399 replies to this topic

[Datepalm]

Galactus, on 14 April 2012 - 07:41 PM, said:

To be fair, it's not *that* anachronistic. There was all sorts of weirdo intellectual strains in Russia (not just Russia, admittedly, at the time)

I don't disagree on the plot (although I found it dull rather than actually offensive, but then, I have low opinion of alt-history in general) but the idea of russians as "asians" isn't actually something she picked out of thin air: It was one of those weird intellectual strains that russians seem so fond of.

No, you're right, I know that...it just felt shoehorned in as a kind of western-logic-apologia thing. It wasnt engaging with 19th c. Russian intellectual tradition, it was engaging with 21st C. American, let's-be-charitable, intellectual tradition, as least thats how it felt to me. Its text and subtext again - valorization and admiration of the non-west - rooted in a western paradigm of that supposed dichotomy, non-western (sorta) setting - still packed  with STUPID, POINTLESS, IRRELEVANT, British stuff, because if you haven't got Victoriana, it's not steampunk. Characters that make feminist noises, but are still surrounded by men. ACM is particularly impressed, in her review, for the positive reference to the 'traditionaly feminine' mother, but thats just STUFF THE CHARACTERS SAY. In the actual story, she's a vanishing piece of milquetoast condescended to by the text and by her relatives.

[Callan S.]

sciborg2, on 14 April 2012 - 10:36 PM, said:

Hahaha, god I remember that being one of the most fucking pointless hashing of semantics.

A good lesson for Bakker is shit is not serious on the 'net. I think the problem Bakker has is that ACM wrote a comedic piece and most people smirked at it.

Well, I guess as a theory that is possible. It just comes down to figuring some determination method of whether it was just a forgetable joke or if the initial piece actually lost sales (if it only lost five or six sales I'd be willing to say that had no effect on sales). Never mind the more ambiguous territory of reputation damage (well, newspapers and such are usually shy of handing out mysogyny judgements, anyway).

[Serious Callers Only]

Can this thread be resumed by the "successful troll is successful" meme?

[Callan S.]

Luisa Aoiftrazzini, on 14 April 2012 - 09:15 PM, said:

I think he's probably being judged as anyone is, who loses their cool and then does not come back to the "scene" of the misstep and apologise. Why should people check TPB for an apology, rather than in the discussions with those whom he thinks he owes one?

I'm not sure I said 'should' at all? If there is a write up somewhere on how to behave on the internet, I'm pretty sure alot of people have broken it already. But I'd grant if overall human communication was more formalised and such was adhered to, then he aught to be checked agains that.

[Datepalm]

Oh, come on. Is it really a controversial notion that Bakker was behaving like a patronizing, entitled ass here without recourse to circuitous semantics?

[Tarant]

Valente's post is full of fail.  I mean John Scalzi's http://whatever.scal...ap-i-dont-get/is a good post on the subject of male privilege online.  The post that inspired it http://glutenfreegir...egetable-salad/ is a gut punch of a post that says ten times more about the subject of misogyny online and says it a hundred times better.  If you want to read something about the subject that's where to start.

Valente's post, on the other hand, just starts off really poorly.

Quote

Requires Only That You Hate is regularly showered with hatred for her thoughts on science fiction and fantasy–she was called a rabid animal by Peter Watts, a luminary in our field, who received very little public condemnation for his statements. (A rabid animal! Because she thought a book was sexist! I thought humorless feminists were the ones who took things too seriously!)

Reading comprehension much?  The first sentence in ACM's post states they she's only read five pages of Bakker's book.  She's not critiquing Bakker's book. Watts' response is to her referring to Bakker as a "self-important little roach".  Watts is specific in that regards.  ACM is trolling here, referring  to someone as neckbeard, "R. Scott Bakker: Prince of Misogyny", "an egocentric little wanker", "a sexist douche",  and "an egocentric snowflake" is not just calling a book sexist.

Similarly, Doyle is trolling as well.

