#ferretbrain

Anyway, background cheapshots and raised plagiarism eyebrows aside, I really have no strong opinions on either fandom or Cassandra Cla(i)re, but I quite liked the idea that a popular, moderately competent fanfic writer managed to break into the publishing world. Fanfic is a difficult beast to comprehend unless you're right there in its mouth but, as far as I see it (and, bear in mind, if you do write fanfic this is probably going to sound like the simplistic flailings of an outsider), there are three possible attitudes, or at the very least a spectrum with some definable stopping points on it:

1) Fanfic is art, man, art and there is ultimately no difference between If You Are Prepared and Bleak House. They're both pretty damn long for starters.

2) Fanfic is like original fiction but not as good, and is basically written by people who can't get their own stuff published

3) Fanfic is entirely different from original fiction

Since the first one is clearly non-viable, and the second is actively rude, I subscribe to the third. Writing for fans and writing for publication is vastly different, and to assume that the one aspires to the other is rather to miss the point (and, arguably, the pleasures) of fanfic. Even so, I would have thought the gulf between fanfic and original fiction to be eminently jumpable. I mean, the ability to string a decent sentence together is a transferable skill, right. Right? Well, evidently not. To be fair, my problems with City of Bones a are not about the sentences (although they are of questionable quality), they goes rather deeper than that.

The truth is I actually couldn't read the damn book. I had to give up. It's not that it was, y'know, bad as such, although it occasionally was, it just didn't - to my mind at least - make the leap from fanfic to original fiction at all successfully. I know attempting to draw a distinction between fanfic and original writing is likely to get me shot at dawn but it's the only hope I have of articulating why City of Bones just doesn't work.

As far as I could tell from the sliver I read, City of Bones is young adult urban fantasy. The heroine, Clary Fray, (and let's not even ask why an author who calls herself Cassandra Clare decided to call her heroine Clary) is exactly the sort of spunky young thing you would expect of a modern heroine. She's out at a nightclub with her best friend Simon when she happens to witness a supernatural murder. Demons yadda yadda vampires yadda yadda Shadowhunters yadda yadda sardonic attractive blonde yadda yadda yadda wise old mentor with bird yadda yadda. Look, truthfully, I don't really have any idea what the plot is because I only made it to page 63.

And this is the exact moment when I snapped.

"In the distance she could hear a faint and delicate noise, like wind chimes shaken by a storm. She set off down the corridor slowly, trailing a hand along the wall. The Victorian-looking wallpaper was faded with age, burgundy and pale grey. Each side of the corridor was lined with closed doors. The sound she was following grew louder. Now she could identify it as the sound of a piano being played with desultory but undeniable skill, though she couldn't identify the tune. Turning the corner, she came to a doorway, the door propped fully open. Peering in she saw what was clearly a music room. A grand piano stood in one corner, and rows of chairs were arranged against the far wall. A covered harp occupied the centre of the room. Jace was seated at the grand piano, his slender hands moving rapidly over the keys. He was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, his tawny hair ruffled up around his head as if he'd just woken up. Watching the quick, sure movements of his hands across the keys, Clary remembered how it had felt to be lifted up by those hands, his hands holding her up and the stars hurtling down around her head like a rain of silver tinsel."

Let's skim all over the things that are awkward about this passage ... wind chimes only make sounds when they're stirred and piano music doesn't sound like that anyway ... how can wallpaper be faded with burgundy ... can a skill be desultory but undeniable ... why does it have to "clearly" be a music room, surely it is just is one ... how many times can you say "hands" in one sentence ... how does she know he's barefoot, he's playing the bloody piano ... and what the fuck is with the rain of silver tinsel...

But, yes, skim all that and riddle me this:

Wouldn't that whole scene be so much better if it turned out be Draco Malfoy sitting at the grand piano?

There's a technical name for what's wrong with this passage. In the industry we call it "blowing your load prematurely" (question is, what industry). Seriously, though, we're on page 63, we've spent all of 20 of them in the company of this character (and, let's face it, he's a pretty, sardonic, wise-cracking faintly angsty type very reminiscent of Cla(i)re's take on a certain slytherin): why the fuck should we be even remotely interested in the sight of him at a grand piano? It's a very senses-heavy scene: we have the sound distant music, the wallpaper beneath Clary's fingertips, and the lovingly detailed description of the ruffle-haired eyecandy sitting at the piano, so there's this self-conscious build up, deliberately (albeit not entirely eptly) evoking something of the fairytale, and what's the pay off? Up until this point the tawny-haired Jace has been a rude and snippy, so it's clear that this little scene is meant to show us a different side of him but character revelation scenes only function when you know the character well enough to experience it as a revelation. This is just ... information, excessively presented. It's like being hit over the head with a neon sign saying: "you should fancy this character now." And for the record, he's a demon hunter, not a concert pianist so there really is no reason to have that scene there except as drool-footage.

Possibly I'd feel differently if I was a teenage girl but I hope I'd have more taste.

What the scene did for me, aside from inducing me to throw the book across the room in disgust, was exemplify the subtle sense of wrongness I'd been getting throughout the previous 62 pages. Essentially City of Bones reads like fanfic - and I don't mean that as kneejerk indicator of poor quality, I mean that it reads like something constructed for a different purpose, functioning on a different ruleset. Leaving aside any criticisms of the actual style, this scene would probably work - for me - if I read it as fanfic. It's visually and linguistically striking - the juxtaposition of scruffy boy and fine old instrument (sorry), the hint at aspects of a character hitherto unknown, the touch of submerged melancholia (playing the grand piano to an empty room is a lonely hobby), all this would be fine if the mysterious pianist turned out to Draco. I mean, playing the grand piano is one of the things that one could potentially imagine Draco being able to do. Well, if you stopped and thought about it for a moment, probably not, because surely wizards have ... like ... magical pianos, or house elves to produce their music for them. But given that Draco is a repressively raised posh kid, it seems to me at least credible his parents made him have piano lessons, even if he hated it. And Draco, being the wizarding equivalent of genetically modified, would probably be reasonably good at it regardless.

I truthfully have no idea what it is that makes fanfic work but it seems to me to have something to do with potential plausibility. Scenes of certain characters doing things they never explicitly did in the books (even if this is fucking each other) resonate with you because it feels both novel and familiar - to continue the musical theme, if I presented you with Remus Lupin playing the electric guitar you might raise an eyebrow because he's far too bookish and quiet, but it would totally suit Sirius Black for example. Or even James Sodding Potter. And such scenes require no build-up because the reader already knows the characters being written about. Equally, dwelling on the details, and presenting very visual, senusous scenes, seems less purple than it does when you do it in original fiction because it helps to establish a familiar character in what may be an unfamiliar setting: for what's it worth, I can picture Draco Malfoy playing the grand piano very vividly. Pale hair, slender fingers, whatever. Fan fiction, even if you're looking at a 100,000 word AU fic, seems to be all about the establishment of moments, which need not necessarily (and probably don't) exist as part of a continuum of moments.

This is absolutely the opposite to a book.

The scene of Jace/grand piano has utterly no resonance for the reader because, well, partly because it's rubbish and partly because no time has been given to properly establishing the character so it's essentially meaningless, but mainly because it has no real sense of its place in a connected, developing narrative. Although the 63 pages I read did occasionally have moments of genuine mediocrity that made me suspect I should try to be more generous with the text, the whole reading experience felt so ultimately hollow I couldn't bring put myself through it. There's nothing inherently wrong with something reading like fanfic - fanfic reads like fanfic and I quite enjoy the stuff - but City of Bones is a work of original fiction, it's a book that I paid real money for (more fool me) In essence, then, it's original fiction without the necessary underpinnings, and fanfic without any of the characters you like. Worst of all possible worlds.

Comments:

Dan H

at 12:57 on 2008-09-25So I've started reading it now, to pick up where Kyra left off (nearly at good old Page 63).

I actually don't think it reads that much like fanfic (at least not like *good* fanfic). There's way too much exposition (fanfic tends to assume that everybody knows what's going on) including some truly wonderful scenes with people actually saying things like "surely you recognise a girl, your sister, Isabelle, is one" (Isabelle, it should be pointed out, is *right fucking there*).

Favourite line so far: "Her hair was almost precisely the colour of black ink".

What colour would that be, exactly? Black, perhaps?

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Arthur B

at 15:32 on 2008-09-25It strikes me, actually, that while most of us have a good idea of what "bad" fanfic is like, good fanfic must by its nature vary widely in style, because at least part of the point of fanfic is to produce something that is reminiscent of the source material, so good Lovecraft fanfic will read different from good Firefly fanfic, or good Pratchett fanfic.

(Which would mean that, say, "good" Cecilia Dart-Thornton fanfic is a contradiction in terms: if it's good, it's no longer reminiscent of the source material.)

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Dan H

at 18:38 on 2008-09-25I think Lovecraft fanfic is a special case actually, because it borrows Lovecraft's ideas rather than his characters. Lovecraft fanfic (and, to borrow Arthur's term, peerfic) is all about eldrich horrors from beyond the void, it's not like anybody writes Herbert West/Charles Dexter Ward slash.

Actually they probably do.

By contrast, I actually think with most fanfic the style is fairly consistent between fandoms (although I admit to limited experience here). Part of Cassandra Cla(i)re's big plagarism debacle, indeed, was the fact that she regularly borrowed lines from Buffy for her Draco fics.

In further updates on City of Bones I've now got past the point reached by our intrepid editor and have the following to add:

Holy Crap the wise old mentor dude is a lot like Dumbledore. There's a bit where he asks the heroine if she wants anything and I *totally* expected him to offer her a sherbet lemon. And if you don't read "Muggle" for "Mundie" every time you're a better man than I am.

Also, some exposition from earlier in the book which I found particularly awful:

"Demons," drawled the blond boy, tracing the word on the air with his finger, Religiously defined as hell's denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, as any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension."

"That's enough, Jace" said the girl.

"Isabelle's right," agreed the taller boy, "nobody here needs a lesson in semantics - or demonology."

As you know, I *almost* applaud the bare faced cheek of it.

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Arthur B

at 00:38 on 2008-09-26

I think Lovecraft fanfic is a special case actually, because it borrows Lovecraft's ideas rather than his characters. Lovecraft fanfic (and, to borrow Arthur's term, peerfic) is all about eldrich horrors from beyond the void, it's not like anybody writes Herbert West/Charles Dexter Ward slash.

To be fair, there aren't that many recurring characters in Lovecraftian fiction except for the Old Ones themselves, who get reused all the time. And I've lost count of the number of times I've read stories about long-lost offshoots of the Whateley clan or where yet another dozy protagonist realises they come from Innsmouth stock.

I agree, though, that the Lovecraft-tribute scene is pretty unique; I expect this is partly because Lovecraft was one of the first authors who genuinely encouraged people to write stories set in his mythology, to the point of sending them detailed letters showing them how to boost their fanfic to peerfic. Having essentially established the core of his own fandom before he died, that core went on to set the norms for Lovecraft tribute works forevermore.

By contrast, I actually think with most fanfic the style is fairly consistent between fandoms (although I admit to limited experience here). Part of Cassandra Cla(i)re's big plagarism debacle, indeed, was the fact that she regularly borrowed lines from Buffy for her Draco fics.

I would suggest that this may be the result of people writing to indulge the sort of mores that have grown up around fandom-in-general, as opposed to writing to emulate the original work.

Which might explain why City of Bones exists. Once you don't care what the background to what you're reading is, so long as it has shipping and mary sues and whatnot, it becomes easier to accept the idea of fanfic-like work which is fanfic of nothing in particular - nothing, that is, except fanfic itself.

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Montavilla

at 01:55 on 2008-09-28

I truthfully have no idea what it is that makes fanfic work but it seems to me to have something to do with potential plausibility. Scenes of certain characters doing things they never explicitly did in the books (even if this is fucking each other) resonate with you because it feels both novel and familiar - to continue the musical theme, if I presented you with Remus Lupin playing the electric guitar you might raise an eyebrow because he's far too bookish and quiet, but it would totally suit Sirius Black for example. Or even James Sodding Potter.

