What Are You Reading Wednesday
Jun. 19th, 2019 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricCurrently Reading:
Fiction: A Hand of Knaves. Technically, Redwall.
Non-Fiction: none
Lit Mag: Still puttering through Meanjin Winter 2018
Academic: None
Recently Finished
Fiction:
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thesis (Watsonian): Stephen Gordon should learn to darn her own damn stockings, and would likely find the quality of her relationships (sexual-romantic and otherwise) improved significantly as a result.
Thesis (Doylist): It is absolutely implausible that a woman, rich or not, invert or not, who served as an ambulance driver on the Western Front would not have darned her own stockings at least for the duration, and thus to answer in the aftermath of the war that she did not even *know* who had darned her stockings is patently ridiculous. This one brief conversation shows Radclyffe Hall's investment in awarding Stephen the maximum possible degree of male (upper class) privilege, and if that's what Hall considered essential to invert existence, no bloody wonder the book positions all invert/'normal'woman relationships as hopelessly doomed.
Look, a lot has been said about this book's flaws. I don't actually think the internalised self-hatred is one of them: I think Hall, like Carpenter and Krafft-Ebbing, makes a distinction between the unhappy lot of the invert in society, and the inherent nature of the invert. The classism is a bit rank at points (cf: stockings), but what really got me is the condescending-to-outright-spiteful attitude to feminine women, all of whom are classed as 'normal' regardless of whether they're dating men or inverts. Like, I get WHY that is (in Hall's/Krafft-Ebbings taxonomy, gender identity and sexual attraction are inextricable but gender identity has the upper hand, at least for women), but damn. The exclusion from society isn't your fault, but your wholesale dismissal of *the very women you are in relationship with* as full humans sure fucking is. (Memo also to: all men, ever.) The novel's spite toward feminine men (the only model of homosexual men available in the novel - who exactly they're sleeping with is entirely unclear) is ... almost worse, in some ways. The narrator-MC's condescension toward 'normal women' is no worse than (and indeed less marked than) that of many men for the period. But the point you can tell the narrator-MC-author complex really loathes femininity is in the book's loathing for feminine men: Stephen, Puddle, and the whole novel absolutely detest the fact that male inverts are their fellow travellers, even the slightest male femininity is repulsive, while female masculinity is elevated as a state of tragic nobility.
And despite all that: I really loved this book, I loved Stephen, I loved the fact that the book's taxonomy of sex and gender poses both internal challenges and challenges from A Modern (TM) Perspective. A++ brain fodder.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love Murderbot. I want Murderbot to be happy and not have to look anyone in the eye ever again.
I have few comments, except that, from a craft perspective, this is a PERFECT GEM of a novella. Engaging, yet contained. It doesn't feel like there are threads hanging, even though there's material here for a whole quartet.
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Here is a book that is not suffering from Second Book Syndrome. It *is* providing a platform to book 3, but it's beautifully and tightly held together.
Additional craft note: Wells manages to narrate an actually quite graphic amount of violence without losing the sense of *tenderness* in the narrative: narrative for MC, MC for others, and hence reader for MC. It's a masterclass.
Industry comment: it sure is notable how the first book in this series costs about as much as the first Binti book does, but subsequent ones cost *three times as much*. I do think this is a better example of novella-series, but not by *three times as much*, and also I doubt that's the key factor behind the costing. Oh, and this series so far is much better edited. That COULD be a case of Wells doing the damn work herself, or it could be a case of her getting better professional treatment from the publisher. Which one do you wanna bet it is?
Online Fiction:
Ha Seong-Nan, trans. Janet Hong, in Yale Review, The Woman Next Door. The underlying and unspoken homoeroticism here sure is a Thing. A thing that the final paragraph tries but fails to negate in favour of hetero-standard jealousy tropes.
Academic: I read the Sobecki article on Chaucer Life Documents. The documentary history work is superb, the effort to have his cake and yet be unproblematic re: the rape charge is... less so. He does acknowledge that it's Problematique that male scholars keep producing reasons 'raptus' might not mean what it sounds like, but... that is precisely what he's doing. Which is fine, and actually I'm easily convinced by abduction readings. But Sobecki basically dodges the fact that *abducting someone as a bride for your ward* is still, like... a pretty impressive act of violence, even if it WAS a common one (this is the first I've heard of raptus being common in wardship records, but apparently it is). It's like he (and everyone else who puts forward the 'but abduction' argument) has two settings for historical men, 'Bad Rapist' and 'Not Proven Rapist Therefore Not Bad'.
Folks. Odds are Chaucer was a rapist or an enabler of rapists, because odds are *most men were*. That doesn't mean odds are that he raped Cecily de Chaumpagne in particular, but... geez. Our ability to grapple with these documents would really be improved if we stopped talking as if interpreting *one* raptus document as not-rape meant the man in question was Not A Rapist.
Up Next:
I've got 'The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo', but mostly, I've got 45 student essays to mark.
Music notes: I ended up listening to the Hadestown concept album and OST a lot this week. I still cannot believe this track predates Trump by *nearly a decade*:
Fiction: A Hand of Knaves. Technically, Redwall.