Quote

Sady Doyle got absolutely eviscerated, along with such whimsical threats of violence and forcible silencing, for merely stating that A Song of Ice and Fire had some serious race and gender issues

Yeah, that's not  what happened.  Doyle started by stating that "George R.R. Martin is creepy" and went on to state "George R.R. Martin is creepy. Quite possibly the creepiest author I’ve read in QUITE SOME TIME.". Along with basically telling the entire fandom that she didn't care about their opinions, thought they were stupid and childish, and that the entire genre was stupid and childish.  Christopher Priest had some harsh opinions but he wasn't nearly as harsh and belligerent as ACM and Sady Doyle.  So the idea that ACM and Doyle are somehow being much nicer than Priest doesn't fly with me, not at all.

[Ran]

I thought Companion to Wolves was pretty good, but then again I thought that it's not really a book about homosexuality, no more than a book about prison rape is about homosexuality. That said, I recall getting into some sort of argument about it with Bear or Monette, I can't quite recall, because it kept seeming to me that they thought it was going to be terribly shocking to readers and, well, no, it wasn't.

But then I've a vague recollection of their saying in the end that it wasn't that they really wrote it to shock - that's the wrong frame of reference - but that it was more of a comment on authorial intent (since in writing CoW they were deliberately tackling some issues connected with Anne McCaffrey's very conservative sexual politics as embedded in Pern, and more generally in the "animal companion" stories that followed.)

Haven't had a chance to read the second book as yet.

[Galactus]

Datepalm, on 15 April 2012 - 02:02 AM, said:

No, you're right, I know that...it just felt shoehorned in as a kind of western-logic-apologia thing. It wasnt engaging with 19th c. Russian intellectual tradition, it was engaging with 21st C. American, let's-be-charitable, intellectual tradition, as least thats how it felt to me. Its text and subtext again - valorization and admiration of the non-west - rooted in a western paradigm of that supposed dichotomy, non-western (sorta) setting - still packed  with STUPID, POINTLESS, IRRELEVANT, British stuff, because if you haven't got Victoriana, it's not steampunk. Characters that make feminist noises, but are still surrounded by men. ACM is particularly impressed, in her review, for the positive reference to the 'traditionaly feminine' mother, but thats just STUFF THE CHARACTERS SAY. In the actual story, she's a vanishing piece of milquetoast condescended to by the text and by her relatives.

Oh, I agree, it's just that well... That's the degree of competence I expect from non-historians trying to write historically.

[Maia]

Hm, for the longest time I thought that "Moon" in question was the author Elizabeth Moon. I was soo confused...

Anyway, wanted to chime in re: why Bakker's oeuvre definitely feels misogynistic to me, despite his protestations.

And how polemicising against Abrahamic faiths in a fantasy book is unlikely to reach the very audience he purports to want to convince - i.e. people strongly influenced in their thinking by the same.

And how (extreme) misogyny actually pre-dated said Faiths, also took and takes place where they never held sway  and how, at least in case of Islam, it replaced something even worse in that respect.

And how Bakker really doesn't say anything new about terrible, unjust treatment of women that can't be gleaned from Iliad and Odyssey, which also manage to feature more admirable and interesting female characters than his series does.

I am still interested enough  in the plot of the series and in discussions of them on this board to continue reading. But that's _despite_ Bakker's oh, so subtle "subversion" message, not because of it.


Didn't read Sedia's "Heart of Iron", though I have to confess that I liked "The Secret History of Moscow", but I just have to barge in a little too :

Datepalm, on 14 April 2012 - 12:43 PM, said:

No, sorry, if you're from St Petersburg you're still not actually Asian or non-white,

Well, you can be and not just if your ancestors hail from Middle Asia. There are a lot of ethnicities in Russia proper, which are physically  Asian. The so-called "peoples of the North", etc. Let's not forget the different connotations of nationality and ethnicity in Russia. The notorious "fifth point" in all official forms of USSR wasn't called "nationality" for nothing...

Quote

despite shoehorning in anachronistic authorial lectures about how Russian is actually so like totally not western and they only think they are because western imperialism made them think that.

