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I enjoy these reviews but disagree with your premise that fantasy books must be written using "fantastical" language to succeed. Jemisin's latest series, for example, tells what is essentially a first person escape from bondage narrative that wouldn't be out of place in a 19th century novel. The narrator is the former slave and the goal of the book is not to world build or to immerse the reader in an alien place but to convey truths about race and prejudice in society, and how prejudice carries through generations. It would make no sense for this book to be written like "Little, Big". Similarly, a story like "The City and the City", which is a noir detective story set in a fictional country in Eastern Europe, gains its power from being written like a typical detective story - the strangeness of the setting leaks through the gaps, so to speak, and are highlighted by the plain and direct, hardbitten language of the protagonist. I actually don't really like the Assassin's series, but my memory is that Hobb is striving for psychological realism here, so again, the sort of writing you are looking for does not seem suited to the tale she is telling. One might as well say that all super hero stories must be written like Golden Age Superman.
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Sep 10, 2017 04:54
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:
How does describing a female author's style as "hysterical anxiety" work out for you, typically? How should a former slave describe her bondage? Why isn't an anxious style "advantageous" (one thinks of Quentin in The Sound and the Fury)? What the gently caress are you even talking about here?
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Sep 10, 2017 13:12
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Jemisin's Fifth Season and Smith's NW in particular are rooted in the themes of anxiety and hysteria - everything seems rooted in the terror and oppression of the moment (it's why the former is written in present tense). 'Hysteric realism' in particular was a term coined for Smith's novel White Teeth, though the context is very different. NW however is balanced by its realism and naturalism that make it a genuinely good story of urban life, race, and class. I read the article you linked and it doesn't say anything like what you assert above. The phrase "hysterical realism" is describing a series of modern/postmodern novels that cram a whole bunch of whimsical and strange things into the recognizable "modern" world and subject the main character to these strange and whimsical events. It's described as "hysterical" (a term thatdoesn't even seem to the books described in that article) because it's going over the top, beyond the confines of magic realism. This bears no relationship to what's going on in Jemisin's most recent trilogy, which has a limited cast of characters, focuses strongly on three or four in particular and follows them closely, and has an almost total lack of whimsy. Someone feeling uncharitable might point out that the only similarity Zadie Smith and Jemisin share is that they are both women of color, and that that appears to be the entire basis for your comparison. And I'm not even going to start with your insane notion that Jemisin isn't a slave herself and therefore cannot write from the perspective of a slave. Joyce wasn't an Irish housewife, and Crowley was neither a Puerto Rican woman in her twenties nor the king of the loving fairies.
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Sep 10, 2017 14:49
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the old ceremony posted:. WOMEN ARE AN ABUSED DEMOGRAPHIC shows up in every work, but there is never any attempt to deal with the specific ways in which women are abused beyond the inevitable rape scenes. there are no fantasy novels about sex trafficking, or the full complexities of an abusive relationship, or learning to live in an arranged marriage, or coming out as transgender, or being the single mother of a daughter in a patriarchal society, or being expected to care for ailing family members, or any of the problems that women in the real world deal with every single day. there are just endless male authors writing rape scenes, usually obviously with one hand, and patting themselves on the back for being progressive and dealing with real issues. The last two Hugo winners were written by a woman who is also a person of color, and are about many of the things you talk about in your first paragraph, such as feminism, the exploitation of the female body, the exploitation of the black body, overcoming societal programming and self-actualization, and the way this is passed down from mother to daughter. But don't let me interrupt you, you're on quite a roll.
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Sep 12, 2017 23:52
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the old ceremony posted:okay, jemisin exists. i don't like her work, but i like her - she is doing important stuff for the genre just by existing and i'm glad she's getting acclaim and success. Octavia Butler and Yoon Ha Lee (identifies as a trans man) come to mind, but I'm not disagreeing with you that it's a white male dominated field. I also agree that it needs to be broader in scope. Your post was just weird because it asserted that this stuff doesn't exist, when in fact it's been dominating the awards for the last couple of years.
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Sep 13, 2017 01:12
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just another posted:I'm reminded of this Freddie deBoer post: Sorry that you can't ignore real problems in society like you used to be able to. How does it feel being like everyone else? Guess what, cultural criticism has always come from a political perspective, it's just that the perspective is no longer "we don't want to talk about this stuff."
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Sep 13, 2017 02:54
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Perhaps I could interest you in A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, where dragons hatch from stone eggs and people rise from the dead repeatedly for no discernible reason.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:35
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BananaNutkins posted:That's pretty much what genre fiction is, and it has different priorities than literary fiction does, so analysis of it using the same metrics is kinda dumb. Much like you’re posting (if that’s what you think why are you posting in this thread).
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Mar 14, 2018 01:47
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There was a lot of handwringing about BotL getting probed but I’ve read the last ten pages of this thread and it got a lot more interesting because Mel, Chernobyl et al were actually willing to engage. Good job everybody. Also, go read Earthsea esp the Tombs of Atuan.
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Jan 31, 2019 15:08
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pikachode posted:dammit no i am reading the way of kings It's incredible. There's are several characters who are supposed to deliver burns so sick that the targets are left gasping for breath and everyone around bursts into applause at his cleverness. Only...Brandon Sanderson really, really can't write comedy, so you're left with large chunks of the movie reading like the on-air segments of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Here's an example I found via googling: Brandon Sanderson's comedic genius posted:"You've got a tongue on you"
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Feb 3, 2019 02:40
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When Fantasy authors start inserting their own poetry into their novels is when the poo poo really hits the fan.brandon sanderson posted:For glory lit, and life alive
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Feb 3, 2019 03:12
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:
However will the people of Book Barn criticize Mein Kampf without your trenchant insights.
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Feb 3, 2019 16:41
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bb poster 1: more praise for hitler's literary craft and prose mastery...my weapons are useless against it bb poster 2: if only i had skimmed the reading for lit 101...if only i hadn't read so many fantasy books... bb poster 1: will a hero not save us??? *looks to the sky* botl: *rattling bars in posting jail* you must let me go!!
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Feb 3, 2019 16:53
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Eugene V. Dubstep posted:pls stop your rap sheet is quite a read
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Feb 3, 2019 17:16
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[Ed:nm]
uberkeyzer fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Feb 3, 2019 |
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Feb 3, 2019 18:11
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