existence.
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Feb 3, 2020 18:41
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im liquidating my investment portfolio and buying every copy of american dirt i can find
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Feb 3, 2020 18:44
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quit being a loving child and read Americn Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins
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Feb 3, 2020 18:50
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Ras Het posted:Can you provide examples of the orientalist literature you've been recommended that you feel ought to be consigned to the trash heap because of their orientalism Karl May mostly. I assume the English speaking world has its own counterparts.
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Feb 3, 2020 18:56
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for real though we need to be clear on the fact that "telling the stories of others" is at root what fiction is about, and there is nothing inherently wrong with a white person writing a book about mexican immigrants. the problem with american dirt is not that a white person wrote it but that it's schlocky misery porn designed to appeal to the sensitivities and stereotypes of white american liberals. if a mexican person did the same thing the book would also be bad. fiction is not memoir. you do not need to be the person, even the type of person, you are writing about in order to write well. i realize i am harping on this but there a lot of posts in this thread that are conflating "bad to write about mexicans" with "bad book about mexicans". Zadie Smith posted:For me the question is not: Should we abandon fiction? (Readers will decide that—are in the process of already deciding. Many decided some time ago.) The question is: Do we know what fiction was? We think we know. In the process of turning from it, we’ve accused it of appropriation, colonization, delusion, vanity, naiveté, political and moral irresponsibility. We have found fiction wanting in myriad ways but rarely paused to wonder, or recall, what we once wanted from it—what theories of self-and-other it offered us, or why, for so long, those theories felt meaningful to so many. Embarrassed by the novel—and its mortifying habit of putting words into the mouths of others—many have moved swiftly on to what they perceive to be safer ground, namely, the supposedly unquestionable authenticity of personal experience.
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Feb 3, 2020 19:09
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The Book Barn › The Genres Ablaze: The same thing as choosing to buy free range eggs at the farmers market
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Feb 3, 2020 22:51
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taken as a whole, is shoplifting a copy of American Dirt from Barnes and Noble and reading it just so I can scoff at it a moral act, or an immoral one
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Feb 3, 2020 23:01
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These last few pages I feel there's been a misunderstanding. Mexican authors are published all the time; in Mexico, Argentina and Spain. Latin American literature in general is probably better regarded than US literature. Mexican authors, and other minorities, being mistreated and overshadowed by white people in the US is a problem that goes beyond the publishing industry and I don't think it has much to do with the literary medium. It happens in other media industries. If you want to support spanish-speaking authors there's hundreds of years of literature for you to pick a book. You can start by reading 2666 by Roberto Bolaño (A Chilean that wrote a lot about Mexico, incidentally)
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Feb 3, 2020 23:07
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Relax Or DIE posted:taken as a whole, is shoplifting a copy of American Dirt from Barnes and Noble and reading it just so I can scoff at it a moral act, or an immoral one They cancel each other
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Feb 3, 2020 23:07
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It depends. If you are Latino, you are further reinforcing negative stereotypes about your people, which is a net negative. If you are white, you're subverting expectations and asserting your privilege to prove a point, which is a commendable act. In this Medium article/review, I will set forth to
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Feb 3, 2020 23:08
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Relax Or DIE posted:taken as a whole, is shoplifting a copy of American Dirt from Barnes and Noble and reading it just so I can scoff at it a moral act, or an immoral one stealing from hedge-fund owned business is good yeah
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Feb 3, 2020 23:09
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Relax Or DIE posted:taken as a whole, is shoplifting a copy of American Dirt from Barnes and Noble and reading it just so I can scoff at it a moral act, or an immoral one Amoral but unethical
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Feb 3, 2020 23:15
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Relax Or DIE posted:taken as a whole, is shoplifting a copy of American Dirt from Barnes and Noble and reading it just so I can scoff at it a moral act, or an immoral one immoral, b/c you're deliberately courting the sin of pride
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Feb 3, 2020 23:17
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Pacho posted:These last few pages I feel there's been a misunderstanding. Mexican authors are published all the time; in Mexico, Argentina and Spain. Latin American literature in general is probably better regarded than US literature. When Mexico sends its people, it's probably not sending its best authors, then. Why go play in the little leagues?
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Feb 3, 2020 23:18
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Pacho posted:These last few pages I feel there's been a misunderstanding. Mexican authors are published all the time; in Mexico, Argentina and Spain. Latin American literature in general is probably better regarded than US literature. lmao yeah, now pull the other one! next thing you'll tell me is more people natively speak Spanish than English
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Feb 4, 2020 18:08
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If a brown person writes a thing and no white person reads it (in English) is it really even written?