Sadly, you made me immediately start wondering what Remus would play in James Potter and the Silver Marauders band. He might, ala George Harrison, play lead guitar. (Sirius would be play rhythm guitar and James would play the bass). Peter, of course, would be on drums. Which might explain why they put up with him all that time. It's hard to find someone who's got their own drum set.

Favourite line so far: "Her hair was almost precisely the colour of black ink". What colour would that be, exactly? Black, perhaps?

To be fair, comparing hair to ink is a difficult image these days because we only really see ink in the stems of our ballpoint pens. Perhaps it might have been better to say, "Her hair was almost precisely the color of laser toner. In a really old printer. You know. The black-and-white kind."

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Dan H

at 12:18 on 2008-09-28

To be fair, comparing hair to ink is a difficult image these days because we only really see ink in the stems of our ballpoint pens. Perhaps it might have been better to say, "Her hair was almost precisely the color of laser toner. In a really old printer. You know. The black-and-white kind."

Hee hee.

In all seriousness, though, it's not the comparison to ink that bugged me, it just strikes me as elementary that if you're saying "X was the colour of Y" then unless you're doing a Blackadder style joke "Y" should not include reference to a specific colour. "Her hair was black as ink" "her hair was black, like ink" "her hair was ink-black" would all have been fine. So for that matter would be "her hair was like black ink". "Hair the colour of black ink" is like something out of the Bulwer-Lytton contest: "Her hair was the colour of black ink, her eyes the colour of a blue crayon, and her dress the colour of a dress made out of red silk."

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Wardog

at 14:16 on 2008-09-29

Since we're playing Favourite Lines, my personal shoutout goes to: "He had electric blue dyed hair that stuck up around his head like the tendrils of a startled octopus..." I guess it's just the awkwardness of the construction coupled with that startled octopus...

Arthur: I would suggest that this may be the result of people writing to indulge the sort of mores that have grown up around fandom-in-general, as opposed to writing to emulate the original work.

I'm not sure emulating the original work has ever real been the goal, well, not unless there's specific stylistic feature *to* emulate if that makes sense - like Lovecraft. I mean, you want to make your characters sound like the characters they are but ... well ... to indulge a bit of JKR bashing just because that's what we do here, most of the Harry Potter stuff I've read has been stylistically objectively better than the author.

"Her hair was almost precisely the color of laser toner. In a really old printer. You know. The black-and-white kind."

Hehe!!!

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Arthur B

at 15:47 on 2008-09-29

I think direct stylistic mimicing is, as you point out, actually rare, especially since a lot of fanfic is written about TV series, so you're translating a visual format into a literary one. But at the same time I think that the aim of a lot of fanfic is to emulate the source work in the sense that the writer's trying to tell a story that is a) reminiscent of the source material, in that it establishes a mood and tells a story which could recognisably fit within the source, and b) features the characters behaving in a manner recognisable from the source (unless the explicit point of the fic is something like "What if Captain Lolcats got possessed by a brain worm?"). At the very least, a lot of fanfic authors seem to want to produce something where the reader would look at it and say "Yes, that's very much how it would have happened on my favourite show if the screenwriters had only had the courage to write an episode where the ship's doctor and the robot owl consummate their love".

I say "a lot of fanfic" because I've seen the occasional piece (generally AU fics) where the premise is so utterly far removed from the source material that I start scratching my head and wondering why the author bothered retaining the link to the source material in the first place. Sure, perhaps the characters retain scraps of their personality, but they're in such an utterly different scenario it becomes a stretch to call them the same characters; to my mind, at least, characters are at least partially defined by context. Being a cheeky black marketeer on Deep Space 9 is a very different proposition from being a cheeky black marketeer in Blitz-era London.

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Wardog

at 16:01 on 2008-09-29

We are now mainly haggling over semantics, dear boy.

So instead I would like to play the "Her hair was" game.

I submit: Her hair was almost precisely the colour of one of those motorola telephones, the ones with that come with a gloss finish not matte."

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Claire E Fitzgerald

at 16:32 on 2008-09-29

Her hair was almost precisely the colour of a grey cat in a room that was totally dark, such that the colour of the cat was indistinguishable from black.

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Arthur B

at 16:59 on 2008-09-29

Her hair was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.

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Wardog

at 21:20 on 2008-09-29

Oi! Minus three points from Slytherin for being meta.

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Arthur B

at 00:26 on 2008-09-30

“Minus three hundred points for turning the comments section into Harry Potter fanfiction," muttered Harry, glowering at his Nintendo DS. He was pretty sure he was on the right track in this Phoenix Wright episode, but the game was being evasive about precisely which investigative avenue he should pursue. Harry was not looking forward to the half hour he'd have to spend looking for the plot, but he supposed he couldn't complain: he normally had to doss about for half a year before getting anything done in real life.

"How's my hair looking?" asked Ron, anxious about his big date with Hermione. He had spent the last six hours smearing his skin with Hackiburr's Very Useful Ointment in order to conceal the telltale marks of gingerness, and was now in the process of rubbing the stuff into his scalp. Harry glanced at his bare-torsoed chum and then returned his attention to his game.

"Your hair is all carroty," quipped Harry, "like someone was just sick in it."

Draco giggled and ran his hands through his hair, which was bright yellow like artificial egg yolk.

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Rami

at 12:17 on 2008-09-30

I think these are still worse, but you're getting there ;-)

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Guy

at 04:26 on 2009-07-24

Her hair was almost precisely the colour of light with a frequency of 590 nm and a wavelength of 526 THz, and as she moved the angle of its inclination to her scalp seemed to undulate with a regularity that spoke softly to his soul.

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Rami

at 04:41 on 2009-07-24

a frequency of 590 nm and a wavelength of 526 THz

I think you got the wavelength and frequency swapped around ;-)

A redhead, eh? Why is it that female protagonists never seem to have violently ginger hair?

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Guy

at 08:34 on 2009-07-24

Oops, so I did. I could pretend that it was a deliberate attempt to further enhance the awfulness of the sentence, but no, I just muddled it up. :)

It would be kind of interesting to see some kind of frequency histogram of female (and male) protagonists and the wavelengths of their hair colours... but I suspect nobody would be mad enough to actually do the work to make such a thing.

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Michal

at 05:29 on 2011-09-29

And I only stumbled on this when I found out Cassandra Clare will be one of the instructors at the 2012 Clarion Writer's Workshop.

Suffice to say, I won't be applying. (Jesus Christ guys, you had Neil Gaiman and Ellen Kushner and Particia C. Wrede and Gene fucking Wolfe as instructors and now you've had budget cuts or what?)

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Arthur B

at 11:25 on 2011-09-29

Well they also had Orson Scott Card.

I guess it's like Hogwarts. Not everyone can be a Griffindor or a Ravenclaw. They also have to recruit Slytherins (Card) and Hufflepuffs (Clare).

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Michal

at 13:30 on 2012-11-18

There's a movie now.

I think I caught a half-second glimpse of Henry VIII at one point.

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Arthur B

at 14:05 on 2012-11-18

Urgh, they actually say "mundanes".

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Ibmiller

at 15:05 on 2012-11-19

It's like they learned nothing from Golden Compass...

Also, are they deliberately trying to recreate the "awkward teen significantly older British actor" Twilight vibe?

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Wardog

at 15:36 on 2012-11-19

Oh no, that's Jamie Campbell-Bower. Officially the drippiest boy in Hollywood.

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Arthur B

at 15:44 on 2012-11-19

Also, are they deliberately trying to recreate the "awkward teen significantly older British actor" Twilight vibe?

I suspect they are going to mimic Twilight/Potter as closely as copyright will allow. It's got that "clinging to the underbelly of the bandwagon and trying to scrape as much gold as you can out of it" look. (Of course, this is likely to lead to jibbering incoherence due to Potter and Twilight being two different bandwagons...)

The extent to which Blonde Love Interest looks like a reject from the Draco Malfoy auditions is hilarious.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 16:51 on 2012-11-19

The extent to which Blonde Love Interest looks like a reject from the Draco Malfoy auditions is hilarious.

Even more difficult for atheists like me to get our heads around are the doctrines of the Calvinists. Very roughly (from my limited understanding) the Calvinists embrace fully the idea that it is impossible for any human being to be truly worthy of God's love. God is just that great and we are just that flawed. This is actually comparatively uncontroversial - it's just a firm statement of the idea that salvation comes wholly from the Grace of God, and not from your individual virtue. The Calvinists take this idea to its logical conclusion: that since obviously not everybody can be saved, God's grace will only fall on a small proportion of the population - the Elect. Since nobody can be worthy of God, whether one is or is not part of the Elect is entirely outside of one's own control. There are just some people who are predestined towards salvation, and some who aren't.

Now it would be easy here to score cheap points and say that this is just somebody using religion as a control mechanism, pretending that the reason he's so much better off than everybody else is because God likes him better. But that's actually not massively plausible. After all, when Calivinist doctrine was first developed, the Calvinists weren't exactly ruling the roost.

Calvinism is actually a fairly logical extension of one of the more difficult points of protestant doctrine: the idea of salvation by grace. People seem to be uncomfortable with the idea that drawing closer to a supernatural being who transcends all of the concerns of physical reality might actually not be the same thing as being nice to people. Perhaps it's just overexposure to classical mythology at an impressionable age, but I don't find it that hard to understand. I somehow can't imagine a classical theologian saying "but why would the Gods be so angry about Prometheus stealing fire? Why do we worship them if they're so mean?" or a Viking saying "I'm sure that Odin will understand that you wanted to die valiantly in battle."

I think that perhaps the reason people find the ideas expressed in - say - Calvinist theology, or The Last Battle is that, since we live in a secular society, we naturally divorce these kinds of ideas from their supernatural context. For example: burning at the stake was actually supposed to be a merciful form of execution, because it allowed the accused the maximum possible amount of time to repent. If you genuinely believe in an immortal soul, this is actually very sensible. Far better to burn somebody to death slowly, giving them a chance to go to heaven, than to cut their head off and condemn them to hell. To somebody who doesn't believe in an afterlife, though, it's needless cruelty.

When you decontextualise the doctrines or practices of a religion, you invariably make them into something extremely sinister and disturbing.

Which is why Harry Potter freaks me out so much.

JK Rowling self-defines as a Christian. More specifically, she was apparently raised Church of Scotland which, the internet reliably informs me, has strong Calvinist influences. If this is true, then it seems that Rowling has allowed her faith to strongly influence her work. Unfortunately she has also allowed it to become so decontextualised as to be unrecognisable.

Let us take the principle of Election, the notion that there are a fortunate few who, by grace of God, shall be called to salvation. In the Potterverse "Election" is called "Sorting" and instead of being controlled by Almighty God it is controlled by a hat.

Now I know Rowling pays lip service to the houses all being equal, but it's nonsense. Gryffindor is the superior house, all the way. Rowling herself declares not only that she would want to be in Gryffindor if she attended Hogwarts but also that she "hopes she would be found worthy."

So basically at the age of eleven, your fate is already sealed. Either you're Gryffindor, or you're evil, or you're chattel. You can't change, you can't be redeemed (unless you've already had the good fortune to fall in love with a Gryffindor) you are either Good or you are Evil or you Just Don't Matter and none of your decisions, none of your actions, mean a damned thing. No matter how much of a bullying little shit James Potter was, we are never really asked to see him as anything but a hero. Lily treats Snape like dirt, but is still the byword for selfless love in the series. And of course Dumbledore, our epitome of goodness, is a manipulative self-serving bastard who plots world domination and raises Harry to be a sacrificial lamb. But in the end we are expected to view all of these people as heroes because they were Gryffindors and therefore virtuous by definition.

Then of course there is Snape. After nearly twenty years of loyal service to Dumbledore, risking death or worse to spy on the Dark Lord, and incidentally building up a loyal fanbase who for some reason think that being smart is cooler than owning a flying motorcycle, JK Rowling eventually grants him the ultimate accolade. "Sometimes, we sort too soon." If a member of a different house displays courage, it shows that they must really be a Gryffindor deep down.

