Can’t Go Back Home Again?: A Look Back on Twenty-Five Years of Life, Reading, and Reviewing

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory. - Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

2024 is shaping up to be a déjà vu sort of year for me.  Next month, I turn 50 and it will be 25 years since my first paid teaching job.  Yet after 23 years, I am returning to that school to teach history.  This is after I spent the last two months of 2023-24 school year teaching at another school where I did my student teaching in the spring of 1999.  Today, I just received a refurbished Dreamcast game console in the mail; I bought my first one on US release day back on 9/9/1999.  Next, I’ll probably turn on the radio and hear Santana’s “Smooth” or the New Radical’s “You Get What You Give” - both hits during the summer of 1999.

And yet so, so much has changed in the interim.  Every so often, maybe once every couple of months or so, I’ll try to follow links in my sidebar to sites that I used to visit and comment on frequently.  Take a look at it now:  it is more of a graveyard of sites, some who haven’t posted any updates since before my own gradual withdrawal from online book commentary that began in 2015.  The ones who do comment seem to not be talking much of anything new - I recognize still the authors, basic genres, and so forth - but yet there is a lot of silence even within those words, as if the writers (some of whom I would consider to be acquaintance-level friends even today, despite my near-total abandonment of reviewing in recent years) themselves are no longer as connected to something greater than a shrinking, small circle of like-minded people.

Of course, a lot of this can be seen in light of the technological changes since 2010, which seems to me to be around the highwater point of online book reviewing/blogging.  2010 was the year that I joined the then-Twitter and while it was exhilarating at times for the first couple of years getting to know even more people across 5-6 continents, communicating at times in 3 different languages, things just seemed to devolve the more “social” things got.  I’m not going to claim complete innocence in past comments on certain topics and people, but somewhere along the way, it seems that discussing a written work became less about how that work had a personal impact and more about what it could say about contemporary issues.  Not that there isn’t a time and place for such things, but when the Author(s) become the focal point of discourse, then what is contained within the Text(s) often becomes less important.  After a while, it was just a seeming hamster’s wheel of arguments over which authors should be considered for which accolades.  I never even bothered to get into the nascent Goodreads communities of a decade ago because of what I noticed going on in several of them that were linked to tweets that I read on my feed.

I just drifted away by late 2015.  I would read some, but I just didn’t fill fulfilled by writing about what I read or by what others were discussing.  I was just burned out by everything.  So I left.  Like Wolfe’s characters, I had to physically leave in order to find out something about myself, even if that meant a sort of permanent exile of sorts from a former time and “home.” 

However, lately I have begun questioning this line of thought.  Yes, me at 50 will be a very different “first year” teacher at my current school than the callow 25 year-old version.  Just like my experience in loading GD-ROM Dreamcast games that I played new back in 1999-2001, there is something “retro” about my relationships with what I wrote back 10-20 years ago compared to today.  Re-reading some of my reviews is akin to rediscovering things long forgotten.  And apparently, there were things written that were worth reading, considering the steady number of website visits I get for the “classics” or certain essays reviewing a line of thought compared to what was in “the rage” in other parts of the blogosphere that I visited.  Not everyone is satisfied with ***** commentaries with too-brief discussions and maybe a “dinosaur” such as this blog should write more to meet the needs of its creator and those who just maybe want something written that reminds them of a less group-centric literary discussion nature and something that, if not quite the home of years past, may provide something, or anything, that may serve to connect a lived past with an imagined present.

We’ll see, but I’ll try to start writing weekly or biweekly essays and occasional reviews of what I am reading, even if 99% of it is different from what I reviewed in 2008.  I am different now, after all…

A few thoughts on the passings of Harper Lee and Umberto Eco

This past Friday saw the passing of two of my favorite writers, Harper Lee and Umberto Eco.  For very different reasons, each has influenced me as a reader.  At the risk of writing treacly tripe, I just wanted to share a bit about what I enjoyed about their works.

I first encountered Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird as part of my college prep junior English summer reading list.  Although there were several other "worthy" books there that I also enjoyed (Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon being one of them), there was something special about Lee's book that took me years to understand.  Perhaps it was a shared affinity for our hometowns, despite the ugliness that underlay local society.  Perhaps it was just the games of youth created before the age of internet and advanced video games that captivated me.  Or maybe it was this nascent, barely self-aware, sense of outrage at the world's cruelties that fascinated me.  But I suspect, in addition to these possibilities suggested to me through my experiences as an adult, what I really enjoyed about To Kill a Mockingbird was that it was a story of juvenile growth that did not dismiss the worries and concerns of childhood, but instead it was a story of humaneness in the midst of casual injustice.

Lee's interest in exploring Scout's growing awareness of the social hypocrisies around her is seen even further in the pre-Mockingbird draft, Go Set a Watchman, that was published last year.  Despite the controversies surrounding its publication and some of the character arcs, I found that novel exploring certain intriguing avenues (such as Jean Louise's clashes with her father and uncle) that the later To Kill a Mockingbird obfuscated due to its switch in focus to Scout's formative years.  As a Southerner who has conflicted views about his native region, I found Lee's exploration of similar concerns to be comforting, as her characters worked through certain doubts and conflicts in a fashion that enabled me to work through my own issues as a teenager.

But if Lee's works sparked an emotional response to matters of society and racism (and the hypocrisies that exist at their merging bounds), then Umberto Eco's works, fiction and non-fiction alike, stimulated a more intellectual response to human conflicts and the desire to understand collected knowledge.  I remember first discovering Eco by accident a little over twenty years ago, when I was outside looking through the free bin at the Knoxville McKay's used book and music store when I discovered a battered paperback, missing the front cover.  The blurb about a medieval mystery intrigued me, so I kept it for Christmas Break reading a few weeks later. 

Having taken courses in medieval intellectual history and Latin provided me with some insights into what Eco's characters were discussing and what really fascinated me was how easily he mixed the arcane with the familiar, the secular with the religious.  There was a very palpable narrative tension (William Weaver did an outstanding job with the translation; the original Italian was only slightly smoother in shifting between the erudite discussions in Latin and the vernacular) throughout the novel, yet the source of this tension was something I had never really encountered in fiction before.  Over the next few years, I read his latter novels (reading the last three soon upon their publications, the last two in Italian before the English translation was published) and found myself mesmerized by how he could mix in conspiracy theories, legenda, and humor to create engrossing tales.

Yet the more I read Eco, the more curious I became about his non-fiction.  I knew something of semiotics from grad school, but reading translations of Serendipities, Kant and the Platypus, and Mouse or Rat?, not to mention his illustrated books on beauty, ugliness, and lists, deepened my appreciation for him as a thinker.  Reading Eco is not best for more passive readers.  He wants the reader to engage with the texts, both as if they were veritable scriptures and as if they were elaborate forgeries that had to be cracked.  He "lies" to us, or perhaps reveals our possible self-deceptions through his examination of texts.  As he states in the opening chapter, "The Force of Falsity," to Serendipities regarding historical forgeries:

And yet each of these stories had a virtue:  as narratives, they seemed plausible, more than everyday or historical reality, which is far more complex and less credible.  The stories seemed to explain something that was otherwise hard to understand. (p. 17)

This "falsification" of the inexplicable in order to create coherency (albeit not a truthful one) is something he explores in multiple fashions across his works.  It is, as he said in the introduction to his book Dire Quasi la Stessa Cosa (Saying Almost the Same Thing):

Ecco il senso dei capitoli che seguono:  cercare di capire come, pur sapendo che non si dice mai la stessa cosa, si possa dire quasi la stessa cosa.  A questo punto ciò che fa problema non è più tanto l'idea della stessa cosa, né quella della stessa cosa, bensì l'idea di quel quasi. (p. 10)

This is the meaning of the following chapters: trying to understand how, despite knowing that although one never says the same thing, you can say almost the same thing. At this point the problem arises is not so much the idea of the same thing, nor that of the same thing, but the idea of that almost.

As my Italian reading comprehension is weaker than my Spanish or Portuguese, the translation is likely "rough," but yet that roughness and imprecision serves to underscore Eco's point.  It is never about saying the exact thing, providing the exact truth, but rather it's more about those almost truths from which we construct our understandings of the world and our perceived realities.  Embedded within this are our semantic memories (a topic he explores within his relatively underrated The Flame of Queen Loana), the fount from which our world views arise.