Wait, I thought it was good old Peter the Great?!

Galactus, on 14 April 2012 - 07:41 PM, said:

the idea of russians as "asians" isn't actually something she picked out of thin air: It was one of those weird intellectual strains that russians seem so fond of.

Well, it is not controversial that Russia has been influenced by Asian cultures much more than Western Europe (though you could quibble about the Southern one), that The Tatar-Mongol Conquest did change the direction of Russia's development for  centuries to come, that Russia later proceeded to incorporate a lot of Asian cultures, while borrowing certain things from them and that a good chunk of it lies in Asia. All of which resulted in Russia being different from (the rest of) Europe.

And it wasn't just self-perception of Russians as "Asians", but Western Europe saw and described them as such too, so... Just read any of the journals of people who travelled to Russia from Europe or US (John Quincey Adams) in 18th - 19th centuries and you will see it.

[Datepalm]

Maia Re Heart of Iron -

I think those are all really good points and that a book exploring the complexities of Russian ethnicity, nationalism and relashionships to the east and west would be really cool. A lot of my immediate family are Siberian, Tatar, Greek, etc. (come to think of it, the rest is Ukrainian and Jewish and kind of genially loathe actual ethnic Russians.) I'm aware that Russia isn't a exactly a monolith of Russians, and that even if it was, they have a fairly tortured history wrt to Westernism.

But this is not that book. It's having its cake and eating it - it talks the talk, but it won't actually walk there. It revels in asian potential of Russia (in away that feels to me like its playing to westen sensibilities of 'asian cool', not to the genuine ambivalence towards western Europe of Russia), but it's protagonist is a (white, christian) St. Petersburg aristocrat, not, like, a Karelian tribeswoman or Kazan muslim or whatever , going to a westernized university. Its not about Asian Russia, it's about a white chick finding herself in the exotic east, only, like, it's ok becuase she's like totally asian too!

(Hey, I do that sometimes, in moments of weakness - "don't you talk about my white proivelege - i'm jewish! Go Holocaust! yeah!", but i'm being an ass and I didn't write a whole fucking book drawing out that tenous concept.)

[Prince Alexander]

Maia, on 15 April 2012 - 06:50 AM, said:

Well, you can be and not just if your ancestors hail from Middle Asia. There are a lot of ethnicities in Russia proper, which are physically  Asian. The so-called "peoples of the North", etc. Let's not forget the different connotations of nationality and ethnicity in Russia. The notorious "fifth point" in all official forms of USSR wasn't called "nationality" for nothing...

Also mixed or sometimes even pure Tatar, Georgian, Armenian, Kazakh and many others appear and are considered "white", but they are in no way "western". And they constitute a huge % of many urban centers' population.

Edited by Prince Alexander, 15 April 2012 - 07:24 AM.

[Nukelavee]

Well, that moves towards the whole nobody wants to get stuck being white guy out anymore.

"Sure, I'm white, but I'm not one of those whites!"

But, again, why the fixation on Bakker and crew?  Why give airtime to a flawed premise/arguement over looking for solid of examples of what you want to see addressed?

Why mention McCaffery with Bakker?  Why not look at Lessa and Brekke vs Signy Mallory and Morgaine?

Why not Janet Morris compared to Cherryh, Roxxanne vs Ischade?

And, back to "what defines a "good" female character?".  I don't even know if realistic is what people are after, honestly.  I mean, I know a lot of people who, if realisticaly portrayed as characters, would be offensive to a lot of readers.

Again, I think the quest for some kind of critical coup, being hailed as a writer of good, or strong, females, means some writers concentrate too much on the reception the work will recieve from the most vocal, instead of something that rings true for teh majority.