Rowling clearly subscribes to the philosophy that a person has a fundamental nature. That deep down a person cannot change. Deep down Harry is a hero, Percy is officious, Voldemort is Evil, Snape is a bully, Dumbledore is good but tempted by power. None of these traits will change, none of them can change. Rowling seems to believe it impossible.

This is most apparent, I think, in how she writes about Harry. It is never his actions. which win him praise, but rather the spirit in which he acts. This is perhaps most apparent in the seventh book, when Harry uses the Cruciatus curse on Amycus Carrow and McGonagall responds with the statement that it is "very gallant" of him.

Now I admit I might be a little bit behind the times here, but how is torturing your enemies "gallant"? Presumably in the same way that a single minded obsession with the personal destruction of your enemies has something to do with "love".

But my objections here are based on a false assumption: on the assumption that a person's moral character (their salvation, their redemption) is in any way affected by their actions. In Rowling's world it is not, and this is a deliberate and conscious theme throughout the books. Harry performs the same actions as other characters, but because he is by nature pure, his actions are actions of goodness, not of evil.

Even further proof that Harry's goodness is nothing to do with his actions - or indeed even his personality - but is instead some kind of elemental property comes from this rather interesting quote, regarding the fact that Voldemort had hope of salvation:

"Because he had taken into his body this-- this drop of hope or love (Harry's blood). So that meant that if he could have mustered the courage to repent, he would have been okay. But, of course, he wouldn't. And that's his choice."

Now there's two interesting things here. The first is that Voldemort's hope came literally from Harry's blood. Voldemort is not a person, Harry is not a person. Harry is a vessel full of Hope and Love in distilled form. No matter how many people he tortures or brutalises, he will always have Hope and Love in his very blood. It is physical contact with Harry's blood that gave Voldemort his one chance of redemption.

The second, subtler point is this one:

"But, of course, he wouldn't. And that's his choice."

Notice that she uses the words "of course" and "his choice" in the same sentence. And this is the point I find most interesting.

If you ever try to argue that JK Rowling is a slavering determinist, people always pull out two facts. Firstly, there's the fact that Harry "chose" not to be placed in Slytherin. Secondly, there's this extremely interesting line by Dumbledore.

"It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Now I hope it doesn't look like I'm being obsessive here, but I think it's extremely telling that Dumbledore uses the phrase "show what we truly are" and not " say "decide what we become." Dumbledore is telling us, quite clearly, that who we are never changes, that the decisions we make in our lives serve only to illuminate our natures, which are otherwise immutable.

So Voldemort could never have been redeemed. He was given the chance to "try for some remorse" but there was never any realistic expectation that he would be able to. Indeed we are told repeatedly throughout the series that Voldemort is not capable of love. Not that he hasn't known love, that he has never experienced love, that he is literally incapable of it.

A choice, to Rowling, is not a chance to control one's own destiny, but a chance to show your quality. The outcome of a choice is predetermined. Voldemort would never have chosen redemption, so he had no chance of redemption, no matter how much of Harry's Magic Blood he had pumping through him.

I started this article talking about Calvinist Election, and by mentioning that "atheists like me" find it a rather disturbing concept. I think a big thing that people find uncomfortable is the idea that "the Elect" get to strut around being all superior, just because some random fluke made them God's Chosen. This is of course not how it works. The whole point of Election is that no one man is more worthy of salvation than any other, that any who are saved, are saved by the grace of God, not by their own merits. Within Calvinist philosophy being "chosen" doesn't make you better than anybody else, it just gives you one extra reason to thank God.

Rowling's world, however, really does work the way atheists perceive Calvinist Election as working. Harry is arbitrarily singled out as being "special" or "chosen" and this literally does make him better than other people. Harry is as incorruptible as Voldemort is irredeemable. Harry's choices will always be the right ones, not because of his moral character but because the world itself will change to accommodate him. He can withstand the Imperius Curse, he can see into the mind of the Dark Lord, yet remain uncorrupted by it, he can unite the Deathly Hallows. Even when he actively seeks to bring pain and death to his enemies, it is somehow virtuous. Because Harry is Just That Awesome.

JK Rowling has said, in interview:

"My beliefs and my struggling with religious belief and so on I think is quite apparent in this book."

And apparent it is. The culmination of the Harry Potter series reads like the scrabbling of a Cultural Christian, trying to construct a moral framework out of fragments of doctrine she does not entirely understand or believe. Half-formed ideas about faith and destiny and redemption and death collide producing a result that is mostly simplistic, and occasionally sacrilegious.

The quasi-Christian overtones make some parts of the book genuinely incoherent. At times Harry's faith in Dumbledore is presented as almost akin to faith in God. He sets forth on his great journey, after all, knowing virtually nothing and Trusting That Dumbledore Would Provide. Indeed the Dumbledore-as-Divinity concept is a strong theme from the very start. It is very frequently Harry's Faith in Dumbledore that truly saves the day (most explicitly in Chamber of Secrets). The entire subplot with Dumbeldore's backstory is presented almost as Harry's last test of Faith.

And of course if Dumbledore is God, then this naturally casts Harry in the role of Jesus: walking amongst the unbelievers, spreading His word, facing persecution and ultimately death. A sacrifice made in perfect Love to redeem the sins of the Wizarding World.

Except that Dumbledore isn't God, he's just a guy, so having unwavering faith in him isn't laudable, it's blind fanaticism. And Harry doesn't sacrifice himself to save Hogwarts, he sacrifices himself to kill Voldemort. Hell, Rowling even admits that after book 6, if Harry looked into the Mirror of Erised he would see "Voldemort finished, dead, gone". His deepest desire is not to protect his friends, or even to live a normal life, but to kill the guy who killed his parents.

It's a mess, and the fact that it's a mess is probably the saddest thing of all. Rowling so clearly wanted to say something big about faith, about love, and about death, but all she has managed to do is communicate her own confuson.Themes:

J.K. Rowling

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Books

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Young Adult / Children

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Wardog

at 09:34 on 2007-08-17And obviously you have the whole sacramental thing of Voldemort receiving Harry's blood, or rather refusing the salvation contained within it... euw.

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Arthur B

at 11:11 on 2007-08-17I think you can also see attitudes towards predestination in her view of herself and her work. I was watching her original publisher on TV the other day talking about how he advised her to get a day job, because very very few people can actually make a living on children's books, and how she simply said she was very confident that HP would be successful. Which turned out to be right, of course, but there's no way anyone could have predicted exactly how much the HP books took off (and arguably they didn't become

really

massive until

Prisoner of Azkaban

). I know, I know, most authors probably harbour hopes that they'll be able to live off their soon-to-be-published novel and ditch the day job, it's human nature to be optimistic - but it's also human nature to harbour a deep-seated worry that your book might just flop. Rowling has never shown any evidence of the latter.

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Dan H

at 14:49 on 2007-08-17This is, I think, also evidence of Ms Rowling's deeply fucked up priorities. Having faith in yourself is one thing, but she had a fucking *kid* to support. You think she'd give some thought to how the poor bastard was going to eat.

Also: Fun exercise for your spare time. Re-read the chapter entitled "Horcruxes" in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It's as fucked up as all hell. It's where Dumbledore explains that Harry Potter hating Voldemort and wanting to kill him is evidence of his deep capacity for love.

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Arthur B

at 16:08 on 2007-08-17Care to summarise? I don't have the Half-Blood Prince and don't intend to read it - as far as I can tell, it's the big waterslide that dumps the reader in the sewer of

Deathly Hallows

.

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Dan H

at 16:23 on 2007-08-17Lets see, choice quotes from that chapter include:

"If Voldemort had never murdered your father, would he have implanted in you a furious desire for revenge?"

And of course

"You have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort's followers!"

"Of course I haven't," said Harry indignantly. "He killed my mum and dad!"

"You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!" said Dumbledore loudly.

And

"Imagine, please just for a moment that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!"

"I'd want him finished," said Harry quietly. "And I'd want to do it."

That's your shining beacon of love folks: an angry little man driven by pure hatred and the desire for personal vengeance.

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Arthur B

at 16:33 on 2007-08-17That's hilarious. It's like Dumbledore is dozing his way through a speech and isn't actually listening to what Harry is saying.

"So, Harry, what will you do if you defeat Voldemort?" asked Dumbledore.

"I will become an Auror and turn the Ministry of Magic into a terrifying machine devoted to exterminating House Slytherin. I will use Unforgivable Curses like they were party tricks. I will break every single rule regulating magical law enforcement in my pursuit of the Slytherin menace."

"Oh Harry, you truly are a fountain of love and forgiveness!"

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Dan H

at 16:38 on 2007-08-17It's even worse than that: he's paying absolute attention to what Harry's saying, but deep down he's thinking "bwahahaha, see how I have manipulated this boy into believing that his childish desire to lash out at Lord Voldemort is a noble and selfless act! Now he is certain to do exactly as I wish while I arrange his death!"

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Arthur B

at 16:47 on 2007-08-17Yeah. You know how I said how Harry walking to his own death in order to be the messiah was the act of a paranoid schizophrenic? I take that back. Orchestrating your own death and the death of your protege because you firmly believe that a) this will let you defeat the greatest evil in the world and b) this is how you think the Truest Love works is the act of a paranoid schizophrenic megalomaniac.

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lessofthat

at 01:04 on 2007-08-28If only it were. It sounds more to me like the act of a man with no discernible personality traits whatsoever. I wonder how the books would read if you quietly ctrl-H'ed every instance of the word 'destiny' with the word 'plot'.

Hemmens, you've skewered the woman precisely and with brio, and you deserve applause, but how in the name of fuck was all this - except the ugly suicide cult business you mention in the previous piece - not visible from the downslope of book 3?

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Arthur B

at 09:26 on 2007-08-28I think people still had some faith that Rowling would pull off some brilliant plot twist and the series wouldn't go in the direction that it was obviously going, and in fact did. To be fair, for the first four books she was able to surprise me with the endings - I didn't expect Bloke With Turban to have Lord Voldemort pasted to the back of his head, I didn't expect that Tom Riddle was anything other than a horrible sneak called Tom Riddle, I hadn't guessed that the Goblet of Fire would be a teleportation trap. The third book is the best example of this, where the climactic encounter with Sirius Black you're expecting is still fifty-odd pages away happens early, before our heroes are even slightly ready.

Book 5, conversely, is pretty much devoid of surprises. In books 1-4 the titular thing - the Philosopher's Stone, the Chamber of Secrets, the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Goblet of Fire - is a mysterious object, place or person which is the key to the mystery the book covers. The Order of the Phoenix, conversely, is carefully explained early on in book 5 and isn't really especially relevant or important.

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lessofthat

at 10:57 on 2007-08-28Even her critics admit that Rowling does a good plot, but her creepy ideology and incoherent philosophy - her apparent belief that moral goodness is something you're born to, like the aristocracy, or that happens to you, like celebrity - has been visible for years.

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Arthur B

at 11:41 on 2007-08-28True, but until now people could always console themselves with the possibility that the whole goodness-by-selection deal was meant to be a Big Lie which was going to be exposed in the last book. In fact, the bit in

Deathly Hallows

where Harry struggles with the new facts he knows about Dumbledore could have been an excellent opportunity for Harry's worldview to be seriously challenged, but Rowling squandered the opportunity by having Harry's worldview be the correct one all along.

There was plenty of reason for bile and invective to be thrown in Rowling's general direction after books 5 and 6, and several decent causes for complaint after 4. I think the reason the flood has happened now, as opposed to earlier, is that with the publication of book 7 there is now no opportunity for Rowling to redeem the series.

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Wardog

at 15:00 on 2007-08-28I'm not actually sure all this stuff *has* been visible; it's been *there* but that's not quite the same thing. A lot of people (self included, at least until 6) assumed it was all building up into something quite dark and interesting. And don't we feel like idiots now.

