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September Girls
28/10/13 16:57I had some complicated feelings about September Girls; I really enjoyed the book, I found the writing vivid and powerful, and the first half of it read as a nuanced deconstruction of masculinity and femininity, the narrowness of the roles available for both women and men. (The second half, I thought, didn't bring quite as much nuance to the boy-saves-girl story; not a fatal flaw, but I wish it had followed through a little more on the impressive beginning.)
Then there was the GoodReads dust-up -- a couple of people called out the book (with a fair amount of mockery and derision) for sexism and bad writing, those people got called out as bullies, things proceeded pretty much as you'd expect because GoodReads, and the conversation got focused around a bunch of tone-argument stuff, which I thought was a shame because (a) it's actually quite a good book, and (b) at least in this instance the author did not embarrass himself with defensive rebuttals.
So anyway, I was glad to see this post on Book Smugglers; partly because it legitimizes my own gut reaction, and partly because it's at least a step away from the "proof texts of horribleness" approach that tends, at worst, to be infinitely self-reinforcing.
And the thing is, I think most good writing -- if it's anything but crisp and bland -- is pretty easy to mock; because it builds up its own rules, and a lot of it works in context that wouldn't work out of context, and often it's right on the edge of falling over into purpleness or melodrama or sentimentality. It's pretty easy to just go "LOL, terrible!" and it's everyone's right to have that reaction -- and nobody's wrong for thinking that September Girls is in fact a sexist book, or that it's not worth their time to find out -- but -- hmm. I've been seeing a lot of criticism lately that I find hyperbolic, and that pushes me to thinking, "I can't write with that fear in the room, the fear that if I try to be genuine and honest I'm just going to be opening myself up for pointing and laughing." And on the other hand, ultimately honest criticism is more important than the writer's personal feelings, I think.
Then there was the GoodReads dust-up -- a couple of people called out the book (with a fair amount of mockery and derision) for sexism and bad writing, those people got called out as bullies, things proceeded pretty much as you'd expect because GoodReads, and the conversation got focused around a bunch of tone-argument stuff, which I thought was a shame because (a) it's actually quite a good book, and (b) at least in this instance the author did not embarrass himself with defensive rebuttals.
So anyway, I was glad to see this post on Book Smugglers; partly because it legitimizes my own gut reaction, and partly because it's at least a step away from the "proof texts of horribleness" approach that tends, at worst, to be infinitely self-reinforcing.
And the thing is, I think most good writing -- if it's anything but crisp and bland -- is pretty easy to mock; because it builds up its own rules, and a lot of it works in context that wouldn't work out of context, and often it's right on the edge of falling over into purpleness or melodrama or sentimentality. It's pretty easy to just go "LOL, terrible!" and it's everyone's right to have that reaction -- and nobody's wrong for thinking that September Girls is in fact a sexist book, or that it's not worth their time to find out -- but -- hmm. I've been seeing a lot of criticism lately that I find hyperbolic, and that pushes me to thinking, "I can't write with that fear in the room, the fear that if I try to be genuine and honest I'm just going to be opening myself up for pointing and laughing." And on the other hand, ultimately honest criticism is more important than the writer's personal feelings, I think.