In reading Eco, especially his non-fiction, I found my interpretations of reality to be tested.  Certain narratives were rejected in favor of other, perhaps equally "false" but still more plausible, ones.  Sometimes it felt as though I were slowly being let in on a grand joke, albeit one in which I was partially the punchline.  In re-reading some of his works these past two days, I cannot help but feel we have lost a great thinker and forger of plausible lies.  Coupled with the emotional resonance I found in Lee's work, these two now-departed writers perhaps, more than most, if not all other writers, have helped mold me as a reader.  But while in certain senses the Authors are Dead, their texts still live on.  Now to free up some time to delve back into them and see how I shall be touched again on a re-read and how I might still be transformed as a reader.

Renovatio blogis

I said four months ago (using April Fool's Day as a cover) that I was contemplating shuttering this blog after nearly eleven years.  There were many reasons why I had reduced my blogging frequency (and by extension, my overall online profile) since mid-January:  focusing on weight loss/fitness improvement; burnout on reading much after a decade of reading on average 400 books a year; general ennui with the circular nature of tangentially book-related discussions; increasing discomfort with the sorts of "conversations" I was seeing on social media; etc.  I didn't really go into detail then and I'm not going to now, but being the sort of person who prefers thesis-antithesis=synthesis in the realm of ideas to rehashing ad hominem attacks or feeling pressured to give "hot takes" on ephemeral social controversies du jour, it was easier to just bow out than to continue to be inundated with repetitive crap.  I'm also much more of an extravert than many, so it was easier to find stimulating conversation at work and elsewhere than it was online, so naturally I gravitated back to things that gave me much more pleasure and less irritation and aggravation.

But there is something in the art of communicating one's assessment of ideas and people via a written, electronic medium such as a blog that continues to have some appeal to me.  Oh, it's not about the number of "hits" I draw for certain pieces or about who is talking about what I said as much as it is about expressing something that might aid another in his/her search for greater understanding on a topic (especially if it's one as august as squirrel adulation).  It is interesting to see which posts draw a steady stream of visits, month after month.  One such example was a March 2014 entry where I posted my 1994 university course-assigned translation of the final 100 lines or so of Book I of Vergil's Æneid.  As of this writing, it has been viewed 768 times, more than almost all of the 2014 releases that I reviewed that year.

It is not an anomaly; more often than not, the "classics" and older literature have stronger, longer "tails" than recent fiction when it comes to views here.  My William Faulkner and Zora Neale Hurston reviews (which were first posted at Gogol's Overcoat and which receive even greater views there than here) average in the high hundreds or low thousands for page views.  Doubtless a good portion of this traffic involves high school and college students seeking something they could utilize (plagiarize?) in a report/paper, but I suspect there is something more to it than just that.  I know that from time to time I search for others' opinions on works that I'm reading and it is so difficult at times to find something that isn't linked to Amazon or Goodreads, but instead is more of a "proper" length review of the work in question.

Realizing that some, even if they rarely (if ever) comment here, see value in what I write about older literature (or even the snippets that I translate into an English-language first draft) makes it easier to continue writing in spite of the above-mentioned irritants, which likely will never completely fade away.  So while I probably won't be writing more than a handful of times a month for a while still (my desktop's motherboard failed last week and my Macbook at six years is ancient; blogging via my iPhone is out of the question), I believe that when I do resume writing on a more regular basis that there might be a renewal of spirit to be found.  After all, I'm the critic whose opinion is the only one worth considering here, so the new content will reflect my interests more so than anyone else's.  So there might be some language-related material mixed in with discussion of which Library of America editions I've bought lately, topped off with occasional scandalous squirrel pornography.

Now excuse me while I try to decide which books I'm going to keep and which 150-200 I'm going to sell/trade this month.  Maybe I should post photos of those?

When "101" just doesn't cut it anymore

Most students who've attended an American university have experience with an "101":  an introductory survey to a discipline that is meant to provide a broad parameter of that discipline's general features.  As a survey course, it focuses much more on a bigger picture than it does on exploring any particular detail in course.  For some, 101 courses are a gateway to more advanced, specialized training, while for others they either provide only what they were seeking in the first place (broad, general knowledge) or they were just requirements that were endured and best forgotten.

The "101" can also be an analogy for certain discussions, particularly those that are meant to be a general challenge to social assumptions.  It's been a couple of weeks since I've had the time to blog about anything, but I've been vaguely aware of the number of debates spawned by an article/challenge by K. Tempest Bradford last month regarding the challenging of her readers to spend a year not reading white, straight, cisgendered male writers.  As such challenges typically go, it provoked more than just a challenge to read differently; it made several react against the very notion that they needed to be challenged at all.

In thinking about the uproar caused by this modest challenge (I say "modest" in that it is not a materially onerous goal), I found myself thinking about certain survey course debates.  One salient example is that of how much coverage should be given to certain civilizations vis à vis others.  It is an enduring, important debate in social studies and there are several valid arguments made by various sides, not all of which are in total opposition to the others.  When it comes to Bradford's challenge, several made various iterations of this particular debate, although often it was used to excuse those people from participating (as though not going whole hog on this were somehow a horrid thing!).

However, there is an inherent weakness to challenges such as Bradford's, namely that they have to be general surveys and not in-depth explorations of certain topics.  By merely saying "read more X writers," which is basically what this challenge boils down to, the reader is challenged to participate foremost in a quantitative process (increasing number of books read in the target group/s) and not so much in a qualitative assessment of why certain works should be read.  After all, it is easy to read a set number.  It is much more difficult to process what was just read and apply that to other literature read over a period of time.

Last month, I began a re-read of the two-volume Library of America collection of nine novels written by writers of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s.  So far, I have only reviewed one book, Jean Toomer's Cane, yet I found myself thinking about certain issues of identity expressed in that marvelous work.  Of particular interest was the author's own self-identity; he did not want to be identified as either black or white.  In knowing this, the language of the poems and vignettes there reflects this particular self-view.  It was also interesting, when doing background research on the book's initial reception, in how divided the reactions were among the black writers of the time, as Toomer's use of the then-revolutionary Modernist approach to narrative threatened, in some of their minds, the fragile equilibrium achieved in balancing white and black audience expectations for then-contemporary black literature.  In reading Cane and then beginning Richard Wright's posthumously published first novel, Lawd Today (then labeled as Cesspool), while sampling other writers of the Harlem Renaissance, there were some interesting fault lines that emerged when it came to social customs, religion, sexuality, and political views.  And through it all, threading a fine needle, was the central question of identity: "Who am I and how do I make it in this world around me?" 

This is what crops up repeatedly in the readings I've done over the years of authors who were of various skin tones, genders, ages, abilities, and faiths.  There are some interesting intersections, such as thematic resonances of the works of William Faulkner and the writers of the Latin American Boom Generation, as well as some expected (and yet sometimes surprising divergences).  This is what a reader can experience if s/he chooses to read widely, not just along the parameters of Bradford's challenge, but also across genres and non-fiction fields (W.E.B. Du Bois's 1896 history, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade, is a captivating read nearly 120 years later).

However, this analysis of writers and how their thoughts reflect or oppose the espirit du temps is not "101" material.  It involves more than just saying, "I've read 30 books by X group of writers" to accomplish anything.  Anyone can read assignments and pass certain tests, but it takes much more self-reflection to integrate what one has read and make it a part of their own self-identity.  Challenges are well and good, yet they often don't go far enough.  Yes, it would be great if more people read works by writers who are not part of the dominant social group/s, but if they aren't talking about or debating these works' merits with others, then is the full benefit of such exercises being reached?

I have my doubts about this.  I do worry at times that such important things can be reduced to a sort of competition or status of belonging.  "Well, you need to read more of this!" can easily be construed as an attack on another's value/priority systems, even if such was never intended.  While I certainly don't think this is ever the intent of such challenges, it certainly can devolve to such in the minds of those who feel there is no real encouragement to discuss the merits of this works, but instead ponder if it may not be worth it.  It is difficult to combat these perceptions, honest as they are (errare humanum est, after all), unless there is a mutual willingness to go beyond "101" and delve into a host of related issues together to find, if not commonality, then at least grounds for further exploration and discussion.  It is only then, I suspect, that the true fruits of diverse reading and writing can ripen and be enjoyed fully.