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lessofthat

at 16:05 on 2007-08-28The more interesting question then is "what rendered it invisible?"

What surprises me is that everyone here dissing Rowling seems to have reached the same conclusions as I did, and articulated them rather better than I ever managed to, but inexplicably read all the way to the end before doing so. What dazzled you in the meantime? Was it just the plot, or were there promises of complexity in Harry and his gang that I overlooked?

I'd particularly like to know because I might then be able to reverse-engineer some kind of cure and inject it into the friend who told me last week '[book 7] is a fucking triumph and we're lucky to have her'. Or at least understand what the hell's going on with that.

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Arthur B

at 16:24 on 2007-08-28For my part, I was assuming (until book 5) that Rowling was going to pull the same start with the overarching plot of the series that she did with books 1-4 - specifically, try her hardest to trick the reader into thinking that a particular thing was going to happen, and then pull the rug out from under them. Sure, it was pretty obvious that we were going to have a ludicrous final battle in Hogwarts between Harry and Voldemort, and that Harry would prove to be the Chosen One by virtue of his amazing feat of surviving to his first birthday, but in the early Potter books whenever something's

that

obvious it usually isn't true.

Rowling's a one-trick pony, but she's pretty good at the narrative misdirection trick. It's why you had fans suggesting with a straight face that Dumbledore was actually Ron from the future; people realise that Rowling often throws out sudden plot twists, especially when the plot seems to be fairly straightforward, and the fans had plenty of fun coming up with convoluted ideas of what would happen at the conclusion.

Rowling's biggest misdirection was tricking people into thinking that the things which were obviously going to transpire in the HP series would not, in fact, come to pass.

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empink

at 03:32 on 2007-08-29@lessofthat

I think that sometimes, you just don't *see* the bad points of a book for whatever reason. Everyone I know can speak to hating or at least disliking a book that they loved a while ago- it's the same sort of thing at work, or at least the same set of forces. For some reason, you may just want to enjoy a book so badly that you ignore its rough corners. Or you aren't yet adept at recognising those rough corners yet, so they pass you by. Or you weren't really paying much attention, and everything seems all right to your friends, and everything seems all right in (faulty) hindsight, so you jump at the next chance to read more from the same author.

All of that is far, far more pronounced when there is a lot of strong emotion sloshing around about a book or story or creative endeavour. You're either caught up in the hype to some extent, invest in it and suddenly realise it matters to you because your investment in it feels a lot sillier if it doesn't matter to you, or you're not and you wonder why the hell everyone's losing their heads over the whole thing.

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Wardog

at 21:17 on 2007-08-29Agreed, empink.

The first three books, at least, have advantages to balance their disadvantages. They're not great literature (but then, what is?) but they're reasonably well-written, tautly plotted, genuinely amusing and occasionally, as Arthur points out above, quite surprising. I remember being quite startled that Snape wasn't, in fact, the bad guy of book 1 and I was quite impressed at the rather morally complex position he occupied in what was obviously a children's a book: at that stage in the game, he's good but not nice which is interesting for a children's book.

Also, as empink observes, the problems aren't really pronounced enough to add up to anything coherently problematic. Dan could never have written this article based off the first few books. I remember Harry seemed rather bland but nobody cared - he was a hero and heroes are meant to Save The World not be interesting and they were plenty of nice secondary characters to shine well when set against Harry's lack of personality. And the fact that Snape *wasn't* the bad guy seemed to suggest that Slytherin - despite the bad press - weren't basically evil, again suggesting a potentially morally layered universe. As the books progresses the houses, for example, become more and more simplified. I always thought well of the potrayal of Cedric Diggory (from book VI). I mean, he's a Hufflepuff, but he's clever AND brave AND abmitious. I always thought that might be trying to say something worthwhile.

Of course it wasn't.

Also the later books are all about shutting down avenues of interpretation - the early books are a glorious free-for-all. Because they're not sprawling information dumps, the glimpses of the world they offer are subtle and intriguing - perhaps it's just evidence of how lame we are but we used to spend hours discussing Harry Potter in the pub, wondering what this and that meant, and what was going to happen, and who such and such a character was.

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Arthur B

at 22:11 on 2007-08-29Slytherin is a particularly good example, actually. From the very beginning, Rowling has been adamant that the Slytherins aren't all evil. The internal evidence of the books seems to correspond with that, right up until the end when whoosh! Basically every Slytherin student and teacher turns Quisling and helps the Death Eaters stomp all over Hogwarts. The one exception is Snape, and it's notable that at the very end Harry names his kid after Snape because of Snape's courage - the Griffindor virtue, not traditionally anything to do with Slytherin.

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lessofthat

at 10:23 on 2007-08-30Fair enough. Looking back, I can remember that sense that though the first three were flawed, there was something a bit different about them; the Slytherins had that aristocracy-of-hell feel that old guard Tories like Heseltine do (they may be scum, but they're engaging scum and you know where you are with them); Snape was, as Kyra says, not bad but not nice. I remember even being faintly impressed that Rowling knew what colour a philosopher's stone would be, but that she didn't feel the need to regurgitate all the matching alchemical background. It suggested she'd bothered to do the research but wore it lightly.

I wasn't that impressed though. I also remember reading a quote by some publishing type on the back of the first book way back in like '98, to the effect that future generations of children will talk about Diagon Alley the way past ones talked about the Hundred Acre Wood or, I don't know, Byker Grove or something. I thought that was ridiculous hyperbole. I suppose that's why he's a publishing type and I'm not, because how wrong was I.

@empink. The hype and social enthusiasm bypassed me, largely for reasons of grumpiness I suppose. So that's a powerful inoculating factor too.

Again, I guess that Harry's abject blandness was less apparent in his pre-teenage years. I don't really understand children, so absence of personality in them is less troublesome. I imagine that's true of other people too.

"the problems aren't really pronounced enough to add up to anything coherently problematic." I still disagree - I think the Choosing Hat alone is a particularly repellent embodiment of the English class system - but I think I have a better idea of why bright, sane people were distracted enough not to be bothered.

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Arthur B

at 13:16 on 2007-08-30On Harry's personality: half the reason book 5 lost me was that Harry became a repugnant, grumpy teenager. He was a well-observed repugnant teen, and I can just about barely remember what it was like being one myself, but there's a reason most people don't want to hang out with such oiks once they get over puberty, and that's because they're completely awful to be around.

In the earlier books his main personality trait was utter confusion and occasional amazement and wonder when regarding the world he'd been thrust into, which worked nicely with his role as the character we see the world through. It's a good device for the first three-or-so books, but it couldn't have been maintained for the entire series - nobody would have bought it if Rowling had tried to have Harry still be completely bowled over by the awesomeness of the wizarding world when he's lived in it for over half a decade - but it's a crying shame she didn't have anything particularly good to replace it with.

Re: the Sorting Hat - in the early books, I could accept the Sorting Hat as being a nice pastiche of the apparently arbitrary nature kids get assigned to classes and houses in secondary school. I could convince myself that the Hat essentially took a quick look at the students' personalities and flung them into whichever House seemed to have the most suitable internal culture for them, and the different characters of the Houses were a result of a self-perpetuating internal culture that the Hat just reinforced. It eventually became brutally apparent that the Hat is essentially a living filter for the Elect, and that being chosen as Gryffindor by the Hat is essentially an absolute vote of confidence in your moral integrity, but it took a while; again, it wasn't until book 5 that I realised that we'd never seen

one

single person who didn't fit in perfectly in their House, and

come on

: just because you're hard-working or brave or ambitious at 11 doesn't mean that's still going to be the case when you're 15.

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empink

at 13:19 on 2007-08-30@lessofthat I don't really understand children, so absence of personality in them is less troublesome. I imagine that's true of other people too.

SO TRUE.

I still disagree - I think the Choosing Hat alone is a particularly repellent embodiment of the English class system

That's what I would have said after reading it. I can't remember how many times I wanted to point at JKR's treatment of the women in her book (married, had babies, or wanted to, or died, or died regardless, or were ugly, unsexy and old) and ask people what they thought was up with THAT. Then again, I remember how much less that would have pinged me a year or two ago, when I was still supposedly not a feminist. Snape's "I see no difference" feels particularly apt in this case. Until you *do* see the difference, or have it pointed out to you in a way you can't bring yourself to ignore, you...don't. And to others who do, you either look like a huge, defensive jackass, or like Stupid of the century. And to others who don't, you are Sane McGrateful for the author's bounty. And even that's simplifying the whole thing, but really, that's how it seems to have worked in my corner so far.

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Dan H

at 00:40 on 2007-09-07Sorry I haven't commented: No internet.

In short, the reason that it took me a while to realise that Rowling was espousing a repulsive moral philosophy is that the series went through a massive genre shift between (roughly) books four and five, and assumptions which are perfectly acceptable in a boarding school romp have no place in a serious story about love and death and choices.

I always saw the Sorting Hat as being a metaphor for the cliques you get at school. The Slytherins are the privileged popular kids, the Ravenclaw are the swots, Hufflepuff are everybody else. Gryffindor - in the early books - was essentially just "the hero and his mates". There's comparatively little evidence that Gryffindors are *objectively* superior in the early books - there's just Harry's natural tendency to side with his friends. Indeed in the early books there's a fair number of dodgy Gryffindors (like Peter Pettigrew) and admirable non-Gryffindors (like Cedric Diggory and, arguably, Snape). In book five we even discover that James Potter was a bullying little shit. By the start of book six, things actually looked reasonably complex, and rather grown up. The last two books, though, took all of that apart. The Slytherins all leave in the final battle, James Potter wasn't a bully at all, he was just mad at Snape because he called Lily Potter a bad name, and we are asked to take Harry's desire for vengeance as evidence of his moral superiority.

Essentially I didn't find the early books morally repulsive, because I didn't think they were trying to make any kind of moral statement beyond "it is good to stick by your friends" and possibly "believe in yourself". The whole business with Sorting and predestination was just a convenient plot device to give the hero a set of allies and enemies. Early Potter doesn't advocate predeterminism any more than the Lord of the Rings advocates genocide.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/tjLTVHEducFb4rKDHU5DukBHtQcCbTVMEEq55v0CxV4-#5e156

at 11:32 on 2009-08-09Aw come on Hemmens, don't you think getting that level of publicity could have turned your head like it did JKR's? I don't blame her for over reaching herself and her abilities given the phenomenal publicity she received. I shudder to think what it would have done to my mind!

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Robinson L

at 00:30 on 2009-08-11

I don't blame her for over reaching herself and her abilities given the phenomenal publicity she received. I shudder to think what it would have done to my mind!

Sure it's understandable for fame to go to her head. Doesn't make the results any less execrable.

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http://lunabell14.myopenid.com/

at 22:42 on 2010-07-27Actually, in Order of the Phoenix, during the sorting hat song, it sings this line (credit from Mugglenet):

For instance, Slytherin Took only pure-blood wizards Of great cunning, just like him

So basically, Rowling admits even earlier that Slytherins are all racist, and therefore the bad guys. I remember this kind of bugged me when I read it, since there is definitely no relationship between being cunning and being pure-blood. And you would think since Voldemort and Snape could by-pass the pure-blood rule, they would get rid of that criteria.

But honestly, I don't see how she can get credit for complex characterization when there such sweeping generalizations about Gryffindors and Slyterins. Especially when some of the good guys show what I consider some very questionable morality (such as Harry crucio-ing the Death Eater over nothing, Dumbledore being a manipulative dick, etc.)

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http://prue84.livejournal.com/

at 23:06 on 2011-02-20I've avidly read this articol and how hell, how you are right!

I admit I'm never been Harry fan (I'm a "Slytherin" person because I feel I fell in that house - not a fan because they're the evil!), but this articole make me even less fan of Harry.

