https://the-orbit.net/almostdiamonds/2011/08/30/the-love-of-problematic-literature/ Politics. Sex. Science. Art. You know, the good stuff. Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:52:26 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.6 https://the-orbit.net/almostdiamonds/2011/08/30/the-love-of-problematic-literature/#comment-4066 Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:52:26 +0000 http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/08/30/the-love-of-problematic-literature/#comment-4066 Pretty much everyone agrees that not all easy reads (in the sense of "doesn't stress me out") are good reads. For some reason the converse isn't so readily accepted.There are stories that I love because they're the literary equivalent of comfort food: you just like to go there, partly because they don't demand much from you. But I don't kid myself that the best literature doesn't demand much from me; on the contrary.(Some of?) The best books I've read are hard — they stretch you, they aren't in the least comfortable, they can be downright exhausting. Well, ain't that just like life?To pick an example of an author who will almost certainly never receive a Hugo, but might score a Nebula: C. S. Friedman. I have to work myself up to reading her books — but I absolutely can't forget them.

]]> https://the-orbit.net/almostdiamonds/2011/08/30/the-love-of-problematic-literature/#comment-4067 Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:22:42 +0000 http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/08/30/the-love-of-problematic-literature/#comment-4067 I am struck anew by the animosity in some quarters toward A Song of Ice and Fire. For example, this year's winner of the Nebula was Connie Willis's Blackout. Connie Willis's writing is genteel; George R.R. Martin's is not. Yet Blackout and its "sequel", All Clear, are more offensive to me than A Song of Ice and Fire ever was. Blackout and All Clear are unabashed idealizations of the World War II era and mystical Christian proselytization to boot. (If I wanted to use the word "privilege", I'd use it to describe Connie Willis's airy perspective.) Magic aside, Song of Ice and Fire is a gritty, realistic depiction of politics in a parallel universe's version of medieval Europe and Asia Minor. You read Song of Ice and Fire thinking, "Damn. I'd never survive that shit. I'm so glad I don't live in the Middle Ages."(Seriously, what is up with today's prominent fantasy writers? The author of Zoo City was on NPR smugly decrying "the artificial war between atheists and creationists" and embracing the Golden Mean Fallacy. Never mind the fact that "artificial war between atheists and creationists" is a criminally inelegant clause.)I don't think any of the literature I love is non-problematic. Not all of the problems are justifiable. Sometimes, this gets exhausting. "I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the critique" is correct. But it is just . . . weird to decide that all Ice and Fire fans are hateful because they're burning to live in a medieval patriarchy where women are treated like shit. Most of them probably don't; maybe some of them do. I'd need more than an individual's Ice and Fire fandom to determine whether he or she was drinking the sexist Kool-Aid.

]]>