Books: An Update
Feb. 16th, 2013 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricA few more books read of late:
Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: It is... difficult to review this book. Of course, it contains a lot of distressing and upsetting material about extreme religious conservatism: that's why I read it. Goodreads recommended it to me, and I sought it out because it's been bugging me lately that I know quite a lot about fundamentalist Christianity and Islam, and offences against women committed in and enabled by both those religions. I know a good deal less about the oppressive aspects of Judiasm (or, for that matter, Hinduism or Buddhism) or the cultural contexts in which they take place - although I know enough to know it happens.
So now I know more. I read this book specifically to find out about horrible and offensive practices, and sure enough I did. I also know a bunch of interesting things about how and *why* Hasidic sects formed and thrived in the period after the Holocaust. The notion that only by practicing *excessive* purity, greater purity than that which is required, could a community insure itself against westernisation and moral decay and thereby prevent another holocaust or similar event... is sickening, but not incomprehensible, given the way human logic often works. I also find it fascinating that sects utterly opposed to westernisation and adaptation to external cultural mores found a home and thrived in America - that, too, seems predictable even as it is contradictory. And it was interesting to see, in Feldman's account, the ways in which her community *had* become strongly Americanised/westernised - the insistence by even the most pious that a young bride take the pill in order to be able to consummate her marriage in a timely fashion struck me particularly.
Also unsurprising, for humans at large: that where excesses of purity are called for, the burden of maintaining that purity for the community would fall on women. Not exclusively, I'm not that silly, and there is plenty of evidence in Feldman's account that young men in her community also suffered from enforced piety and restrictions on their dress, food, reading habits, and social lives. Even less surprising: that a close-knit and sexually conservative community would cover up and refuse to expel or punish pedophilia, and would privilege systems of gender separation over listening to young women's account of sexual assault, and over teaching young men to actually engage respectfully with women.
These things, really, are the things I wanted to know - not *if* they happen, because humans are shitty, and close-knit religious communities of all stripes often particularly so. But I didn't know much about the particular shape these patterns take outside of Xnity and Islam; now I know a little more. I also know enough about religion to know that very few structures are exclusively oppressive: there are spaces for agency, comfort and happiness embedded in very distasteful traditions (like Feldman in her pre-marriage classes, I too have heard many times that the seclusion of women during and after their periods promotes marital harmony by keeping desire alive. Let's not even talk about the many many ways that's bogus logic *even though I'm sure it works for many people*). The other thing that struck me is how much her upbringing harmed Feldman. No number of couples happily abstaining two weeks of the month should justify the kind of hurt the practice caused to Feldman, even if she were the only woman ever to feel abandoned, unwanted, or useless. Her grief at being thrown together with this man for what was, for them, the ongoing trauma of extreme vaginosis and failures to consummate - only to be wrenched apart from him for weeks at a time and then round again... nothing should justify that.
Now, a literary comment: this is not a particularly *good* memoir. It is, as others have commented, too indebted to the rant-blog genre. Written so soon after the events it narrates, it lacks the element of critical self-insight which makes a good memoir. Feldman shows, I think, considerable insight into the motivations of others, but her portrait of herself is devoted to an idea of herself as special, uniquely unfit for religious conformity, rebellious, on a lifelong path to individuality unlike those around her. I don't begrudge her the book deal - whatever it took to get her out. But I do think that a decade's space would have made for a better literary product.
Baroness Orkzy, The Scarlet Pimpernel: This was fun! Classist as all get-out and radiating English smugness. But Marguerite was pretty damn fabulous, which makes up for many things.
Raymond Carver, So Much Water So Close To Home (short story): Quite an unsettling story. I liked the way the 'so much water, so close to home' refrain seemed to operate both as a protest - why go so far? why get entangled with (commit?) such things - and a warning. There's water close to home, too. It could've been you.
John Tranter (ed), Best Australian Poems 2012: A fascinating collection. Selections already posted here on the /poetry tag.
I've skipped over a few Robin Hobb books in my "read" shelf - I'm reading the Rain Wild Chronicles at the moment, and will review once I'm through all four of them.
Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: It is... difficult to review this book. Of course, it contains a lot of distressing and upsetting material about extreme religious conservatism: that's why I read it. Goodreads recommended it to me, and I sought it out because it's been bugging me lately that I know quite a lot about fundamentalist Christianity and Islam, and offences against women committed in and enabled by both those religions. I know a good deal less about the oppressive aspects of Judiasm (or, for that matter, Hinduism or Buddhism) or the cultural contexts in which they take place - although I know enough to know it happens.