Brief thoughts on the Nebula shortlists

So the latest installment of the Nebula Awards shortlists have now been released.  It's a list, yes, but as a reader of all sorts of fictions, it is a disappointing list, one that (especially in the novel category, but to some degree in other categories) still gives off that faint miasmic whiff of logrolling and "political" blocs.  Yes, there are some very good works on there (including two on the Novel shortlist), but really do we have to nominate yet another Jack McDevitt or his seeming generational successor, Ann Leckie?

Perhaps as an increasingly distant outsider, I am missing some subtly great stories, but it seems, based on admittedly spotty sampling of the finalists, that while there is some experimentation and broadening of scope beyond the so-called "core genre," that no matter how much some gussy up their tales with needed socio-cultural diverse characters and locales, the main content and story focus remain very much stuck in the same paradigms of the past four decades.  The majority of the stories I've read from these SF publishers are stagnant; they seem to focus more on demonstrating too much of an "awareness" of previous genre stories, skimping too much on developing new models, new techniques for these changing worlds of ours.

Maybe I'm just disappointed that this feels like the literary equivalent of Nickelback or Coldplay.  Sure, many loved them once, but the repetition of formula yields diminishing returns over the years.  Same seems to hold true with contemporary SF, or at least that which is heralded as being of it, by it, and for it and its dedicated readers.  The best SF these days, ironically, seems to be written by "literary fiction" writers.  Whenever it is translated into English, Antoine Volodine's Terminus radieux may be one of the better post-Collapse novels written this decade.  David Cronenberg's Consumed easily can be read as a SF novel, albeit one that focuses more on characterization and how people slot into an increasingly voyeuristic world.  John Darnielle's Wolf in White Van does a much better job at portraying a SFnal community/ethos than did Jo Walton's Among Others.  These books, which are just the tip of the iceberg of 2014 releases that contained SF elements, certainly would have made for a more interesting novel category than the majority of the nominees.  Again, McDevitt?  Leckie?  A disappointing Addison/Monette novel (she's written much better work, especially her short stories)?  These are the best SF novels of 2014 according to SFWA?  I cannot help but think either whole swaths of excellent stories were not read by the majority of the voters or that perhaps self-interest justified supporting some tales at the expense of plausibly much more qualified narratives.

But in the end, does it really matter, any of this?  Increasingly, I've become convinced that it doesn't.  I'm surprised that I wrote this much about a matter that is less important than discovering and championing stories that are published on the margins of these literary subfields.  Now back to reading other imaginative fictions, perchance to marvel over.

Testing canons or the constant restructuring of literary corpora

For a long while now, I have considered the issue of literature and its places and uses in contemporary society.  It was a secondary interest of mine when I was in graduate school (the primary being cultural religious concepts in practice in the early 20th century), ever since I had to present a brief summary of Paul Fussell's Wartime in a class and I found myself thinking about how certain literary concepts had become transformed when shifted back into an oral form and retransmitted through often-crude soldier compositions.  Nearly 20 years later, my opinions on it may be as fluid as ever, yet there are some interesting restructurings that have occurred in the interim.

The very concept of a "master list" or, which is much more palatable for the anarchist within me, a broadly-defined series of literary corpora is one that many can accept at a theoretical level.  There are, after all, certain works that a nation (defined here as a large cultural group that shares certain deep socio-cultural bonds in common and not as a synonym for a particular political organizing of peoples) very well might hold as being intrinsic for understanding that people:  religious texts, political tracts, histories, epic poems and fictions.  Things like Robert Burns' poetry being quoted in Scotland on Burns Night or recognizing who said "to be or not to be" or "behold I make all things new" are so familiar to certain cultures that one does not have to have been intimately familiar with the source material to understand the reference being made.

However, it is when we delve a bit further into the literary corpora that certain questions arise:  Is this material suitable today, centuries after its composition?  Are we neglecting other streams of thought by favoring this particular body of literature?  An old truism, albeit one fraught with fallibility, is that history is written by the "winners."  (In truth, histories are like any other power paradigm, with different expressions and strengths to those expressions.)  Are non-majority groups (working class, women, non-whites, non-Christians) adequately represented, whatever might be meant by "adequately?"

These are questions that not only should not be avoided, but instead they should be embraced if one wants to set about constructing any sort of national literary corpus.  I am the son of a retired high school English/literature teacher and I myself have taught literature and grammar in addition to social studies.  As is common practice, there were the sets of five books that we were required to read (and later, to teach) for certain high school lit courses.  Although I managed to avoid having teaching it, I remember questioning the validity of having John Knowles' A Separate Peace on the sophomore reading list when its setting (an all-white boarding school around the time of World War II) and characters were almost polar opposites of the experiences of the majority-black urban public school students I was teaching at the time.  Although there are many elements to Knowles' story that recommend it to many sorts of readers, it would have been very difficult to present it as something vital, something important to readers who had become accustomed to not being represented at all (or even worse, in token fashion) in school reading curricula.

What does a teacher or literature professor do when confronted with this reality?  After all, it isn't feasible to develop multiple, parallel reading lists or other literary canons in miniature without destroying the very concept of a national literary corpus.  Yet the possible solutions are fraught with difficulties, which those who are opposed to the reimagination of the reading lists take glee in pointing out.  How should we go about making the reading lists, and by extension, our understanding of what constitutes national "literary canon" more inclusive without seeming to "dilute" the quality of the literature or destroying even the shredded remnants of what formerly was a universally held understanding of what "all Americans should know?" (I use American literature here as an example as it is my native culture; similar arguments, albeit with different constituent works, would apply for other national literatures).

One solution, albeit not a perfect one (none are; we are a fractious species, after all) is to expand and to make the incorporation of diverse perspectives a foundational principle of understanding American culture and its literatures.  By all means introduce students to the First and Second Great Awakenings and the Transcendentalist Movement.  Just also introduce them to the writers of the Harlem Renaissance or the socialist writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Have them question why certain writers outside dominant American literary circles utilized similar sources (the Bible, Shakespeare, the Declaration of Independence, the letters of Lincoln, etc.) to argue for radically different paths for American society in the fiction, poetry, and non-fiction of the past two centuries.  By being aware of the similarity in sources as well as the divergences in interpretation and application, readers can be exposed to a wealth of different understandings of American history and literature in a way that shows the full truth of e pluribus unum without whitewashing the ideas or smothering dissenting views.

National literary corpora are not made to be static entities; they must be tested, tried, and occasionally discarded lest the national discourse become stale and enfeebled.  Two centuries ago, a "well-read" American would be able to quote Thucydides and Horace in the original Greek and Latin.  Today, while still esteemed by some, knowledge of either, in translation or in the original tongues, is not essential; their ideas, however, have been disseminated through others influenced by them.  Sometimes, it is preferable for certain texts, or at least certain interpretations derived from them, to fall away and be cast in the dustbins of history.  Surely few lament those execrable justifications for chattel slavery derived from Biblical passages!

But at the same time, as the literary corpora expand at a time when "deep" reading appears to have declined, there also should be a fight of sorts to find ourselves within our literary texts.  What does it mean to be a member of a nation?  In what do we really believe?  What is "natural law" and why do some believe that not only does it exist, but that it is essential to explaining just what we are?  Why should we study history and politics and literature in the first place, if each is controlled by other groups?  It is easy to acquiesce to current situations and to accept passively what is presented to us.  It is much more difficult, yet much more rewarding (and challenging!) to question all that is around us.

That notion of "critical thinking," however is much more easily packaged and pitched as a panacea in education than it is anything that can be instilled in readers.  To become a "critical thinker" means, at least in part, an abnegation of our own selves.  We cannot remain unchanged in this endeavor.  We have to test ourselves, deny certain preconceptions we have made.  We have to be remade anew through this enterprise.  To be anything less than "all in" is to become but a consumer of content, guzzling down pre-digested ideas and concepts and doing little else with the information but to argue matters of plot and favorite characters, with no real interest in what it all means.  I say this not to belittle those who do read for these purposes, merely to note that there are other literary worlds undreamt of in their philosophies.

