Reading for the Hugos - a personal view
I mostly keep my blog reasonably politically neutral, for so many of my friends have so many wonderful views and I love it that you can all meet up here. Today I’m breaking my rule. Again.
I’ve been following the Hugo awards closely this year for so many reasons. I’ve already said that I’ll read everything I can get hold of, regardless of who wrote it. Scalzi suggesting that we all read everything has become a subject of controversy in some circles. I do agree he’s suggesting this from a position of privilege (it’s easier for him, and he is probably aware of this) but I’ll also be reading everything I can get hold of.
The fact that the work has been short-listed and I can get hold of it is sufficient to provoke this reaction. The new article by Foz Meadows has got me thinking, though, that maybe I should explain myself a bit.
Beale’s is not the kind of writing I enjoy, so I generally avoid his fiction. His non-fiction I won’t go near with a barge pole except in very specific circumstances. I checked his blog and some posts out, ages ago, in the interest of fairness, when the SFWA stuff happened. Then I checked it out again (in disbelief) when he said those very strange things about Jemisin and others. I let his own words convince me that he and I live in different universes and that his universe is one I want no part of. I read him because I do try to read people’s own opinions in the shape they give to them in public. I try not to rely on summaries or extracts by other parties. I did this for Hitler (yes, reader, Mein Kampf and I have made intimate acquaintance, albeit in English translation) so it’s only fair I do it for others.
No reader is a fair and dispassionate judge. Craft is not independent of the creator and reading is not independent of the reader. My concept of the perfect work of art bears my interests and my personality like a deep imprint. We share ourselves with the fiction we read. It says something about me that the best-written book out there for me - the gold standard against which others are compared - is To Kill a Mockingbird – this shows what kind of reader I am.
I am, however, a trained reader. I should be able to see the person and culture beneath the writing for myself and to assess the writing and make up my own mind as to the relationship between the two, the quality of the latter and so forth. This is why I’m reading everything I can get hold of for the Hugos and why I will not make an exception for this one work. I need to retain my trust in my own reading and judgement. There is a vast difference between a thousand people bringing shared and thoughtful views together and sitting in judgement on a group of works, and a thousand people baying at the moon.
I’m a bit of an outlier on this, I suspect, especially when really, really I never want to meet Beale. Partly I have a need to understand what makes people with privilege hurt other people, but partly it’s because my particular privilege (my education, my brain) brings with it the responsibility to make my own judgement about any given work of literature and, in this instance (because I’m eligible to vote) make my voice heard. Privilege brings responsibility. It’s not always about being shiny and pretty and blessed by life.
This is what I do with my privilege – I read as much as I can stomach and then more again, just to make certain. And I judge. Just as any critical reader will, I judge. Ask me about my views on Orson Scott Card’s writing some day…for I have views. That is, in fact, the whole point.
Judgement leads to some strange realities, sometimes. I started reading the nominated work yesterday, but had to stop for a bit to laugh at the Latin. This doesn’t bode well for my vote. A writer who doesn’t check their foreign languages with an editor or someone who knows a bit more is going to work that much harder with me to get me to respond positively to the work. Readers are not neutral and bad Latin, Italian, French make me laugh, every time. I’ll get past the laughter and read the work seriously. But first I have to get past the laughter.
We should get past the laughter and past the pre-reading pain. We should criticise. We should think things through. And we should make up our own minds.
This is not dividing the work from its creator – it’s maintaining our own capacity to live in a complex and dangerous society and to retain who we are and to use that right to vote as our own small part of privilege. For me, either I read none of the works and don’t vote, or I read everything I possibly can and I think it through, for myself.
I do understand when it’s easier to follow the crowd and accept an agreed opinion. When the molotov cocktails ‘happened’ in the ACT (the Jewish community was attacked) the meeting at Parliament House was carefully arranged so that everyone Jewish of note would agree with the cabinet Minister who met with us to make everything right. The minister in question tried to get it minuted that the whole thing was probably a group of teenage boys who were up to mischief. I questioned this approach, gently. I was the one whose hand the minister refused to shake at the end of the meeting.