So now I know more. I read this book specifically to find out about horrible and offensive practices, and sure enough I did. I also know a bunch of interesting things about how and *why* Hasidic sects formed and thrived in the period after the Holocaust. The notion that only by practicing *excessive* purity, greater purity than that which is required, could a community insure itself against westernisation and moral decay and thereby prevent another holocaust or similar event... is sickening, but not incomprehensible, given the way human logic often works. I also find it fascinating that sects utterly opposed to westernisation and adaptation to external cultural mores found a home and thrived in America - that, too, seems predictable even as it is contradictory. And it was interesting to see, in Feldman's account, the ways in which her community *had* become strongly Americanised/westernised - the insistence by even the most pious that a young bride take the pill in order to be able to consummate her marriage in a timely fashion struck me particularly.
Also unsurprising, for humans at large: that where excesses of purity are called for, the burden of maintaining that purity for the community would fall on women. Not exclusively, I'm not that silly, and there is plenty of evidence in Feldman's account that young men in her community also suffered from enforced piety and restrictions on their dress, food, reading habits, and social lives. Even less surprising: that a close-knit and sexually conservative community would cover up and refuse to expel or punish pedophilia, and would privilege systems of gender separation over listening to young women's account of sexual assault, and over teaching young men to actually engage respectfully with women.
These things, really, are the things I wanted to know - not *if* they happen, because humans are shitty, and close-knit religious communities of all stripes often particularly so. But I didn't know much about the particular shape these patterns take outside of Xnity and Islam; now I know a little more. I also know enough about religion to know that very few structures are exclusively oppressive: there are spaces for agency, comfort and happiness embedded in very distasteful traditions (like Feldman in her pre-marriage classes, I too have heard many times that the seclusion of women during and after their periods promotes marital harmony by keeping desire alive. Let's not even talk about the many many ways that's bogus logic *even though I'm sure it works for many people*). The other thing that struck me is how much her upbringing harmed Feldman. No number of couples happily abstaining two weeks of the month should justify the kind of hurt the practice caused to Feldman, even if she were the only woman ever to feel abandoned, unwanted, or useless. Her grief at being thrown together with this man for what was, for them, the ongoing trauma of extreme vaginosis and failures to consummate - only to be wrenched apart from him for weeks at a time and then round again... nothing should justify that.
Now, a literary comment: this is not a particularly *good* memoir. It is, as others have commented, too indebted to the rant-blog genre. Written so soon after the events it narrates, it lacks the element of critical self-insight which makes a good memoir. Feldman shows, I think, considerable insight into the motivations of others, but her portrait of herself is devoted to an idea of herself as special, uniquely unfit for religious conformity, rebellious, on a lifelong path to individuality unlike those around her. I don't begrudge her the book deal - whatever it took to get her out. But I do think that a decade's space would have made for a better literary product.
Baroness Orkzy, The Scarlet Pimpernel: This was fun! Classist as all get-out and radiating English smugness. But Marguerite was pretty damn fabulous, which makes up for many things.
Raymond Carver, So Much Water So Close To Home (short story): Quite an unsettling story. I liked the way the 'so much water, so close to home' refrain seemed to operate both as a protest - why go so far? why get entangled with (commit?) such things - and a warning. There's water close to home, too. It could've been you.
John Tranter (ed), Best Australian Poems 2012: A fascinating collection. Selections already posted here on the /poetry tag.
I've skipped over a few Robin Hobb books in my "read" shelf - I'm reading the Rain Wild Chronicles at the moment, and will review once I'm through all four of them.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-16 02:38 pm (UTC)Feldman is really, really young. I don't think she was much older than 25 when she wrote her memoir, and the important events only took place in the decade before that. I agree that perspective would have helped.
Somewhere I saw a roundtable discussion of the book by 5 rebels from Hasidism who blogged on the Internet. It was fascinating the kind of critiques they had. I remember that they were very harsh about the accusation of the father killing his son for masturbation. They pointed out that she hadn't seen it, and she didn't know the people involved. It was only a rumor, without enough evidence to publish. Some of the bloggers implied that they knew of the situation and that it didn't happen the way she said.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-17 09:32 am (UTC)