All this, however, is so far only posturing.  However, I have also put into action certain practices that I hope will further and deepen my own literary education.  One such thing is a renewed focus on reading and reviewing both older and current American literary works, including non-fiction.  Over the next few years, I plan on reading and reviewing at least 20 books from the Library of America series.  These reviews (including the dozens I have already written over the past three years) shall help me in testing whether or not these works still retain their importance or if, as I suspect might be in the case for at least a few, they represent more past strains of American literary/social thought than current or future trends.

By writing about these hundreds (I have 139 volumes at present out of 266 due to be published by June) of works over a long period of time, I suspect I'll be exposed to more than just the "familiar suspects" of American letters.  Although there are certain key omissions to the Library of America series (some of which are slowly being rectified over the past two decades, namely works by women and people of color), there should be enough of a spectrum of American literature provided to make for several in-depth essays.  Hopefully, this reading/reviewing project will help me develop further as a literary critic and as a human being as well.  If this is not the ultimate purpose in testing literary canons and reconstructing my understanding of literary corpora, then what purpose is there to engage with these works at all?

The limitations of group discussions involving exemplary writers

This evening, I was scrolling through my links page when I saw a day-old post on A Dribble of Ink entitled "Let's talk about science fiction books by women."  Before reading the article in question, I knew that I would have some issues with the group discussion, despite liking and respecting many of the participants in this discussion.  It's not that I had disdain for the panel nominations (although I do question why the list comprises mostly of authors that my now-dead grandmother read before macular degeneration (and later, dementia) caused her to stop reading a decade ago), but rather that there was too much of a uniformity of opinion on a half-handful of English-speaking female SF writers who were most active in the 20th century and not the 21st.

Perhaps it's as simple as it is very difficult to be well-read in any literary genre these days, but most especially in those genres that have a multilingual authorial and reader pool.  In the 21st century, English may still very well be the preeminent language of discourse, but there are some outstanding women writers writing in languages such as Spanish, French, German, Japanese, or Finnish, just to name a few that come to mind.  From older writers such as the Argentine Angélica Gorodischer, the Finnish writers Leena Krohn and Johanna Sinisalo, or Élisabeth Vonarburg (French/Quebecois) to younger writers such as Juli Zeh (Germany) or Yoko Ogawa and Banana Yoshimoto (Japan), these are just the most prominent female SF writers who do not write fiction in English.  Lately, there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of writers, men and women alike, who hail from non-Anglophone countries yet whose stories have been composed in English.

It is easy to wag my finger and say that lists such as the one linked to above should be more "diverse," but the reality is that it is so very difficult for even those readers such as myself who manage to read hundreds of recent releases each year to be kept fully abreast of what is available in any given literary field.  I have a list of over 160 works published for the first time this year in either US or international editions (in those cases, first overall publication) from which I have reviewed and/or read over 90% of the listed titles.  Recently, major literary and newspaper publications have begun publishing their Best of Year lists and at best I have read around 1/4 to 1/3 of the titles listed (a great many of these being books that will make my Best of 2014 lists later this month).  At first, I felt almost ecstatic seeing that so many books that I enjoyed also made others' lists.  Then it dawned on me that there are so many areas in which I have not read as much and that there are likely hundreds, if not thousands, of recent releases in a multitude of languages, not just the English-centric lists that dominate discussion these days, that may be equal to or superior to the titles that will grace my lists.

This is a sobering realization, that no matter how much one tries to be diverse in her reading, no matter how well-read he might be, there are just so many limitations that cripple our ability to identify and to praise exemplary writers.  But maybe that's precisely the point of creating such lists.  Maybe we list makers, while in the act of contemplating what we view to be exemplars of modern literature, should consider what we are most certainly missing and to have a humbleness about us that allows us to strive to shrink, even if it's just a bucket scooped out of the oceans, that vast body of unknown and unrecognized works just a teeny-tiny bit.  Perhaps it is in the identifying of what we do not know, of what limits and confines us, that we are able to understand ourselves and each other (including those now-dead writers and their thoughts and concerns) just a bit more.

Burnout

I came to the realization this weekend, while finishing (three months after beginning it) the Upgraded anthology, that I'm just burned out on SF/F and SF/F short fiction in particular.  Although I don't read much "core" SF/F these days, I still feel rather disinterested and rather wearied when I finish reading a SF/F book.  Maybe some of it is just seeing example after example of prose that isn't actively bad, but also isn't is beautifully-written either.  Maybe it's wanting closer connections to characters, especially non-bourgeois character types (yes, even in works written by non-Anglo, non-white, non-male writers, too often the characters felt as though they were expressing middle class sentiments).  Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm just not all that into what is developing in SF/F circles these days.

Whatever it is, when I finish writing these 2014 reviews/mini-reviews, I plan on taking months off from reading any SF/F, especially short fiction.  Come to think of it, maybe a break from reading in general will come as well for a few weeks this winter.  The Bible might say that man cannot live by bread alone, but I'm beginning to think that I can't live well as a human being by reading so much and not doing as much as I did in my late teens and twenties.  Beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic reading online discussions, to be honest.  Maybe that's a contributing factor to this sense of ennui and burnout.

So I was prepared to write a column defending the notion of reading being more than just entertainment when...

I saw some chatter on Facebook yesterday about an article in The New Yorker by Rebecca Mead entitled "The Percy Jackson Problem."  I didn't have time to read it then (I was at work and just checking messages during my break time), but I remember seeing a plethora of comments about how valuable it was to "read anything of interest" and that "stuffy" literature would stunt a child's love of reading.  I found myself making a counterargument in my head, laying out reasons why people should and do read for more than just information gathering or for this nebulous thing called "pure pleasure," when I finally got around to reading Mead's actual essay earlier today.  It seems the discussions I read differ from the article.

Mead was close to writing a good article about the changes in speech, reading selection, and how literature reflects contemporary material cultures.  She could have made a case for how cultural diffusion is a vital component of our own lives and that what we read at any given age will directly affect what is transmitted to the following generations.  She could have done much more with this than to bemoan a contemporary adaptation of Greco-Roman mythology without acknowledging that it too is but one more link in the millennia of retellings and adaptations of certain story cycles to suit the needs of the considered literary/cultural generation.  But yet she didn't and it is hard to parse "The Percy Jackson Problem" as being much more than a lament that doesn't hold up under much scrutiny.

I think Mead perhaps was thinking of cultural distortion, of how things are lost in the transmission of years and societies, but this wasn't the thrust of her argument.  It just isn't a terribly profound piece (if it was ever meant to be construed as one).  It would have been interesting to see a case being made for how the literature that children and young adults read today has been shaping their socio-cultural values.  After all, what you read does matter.  Look what The Jungle did a century ago.  Then look how it is presented today and see the disconnect.  Reading for "pleasure" can also mean reading what is socially acceptable, or at least the social interpretations of said literature.  Reading for "pleasure" can also reinforce certain notions that help constrain generations.  After all, when is "working class" literature ever presented as such during a reader's formative years?  Yet there are many such titles that are read but not understood as such.  Things have been distorted in the transmission and reading that incites, that provokes, that leads to personal rebellion is often neutered or shunted aside in favor of this notion of reading primarily for "pleasure."

This, of course, is a very different argument than the one Mead presents.  It, too, is one that would anger many to even consider at all.  But I think it would make for a more interesting and sustained argument about the vital importance of reading and how what one reads (and the whens and whys of that initial reading) can shape their world-views (and by extension, their very same worlds) than what was presented in Mead's article.  Might write more on this topic at a later date.

Interesting...

I literally have only two minutes before I have to leave for work, so I'll edit this post tonight to reflect my take on this.  But for now, presented without comment:

Apologies and Finality

The Things That We Do:  On Mistakes, On Apologies

Edit:  

Words are cheap unless there is a continual effort of repentance here. While these apologies sound good, it'll be a long time for many to forgive her actions. But in reading this, I couldn't help but think of those times that I might have helped enabled this behavior. I did at the time two years ago think her acerbic reviews were a nice, bracing counter to the "cult of niceness," but I did become uncomfortable at seeing the personal attacks, however at the time I was either silent or maybe slightly complicit in the verbal abuse. I regretted and still regret this and that is something I should note before commenting at all on this matter.