I'd also like to point out what I feel about Draco/Malfoys and Ron/Weasleys: they are basically the same, as both the families are racist but, when Draco say something nasty about Ron (usually something about being poor), he is labelled as "evil" while when Ron says something nasty about Draco (and Slytherins in general), he is still the good guy (or the Chosen One's biggest friend). What always bugged me is that Slytherin's House has some qualities (if I remember right, the Sorting Hat explain them in the first book), and yet "all in Slytherin are bad". What, why? Why there can't be bad or asses in the other houses? Why there is no Death Eater's son in Rawenclaw? Why Slytherins' students are all "Death Eater's wannabes?": couldn't be that many of them have pressures? Couldn't be that many of these families are simply acting like nobles families had done during the centuries, acting in a way while they wanted nothing more than be free to hug, kiss and reward?

I'm going totally off-topic here, but...

Thanxs for this articole! I have read the one regarding Abused Woman in the media and I'll slowly made my way in this site: too many interesting analysis. :)

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http://shrek2be.livejournal.com/

at 14:05 on 2011-12-30I am not too intelligent to say that I understand what you have writtenabove in your post Daniel.I'll try to interpret DH and essentially HP in my own little simplistic way.

The problem for me is Rowling tries to keep Harry as Jesus and then convert him back to a human . Dumbledore ideally should be the Merlin/Gandalf figure (or like GOD with Harry being the son of GOD) but due to poor writing comes across as a bad human being. who shouldn't be preaching philosophy as he still believed in the greater good with the way he treated Harry.

I haven't read LOTR but have watched the movies and even Tolkien understands Frodo has changed irrevocably because he is no longer normal that he has to go to Valinor which I guess is the term for heaven. Rowling doesn't get this part at all. The epilogue validates how naive Rowling is terms of understanding religion. Harry's ideal character growth for me would be accepting that he has never been normal.

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http://ladylazarus1027.livejournal.com/

at 00:38 on 2012-07-12

JK Rowling self-defines as a Christian. More specifically, she was apparently raised Church of Scotland which, the internet reliably informs me, has strong Calvinist influences. If this is true, then it seems that Rowling has allowed her faith to strongly influence her work.

I'm fairly sure Rowling didn't start attending the Church of Scotland until she was in her late twenties* -- at the absolute earliest-- but I can see why you wouldn't want facts to get in the way of your rant.

* According to wikipedia, she was born and raised in Gloucestershire, quite far from Scotland.

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Jamie Johnston

at 17:27 on 2012-07-13Greetings, unnecessarily sarcastic commenter! I don't know when (or whether) Rowling joined the Church of Scotland, but it's possible for her to have done so without living in Scotland. There is, for example, a Church of Scotland church near where I work in central London.

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Shim

at 20:39 on 2012-07-13A quick googling shows

this article from the Telegraph

which says she was raised as an Anglican. When she joined the Church of Scotland, I have no idea, and the Anglican church is very varied, so it's not that enlightening.

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Dan H

at 21:09 on 2012-07-13

I'm fairly sure Rowling didn't start attending the Church of Scotland until she was in her late twenties* -- at the absolute earliest-- but I can see why you wouldn't want facts to get in the way of your rant.

Thanks for the clarification. To be honest, though, I'm not convinced that there is much difference between "was raised" and "was influenced by in her twenties" and I'm not sure whether that particular detail actually has much to do with my central argument, which is that the Harry Potter books present a world in which some people are predestined towards salvation and others not.

What Rowling herself believes, or why she believes it, or when she started believing it is distinctly secondary.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 02:54 on 2012-07-14I think people are tripping up on the idea that Rowling's terrible writing is due to her being a deranged Calvinist, rather than just a terrible writer. I don't think this article really pushes that connection very hard, but I can see why people who want to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking would jump on that.

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Dan H

at 10:34 on 2012-07-14I think that's probably the case. Ironically I think the article actually argues fairly strongly that Rowling *isn't* a deranged Calvinist, and that if she was her writing would probably be somewhat improved.

The problem I have with the attitude to Salvation in the Potter books is that it superficially resembles Calvinist Election without any of the theological underpinnings.

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Cammalot

at 11:38 on 2012-07-14

The problem I have with the attitude to Salvation in the Potter books is that it superficially resembles Calvinist Election without any of the theological underpinnings.

Yes, and I'd speculate that seems like that *would* be a product of a later-in-life association with the church, rather than early internalization of the doctrine.

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Ibmiller

at 11:38 on 2012-07-14Rather hilariously, I love this article, and I am a Calvinist (who some call deranged...) Completely agree that Rowling's world would improve from theological underpinnings other than "some people who are pretty are nice and some people who don't have noses are racist."

Hmmm...the Harry Potter series rewritten by a deranged Calvinist...if I were any kind of writer, I might want to take that up as a challenge...

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 11:55 on 2012-07-14I think this specifically is what's getting people.

If [Rowling belongs to the Church of Scotland] is true, then it seems that Rowling has allowed her faith to strongly influence her work.

That implies a more direct connection than the one I got: that

Potter

and Calvinism both espouse a similar salvation-of-the-elect worldview, the difference being that Calvinists have put a bit more thought and indeed humanity and decency into their version. Their conclusions about how life works aren't the inadvertent result of an overlong fantasy series spinning out of an inexperienced writer's control.

Potter

would likely have ended up the same way if Rowling had never heard of Calvinism.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 12:02 on 2012-07-14

I am a Calvinist (who some call deranged...)

I actually don't think Calvinists are any more deranged than any other religious group. What would make Rowling's worldview deranged would be a conscious attempt to decontextualize Calvinist or most other religious beliefs into something secular, which I think everyone agrees probably did not happen.

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Ashimbabbar

at 14:27 on 2014-04-25• It's an extremely interesting and deep analysis ( not that everybody hadn't noticed, but now I have too )

• The "but of course Voldemort wouldn't repent" makes an interesting contrast with LOTR [ Tolkien being a Catholic ]. Here Saruman could really have repented ( after the Ents smashed Isengard ), it is not his 'nature' that prevents him too, only his choice ( I think LOTR would have been much better if he had but never mind that ). Gollum too could have if it hadn't been for Sam's hostility and his own reaction to it… they were really offered the choice.

• This "Rowlingian Calvinism", for want of a better term, sounds like a very good belief for the bad guys in a Fantasy novel…

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Daniel F

at 15:46 on 2014-04-25

it is not his 'nature' that prevents him too, only his choice ( I think LOTR would have been much better if he had but never mind that ).

One of the infuriating things about S5 of Angel is its blatant disregard for any of the show’s prior mythology (to be fair, this was partly due to network pressure). The girls at Boils and Blinding Torment get particularly furious about this, complaining about the way it craps all over the notion that vampires are in any way different to regular people. To quote them quoting Buffy

To paraphrase almost every character in Buffy ever: A vampire is not the person they appear to be. They walk like them, they talk like them, they have access to their memories, they might even do their hair like them, but it’s not them.

Which is pretty darn clear, and is, as the girls observed, spelled out in the first episode, and about every five episodes thereafter.

The thing is, while it’s spelled out like that, it’s pretty clear that it’s not like that. Jessee pops up in the second damned episode and seems quite convinced that apart from being “connected to everything” he’s still the same guy he always was. Angelus, while evil, still has a lot of Angel’s basic personality traits (“it’s just … you’re still the only thing he thinks about” is I believe how Willow describes it). Not only is there textual evidence against the whole “demon in a Xander suit” theory (and very little to support it except maybe that scene in series two where Angel’s “inner demon” beats up that other demon inside Angel’s body), there’s also some fairly fundamental problems with the whole idea of something that has your appearance, memories and personality being, in any meaningful sense “not you”.

Memory, Continuity, and Tom Riker

The question of who “you” actually are is a horrendously difficult one in philosophical terms. In practical terms, you know that you’re you, other people aren’t you and that’s an end to it. In the world of the philosophy of identity it’s far trickier.

One of the thought experiments presented in TPtWtbE is the teleporter problem. Suppose you go through a Star Trek matter transporter. It scans your body, and reduces it to data. Then it blasts you into atoms, and reconstructs you miles away from (presumably) completely different parts. None of the characters in Star Trek seem remotely bothered by this but it raises a lot of difficult questions. If the person who is reconstituted at the other end of the teleporter is made from completely different atoms from the person who went in, in what sense are they the same person?

The problem is compounded by the fact that the person who goes into the teleporter and the person who comes out are in fact capable of living independent lives. In a relatively famous episode, it is discovered that exactly that had happened to Riker. A transporter accident had split him into two people, both with exactly the same memories and experiences, and both believing themselves to be the “original” Will Riker. The Trek episode neatly dodged a lot of the nastier problems involved with this kind of conundrum by having the “other will” be one who had been stuck on a remote planet for several years, making it fairly clear to one and all that the Will Riker who has been, y'know, on TV all this time is the real one.

A similar idea crops up in The Prestige - Tesla's teleporting machine doesn't destroy the original, so you always get two copies, an Hugh Jackman solves the problem by drowning himself. This creates a terribly haunting image in the original film, but it's interesting that in many ways the machine functions identically to the “real” teleporter in Star Trek. It's just that the way it disposes of the “original” is less neat.

I understand that the way a lot of philosophers resolve such issues is with a concept called “Continuity of Consciousness” - broadly speaking if the individual coming out of the transporter remembers being the person who went into it, they can be said to be the same person.

Of course there are arguments against this definition (the two Rikers and the Tesla machine highlight one of them) but it's still extremely useful, and it's very interesting when applied to Buffy vampires.

The Buffy vamp remembers its human life. This is described in early episodes as “having access” to the human's memories, with the implication that the vampire knows itself to be a demon, and simply uses the human's memories to trick people into thinking it's something else, but this is clearly untrue. We witness the transformations of several vampires, and all of them clearly genuinely consider themselves to be the person who got bit, not some alien parasite. They have, in a word, continuity of consciousness. Not only that, but no vampire ever displays knowledge or memory of having existed independently as a demon.

Of course once a person becomes a vampire they are changed - they lose their soul (which seems to have a rather nebulous effect, certainly it doesn't seem to alter their sense of identity very much) and become Evil, but you can't really say that they're different people except in the metaphorical sense that we are all “different people” when we are – say – drunk.

This has particular consequences when it comes to little things like moral culpability.

Blame, Responsibility, and Evil

Even if you accept that vampires, whatever the show might say, are the same people they were when they were alive, it's still perfectly reasonable to say that they are the same people but evil(it's also perfectly reasonable to argue that the “but evil” segment of that sentence renders them not the same person at all, what isn't reasonable is arguing that they're suddenly a demon occupying somebody else's body – whatever the text says, Buffy vamps clearly don't work like that).

But even here we run into a bit of a stumbling block. Okay, vampires are evil. They kill people, because that's what they do, hence the slayage. Except that repeatedly, starting lest we forget in series two when Spike turns against Angelus, vampires have shown that they are capable of choosing to do good – or at the very least not to do evil. Now frequently they choose it for selfish reasons: Spike helps save the world because he likes being evil in it, and later fights demons because he enjoys hurting demons. The vampires at the dodgy place Riley goes to avoid killing people because it helps them stay under the radar. Harmony goes on the cowblood because it's a condition of her employment at Wolfram and Hart.

Now on the one hand, this makes the vampires that actually do kill people way more reprehensible. On the other hand, it makes killing vampires on spec a little bit dodgy. Yes, some vampires kill people, but a great many of them don’t, either because of artificial constraints (a chip in the head) emotional constraints (I haz soul! It make me sad if I do the killing!) or rational self-interest (killing people will get me fired, killing people will make them less likely to let me feed on them repeatedly). These, not to put too fine a point on it, are pretty much the three reasons that regular people don’t go around committing murder.

Now true, vampires are still much more likely to kill people than humans, but to get all formal logic about it, you can’t say that all vampires are killers – they are clearly capable of choosing not to kill – which leaves you only with “some vampires are killers” which is kinda useless. This means that staking vampires the moment they rise is basically a form of racial profiling. It’s effective racial profiling, to be sure, since they’re mostly going to go on to be mass murderers, but it’s much less cut and dried than the original remit of “a demon in the body of your friend”.