I don’t make big waves. I’m obdurate, but not important. But I will read works for myself and I will form my own opinion. And if it means someone doesn’t want to shake my hand at the end of the day, then they’re in fine company.
I’ve been following the Hugo awards closely this year for so many reasons. I’ve already said that I’ll read everything I can get hold of, regardless of who wrote it. Scalzi suggesting that we all read everything has become a subject of controversy in some circles. I do agree he’s suggesting this from a position of privilege (it’s easier for him, and he is probably aware of this) but I’ll also be reading everything I can get hold of.
The fact that the work has been short-listed and I can get hold of it is sufficient to provoke this reaction. The new article by Foz Meadows has got me thinking, though, that maybe I should explain myself a bit.
Beale’s is not the kind of writing I enjoy, so I generally avoid his fiction. His non-fiction I won’t go near with a barge pole except in very specific circumstances. I checked his blog and some posts out, ages ago, in the interest of fairness, when the SFWA stuff happened. Then I checked it out again (in disbelief) when he said those very strange things about Jemisin and others. I let his own words convince me that he and I live in different universes and that his universe is one I want no part of. I read him because I do try to read people’s own opinions in the shape they give to them in public. I try not to rely on summaries or extracts by other parties. I did this for Hitler (yes, reader, Mein Kampf and I have made intimate acquaintance, albeit in English translation) so it’s only fair I do it for others.
No reader is a fair and dispassionate judge. Craft is not independent of the creator and reading is not independent of the reader. My concept of the perfect work of art bears my interests and my personality like a deep imprint. We share ourselves with the fiction we read. It says something about me that the best-written book out there for me - the gold standard against which others are compared - is To Kill a Mockingbird – this shows what kind of reader I am.
I am, however, a trained reader. I should be able to see the person and culture beneath the writing for myself and to assess the writing and make up my own mind as to the relationship between the two, the quality of the latter and so forth. This is why I’m reading everything I can get hold of for the Hugos and why I will not make an exception for this one work. I need to retain my trust in my own reading and judgement. There is a vast difference between a thousand people bringing shared and thoughtful views together and sitting in judgement on a group of works, and a thousand people baying at the moon.
I’m a bit of an outlier on this, I suspect, especially when really, really I never want to meet Beale. Partly I have a need to understand what makes people with privilege hurt other people, but partly it’s because my particular privilege (my education, my brain) brings with it the responsibility to make my own judgement about any given work of literature and, in this instance (because I’m eligible to vote) make my voice heard. Privilege brings responsibility. It’s not always about being shiny and pretty and blessed by life.
This is what I do with my privilege – I read as much as I can stomach and then more again, just to make certain. And I judge. Just as any critical reader will, I judge. Ask me about my views on Orson Scott Card’s writing some day…for I have views. That is, in fact, the whole point.
Judgement leads to some strange realities, sometimes. I started reading the nominated work yesterday, but had to stop for a bit to laugh at the Latin. This doesn’t bode well for my vote. A writer who doesn’t check their foreign languages with an editor or someone who knows a bit more is going to work that much harder with me to get me to respond positively to the work. Readers are not neutral and bad Latin, Italian, French make me laugh, every time. I’ll get past the laughter and read the work seriously. But first I have to get past the laughter.
We should get past the laughter and past the pre-reading pain. We should criticise. We should think things through. And we should make up our own minds.
This is not dividing the work from its creator – it’s maintaining our own capacity to live in a complex and dangerous society and to retain who we are and to use that right to vote as our own small part of privilege. For me, either I read none of the works and don’t vote, or I read everything I possibly can and I think it through, for myself.
I do understand when it’s easier to follow the crowd and accept an agreed opinion. When the molotov cocktails ‘happened’ in the ACT (the Jewish community was attacked) the meeting at Parliament House was carefully arranged so that everyone Jewish of note would agree with the cabinet Minister who met with us to make everything right. The minister in question tried to get it minuted that the whole thing was probably a group of teenage boys who were up to mischief. I questioned this approach, gently. I was the one whose hand the minister refused to shake at the end of the meeting.
I don’t make big waves. I’m obdurate, but not important. But I will read works for myself and I will form my own opinion. And if it means someone doesn’t want to shake my hand at the end of the day, then they’re in fine company.
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