 So in reading this past week all of these posts on the RH matter, I saw a lot of hurt and anger on display. Words alone will not heal these griefs. Hopefully those who were friends before this can find it in themselves to reconcile. Those injured relationships and betrayed trusts are the worst casualties of this. So yeah, she has a lot to do to redress all of these hurts. If she'll do this, then things will improve. But if it's just one more way to deflect ultimate responsibility and to leave open a recurrence of this hateful behavior, then all of these words will not just be in vain, but they'll just be one more dagger to the hearts of those willing to trust. Time will tell. This is all I have to say on this, as anything else would risk continuing the arguments I've seen elsewhere over the past week.

The Ceremony of Innocence: The OF Blog Turns 10

On August 25, 2004, I began this blog as an extension of the now-defunct wotmania's Other Fantasy section.  Originally I intended to make only occasional posts of interviews and other content originating on that site, but after three years and barely any posts (I think there were only 1-2 posts/month done by myself and my former co-mods at OF), I decided to try my hand at reviewing current fantasy fiction, despite having not grown up as a primarily SF/F-reading fan.  For a while, this was sufficient, as there were quite a few interesting works released in the wake of the past decade's New Weird moment and I hadn't had to deal with arguments about cover art related to hoods and chainmail yet.

But people change as they age.  When I founded The OF Blog as OF Blog of the Fallen (a reference to Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series),  I had just turned 30 the month before and I was planning on going back to college in order to work as a therapist instead of a public school teacher.  As I write this now, having turned 40 and suffering from several pains that the intervening years have inflicted upon me, it is hard to believe that a quarter of my life has been devoted to maintaining this site.  I have seen dozens, if not hundreds, of blogs start up and fail during this time.  I've seen forums like wotmania go under, with successor sites failing to capture any of the energy and creativity of those early years of the 21st century.  I was blogging before Facebook and Twitter rose to dominate the then-nascent "social media."  I remember using MSN Messenger to keep in touch with friends and loved ones.  So much is dust, now.

I had contemplated making a series of posts reflecting the changes that had occurred here, but I became more and more depressed in glancing through the archives.  I saw glimpses of the arguments of the day:  should a blog's focus be on current or overlooked works?  Should we worry about the influence that publishers might have on us by sending us review copies?  Are posts depicting "book porn" or cover art frivolous, detracting from a blog's "true" purpose?

How strange those arguments back then, 5-7 years ago, compared to those of today!  This weekend, I was re-reading some of William Butler Yeats' poetry when I encountered these lines from "The Second Coming":

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Reflecting back, I feel as though this "ceremony of innocence," this writing about books and poems and stories real and imagined, as though all of this were just dandelion puffs floating away under the force of a cold wind.  Today, I review as many books as ever (I just finished my 100th review for 2014), but there is little discussion about specific books here or anywhere else these days.  Oh, there are discussions that have books as a tangent, discussions about authors and their socio-political views, some of which are perhaps worthy debates, but there really aren't places to discuss these specific stories.  If I'm lucky, there might be a couple of comments left here in a given month or maybe a handful of retweets on Twitter or Likes on Facebook, but there really isn't any conversation about literature that appeals to me.

In their place are discussions of matters that make me uncomfortable to discuss.  Not because I often disagree with the main ideas introduced by people I follow, because I don't, but rather because the way these ideas are presented are sometimes too strident for my academic-trained perspective.  It is a good thing to see a wider variety of people writing stories that touch upon their personal experiences, but sometimes I just want more of a discussion of those stories and less a denunciation of those who likely aren't going to listen to their views in the first place.  I am far from the best in a whole host of areas, but I seem to be lacking in the conviction that so many others have in their views being not just correct, but "right" ones.

It's hard being a dinosaur who has outlived his era.  I don't want to see if my words spark any lightning; I am failing to rage against the dying of the light.  There are days where I just want to retire to this little corner and write secretly, none reading my words, about a wide range of works.  I don't want to think about whether or not Author X or Critic Y has said something non-progressive about Topic Z.  At times, the arguments about identities, whether they be that of groups or of literary genres such as SF/F, divide without expanding the discussion to encompass a diversity of opinions.   I care, but there's also a frustration that I'm not aware of enough discussion of excellent books that exist in a variety of genres due to this focus on authors at the expense of analyzing their works.  With so many people being labeled as fools or worse, I wonder if those epithets could be applied to me for just being unready to commit at the drop of a hat to a cause or a position. 

Then again, there are still worlds to visit and to describe.  Maybe what's best is not to focus so much on matters outside of the realm of literature but to continue to accentuate what is enjoyable and delightful about the act of reading, about the power of poetry, about the music embedded in magical prose.  This is something that I fear I often fail to capture in my posts, but perhaps I am mistaken.  I shall endeavor to presume so and try to trudge on.  The OF Blog may now be 10 and it may no longer be oriented toward SF/F, but it is still a place of expression and hopefully a newer perspective will emerge that will make this a place where others can find discussions that they haven't discovered elsewhere.  In the meantime, I'll probably retire to being a voice crying in the wilderness, as surely some revelation is at hand.  But it's alright, ma, it's life and life only...

The Perpetual Decline and Fall of Literary Criticism

Almost eighteen years ago, I enrolled in what proved to be the toughest course in my graduate studies at the University of Tennessee:  History 510:  Foundations of Graduate Study in History.  I was barely twenty-two then and perhaps more immature than that; I was the youngest MA candidate that semester.  This course focused on epistemological and methodological approaches to history, an area that interested me in some places, but in others I was not ready to devote the contemplation necessary to get superior grades on my essays and presentations.  I passed, but it was the only history course that I made lower than a B, at a C+.  I still remember thinking then about why was it so important to be "serious" all the time about a field that at its heart was the telling of a story to another person about something that may or may not have happened in the past.

Now that I am older, I find such subjects much more interesting.  The mechanics of how historia (the root word is applied in many European languages to both fiction and non-fiction accounts) works, how ideas are disseminated from person to person, culture to culture over time and space, this now appeals to me after years' experience as a secondary and community college instructor.  There is delight to be found in dissecting a writer's prose, unearthing some portentous element that may be key to understanding the import of what was read or heard.  However, this quest for greater textual understanding is not an universal one; many would prefer to take it in as it is and process it as they may.

This issue of delving into a subject is germane to an interesting set of articles written over the past six weeks.  The first, published back in June on The Guardian's online site, is by Mark Thwaite.  Entitled "What Became of Literary Blogging?",  it is a wistful account of how online literary criticism/reviewing has changed over the past decade.  Some of Thwaite's points resonate with me; I began blogging nearly ten years ago and have seen a sea-change in content and reader interactions with what I write for this blog and elsewhere.  Yet there is an underlying attitude in his article with which I disagree.

Thwaite talks about his desire over the years for there to be more "serious literature" discussion in the newer online venues.  This has stirred up some reaction, as taken at face value, especially considering there seems to be a desire to move away from various literary genres that are covered extensively online, there appears to be an overly-narrow definition of what "serious literature" denotes.  However, I do not have a problem with this, per se, as Thwaite goes on to clarify by what he means by "serious literature":  works that engage readers who want works that challenge readers and do not fall within the confines of more "comfy lit."  He lists several writers that are not household names or are up for various lit prizes, but nonetheless command the respect of those relatively few readers who like fictions that allow them to delve further into its innards. 

Yet in bemoaning the relative failure of the online reviewing/literary criticism world to produce the equivalents of an H.L. Mencken or Edmund Wilson, to name just two important 20th century American critics, Thwaite appears to fall into a trap that has bedeviled generations of literary critics.  As media shift and popular habits change accordingly, there are often those who complain about the current state of affairs and compare it to some perceived "golden age."  It happened in the 18th century with the rise of literacy rates and the emergence of the novel as the preferred form for literary discourse.  It happened in the 19th century with mass publication of newspapers and serial stories containing works by the likes of Dickens or Dumas.  Same holds true in the 20th century and the clash between Edwardian-influenced critics and the nascent Modernists.  Still happening today in the 21st century with the shift away from print and toward a mixed multimedia approach to covering literature.