Dolls, Identity, and Consent

The whole philosophy of identity issue gets even more interesting (and even more problematic) in Dollhouse. Is that me saying something positive about the show? Well yeah, sort of. The actual philosophy of identity bit is kind of interesting – and on some levels it seems to be what Joss is interested in (q.v. the “it makes humanity irrelevant” speech in Man on the Street) – unfortunately because Joss is pathologically incapable of writing a show that doesn’t have EYE YAM TEH FEMINISTS scrawled all over the front in crayon, he muddies the water by making it something that is also about the abuse of women by men who aren’t him.

The problem with Dollhouse (why yes, I am recycling content from an old article) is that it brings up a whole lot of important rape myths and then not only fails to challenge them, but dips the whole thing in a the kind of abstract philosophy that dickheads use so that they can accuse feminists of being “too emotional”.

To quote one blogger whose name, weblog, and other identifying features I have totally forgotten: “the thing I love about this fandom is that you can always find somebody willing to argue that it isn’t rape if she was brainwashed”.

The problem is that “it isn’t rape if she was brainwashed” is actually part of several interesting philosophical questions about identity, free will, and perception. The problem is that rape is not in any way the right subject to be using as a vehicle for these questions. The concept of consent and complicity is complex enough in real world rape cases that it doesn’t need imaginary supertechnology muddying the waters. The abstract philosophy of the Dollhouse contributes to, rather than challenging, the prevailing notion that consent is so vague and ill-defined that anything short of a clear “no” counts.

One of the things I really liked about The Pig that Wants to be Eaten was the way in which it tempered its abstract content with pragmatism. In its discussion of the

Ship of Theseus

, for example, the author points out that the identity of the “real” ship depends on what you want to do with it. If, for example, you were looking for forensic evidence in a murder investigation, you would want the physical components that had been present at the time of the crime. If on the other hand you were looking for Theseus himself, you'd want the ship that was actually in his possession.

The abstract, philosophy-of-identity stuff in Dollhouse is at odds with the simple, practical fact that the Dollhouse is all kinds of fucked up. If the Dollhouse was more benign and less rapetastic, it could explore some of the interesting ideas about identity which are – in theory at least – part and parcel of the show. Unfortunately the nature of the Dollhouse makes abstract theorizing about identity an offensive disservice to its victims. Yes, you can wonder to what extent Echo's imprints are real people with volition, and to what extent therefore they are moral agents in their own right capable of, amongst other things, consenting to sex. The problem is that the house's “brainwash and bone” routine is so close to real-world date-rape that it becomes genuinely uncomfortable.

Which is a shame, because the actual ideas are rather interesting.

Themes:

TV & Movies

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Arthur B

at 14:18 on 2009-09-21

A similar idea crops up in The Prestige - Tesla's teleporting machine doesn't destroy the original, so you always get two copies, an Hugh Jackman solves the problem by drowning himself. This creates a terribly haunting image in the original film,

Uh, actually

the novel came first

. Though you are right that there's a particularly striking image that results from this, if it's the same one from the novel I'm thinking of.

That's a nitpick though, and I completely agree with the rest of your points here. I think the conclusive thing is that, whilst not a compulsive

Buffy

-watcher, I've seen at least a season or two's worth of episodes, and I've

never

even caught an inkling of the idea that vampires are not basically the same people they were before the Embrace (TM White Wolf) but with kewl powerz, simply because I never saw an episode where it was explicitly stated. Which I suppose is another good philosophical question: if you cut out the episodes which make the "they're different people" thing explicit, and a viewer can't work out that vampires are different people from the humans they used to be through observation, can it really be said to be true?

(The best example of using this plot point right, in my book, is

Dracula

; part of the reason the vampirisation of Lucy is so horrifying is that vampire-Lucy is so utterly different from normal-Lucy.)

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Dan H

at 15:36 on 2009-09-21Sorry, you're right, the use of the word "original" in that sentence is entirely specious. I think in my head i was using "original" to mean "before it was co-opted to be an example in a short article about the philosophy of identity".

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Niall

at 22:37 on 2009-09-21Must ... resist ... urge ... to debate ... Buffyverse ... mythology and metaphysics ... must ... resist ...

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Jamie Johnston

at 23:36 on 2009-09-21Ooh, interesting. Hmm. Yes.

Two very

obiter dicta

:

On the rape / brainwashing point, I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn't help to make the same sort of distinction as is made in law between theft (taking another person's property without permission) and fraud (using deceit to trick another person into giving you his property). The word 'rape' was until only a few decades ago almost entirely confined to violent and plainly non-consensual violation. That, of course, is only because society hadn't got far enough in reducing toleration of that extreme form of sexual abuse for it to even begin seriously looking at less obvious forms. But it does also, rightly or wrongly, cause a certain trickiness when we use the same word to denote sex where there is ostensibly consent but the consent is vitiated by, for example, incapacity. On the one hand using 'rape' in this broader sense is strategically shrewd because, now that everyone pretty much agrees that 'classic' violent rape is wrong and is a real problem, saying that something else is also rape immediately challenges people to think again about that other thing and may well shock them into new understanding. But on the other hand, as with assertions like 'meat is murder' or 'property is theft', there is a risk that people simply say, consciously or unconsciously, 'No, that's plainly not literally true and therefore I can ignore whatever point underlies it'. Whereas more progress might be made by treating the two things as separate and concentrating on getting people to acknowledge that the second is also bad. One might say that to some extent this panders to the tendency to regard 'fraud-type-rape' (if I can for the moment call it that without seeming to imply an actual analogy or to trivialize the whole business with my sloppy terminology) as less bad than 'theft-type-rape', it might at least make more progress in solidifying a consensus that 'fraud-type-rape' is actually wrong to some degree. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a time when theft was recognized as bad but fraud wasn't; nowadays, though, fraud is often regarded as actually worse than theft because it involves an abuse not only of the institution of property but also of human trust. Anyway, perhaps this isn't the right article for this line of thought...

The second thing is that the two links in the article don't work because in each case the URL they're trying to point to has somehow got the URL for the Ferretbrain articles index tacked onto the front, in addition to the usual quotation-marks-coming-out-as-'&8221' problem.

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http://belmanoir.livejournal.com/

at 00:47 on 2009-09-22Actually, the Tesla machine functions entirely differently in the book--the duplicate that is created in the book is not really capable of functioning independently, so the philosophical/ethical issues are still present but very different. The movie DID come up with the image Dan is discussing.

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Arthur B

at 01:25 on 2009-09-22Ah, I was thinking of the image right at the end of the book, but now it occurs to me that that only happens in the framing story, which wasn't included in the film.

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Robinson L

at 22:00 on 2009-09-24It's perfectly simple, Dan. Removing the soul counts as an involuntary alignment shift to either Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil (I don't think there are many vampires I'd characterize as Lawful Evil). Side effects may include some changes in personality which go beyond those associated Character Alignment, although this has only been documented in one case (Angel), and as you point out, it's not like he's a different person—more like the same person under radically different circumstances.

Now, vampires can act outside their Alignment (Harmony trying to stay friends with Cordelia in Season 2 or 3 would be an even better example), although Spike takes it to ridiculous levels in

Buffy

Season 5. Evil is just the default.

Contrast with Russel T Davies' depiction of the Daleks and Cybermen in the new

Doctor Who

. You kind of have to admire the guy for sticking to the concept that they're without personality and totally evil—no matter how blisteringly dull this makes them as villains, or the stories they appear in. Whedon, on the other hand, through out the whole “vampires without personalities” angle (probably without even realizing what he was doing) pretty much as soon as it threatened his ability to tell an entertaining story. There's probably a lesson to be learned in all that.

Interesting question about whether vampires can be considered monsters in the moral sense, even without souls. Of course, ever since Season 2 (still referring to

Buffy

), I was wondering why the couldn't just restore the souls of all the vampires they encountered. Or at least a couple, like the Alternate Willow from Season 3.

If the Dollhouse was more benign and less rapetastic, it could explore some of the interesting ideas about identity which are – in theory at least – part and parcel of the show.

Yes, but they would also have to make the plots and characters and dialogue and trivialities like that more

interesting

, too. Even without the unfortunate implications of the Dollhouse-as-human-trafficking angle, there's still the

Dollhouse

-as-fecking-boring-tv-show issue to contend with. Without an engaging

story

with which to prevent it, all the deep philosophizing in the world is so much wasted screen time.

@Jamie: Really? The links work just fine for me.

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Jamie Johnston

at 22:54 on 2009-09-24

Really? The links work just fine for me.

This is because someone has fixed them. Presumably for the sole purpose of making me look silly. :)

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Rami

at 06:37 on 2009-09-25

This is because someone has fixed them. Presumably for the sole purpose of making me look silly. :)

Not at all. I've added some smarts to the Ferret so it shouldn't happen again.

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Arthur B

at 15:04 on 2009-09-25I confess: I used

seeecret poweeers

to dive in and fix the links for everyone's short-term convenience.

Which isn't to downplay the importance of Rami's unique ability to alter the ferret at will, or Jamie's keen bug-spotting powers.

TEAMWORK!

(picture of Captain Planet and cast goes here)

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:04 on 2009-09-27Go Planet!

Incidentally, I do wonder sometimes whether it would be kind to newcomers if it said somewhere on the site who has the secret powers. Or indeed who the editor is. But most of the time I enjoy the fact that it doesn't.

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http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/

at 22:19 on 2009-09-29You might be interested in the Less Wrong post

Timeless Identity

. Spoiler warning: it turns out to be a sales pitch for cryonic preservation. But it's good up until that point.

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Dan H

at 11:18 on 2011-01-10Sorry, I know this is an old post but I was just playing with the Random Article function and I've just found the article linked from the bottom of this comments section.

ARGH ARGH QUANTUM BULLSHIT RAGE!!!

Firstly: you know somebody is a nutbag when they say "as we have seen in..." followed by a link to a post on their own blog.

Secondly: you can't solve the transporter problem by reference to quantum mechanics. Not only does quantum mechanics not really apply to macroscopic bodies, but it ignores the fundamental question of what identity is by clinging to the (completely false) notion that it is somehow impossible to distinguish between particles.

Thirdly: I love how this long winded nonsense about "rationality" ends in something little better than Pascal's Wager - sign up for cryonics because if you're right you get to be immortal and if you aren't you don't lose anything.

Fourthly: GAAAAH QUANTUM BULLSHIT RAGE!!!

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 17:41 on 2011-01-10The "less wrong" guy, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is fascinating. A lot of his stuff seems to be totally nutty, or at the very least exceedingly pretentious, like "the ten virtues of a rationalist." That said, some of his writing is really good.

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth

is a hilarious essay on epistemology that I found pretty convincing.

He also wrote a Harry Potter fanfic:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

which I thought was quite funny as well, even if he occasionally stops the story to complain about JK Rowling's plotting.

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Dan H

at 18:43 on 2011-01-10

The "less wrong" guy, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is fascinating

Fascinating he might be, but I find people who cite "quantum mechanics" in support of their personal ideologies extremely irritating. Quantum mechanics says nothing about the nature of identity except as it relates to sub-atomic particles. You certainly can't use quantum mechanics to prove that psychological continuity is the essence of human identity and you certainly-certainly can't use quantum mechanics to prove that psychological continuity is the essence of human identity by using it to argue, falsely, that physical continuity exists where it doesn't on the basis of the erroneous belief that all electrons are really the same electron.

Quantum mechanics *does* say that "identity" is not a measurable property of particles - when I say "this electron" what I really mean is "the electron that currently has these properties" and if I look at the electron again and its properties have changed I cannot meaningfully describe it as being either the same electron or a different electron.

The same ideas can be applied to human identity as well, and funnily enough they have been for years going back to the original Ship of Theseus. Quantum Mechanics doesn't offer us any new insight into the issue. Just because it is true that the identity of a sub-atomic particle depends only on its quantum numbers, that does not mean that the identity of a person depends only on the quantum numbers of the particles in their body (certainly it cannot be a *necessary* component of identity because I am pretty sure the quantum numbers of the particles in my body are changing all the damned time).

