what are you reading now?

[Corpsey]

its not the life so much as the sensibility and the nervous system its filtered through would be my position.

Kafka's job is a good piece of evidence for this. It "involved investigating and assessing compensation for personal injury to industrial workers; accidents such as lost fingers or limbs were commonplace, owing to poor work safety policies at the time. It was especially true of factories fitted with machine lathes, drills, planing machines and rotary saws, which were rarely fitted with safety guards.[" Many people would make nothing of a job like that, but you can imagine how it played upon his peculiar sensibility.

 

[luka]

Ha, oh I see - you're talking about who should be allowed to publish novels and I'm the one being hyperbolic.

The stupid thing is that I agree with your basic gist - diversity in art is an unequivocal good, right? - but you did phrase it rather ridiculously.

thats not my gist, no.

 

[Mr. Tea]

thats not my gist, no.

Well what is it then? Are you proposing racial quotas for novelists after all?

 

[luka]

don't waste my time Tea. you're not as stupid as that, you're just being obtuse. i have to cycle to Stratford to see my mum now so hopefully someone more patient can explain it to you.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Normal service has been resumed. Another notch on the tally, another fist-pump, another lap of the living room.

 

[IdleRich]

I think everyone agrees that Martin Amis' darts player is stupid and The Wire is at least worthwhile... but neither really gives us a rule as such. Basically all that tells us is that some people write embarrassingly about stuff out of their lane and some people pull it off. The first is obviously incredibly uncomfortable to read or watch... but it's an inevitable consequence or side-effect of the second existing so I guess we put up with it.
I suppose what I'm saying is that you can't look at the darts player and say "that's shit cos MA doesn't know this culture" and then transplant that criticism of not knowing something to something good as a pre-emptive reason why it shouldn't exist. Which I feel is what some criticisms are effectively doing (not those in the thread but that I have read in the real world).

 

[you]

I was going to post these facetiously 'for Tea's benefit'.

Lionel Shriver's full speech: 'I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad'

This is the full transcript of the keynote speech, Fiction and Identity Politics, that author Lionel Shriver gave at the Brisbane Writers Festival

www.theguardian.com

Lionel Shriver and The Magical Vial of White Writers’ Tears

I spent much of my time reading writer Lionel Shriver’s recent speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival first, with my mouth open, then trying to ascertain if she was genuinely obtuse or trying to w…

scottwoodsmakeslists.wordpress.com

Shriver's recourse to extremes should be familiar territory.

---

I take issue with this nigh-autistic retort to Luka's comment about 'allowed'. Of course there are not legal documentations issued by a central body for those allowed to be published and those not. But you know, like any field, representation is skewed by a set of power relations everyone feels but cannot quite outline. There is, a certain type of person that is '%' more likely to find a book deal because of privileges they didn't earn - this is why the 'well don't read it then' response is not good enough. This type of 'what do you mean allowed?' response is akin to Shriver's use of the Sombrero in her obtuse-for-clicks bait piece. Of course a Sombrero is just a hat useful for keeping the sun off. But when it's worn for novelty value, by those with more privilege than their latino objects of caricature then it is more than a hat. Don't be deaf to this. Luka didn't mean 'allowed' in the strictest sense, but, as one a word term for how whole swathes of life are barely represented by big publishing it wasn't a bad choice.

 

[you]

I think everyone agrees that Martin Amis' darts player is stupid and The Wire is at least worthwhile... but neither really gives us a rule as such. Basically all that tells us is that some people write embarrassingly about stuff out of their lane and some people pull it off. The first is obviously incredibly uncomfortable to read or watch... but it's an inevitable consequence or side-effect of the first existing so I guess we put up with it.
I suppose what I'm saying is that you can't look at the darts player and say "that's shit cos MA doesn't know this culture" and then transplant that criticism of not knowing something to something good as a pre-emptive reason why it shouldn't exist. Which I feel is what some criticisms are effectively doing (not those in the thread but that I have read in the real world).

On one level I agree, representations of those unlike the writer are not necessarily bad. They run from nuanced, empathic, complex explorations to shallow, trite, ignorant, clumsy cut-out stereotypes. But sadly I think the latter is more common. See previous post re. publishing industry.