As the media for delivering literary content has changed, so have the approaches toward discussing it.  Two centuries ago, it would be difficult for there to be substantive literary criticism if it weren't recorded in manuscript letters or printed in a broadsheet.  Even thirty years ago, the primary means of communicating one's opinion was either by managing to get a column in a local newspaper or by word-of-mouth.  Yet today, almost anyone can start a blog and write about literature...and other ancillary matters.  Thwaite does note this change and for him, it is a disappointing one, as there is a palpable sense of disappointment that the internet age did not mark a new golden age of literary criticism.  There is something to this, of course.  When I began this blog in August 2004, I focused primarily on genre fictions and I would write about 1-2 reviews/week and the rest of the time I would write reaction pieces to another's column (like I am today) or provide book cover art or anything else of vague interest to myself or potential readers.  I am capable of writing several thousand words on a particular book or subject; I have several dozen reviews that go past two thousand words and address theme and context.

However, such pieces are relatively rare for me, not because I can't write them nor because I am bored with them, but because of a conscious decision that when I write reviews, that I shall endeavor to have those pieces be between 750 and 1200 words, or roughly the space of a full-page newspaper review column.  This space constraint influences the type of review I write, as I usually opt for a hybrid impression and analysis piece that purposely leaves some elements only hinted at in order to pique reader interest.  I do this because I have noticed that when I go over 8-10 paragraphs, readers in the past seemed to have skimmed over what I said and missed the point of several arguments that I raised.  This is not a condemnation, merely an acknowledgement of certain trends.

Therefore, it is likely that many literary critics have altered their approaches to covering topics in order to suit better the desires of their audiences.  Certainly, as Thwaite notes, the rise of social media has had an impact on how reviewers approach discussing the works they have read.  He laments the lost potential of the online medium for an "army" of literary critics writing substantive pieces and to a degree, I sympathize with him.  Yet I do not find myself caught up too much in the rhetoric about whether or not these shifts should be praised or mourned.  The larger question is whether or not there is a conducive environment for discussing works and that I believe does exist, albeit with a few caveats for the style of discourse one might prefer.

Related to Thwaite's article are two recent pieces.  One is written by Kelly Jensen over at Stacked, called "The Three C's of the Changing Book Blogging World."  In it, she discusses these changes from a different perspective than the one Thwaite provides.  Yet she too wonders where the energy has departed, as many promising new voices have abandoned book discussion for one reason or another.  The other was written earlier this week over at Biblibio, entitled "Where is Literary Criticism?  Everywhere."  It was reading this latter article that made me aware of the Thwaite and Jensen pieces and I want to note that I sympathize with the attitude expressed in the title.  She notes a few commonalities between the Thwaite and Jensen pieces when it comes to questioning where has "literary criticism" gone and goes on to critique the flaws in their analyses.  In particular, she notes that in the maze of book-oriented blogs, it can be very easy to miss those who do not focus on one particular genre or approach to reviewing.  This blog certainly could be viewed as an example of such, although I believe that this is further distilled by two other sites I co-manage, Gogol's Overcoat and World War I Literature, Art, and Cinema (the latter just in its infancy stage and lacking a deep corpus of essays and reviews).   Each of the three contains different points of emphasis:  a formerly SF/F-oriented blog; a two-person blog for longer reviews of non-SF/F fiction and occasional history; a specific historical/historical fiction site that eventually will contain essays that will run thousands of words and be closest to what Thwaite discusses, albeit oriented more toward those who have a background in history, specifically World War I cultural history.

I mention these three sites not to drive traffic to them, but to note that each has their own specific function and that in a literary world populated with tens of thousands, if not greater, voices, that it can be more difficult to find exactly what one desires when the ideal of "literary criticism" is considered.  Yet these places where "serious literature" is discussed in-depth do exist, in greater numbers than those now-bygone days of when newspaper book reviews and the Smart Set ruled literary discourse.  They just now are but one set of voices in a noisy literary bazaar.  The near-anarchy of this couldn't suit literary discussion any better.

Mid-year thoughts on 2014 releases

As June turns into July and the second half of 2014 arrives, I suppose now is a natural time to pause for a moment to reflect upon this year's releases so far.  Unlike previous years, I have made a greater effort to review the year's releases soon after I read them.  I have a handy post set aside for cataloging these releases, with links to the reviews as I write them.  To date, I have written 31 reviews of books released in the US in 2014 (and have written another 21 reviews for pre-2014 releases, but that is beside the point).

There are some interesting patterns that I've noticed about the books I've read/reviewed so far.  One is that while there are still more male than female writers read/reviewed, the number of books by women that I've read this year that I've mentally bookmarked to be contenders for my year-end Top 25 is roughly equal with the men.  There are also over 1/3 representation by peoples of color in my review list and almost uniformly, these are among the strongest works that I've reviewed so far this year.  Almost as many, 10, are written by immigrants or the children of immigrants.

One slightly dismaying fact:  only two of the 31 reviewed books are marketed solely or explicitly as genre SF/F; another two could be co-marketed as such.  However, another 8-9 have qualities in common with speculative writing, so perhaps there is a strain of speculative reading in my 2014 reads that could easily have been overlooked.

Only three of the 31 reviews were of books sent to me; two of those three were sent by the author.  I don't receive many review copies anymore (which is fine by me), but it is interesting to see how my reads/reviewing are influenced much more this year by what I purchase than by what others have sent me.  I suspect this is showing my personal preferences much more than in years' past, when I might have included works that I wouldn't have otherwise read into my reading lists because it was something sent to me.

A few conclusions can be drawn from the releases to date:

1)  There is a very strong group of works being released by immigrants/PoC.  I have heard talk of similar numbers in genre fiction, but I think it is more established in lit fic that stories written from a non-WASP perspective are more visible and more popular today than in previous years.

2)  The range of fictions being published is increasing, rather than decreasing, despite what one particular person might have thought about "middling" works.  I do not recognize the Roth/Bellow-esque loser male bourgeois being in the ascendent in recent fictions, although he certainly hasn't faded completely.

3)  Genre SF/F is not producing as many interesting speculative works as non-SF/F-labeled spec fic.  This may be one of the poorest years for reading genre-marketed work that I've encountered since I begin blogging nearly 10 years ago.

4)  There are several intriguing works coming out by established writers in the second half of 2014, but there are some relatively new faces whose upcoming works promise to be very appealing to me.  Slightly more "genre" works, but still the majority seems to be non-SF/F-labeled.

5)  This will be my most difficult year in assembling a Top 25 list, as there are already over 20 strong candidates.  There is no clear-cut favorite for #1 yet as well.

And that's about it.  Any observations to make at mid-year about your own 2014 reading?

I confess: I really know little and understand even less

Saw an interesting New York Times article linked today on Facebook.  Entitled "Faking Cultural Literacy," it deals with issues related to "real-time, real news" cycles in which people are inundated with events, expecting to form opinions even when "real" information is scarce or even nonexistent.  Although I do not agree 100% with its points, I am at least sympathetic with them, as they do strike close to the heart of some musings that I have had over the past several weeks.  What I think I've concluded, at least for know, is that I really know little and understand even less.

This may sound like a counter-intuitive thesis, considering that as an occasional reviewer and teacher, I might be expected to know something about which I fold forth.  However, the older I've become and the more experiences I've had with people from all walks of life (or is it just several walks of life, with several multitudes awaiting to be discovered or, worse, ignored?), the more I've become convinced that I too easily become convinced sometime.  Maybe it's jumping to a conclusion and making comments that hurt another, before hearing their side or learning new information that would lead me to disown those previously-made comments and assumptions.  Or maybe I want to believe in something just hard enough that "evidence" is shifted to support that stance without any further consideration.

Regardless of how it happens, what too frequently happens is that I convince myself that my knowledge and my opinions matter.  To whom it matters is irrelevant.  I am a "decider," someone who proclaims his thoughts on literary genres, politicians, social movements, justice, prejudices, sports teams, and favorite squirrels.  But do I really know anything about what I say?

I am beginning to think "no," that I really don't.  I see evidence of this in listening to others talk about things in ways that I didn't even fathom beforehand.  I see it in my struggles to articulate opinions.  I see it in those moments where it is better to just be silent and to consider what is unfolding around me.  So yes, considering the hugeness of human knowledge and dialogues, I really do know little and understand even less.

But that doesn't mean that I can try harder to understand something or another just a little bit more.

