This book blew my mind when I read it as a teenager. Reread it about 10 years. and not all of it has aged well, (got a lot of gender essentialism that...moreThis book blew my mind when I read it as a teenager. Reread it about 10 years. and not all of it has aged well, (got a lot of gender essentialism that made me roll my eyes) but it's still absolutely worth the time. Not only worth the time in itself, it's also fascinating seeing the impact its had on the way we tell stories, and to catch a glimpse of the story of the hero we keep telling. For better or for worse. So many movies and books are almost scene for scene patterned on it; everything from Star Wars to Ghost Busters to The Devil Wears Prada. Even the last movie I watched, Serenity (we see it every year at the Equality Now charity screening) draws from it, though with some nice twists.
Because of it, I know to watch for the moment where the hero puts on the skin of the enemy. The key bit, of course, is to take it off again. (less)
. . . so. yeah. Naked Lunch. I have now read it. Or something.
I cannot say I understood it, and so I shall talk about myself. I am in a reading group...more. . . so. yeah. Naked Lunch. I have now read it. Or something.
I cannot say I understood it, and so I shall talk about myself. I am in a reading group; been in it for about ten years. It has awesome women, most of which are demographically distinct from me on a variety of metrics; race, religion, generation, income, profession (though it is becoming more lawyerly as the years roll on). Because of my reading group, I had the great joy of explaining “tea bagging” in the John Waters sense of the word, to several African American women of a certain age; an accomplishment I probably rank closer to my law school summa than I should admit. Great people. But the books. Some are good books I would likely never read but for a reading group; I probably never would have read The Maltese Falcon but for the group, and that was an important bit of cultural education I would have missed. Some are sweet, jewel box depictions of an ordinary life. I loath sweet, jewel box depictions of ordinary life. Nails on a blackboard.
There’s also an increasing subset of books that tell an important story (The Help, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Sarah’s Key all jump to mind) but do so by thrusting some reading-group friendly middle class white woman into the narrative and using her as the POV character. And these annoy me because it puts this reading-group friendly Mary Sue into the center of these fascinating, important stories that she may have the right to tell, but not the right to thrust herself into. It’s like historical fan fiction, only with a lot less sex with great historical figures. It makes me grumpy.
So, there’s this book. I can’t claim any great insight about it, but it strikes me that it’s like the negative image of both of the types of books I find tiresome. No middle class, well educated white woman carrying us through this narrative; giving us a point of entry and easy plot exposition, oh no. The POV (I can’t say character; I think there were legion, but I am not sanguine I understood those perspectives the story shifted through) is constantly fragmenting, constantly witnessing horrible things, regularly participating in horrible things, and yet none of it seems to touch him. Or, by extension, me the reader, even as I blink at the page thinking – well, that puts Warren Ellis’s Crooked Little Vein in perspective. Godzilla Bukakke? Pishaw. Nor is there anything in this text as pedestrian and sanitary as tea-bagging. No jewel box depiction of an ordinary life. No coherent narrative at all, and if there was a jewel box, it was made of something that is now soggy and drenched with seminal fluids, effluent, and pus.
(And yes, I recognize, I am doing what I dislike in the books we often read in my reading group; inserting a middle class white woman into all this).
(Note to self; has there been a Mary Sue insertion into this book somewhere in the vast fan fiction universe? Do I dare to google? Or, perhaps, a cross over with the Twelve Labors of Hercules, with a handy river?)
(Oh, that was distressingly counterrevolutionary, wasn’t it? And possibly a violation of my environmentalist street cred. Sigh).
The text I had begins with a brief Massachusetts Supreme Court opinion reversing a trial court’s conclusion that the book was obscene on the less than ringing grounds that while the book is “grossly offensive” and “may appeal to the prurient interest of deviants and those curious about deviants. . . . The record did not show that the book has been ‘commercially exploited for the sake of prurient appeal.”’ Without prejudice to a future challenge should the book be so commercially exploited. “We cannot conceive of a way this book could be so exploited, but if someone does, feel free to re-file,” seemed the unspoken bit.
It reminded not a little of A Scanner Darkly; another book I darkly suspect I did not understand.
So. Yeah. Plus five to crossing a seminal text off the reading list. So there’s that. Can’t say as I understood it. I read every word, and looked up not a few. I flagged only one passage:
“You are agent, mister?” “I prefer the word. . . vector.”
(182). Yeah. Vector. I think that’s what the prosecutors were afraid of. Perverse and not at all polymorphously; if they hadn’t banned it, I doubt I would have ever read it. First Amendment values, yo. Or something.
I’ve seen citations to this book for decades, and it’s been on my shelf, unread-by-me, nearly as long. Finally read it. Kuhn contends that the then-ac...moreI’ve seen citations to this book for decades, and it’s been on my shelf, unread-by-me, nearly as long. Finally read it. Kuhn contends that the then-accepted description of scientific process as a largely smooth increase in human knowledge isn’t accurate. Instead, it’s Hegelian-esque: an accepted model less and less satisfactory as more and more things are observed that do not fit; new models emerge and are resisted for reasons rational and not; and one fine day, the paradigm shifts. For reasons rational and not, a new model becomes accepted. Repeat, with variations.
Reading it now, it’s a little unsatisfying. Yes, paradigms shift. Seen it happen. Some critical number of those in the relevant field of inquiry accept a paradigm, and there’s a new paradigm. Science, law, economics, whatever. I found myself in the odd position of explaining the gold standard, and what it means to have abandoned it, to a chum last Saturday. A paradigm shifted. In that, by a matter of decree, but still, only after some critical number of those in the relevant field accepted that a currency could be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, and not just gold.
Kuhn suggests that paradigms don’t just shift because the new one is better; society doesn’t operate that way. Social enthusiasm for an idea matters a lot. Apparently that pissed a lot of people off at the time, which again from 2012 seems a little silly. We’re not just rational actors. I know I’m not. I loved Kuhn’s illustration of that with Lord Kelvin denouncing X-rays as a hoax. He had a commitment to a certain understanding of how tests worked, and the fact that there could be X-rays messing up the procedures was unsettling. I’m sure he came around.
I suspect I found the book somewhat unsatisfying because it’s central thesis – that we aren’t just rational; that progress is not slow and steady, and that the paradigm matters – is so well accepted that it’s hard to get excited about. Which is pleasingly meta, now that I come to think about it. (less)
What is there left to say about The Hobbit? 25 years since I read it last, and there are bits I know like I read them last year. Smeagol. Smaug. The R...moreWhat is there left to say about The Hobbit? 25 years since I read it last, and there are bits I know like I read them last year. Smeagol. Smaug. The Ring. The Spiders in the Trees. The me-alienating lack of women. And there are bits of which I have no recollection. The man we meet an instant before he draws back the bow and kills the dragon. Beorn the bear. The cognitive dissonance of having the wolves be the bad guys. All these scenes of exclusion and essentialism Terry Pratchett gently, lovingly, and devastatingly critiques in the later Discworld books.
I cannot say that I love Tolkien, though I wish I did. I do love what the humanist English fantasy writers have done with Tolkien.
A seminal text. Slightly bittersweet to re-read, but well worth the time. (less)
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