Non-Fiction: none
Lit Mag: Still puttering through Meanjin Winter 2018
Academic: None
Recently Finished
Fiction:
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe HallMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thesis (Watsonian): Stephen Gordon should learn to darn her own damn stockings, and would likely find the quality of her relationships (sexual-romantic and otherwise) improved significantly as a result.
Thesis (Doylist): It is absolutely implausible that a woman, rich or not, invert or not, who served as an ambulance driver on the Western Front would not have darned her own stockings at least for the duration, and thus to answer in the aftermath of the war that she did not even *know* who had darned her stockings is patently ridiculous. This one brief conversation shows Radclyffe Hall's investment in awarding Stephen the maximum possible degree of male (upper class) privilege, and if that's what Hall considered essential to invert existence, no bloody wonder the book positions all invert/'normal'woman relationships as hopelessly doomed.
Look, a lot has been said about this book's flaws. I don't actually think the internalised self-hatred is one of them: I think Hall, like Carpenter and Krafft-Ebbing, makes a distinction between the unhappy lot of the invert in society, and the inherent nature of the invert. The classism is a bit rank at points (cf: stockings), but what really got me is the condescending-to-outright-spiteful attitude to feminine women, all of whom are classed as 'normal' regardless of whether they're dating men or inverts. Like, I get WHY that is (in Hall's/Krafft-Ebbings taxonomy, gender identity and sexual attraction are inextricable but gender identity has the upper hand, at least for women), but damn. The exclusion from society isn't your fault, but your wholesale dismissal of *the very women you are in relationship with* as full humans sure fucking is. (Memo also to: all men, ever.) The novel's spite toward feminine men (the only model of homosexual men available in the novel - who exactly they're sleeping with is entirely unclear) is ... almost worse, in some ways. The narrator-MC's condescension toward 'normal women' is no worse than (and indeed less marked than) that of many men for the period. But the point you can tell the narrator-MC-author complex really loathes femininity is in the book's loathing for feminine men: Stephen, Puddle, and the whole novel absolutely detest the fact that male inverts are their fellow travellers, even the slightest male femininity is repulsive, while female masculinity is elevated as a state of tragic nobility.
And despite all that: I really loved this book, I loved Stephen, I loved the fact that the book's taxonomy of sex and gender poses both internal challenges and challenges from A Modern (TM) Perspective. A++ brain fodder.
All Systems Red by Martha WellsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love Murderbot. I want Murderbot to be happy and not have to look anyone in the eye ever again.
I have few comments, except that, from a craft perspective, this is a PERFECT GEM of a novella. Engaging, yet contained. It doesn't feel like there are threads hanging, even though there's material here for a whole quartet.
Artificial Condition by Martha WellsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Here is a book that is not suffering from Second Book Syndrome. It *is* providing a platform to book 3, but it's beautifully and tightly held together.
Additional craft note: Wells manages to narrate an actually quite graphic amount of violence without losing the sense of *tenderness* in the narrative: narrative for MC, MC for others, and hence reader for MC. It's a masterclass.
Industry comment: it sure is notable how the first book in this series costs about as much as the first Binti book does, but subsequent ones cost *three times as much*. I do think this is a better example of novella-series, but not by *three times as much*, and also I doubt that's the key factor behind the costing. Oh, and this series so far is much better edited. That COULD be a case of Wells doing the damn work herself, or it could be a case of her getting better professional treatment from the publisher. Which one do you wanna bet it is?
Online Fiction:
Ha Seong-Nan, trans. Janet Hong, in Yale Review, The Woman Next Door. The underlying and unspoken homoeroticism here sure is a Thing. A thing that the final paragraph tries but fails to negate in favour of hetero-standard jealousy tropes.
Academic: I read the Sobecki article on Chaucer Life Documents. The documentary history work is superb, the effort to have his cake and yet be unproblematic re: the rape charge is... less so. He does acknowledge that it's Problematique that male scholars keep producing reasons 'raptus' might not mean what it sounds like, but... that is precisely what he's doing. Which is fine, and actually I'm easily convinced by abduction readings. But Sobecki basically dodges the fact that *abducting someone as a bride for your ward* is still, like... a pretty impressive act of violence, even if it WAS a common one (this is the first I've heard of raptus being common in wardship records, but apparently it is). It's like he (and everyone else who puts forward the 'but abduction' argument) has two settings for historical men, 'Bad Rapist' and 'Not Proven Rapist Therefore Not Bad'.
Folks. Odds are Chaucer was a rapist or an enabler of rapists, because odds are *most men were*. That doesn't mean odds are that he raped Cecily de Chaumpagne in particular, but... geez. Our ability to grapple with these documents would really be improved if we stopped talking as if interpreting *one* raptus document as not-rape meant the man in question was Not A Rapist.
Up Next:
I've got 'The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo', but mostly, I've got 45 student essays to mark.
Music notes: I ended up listening to the Hadestown concept album and OST a lot this week. I still cannot believe this track predates Trump by *nearly a decade*:
no subject
Date: 2019-06-19 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-19 09:40 pm (UTC)As I said, the first book (All Systems Red) is still about the same price as Binti. If it went up, it must have come back down.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-19 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-20 02:26 am (UTC)I only read it about two years ago and I can barely remember why it was so long, though.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-20 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-21 02:13 am (UTC):|
I mean, I'll pay it, I want more of Murderbot, but for fucks sake, this *really* feels like profiteering.