A few qualms about the usage of "trigger warnings" in literary contexts

A couple of days ago, The New York Times published an article entitled "Warning:  The Literary Canon Could Make Students Squirm."  It is a piece presenting various sides on the recent rise in requests on college campuses and elsewhere for there to be "trigger warnings" for media and literature in case traumatized individuals encounter something that might set off a trauma-related reaction.  It is a pop sociological piece, more interested in introducing the topic for a general audience than exploring the matter in depth, but nonetheless it is worth reading if you are not familiar with the issue.

For those who are aware of the increased requests for "trigger warnings," likely there have been some strong reactions.  For many, especially those who have been the victims of traumatic events or know people who have suffered through such, the idea of there being "warnings" makes sense, as it enables them to focus their sympathy on people who have and continue to suffer from episodes related to horrific past personal events.  Safety, particularly of the preventative type, is paramount here and it is easy to empathize with them.  However, there are others who believe that pre-emptive labeling of certain things, especially those that possess great "cultural capital," as literary classics in particular do, can be ultimately detrimental, as such labels might unfairly and unduly influence popular perceptions of certain "difficult" works.

Literature, along with great swaths of human material societies, are not designed to be "safe havens." Whenever ideas and realities clash, whether it be in fiction, poetry, non-fiction, or other written, illustrated, or performed arts, the expression of this violent collision possesses the potential to replicate very real and very hurtful human moments.  If it didn't, then these arts would not contain the elements necessary for us to relate to them, to grasp them, to understand at least a sliver of what is being expressed in these works.  To shunt these works away under a "trigger warning:  X" moniker is to risk making them off limits, to be something that might be re-interpreted along the lines of one or a few lines of potential reader reaction rather than something that might cause a greater spectrum of reactions to be seen and heard.

But even this view risks missing a greater, more substantive point:  literature that discusses disturbing elements may just be cathartic.  Catharsis is a vital part of human interactions with the world.  Encountering something, whether it be "real" or "art," that enables very real fears to be presented in more digestible snippets that then can be worked at and manipulated by our reasoning faculties is something to be treasured.  In writing this article, I was reminded of this quote by G.K. Chesterton:

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

Change the words slightly, perhaps substitute "traumas" for dragons and "fiction" for "fairy tales" and perhaps "overcome" for "killed" and a pithy commentary on why certain "dark" types of literature that are read, viewed, or performed are valuable emerges:  "Fiction does not tell children that traumas exist.  Children (or perhaps survivors?) already know that traumas exist.  Fiction tells (children/survivors) that traumas can be overcome."  Sometimes, I believe that this role of catharsis is overlooked in discussing the issue of safety/protection when it comes to literature and media.

Mind you, this is not intended to belittle or dismiss the viewpoints of those who view things differently.  Instead, I believe that in considering which works are appropriate (after all, de Sade almost certainly is not suitable fare for elementary/primary school students), some trust should be placed with the authors and lecturers that the material may not be just a trigger for traumatic flashbacks but also potentially something that enables a cathartic release and the beginning or continuation of a healing process.  That last element, unfortunately, is not discussed as much when considering this issue.  Perhaps it is time that we consider fragility and resiliency together and keep empathy unaltered by excessive worry at the center of this societal interaction with literature and media.

A few thoughts on "outsiders" as "insiders" and the use of dialect in fiction

Earlier this week, there was some discussion generated on Twitter and a few blogs after a Strange Horizons reviewer made the following comment about Troy L. Wiggins' "A Score of Roses," which appears in the just-released Long Hidden:  Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History.  Most of the focus was on this comment by reviewer Katherine Farmar:

Troy L. Wiggins's "A Score of Roses" features heavy use of phonetic dialect, a literary trick which works perhaps one time out of a hundred—a shame, because the story underneath all the "chil'ren"s and "yo'self"s is charming.

Leaving aside the cross-cultural faux pas that Farmar made, that of failing to recognize how loaded a term "phonetic dialect" is in terms of non-WASP Americans writing in a dialect similar to the non-prestigious dialects spoken by wide swaths of Americans, there are some interesting elements in play here that go far beyond a reviewer's careless comment.  How do people who come from certain backgrounds, we'll say "privileged" in the sense of having their cultural experiences being viewed as the most esteemed in a multicultural society, evaluate fiction written by and told in the dialects of those who come from less-visible communities?

This is a difficult question to answer.  Certainly the story in question, "A Score of Roses," presumes a certain knowledge that those who are not Americans, more specifically those who are not Southerners, and most specifically those who are African-American Southerners will not as readily grasp as those who are "insiders" to this culture.  Below is a representative sample of the dialogue:

"Tell the truth.  Shame the devil."  Sunshine took a sip, stopped, slapped her thigh.  "Oh shit, he ain't real.  Forgot.  'Scuse me." 

"Yo mouth gon' get you in a lot of trouble.  Fine, you want truth, here it go:  I come from the dirt." 

"And I come from yo' neck bone.  Gimme me some mo liquor, Jerry.  And you, gimme some mo' answers." 

"I tole you, I come from the dirt and live wit' the dirt, laugh wit' the dirt, love the dirt and everything that come to be because of it." 

"You soundin' like one'a them big foot country boys that just learned the world was bigger than a fool's middle finger, baby." 

He laughed, a boom boom from deep in his chest that sounded like a drumbeat delivered from the top of a mountain.  "Maybe so."

"Hearing" it in my head, it sounds 'bout right, but perhaps a bit restrained, as though the speakers were code switching a bit, mixing in certain elided words (mo', wit') with pronouncing the "th" in "one'a them," something that is sometimes switched to "d" in both Southern and AAVE speech.  So for myself, a mostly white Southerner, Wiggins' dialogue fits the region well, plus there are a few instances where the changes in pronunciation may mark certain shifts in non-verbal tone.  But I am almost an "insider" when it comes to this particular dialect, as it is close to what I hear everyday and in which I sometimes speak to others.  For those who are not "insiders," there may be negative connotations (from minstrel show blackface to Hee Haw caricatures) to "hearing" this non-prestigious dialect.

So how does a reader reconcile his or her cultural prejudices with fiction written by those outside his/her cultural/ethnic group?  Obvious, the reader might be expected to put in a greater effort to empathize with the expressed viewpoints, but this would only be a start and not necessarily one that will immediately be productive.  As I was reading the online debate on the Wiggins story and the Farmar review, I thought back to the opening story to the just-released Conjunctions 62:  Exile, "Splaining Yourself," by Cuban writer H.G. Carrillo.  Carrillo's piece is much more challenging for English-speaking Americans of all racial/ethnic backgrounds to understand, as it involves understanding a mixture of Cuban Spanish and English in which colorful figurative language in both languages is employed to make a point about how Afro-Cubans are separated in so many fashions from others around them:

It is similar to negro, which you only know to mean love in the Caribbean, never quite finding a place here without an explanation.  Here, all that is heard when you say it is what your body was called before it was "black," which it was called before it was called "African American."  The difference, mi negro, between our negro and their negro is the line of demarcation between love and hate, affection and derision, the past and the present.  It's black and white. 

Oye, negrito, you will need to learn nigger in all its valences, acclimatize yourself to be prepared to know when it is calling you to fight, fuck, or just go out and play pool and get drunk.  Pero, without a lifetime of hearing it – like American football will seem to you – understanding it or getting a clear explanation of what it is may be as illusory and abstract as attempting to describe to a yanqui who is trying to learn Spanish the differences between por y para. (p. 9)

Carrillo's story I think underscores what truly is at play here.  No matter how much the "insider" can try to understand the "outsider" and no matter the efforts the "privileged" make to understand the world-views of those from other traditions, there are always going to be gaps, spaces where misunderstandings and resentments can and will arise.  Those have to be acknowledged first before any true awareness, much less understanding, can take place.  Going back to the Farmar piece, it is fairly evident that she was not very aware of what the use of "phonetic dialect" would mean for members of cultural groups who have resisted centuries of efforts to eradicate any traces of their own cultures.  In some parts of the world, the use of non-prestigious dialects (or in some cases, languages) is intrinsic to expressing one's own identity and culture.  As Carrillo has his narrator observe, "understanding it or getting a clear explanation of what it is may be as illusory and abstract as attempting to describe to a yanqui who is trying to learn Spanish the differences between pro y para."