[Maia]

Datepalm, I am 1/8 Russian . Otherwise a mix of Jewish, Armenian and possibly some distant traces of German too. Anyway, it is difficult for me to argue about the book I haven't read, and from what I have heard about it so far, have no intention of reading. However, there is an "Asian" or, if you prefer, non-European side to Russian culture, self-perception and perception of them by the rest of the world, and it is true whether the protagonist is technically white or not. There is also a fairly popular notion that drastic, forcible and incomplete "Europeisation" of Russia harmed it's development.
I wish somebody would write a good alternative history where Princess Sophia managed to kill off young Peter the Great and proceeded with her intended course of gradual rapprochement with Eastern, rather than Western Europe. There is some evidence that it might have been a more healthy direction to take, in the long term. It is a fascinating subject, IMHO.

Prince Alexander, on 15 April 2012 - 07:22 AM, said:

Also mixed or sometimes even pure Tatar, Georgian, Armenian, Kazakh and many others appear and are considered "white", but they are in no way "western".

Well, some are more "Western" than others, but if Kazakhs are "white", then so are the Chinese and "Asians" don't exist at all! There are just a lot of white people living in Kazakhstan, but  they are not ethnically Kazakhs. There could be some debate about the Tatars, because they have become so mixed throughout the centuries, but there are unmistakeably "Asian" physical features most of them have, too.

Georgians and Armenians, are, of course Caucasians in more sense than one .

Nukelavee, on 15 April 2012 - 08:56 AM, said:

And, back to "what defines a "good" female character?".

The same as defines a good male characters? I.e. depth, complexity, diversity, virtues and flaws, etc.

Quote

Again, I think the quest for some kind of critical coup, being hailed as a writer of good, or strong, females, means some writers concentrate too much on the reception the work will recieve from the most vocal, instead of something that rings true for teh majority.

What is this majority you speak of, that excludes fully half or more of possible audience? And what "rings true" in fantasy is stuff that has internal plausibility, not something lazily cribbed from RL history.

[Sci-2]

Callan S., on 15 April 2012 - 03:31 AM, said:

Well, I guess as a theory that is possible. It just comes down to figuring some determination method of whether it was just a forgetable joke or if the initial piece actually lost sales (if it only lost five or six sales I'd be willing to say that had no effect on sales). Never mind the more ambiguous territory of reputation damage (well, newspapers and such are usually shy of handing out mysogyny judgements, anyway).

By Bakker's lost sales criteria, no one should publish any review or spoof anyone without consulting a lawyer. Maybe Bakker cost Vandermeer sales, maybe he cost Valente sales?

A lot of people have referred to Bakker as creepy/whiny/sexist/arrogant. I suspect Bakker's comments on Valente's blog cost him more sales than Moon's random piece. Until Bakker linked Moon's piece, more people were likely turned off by his attitude toward Vandermeer - If I hadn't been two books into PoN I probably wouldn't have bought anything he wrote.

As I said to Bakker himself, he wrote a controversial book. Perhaps he expected everyone to praise him, and I think he deserves some praise for his talents, but when controversial books generate controversy you don't [get] to turn around and clutch pearls because it raises ire.

@Tarant: I do agree with you, Valente should have formed her arguments better. I do think her overall point still stands, which is being mean doesn't justify targeted sexist language. As I said before, I think Watts is a more complicated case and I can see his reasons, without agreeing with them, for sticking to his "rabid animal" line.

That said, what I think a lot of people miss in discussing ACM is how fucked up the SFF genre is. Song of Kali was given the World Fantasy Award, Wind Up Girl features of a caricature of Thailand, Rothfuss's women are insultingly shite, gays are still second class fictional characters if not radioactive...

But one woman on the internet uses curse words in reviews? Ladies get the pitchforks, and gentlemen clutch your pearls!

@Nuke: I'll be honest, I don't believe in universal white privilege or universal male privilege. At least not in the way it's often discussed online. Class is the biggest determiner, IMO, of measurable quality of life. I'm a believer in Teilhard's "The Age of Nations Has Past" save it's more depressing than he meant it as we move into and an age globalized reactionaries (US evangelicals pushing homophobia in Uganda, Fundamenalist Islam/Christianity) and corporations manipulating nation states (everywhere). If only there was magic we [could] at least say we got a Shadowrun world...

Obviously race and class play into that, but for me you look at class first, as well as things like home life, before you examine race/gender.