Further to this - the damage a naff diegetic representation does should not be overlooked. So many out of touch writers can push out a big seller that will receive eyes and column inches. The disservice this does to those 'systemically barred' (just to prod-ya Tea) from representing their life experience than that of those they know, re-entrenching shite cliches etc, needs to met with more than a pithy 'don't read bad writing, then'.

 

[IdleRich]

Sure sure. And all this stuff about access and who gets to write and get published and so on is all important and relevant etc etc
Just there are loads of things I've enjoyed - more than that, which I think are good or great art - which would have been ruled out of bounds by some commentators on these grounds and that would be a shame.... no, it would be wrong.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I was going to post these facetiously 'for Tea's benefit'.

Lionel Shriver's full speech: 'I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad'

This is the full transcript of the keynote speech, Fiction and Identity Politics, that author Lionel Shriver gave at the Brisbane Writers Festival

www.theguardian.com

Lionel Shriver and The Magical Vial of White Writers’ Tears

I spent much of my time reading writer Lionel Shriver’s recent speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival first, with my mouth open, then trying to ascertain if she was genuinely obtuse or trying to w…

scottwoodsmakeslists.wordpress.com

Shriver's recourse to extremes should be familiar territory.

---

I take issue with this nigh-autistic retort to Luka's comment about 'allowed'. Of course there are not legal documentations issued by a central body for those allowed to be published and those not. But you know, like any field, representation is skewed by a set of power relations everyone feels but cannot quite outline. There is, a certain type of person that is '%' more likely to find a book deal because of privileges they didn't earn - this is why the 'well don't read it then' response is not good enough. This type of 'what do you mean allowed?' response is akin to Shriver's use of the Sombrero in her obtuse-for-clicks bait piece. Of course a Sombrero is just a hat useful for keeping the sun off. But when it's worn for novelty value, by those with more privilege than their latino objects of caricature then it is more than a hat. Don't be deaf to this. Luka didn't mean 'allowed' in the strictest sense, but, as one a word term for how whole swathes of life are barely represented by big publishing it wasn't a bad choice.

Are you really trying to cast me as some Shriverian right-wing culture warrior while using "autistic" essentially as a stand-in for "retarded"? Come off it.

 

[luka]

thank god the cavalry has arrived

 

[luka]

but lets not get sucked into teas game. not everything has to be about him. we can sideline him and skirt around him hopefully.

 

[IdleRich]

So many out of touch writers can push out a big seller that will receive eyes and column inches. The disservice this does to those 'systemically barred' (just to prod-ya Tea) from representing their life experience than that of those they know, re-entrenching shite cliches etc, needs to met with more than a pithy 'don't read bad writing, then'.

Yeeeeeeees.... but even ignoring this debate, there will always be shit writing. In the most facile way, the advice to read as much good and as little bad as possible is the only rule. We can't expect it to sort out good and representations... but then we can't expect it to sort out anything else either. But then it's kinda the only thing there is.

 

[IdleRich]

Maybe people complaining about bad representation is part of the body of criticism that hopefully acts as a guide to doing this.

 

[pattycakes_]

Not to derail the scintillating conversation sparked by (the very important) JKR, but I'd just like to share my review of Heart of Darkness:

"fuck."

 

[Corpsey]

(Based on reading it a few years ago) I really liked HoD up until he got to the end of the river and met Kurtz. It culminates in an anticlimax, just as Apocalypse Now did.

 

[catalog]

i read it years ago on a plane and thought it was crap, but then i read a comic of it recently which was really good

 

[catalog]

one of those, for me, where i know apocalypse now quite well and really like it, and i think it's better

 

[pattycakes_]

(Based on reading it a few years ago) I really liked HoD up until he got to the end of the river and met Kurtz. It culminates in an anticlimax, just as Apocalypse Now did.

Because of the state of Kurtz?

I thought it was spot on. Consumed by the jungle.

 

[luka]

corpsey wanted there to be a big explosion at the end. and some topless girls.