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Feb 4, 2020 23:21
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Mexican authors shouldn't allowed to write about Mexicans either, unless they have >50% indigenous blood. I've seen the Mexican authors protesting – they're practically crackers, whiter than half our presidents, lmao! The "Mexicans" that are part of the literary elite are literally just Spaniards. Wake up sheeple.
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Feb 5, 2020 03:25
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Dirt Road Junglist posted:I've been trying to stay out of this because I probably know less about Mishima than I know, but FINE. Have some tidbits. All I really studied was some of his photography and modeling during a lecture in a 20th Century Asian art history course, in particular his St. Sebastian being pierced by arrows work, which is basically, "And this is super duper homoerotic. Any questions? Cool, moving on." Also, dude was crazy for A E S T H E T I C before it was even a thing. Goddamn lmao, I see. Thank you for writing this down, it's what I wanted to know. Apparatchik Magnet posted:I’m interested by the people who are afraid to read Mishima and somehow become fascist. Are you admitting that your political reasoning skills are poo poo and easily swayed or that you’re unwilling to accept the potential correct conclusions of your quite sharp political reasoning skills because you’re a coward who wants to be popular rather than be fully informed in choosing the correct politics? I can only speak for myself but I'm not worried about becoming a fascist. I'm just trying to decide whether it would be worth my time to actually read his books since it became a topic of this thread. I wouldn't get mad at other people for wanting to read Mishima's books or whatever though. Overall the 'concerns' over whether people could be taken in by fascism just by reading literature by a guy who liked that ideology is rooted in something aside from fears about literary brain washing. IMO it's rooted in the fear that by reading a well written book by Insert Fascist Here, you may end up connecting with his mindset and sympathizing with him. Worst of all, maybe even liking him and understanding him. Seeing someone who espouses something hateful, whatever that may be, be humanized by reading their work can be a scary prospect.
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Feb 5, 2020 20:00
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It is possible (and sometimes even intentional!) to enjoy a book without agreeing with or liking the character.
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Feb 5, 2020 20:25
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HIJK posted:Overall the 'concerns' over whether people could be taken in by fascism just by reading literature by a guy who liked that ideology is rooted in something aside from fears about literary brain washing. IMO it's rooted in the fear that by reading a well written book by Insert Fascist Here, you may end up connecting with his mindset and sympathizing with him. Worst of all, maybe even liking him and understanding him. Seeing someone who espouses something hateful, whatever that may be, be humanized by reading their work can be a scary prospect. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Feb 5, 2020 |
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Feb 5, 2020 20:27
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Sham bam bamina! posted:That is a pathetic fear to have. People with other ideas, no matter how horrible, are in fact people. The idea that you shouldn't even be able to understand where a fascist or racist or whoever is coming from, what brought them to where they are, is absolute horseshit. A lack of knowledge or empathy (to be clear, not sympathy) is not a point of pride. This whole thing traces its philosophical roots back to insane ideas in places like Christianity where if you think about murdering someone it’s the same as murdering them. As well as injunctions for purity of essence and not to be corrupted by coming into contact with outsiders and others who might coincidentally expose you to some non cult ideas about the universe, or at least a different cult.
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Feb 5, 2020 21:07
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derp posted:It is possible (and sometimes even intentional!) to enjoy a book without agreeing with or liking the character. Lolita. One of the most unsettling feelings when you read that book isn't the fact that you're reading a pedophile's account of his own crimes, it's seeing the little bits of his psyche that mirror something in yourself, the driving force of obsession that makes him victimize Dolores in the first place. You don't have to share his specific inclination toward nymphets to see the where the threads of the obsessive mind connect to your own, especially if you yourself have an obsessive personality and have become passionately fixated on things in your own life. I think you could draw a lot of parallels between Humbert's behaviors and those of an addict, for example. It's kind of the cliché example, but it is that for a reason. That's the power fiction has to put us in the minds of those who aren't like us, because we find out through literature just how much they are like us. That's the main contention I have with things like the fantasy and sci-fi genres that largely serve to put us in the minds of people who are just like us, but instead put them into a world that's different and largely serves to facilitate the character. It's not universal by any means, but it is common, as this thread shows.
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Feb 5, 2020 21:08
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