Sorry, personal bugbear.

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 19:03 on 2011-01-10I don't disagree with any of that--I just really wanted to take the opportunity to pimp his epistemology essay, which is not about quantum.

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Dan H

at 19:21 on 2011-01-10Yeah, the epistemology essay is pretty cool, although it gets a bit straw mannish towards the end. Then again, if it's good enough for Galileo...

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 05:16 on 2011-01-11I see I should have specified why I find him "fascinating" in my first comment. I was going to, but didn't because I was too hungry.

On the man's main website he says that he "wears two hats." One writes about the "fine art of human rationality." Now, this is an insufferably pretentious way of putting things, and some of his articles follow suit, but most of his writings are actually quite good. What particularly strikes me is his phrase, "intelligence and learning are worth nothing if used to defeat themselves." He talks about the danger of trying to confirm ideas, various cognitive biases, and then, (this is the one that really got me thinking) the fact that even studying psychology is dangerous if you're not scrupulously honest, because the more you know about how people rationalize, the more easily you can find reason to discredit anything you don't want to believe.

The other hat is "concerned with artificial intelligence." And everything he says about this appears to be goats on fire. He supposedly works for the "Singularity Institute," a "public charity funded by individual donations." Sounds like a con man, except he's too obsessive.

The Harry Potter books aren't "books" any more. They're events. That's why people queue outside a bookshop at midnight to buy a copy, as if somehow starting to read a book an hour later than somebody else makes the reading experience different.  Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have a burning desire to exorcise the spirit of Potter from my soul, and I intend to do it by writing a chapter-by-chapter review of the final instalment. There may be some delays while I fling the book across the room.  So, without further ado...  Chapter One: The Dark Lord Ascending In which Voldemort borrows Lucius Malfoy's wand. I should first take a quick moment to say that his book managed to piss me off before chapter one even started by having a quote from Aeschylus at the start. I mean for fuck's sake, what is this, a 1993 Vampire sourcebook?  Anyway, chapter one is called The Dark Lord Ascending although it should more properly be called "The Dark Lord Sitting In A Dining Room And Being A Bit Mean To The Malfoys But Basically Doing Nothing."  Fans of the series will of course be intimately familiar with scenes of Voldemort Doing Nothing. He's been at it for three books now. This chapter is particularly full of fine examples of the Dark Lord's sinister aptitude for inactivity.  The action - or rather inaction - takes place in the pleasingly alliterative grounds of Malfoy Manor. Voldemort and his wacky minions discuss the progress of their sinister plan to take over the Wizarding World. They bicker about when Harry is going to be moved from his present location, and then they do a lot of exposition about how they are going to take over the Ministry of Magic.  This is particularly heavy handed. 

"It's a start," said Voldemort. "But Thicknesse is only one man. Scrimgeour must be surrounded by our people before I act. One failed attempt on the Minister's life will set me back a long way." "Yes, my Lord - that is true - but you know, as the head of the department of magical law enforcement, Thicknesse has regular contact not only with the Minister himself, but also with the heads of all the other Ministry departments. It will, I think, be easy now that we have such a high-ranking official under our control, to subjugate the others, and then we can all work together to bring Scrimgeour down."

Just in case you didn't catch that, they've got control of a man named Thicknesse, got that, Thicknesse, who is head of the department of magical law enforcement, and they are going to use him to get control over all the other ministers, and use that to take down Scrimgeour, and then take control of the ministry of magic.  Remember in the first book, where the Philosopher's Stone was barely seen, seldom discussed, and it wasn't until the very end of the book that you actually found out why Lord Voldemort wanted it so badly? Remember how cool and exciting that was. Damn I miss that.  While the Death Eaters bicker about whether their dastardly plan which they could have enacted at any time over the past three years is actually going to work or not, we are painfully aware that there is a figure, horribly suspended above the table in the centre of the room. Helpless and silent, we are forced to watch the black-hearted villains discuss their tedious-but-horrific plans, while this figure suffers above us.  Imagine, then, how our horror is compounded when we discover that this innocent creature who the Dark Lord torments so casually is none other than ...  ... Charity Burbage!  You know. Charity Burbage. She taught Muggle Studies at Hogwarts. Remember Muggle Studies? I think Hermione takes it in her third year. Or something.  So anyway, she dies. And this makes a Meaningful Statement About The Nature Of Death. Students of literary history will of course recall that up until 2000's Goblet of Fire, there had never been a death in any children's book ever written.  The Death Eaters talk some more. They make Nazi salutes (seriously: "in silence, both raised their left arms in a kind of salute") and are racist about Muggles and Mudbloods.  Chapter Two: In Memoriam In which Harry gets angry at a Daily Prophet article and shouts "Lies!" For chapter two, we are back following Harry Potter. I confidently predict that we shall never leave his side again.  In chapter two, Harry cuts his finger on the mirror that Sirius gave him. Then he reads two articles about Albus Dumbledore. These give us more information than we could possibly want about the plot-dumping old coot. Tragically, it seems fated to be but the tip of a very large Dumbledore-shaped iceberg.  And these articles are long. Like really, really long. It's basically like JK Rowling took her fifteen-year old notes about the character of Dumbledore, copy-pasted them into the text, and attributed them to a guy with a silly name.  The purpose of this chapter, it seems, is to make us believe that there was more to Dumbledore than we ever expected.  He had thought he knew Dumbledore quite well, but ever since reading this obituary he had been forced to recognise that he had barely known him at all. Never once had he imagined Dumbledore's childhood or youth; it was as though he had sprung into being as Harry had known him, venerable and silver-haired and old.  Now I'm sorry, but that's just cheating.  Dumbledore spends six books being a moderately entertaining but utterly generic White Haired Old Mentor Figure. Harry's belief that Dumbledore had "sprung into being ... venerable and silver-haired and old" is of course literally true. JK Rowling invented him to be a mentor to her protagonist, and at no point does he act like anything else. Dumbledore spends six books as a plot device. Asking us to suddenly see him as a real person is pathetic. She might as well have gone the whole hog and written "Suddenly, Harry realised that JK Rowling was a really brilliant writer, and all her characters were really complex and interesting."  Harry packs his bags, and prepares to leave on his Epic Quest To Defeat Voldemort Using The Spells He Learned In His Second Year Duelling Class.  Chapter Three: The Dursleys Departing In which the Dursleys Depart, and it's actually quite touching. This chapter, unlike the previous two chapters, is not a waste of good wood pulp. We see Harry being taken away from the Dursleys for the last time, and the Dursleys themselves being taken into hiding so that Voldemort cannot target them.  This chapter actually contains something approaching a significant event, and even more rarely, some actual semblance of character development on behalf of the otherwise zero-dimensional Dursley family. 

"I don't think you're a waste of space."

It's a touch of the old style. The Dursleys remain, to the end, a rather pathetic caricature of a middle class family (and really, is there any easier target in the world than the middle class suburbanite?) but Dudley's admission that he doesn't entirely hate Harry, and that Harry did in fact save his life, carries a genuine emotional weight.  So the Dursleys depart in the company of two utterly forgettable Order of the Phoenix members, and we never hear from them again. From here on in we live forever in the magical world of Hogwarts, where fourteen year olds fight dragons, and Dark Lords are desperate to get teaching gigs.  Chapter Four: The Seven Potters In which Harry's mail client goes down. After the Dursleys leave, the Order of the Phoenix show up, and explain that Potter can't escape by magic, because he's still underage, and the "Trace" which detects magic being performed around underage wizards would allow the Ministry to locate him instantly.  So instead they decide to go by broomstick / Thestral / flying motorbike, with six "decoy" Potters, created using Polyjuice potion.  It all goes a bit tits up. They run into a pack of thirty Death Eaters, who start flinging killing curses at them.  Harry responds with the spells he learned in his second year duelling class, and manages to take out about half a dozen of the pursuing Death Eaters with Stupefy and Impedimentia charms, which they are clearly incapable of blocking. Note that since Harry is "still under the Trace," his use of underaged magic should have immediately notified the Ministry to his presence, allowing them to track him trivially. After all, that's why they couldn't just Apparate out of there in the first place. Right?  So Harry and the rest of the Order fight the Death Eaters. During this battle, however, the Order of the Phoenix suffers a Terrible Loss. 

"Hedwig - Hedwig -" But the owl lay motionless and pathetic as a toy on the floor of her cage. He could not take it in, and his terror for the others was paramount.

Leaving aside the fact that I've seen better writing on fanfiction.net (I mean really "He could not take it in and his terror for the others was paramount," what the fuck?), I think it's telling that so far the casualties of this most dark and terrible war are a teacher who we never actually saw in a previous book, and Harry's pet owl. But the whole thing is presented in this massively portentous way that says This Is A Significant Event. I'm sorry, but it's an owl. Not only is it an owl, but it's an owl whose sole function is to deliver Harry's post.  So they fight the Death Eaters, and one of them gets his cowl knocked off to reveal that he is none other than ...  ... ready for this? There's a lot of these big revelations coming up...  ... he is none other than Stanley Shunpike!  Stanley Shunpike ... the guy off Knight Bus? Yeah, I don't care either.  Harry tries to disarm Stan with his trademark Expelliarmus curse, at which point Stan can identify him immediately. This is apparently significant, although since the Ministry is supposed to be able to tell the moment he performs underage magic of any sort anyway, I'm not sure why he's so shocked.  Some thing go wrong, and Hagrid flying tackles a Death Eater and gets all badly hurt and stuff. The next chapter is called "Fallen Warrior." But don't worry, Hagrid doesn't die. Because people only die if it won't get in the way of the plot. I wish I'd had JK Rowling to explain death to me when I was a child.  Chapter Five: Fallen Warrior  In which JK Rowling talks to us about the nature of death. Hagrid doesn't die. He and Harry are taken in by Mr and Mrs Tonks, Harry's tooth (which got knocked out in the previous chapter) is regrown by magic.  Harry and Hagrid travel by Portkey to the Burrow. Everybody else shows up one at a time, taking much longer than they needed to.  Lupin gives Harry a stern talking to about not trying to disarm his enemies. You see, the Death Eaters don't understand the idea of disarming your opponent. They're far too evil to consider the advantages of being armed when your opponent isn't. Or something. 

"Of course not," said Lupin, "but the Death Eaters - frankly most people! - would have expected you to attack back! Expelliarmus is a useful spell, Harry, but the Death Eaters seem to think it is your signature move, and I urge you not to let it become so!"

Essentially this little speech, like the bit about Dumbledore in chapter two, reads a lot like JK Rowling trying to pretend that her weaknesses as a writer are really deliberate character traits. The fact that Harry always uses Expelliarmus in a fight is a limitation of miss Rowling's imagination, her idea of non-evil things to do in a fight is strictly limited. Trying to claim that this is somehow saying something profound about Harry's naivete or his merciful nature is hogwash.  Most everybody makes it back in one piece. George (of Fred and George) loses an ear, which apparently can't be cured because it's "Dark Magic". And Mad-Eye-Moody dies. Now, I kinda liked Mad-Eye, but the character I actually liked was Mad-Eye as played by Barty Crouch under the influence of Polyjuice potion. Now admittedly, that character is pretty much identical to the "real" Mad-Eye, but that's rather strong testimony to how poorly developed he actually was.  This would all be fair enough, but JK then insists on making it very clear to us that there is Death happening and that Death is a very important part of the book, because it's important that children be told about Death.  So we get glorious lines like: 

Harry could not quite believe it. Mad-Eye dead; it could not be ... Mad-Eye, so tough, so brave, the consummate survivor ...

And... 

Nobody seemed to know what to do. Tonks was crying silently into a hand-kerchief: she had been close to Mad-Eye, Harry knew, his favourite and his protegee at the Ministry of Magic.

And of course the execrable: 

The suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a presence.