Edited by sciborg2, 15 April 2012 - 09:56 AM.

[Datepalm]

Maia, on 15 April 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

Datepalm, I am 1/8 Russian . Otherwise a mix of Jewish, Armenian and possibly some distant traces of German too. Anyway, it is difficult for me to argue about the book I haven't read, and from what I have heard about it so far, have no intention of reading. However, there is an "Asian" or, if you prefer, non-European side to Russian culture, self-perception and perception of them by the rest of the world, and it is true whether the protagonist is technically white or not. There is also a fairly popular notion that drastic, forcible and incomplete "Europeisation" of Russia harmed it's development.

Sure, I mean, a lot of places (like, for example, all the ones i'm from) don't really subscribe to a simple western-non western paradigm. Even trying to fit myself into those boxes requires a fair bit of contortion and gets a kind of "sorta, well, yes and no" answer. That whole division seels very western to me to start with, whether it's West=good, else=bad, OR vice versa. It's still that playing field.

HOI, I feel is playing by those rules and doing those contortions. Its doing them to make itself come out on the 'good' side, but it's still engaging firmly with that division of the world where this alt history Russia needs to 'pick sides', and never the twain shall meet. (Thats enough of an eyeroll, and thats just the TEXT. Subtextually, I feel it's even more disingeneous, becuase it has all the British stuff tossed in for no reason whatsoever, and it still rather exotifies it's actual Asian characters. Its not written, on the conceptual lever, with a non-western conception of race, IMO, it just explains it to make a point (rooted back in Western logic), in a rather anvilicious way.)

I like the debate, but I STILL can't recommend actually reading it, becuase it's just pretty blah on purely  the plot and character levels too. (which is so weird coming from Sedia. Take out the colonialist, feminist commentary, (which, In case it's not clear, I think sucks.) and it's a really boring YA steampunk romp with a very straightforward and conventional story.)

[TheValyrianDragonlord]

Tarant, on 15 April 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

"self-important little roach"

What if Bakker was jewish? Oooooh

Anyways to get the discussion back away from non-Bakker stuff I actually have a blog link to a great debate. It concerns Nobel Laureate VS Naipaul's remarks on how no woman writer was his equal. i'm actually surprised it wasn't brought up in this thread yet.

Here's Naipaul's original remarks and the link to the debate http://www.theatlant...g-women/239882/

Quote

In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society on Tuesday about his career, Naipaul, who has been described as the "greatest living writer of English prose", was asked if he considered any woman writer his literary match.

He replied: "I don't think so." Of Austen he said he "couldn't possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world". He felt that women writers were "quite different". He said: "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me."

The author, who was born in Trinidad, said this was because of women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world".

"And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too," he said. He added: "My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don't mean this in any unkind way."

Naipaul is clearly trolling good liberals here. He lives for the ensuing outrage.

For me, an author's public persona has never impacted whether I'll read one of their books. it impacts my decision to support them financially but not whether they're worth reading. it doesn't impact their value as artists.

[Sci-2]

meh, Naipaul is full of shit. It is known.

[Datepalm]

Quote

it doesn't impact their value as artists

That makes sense to me, but Bakker has a special ability to actively make his books less interesting with his extratextual prancing.

I'm pretty sure we talked about Naipaul at the time...is he trolling real life then?

[TheValyrianDragonlord]

Sciborg2

Naipaul is full of shit. And he's a great writer. I actually decided to read one of his books because of his stupid remarks. I picked a nonfiction book because I wanted to get a sense of his mind. And he is great. It was about the Michael X, argentina and eva peron and the congo. I thought I'd be reading some really dumb hackish right wing crap but instead found a very ruthless yet incisive work.

Datepalm

Must have missed the naipaul stuff. Yep he is trolling real life.

[Sci-2]

I have some Naipaul, given to me as gifts. I'll get to it, but he's someone I actually decided I could never support financially. I may get his books from the library or used.

Hmmmm, thinking about that I should probably get my Heidegger used as well. Fuck that Nazi.