However, this does not mean that because there is "white noise" in the semi-failed transmissions between cultural/ethnic groups that attempts to understand these other groups is futile and should be avoided.  If anything, the opposite should be transpiring; people should endeavor to work even more diligently to understand the views and expressive symbols of others, even when – or especially when – these endeavors will lead to faux pas and misunderstandings.  That, at least, is what I take from debates such as the one over the Wiggins story or when I encounter diglossia in forms that I struggle to comprehend.  Sometimes, the "outsiders" become their own "insiders" and those who are accustomed to having others strain to understand their world-view while they themselves nary lift a finger to assist are confronted with the reality that communication is a multi-way street, replete not just with pitfalls but also with "hidden" treasures to discover.

A brief reminder why re-reads can be so important for a reader to do

I frequently re-read, or perhaps read again is a more apt descriptor, as no two reads are ever really the same for me.  Sometimes, especially after a couple of years or more has passed, the stories may gain new depths or lose whatever pretensions to depth that they might have once possessed.  Or perhaps certain elements just end up meaning more than before.

This certainly was the case this past week when I re-read (and read for the first time in its original Serbian) Danilo Kiš's  Early Sorrows, which I first read and reviewed briefly in 2012.  I noted then some of the poignant stories, but this time around, having to read much more slowly than usual in order to compare the translation to the original (I am surprised by how much of the language I have retained over the years).  The stories that moved me then still move me, perhaps even more so than before.  Yet there were tales that I had given short shrift to two years ago which meant more to me now, stories like "A Story That Will Make You Blush" and "Engaged to be Married."  I also noticed how intricately Kiš connected these tales, as certain motifs from one appear in another, yet it isn't until toward the end that the commonalities can really be seen.

Perhaps I will have more to say on this in the future.  For right now, I find myself thinking in a haze, the past and the present commingling, creating something different and strange to behold...

The vanishing simile

Today, I was a bad teacher:  I read a novel (which I may review in the next 1-3 days) while my students were taking one of their state exams.  Shameful behavior, I know, written with an expression like that of a dog caught grabbing a morsel from a dinner plate.  Similes, along with metaphors, are some of the hardest grammatical points for me to explain to my students.  Figurative language is difficult for those who do not grow up speaking that particular idiom and it often leaves my students as wide-eyed as flopping fish suffocating on air.  It is increasingly difficult to explain to native English speakers as well, at least if one wants to treat similes beyond the level of how to identify them (looking for "as" and "like" between image words).

Much of the blame, if blame must be doled out, I attribute to contemporary literature, which strives to be "clear" by being as general as possible in terminology and expressive speech.  Short, declarative sentences may have been the rage since Hemingway, but they also limit the writer (and by extension, the participatory reader)'s ability to express herself and to draw new and potentially deeper connections between the written and imagined worlds.

Similes serve to make seemingly disparate images similar, to create associations that the reader might otherwise never have made.  Yet in hindsight, such comparisons, that of the sheepish grin of the (slightly) naughty teacher and the hungry dog caught in the act of stealing, make things easier for readers to relate with and to.  More so than even metaphors, similes enrich our expressed language, making even the most prosaic statements more vivid.

Yet for some reason, similes are often frowned upon in narrative fictions.  In English, it has become harder and harder to spot good simile usage in dialogue or even in the main narrative framework.  Therefore, when I encountered a recent work where expressions such as the one quoted below are more commonplace, it was a thrillingly pleasant surprise (bold my addition):

A plant grew in the drawer, had been growing there in the dark this whole time, crimson roots attached to a nodule of dirt.  As if the director had pulled it out of the ground and then, for whatever reason, placed it in the drawer.  The slender leaves were almost a neon green, the branching stems ridged like segments of tiny pipe with eye-shaped whorls of raised black or dark blue.  It had the look of a creature trying to escape, with a couple of limbs, finally freed, reflexively curled over the edge of the drawer.

This image of a mysterious plant is made more memorable for me by the simile of a tiny pipe, of something metallic, industrial, and constructed in the midst of the organic, natural, living.  Here, connections, seemingly opposite in nature, were made by the judicious use of a simile to create a point of comparison.  Yet too frequently, writers either do not elect to employ them frequently enough to create a particularly allusive atmosphere or they misunderstand and misuse them, leaving the work feeling as limp as an oversoaked boiled celery, lacking that semantic firmness that would make the scene/action being described through figurative comparison something greater and more nuanced than what it actually is.  It is sad to see this vanishing use of similes, but it is not all that surprising, alas.

My current reading list in light of a recent social media campaign for more diversity in reading

For the past few days, I've noticed during my all-too-brief forays on Twitter a hashtag on my timeline called #weneeddiversebooks.  It certainly is a nice goal to have, but as is frequently the case for such discussions, it is limited in scope.  While I am far from downplaying the importance of reading stories written by and from the viewpoints of peoples of color and of diverse socio-religious backgrounds, the main language of discourse here is still English and due to that oft-cited "three percent" proportion of translated fictions to native English publications in the Anglo-American publishing sphere of influence, wide swaths of global literature in all the commonly-defined genres pass under the radars of those who might otherwise be potential target audiences. 

In thinking about this issue, I recalled another hashtag discussion group, #translationthurs, devoted to covering the diverse works of those translators across the globe to translate excellent fictions and non-fictions from various languages into other languages.  I also noticed today I was mentioned in a tweet about a new project, Women in Translation Month, set for this August.  This especially interests me, concerning my years-long desire to read more from other countries and to discover more women writers from those countries.  If I have the time in three months, I'll try to participate in this, if not on an exclusive-read basis.

Finally, I was curious to see from the books read so far this year how many came from certain countries.  Below is the tally by country (translated works are counted by country of origin and in some cases, decisions on authors' nationalities were made based on setting/story concerns):

Italy - 15

United States - 14

France - 10

Spain - 9

Portugal - 9

Colombia - 6

Argentina - 5

UK - 3

Serbia - 3

Nigeria - 2

Brazil - 2

Greece - 1

Iran - 1

Costa Rica - 1

South Korea - 1

Sierra Leone - 1

Japan - 1

Angola - 1

Germany - 1

Hungary - 1

Chile - 1

Poland - 1


In addition, 29 of these 89 books are by women and 5 are by writers of Jewish or Muslim faith.  It is so tricky in dealing with ethnicity when it comes to Latinos that it could be as low as 8 or as many as 13.  Yes, pretty low in percentage terms, but if I were to re-read several of the Latin American classics/modern novels I already own, I could easily see this number increase significantly.  Still, it is interesting to see that I've already read works this year by writers born in 22 different countries/influenced by their parents' place of birth.  I know there will be more shortly, as there is a Guatemalan writer, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, whose works I plan on reading once La orilla africana arrives in the mail from Spain.

All and all, interesting snapshot.

Poetry is my drug of choice when I get overstimulated on life

I'm perhaps by nature slightly extroverted, needing social stimulation in order to feel "alive" and the experience of new situations often is quasi-intoxicating (I frequently babble and chatter like a drunken squirrel when I meet someone new who interests me).  But there are those times where the "feedback" can be too much, leaving me with a sense that others' emotional states, especially stress-related ones, are "reverbing" within me, leaving me with a quickened heart rate and more irritability than usual.

This has been the case in recent days, getting acclimated to waking up 5-6 hours earlier than before and working 9-14 hours for 7 days/week at two jobs through the end of May.  I like the new experiences, getting to know more students, but after a while of dealing with dozens of raw emotions from middle school students, I feel the need for a bit of quiet, for repose.

I frequently turn to poetry, not prose, for these situations.  And as luck would have it, I was reading some of Iranian writer Sohrab Sepehri's poetry (his posthumous collection, The Oasis of Now, was a runner-up for the 2014 Best Translated Book Award for Poetry) tonight when I came across these lines from "The Surah of Observation" (translated by Karim Ali and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati):

I said,

"He who sees the garden in the memory of wood
will forever feel the torment of love like a gentle breeze."

"He who makes friends with the birds flying in the sky
will have the calmest sleep on earth."

"He who plucks light from the branches of the tree of Time
can open every window with just a sigh."

And with those few lines, written decades ago, I feel as though there is something to consider here that relates directly to dealing with life's frustrations and desires.  It too is intoxicating, but more in a personal, spiritual sense.