The first two are just the old show-don't tell problem, which JK never really got over. She's never really worked out how to convey something to her audience without just telling it to them directly. The last line, though, is just completely fucking amateurish. It's up there with "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil."  Leaving aside the fact that, yet again, she's attempting to convey the information that the people in the room have been struck by the suddenness and completeness of death by saying "the suddenness and completeness of death was with them" she also seems to think that "was with them like a presence" is anything other than nonsense. I mean, how can something be with you without being like a presence? It's a completely empty simile. It's functionally equivalent to saying "the suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a thing" or "the suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a thing that was with them."  I really hate this book.  Chapter Six: The Ghoul In Pyjamas In which we get a plot dump about Horcruxes. In chapter six we have a refreshing change of pace. And by "refreshing" I mean "frustrating" and by "change of pace" I mean "slow to a painful crawl as we watch Harry and co sit around doing nothing for several days."  So Bill and Fleur are getting married. We spend an inordinate amount of time talking about this. Mrs Weasley is entirely preoccupied with it. Presumably because she's a woman and therefore doesn't understand important things like war, death, and her son losing an ear.  In chapter six, Harry Ron and Hermione explain to each other in great detail the plans they have made for their upcoming battle against Voldemort. So we learn how Hermione mind-raped her parents in order to keep them safe (she cries about this for four seconds, Harry and Ron do not comment). We learn how Ron has dressed up the Weasleys' pet Ghoul in an unconvincing red wig, so that nobody will suspect that he's really out to kill Voldemort.  The thing that bugs me about this chapter is that it tries to provide answers to questions which I wouldn't have thought were important until JK drew attention to them. If the book had just been about Messers Potter, Weasley and Granger hunting some Dark Lord ass, I'd be totally onside. Putting this chapter in to "explain" why Voldemort doesn't just capture the Weasleys and torture the hell out of them just highlights how ludicrous it is that he doesn't. Hell, once he's taken over the Ministry of Magic, he could very easily haul in everybody Potter has ever cared about, and start hacking bits off of them until Harry gives himself up.  But he doesn't. Because Ron has cunningly disguised a Ghoul as "Ron With a horrible disease and a completely different face". So they'll leave the Weasleys alone. They're considerate, those Death Eaters.  The other thing we find out is that Hermione has a copy of Secrets of the Darkest Art, otherwise known as the Big Book of Horcruxes. She proceeds to explain in excruciating detail exactly how Horcruxes work. Because lord knows we wouldn't want anybody reading the book to draw their own conclusions about that sort of thing. That would imply that reading a work of fiction was something other than the process of learning facts about the author's world. We can't have that now can we.  Similarly, we get things like: 

"I wonder when Dumbledore removed it from the library ... if he didn't do it until he was headmaster, I bet Voldemort got all the instruction he needed from here." "Why did he have to ask Slughorn how to make a Horcrux then, if he'd already read that?" asked Ron. "He only approached Slughorn to find out what would happen if you split your soul into seven," said Harry.

Which, let's face it, reads like the Q&A section from JKR's official website. This isn't Harry talking to Ron, this is Rowling talking to her readers. At least, to the sorts of readers who ask that sort of question.  The chapter ends with no progress having been made towards finding any of the Horcruxes.  Chapter Seven: The Will of Albus Dumbledore In which Ginny kisses Harry Like She Has Never Kissed Him Before Chapter seven is a mystery dump. Harry wakes up shouting "Grigorovitch!" and we are left to wonder what this mysterious name means.  It's Harry's birthday. Ron gets him a book about pulling chicks. Ginny kisses him as she has never kissed him before. The Minister for Magic shows up and tells Harry, Ron and Hermione that they have all been left stuff in Dumbledore's will. Then he makes an inept attempt to grill them for information.  In Dumbledore's Will, Ron is left the Deluminator (the thing Dumbledore uses at the start of the first book to put out the lights in Privet Drive), Hermione is left a book of fairy tales, and Harry is left the Snitch from his first ever game of Quidditch. And the Sword of Godric Gryffindor, but he's not given that. We are then told that all of these gifts are Very Very Mysterious but that Dumbledore Must Have Had A Plan and therefore it is Important To Work Out What Each Of The Gifts Means.  Once again, nothing happens. Ron tells Harry to keep his filthy vacillating hands out of his sister's long, sweet-smelling hair. Team Potter wonders why Dumbledore left them the bunch of crap he left them. And of course they wonder why the irritating old coot didn't tell them what was going on while he was still alive, or give Harry the Sword of Godric Gryffindor when he still had the chance. 

"And why couldn't he have just told me?" Harry said quietly. "It was there, it was right there on the wall of his office during all our talks last year! If he wanted me to have it, why didn't he give it to me then?"

Going by previous form, the answer to this all important question about Dumbledore's already spurious motivation probably has something to do with love.  Everybody gets ready for the wedding. Because a wedding is exactly what you should be thinking about when a Nazi wizard with no nose is taking over the world.  Chapter Eight: The Wedding In which Voldemort takes over the world while Harry is at a wedding. One of the Weasleys marries one of the characters with a stupid accent. Harry is Polyjuiced into a red-headed stepchild so that he can hide amongst the guests. Harry then has to babysit an offensive aunt of the Weasley clan, who says horrible things about everybody.  Harry, being a man who has his priorities sorted out, decides that the best use of his time, seeing as how he's destined to destroy the Dark Lord and everything, is to get really obsessive about Dumbledore's family history. To be fair to the kid, it's not like he was going to be able to get anything done at the wedding anyway.  So we learn more tedious crap about how Dumbledore's mother was like evil or something, and he had a sister who was a squib. We also learn ...  ... get ready for another big revelation ...  ... this one's really big ...  ... no seriously ...  we also learn that the Dumbledores used to live in Godric's Hollow! Doesn't that shed a whole new light on the other books? Can't you just see it all now, how Dumbledore's every glance, every gesture was just screaming "Harry! My family once lived in the same general location as your family!" Truly, we are in the presence of a master storyteller.  We also find out that Grigorovitch was a wandmaker, that Voldemort is still evil, and that Voldemort has killed the Minister of Magic and taken control of the Wizarding government. 

The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.

Okay, I get it. It's punchy. But for the love of all that is holy, we're a hundred and thirty-three pages in, the Death Eaters have finally done something interesting, and we miss it because we're stuck following Harry, who is stuck at a wedding and angsting about his old headmaster.  Chapter Nine: A Place To Hide In which Team Potter sits around doing nothing.  Potter and his pals flee the wedding and hide out in a greasy spoon cafe, where they are set upon by Dolohov and Thorfin Rowle. Presumably these names mean something to somebody - perhaps to people who have religiously followed JK Rowling's "Wizard of the Month" updates on her website. These two Death Eaters fail to capture the Potterites, which should come as no surprise to anybody.  They decide to modify the memories of these two men, in order to cover their escape. Because lord knows a couple of mindless zombies won't attract attention. 

"But I've never done a memory charm." "Nor have I," said Hermione, "but I know the theory."

By "but I know the theory" she of course means "I mind-raped my parents into thinking they were completely different people who wanted to move to Australia, and by the way I told you fuckers that - like - two chapters ago and you didn't offer me any support or sympathy."  They decide they need somewhere safe, and they decide to go to Grimmauld Place, which is apparently safe because the late, lamented Mad-Eye had set up "protections" there, so that Snape couldn't get in and kill them all (remember that, although JK Rowling told us categorically that Snape was a good guy, we're supposed to ignore this information and keep acting like we think he's a villain). These "protections" turn out to be a tongue-tying curse that lasts for eight seconds (and can't Snape cast spells silently anyway?) and a Spooky Dumbledore Ghost, which goes away once you tell it you aren't Snape.  This chapter is mercifully short.  Chapter Ten: Kreacher's Tale In which we are told firmly that Sirius black was NOT GAY. Harry pokes around Grimmauld place, finding Sirius' old collection of bikini model posters, photograph of himself at the age of one, and a letter from Lily Potter which basically reads:  "Dear Sirius, I'm really glad we aren't going get horribly killed in the next six months. Baby Harry is wonderful and I love him very much. So much that I'll make him immune to dark magic by the sheer loving power of my loving loving love. Love Lily."  And of course, the letter ends on this note: 

Bathilda drops in most days, she's a fascinating old thing with the most amazing stories about Dumbledore, I'm not sure he'd be pleased if he knew! I don't know how much to believe, actually, because it seems incredible that Dumbledore...

The rest of the letter is missing.  You fucking hack, JK Rowling. Look, I get it. You've got a bunch of Dumbledore backplot you want to give us. You've told us that. Just give us the plot dump, or don't give us the plot dump. I don't care at this stage. Nothing's going to be as cool as "he was Ron from the future" anyway.  Next to Sirius' room is the bedroom of ...  ... wait for it ...  ... Sirius's brother: Regulus Arcturus Black.  It's a good thing that he put his middle name on his door really. And a good thing that no two people in the entire Wizarding world have the same initials.  So they've found RAB, but no magic locket of Horcruxness. They ransack the house, then realise that Mundungus probably nicked off with it. Bastard.  So they go to Kreacher, and he gives them a bit of backstory which, unusually is genuinely touching. It turns out that crotchety old Kreacher was given to Lord Voldemort by Regulus, and Voldemort used him to "test" the defences around his locket Horcrux, making Kreacher drink the poison so that he could hide the artefact underneath it. Curiously, this led the Dark Lord to believe that his defences were completely secure, instead of the more sensible opinion that his defences could be breached by anybody with access to a tractable house-elf.  Anyway, Kreacher was all wrecked by this, and when Regulus found out he turned against Voldemort (possibly the genocide was giving him the willies as well). He got Kreacher to take him back to the cave, drank the poison himself, and gave Kreacher the Horcrux with instructions that he should destroy it.  Which is actually kind of sweet, and I'm damned certain Harry and co would never dream of sacrificing themselves for a house-elf.  So they decide to be nice to Kreacher, and this gets him onside. They then send Kreacher looking for Mundugus, so they can get the Horcrux back off him.  Chapter Eleven: The Bribe In which Harry Potter bravely lets a house-elf do his job for him.  Harry Potter, realising that in order to defeat Voldemort he must use the Dark Lord's own methods, however despicable they might be, spends this chapter sitting on his arse doing nothing. Not that Voldemort has anything to fear: he's had decades to practice his sitting-on-his-arse-doing-nothing, and Harry's arse-sitting seems amateurish by comparison.  So anyway. Harry sends Kreacher to get Mundungus back, so he can ask for the Horcrux. While he is sitting around waiting, Remus Lupin shows up and acts like an asshole. He informs Harry that Tonks is now pregnant, and therefore he has decided to join Harry on his quest, because werewolves shouldn't be allowed near small children or something.  We also find out that Voldemort and his minions have continued their cunning plan to imitate the Nazis and have started making Muggle-Borns "register", and presumably wear little yellow stars as well, because in case you hadn't noticed the Death Eaters are a little bit like the Nazis and Voldemort's desire to wipe out the Muggle-Borns is a little bit like the Holocaust. Clever that, isn't it. Kudos to you JK Rowling. It's about time somebody took a stand against genocide.  Anyway, I digress. Remus shows up and acts like an asshole. Harry acts like an asshole back, and they get into this huge "who can be the biggest asshole" competition. This shows us that Harry has "grown up" over the course of the books. We know this because he is now acting like a forty year old novelist thinks a teenager would act, rather than actually displaying any form of personality or motivation.  Remus leaves to go back to his "wife and child", but not before giving us another one of the by now familiar "this is why this book totally makes sense and doesn't suck" speeches. When asked (very sensibly) why Voldemort doesn't just come into the open now that he's - y'know - taken over the goddamned world already, Lupin insists that: 

"Voldemort is playing a very clever game. Declaring himself might have provoked open rebellion: remaining masked has crafted confusion, uncertainty and fear."

Once again, JK drops the "show, don't tell" ball, by having somebody inform us that Voldemort is being clever, when in fact all he's doing is letting Harry slip through his fingers by pulling his punches when he should be rounding people up by the truckload. I mean what, precisely, does Voldemort have to fear from open rebellion? And if he wants to create confusion uncertainty and fear, then I'm sure a couple of senseless massacres could do the same job with fewer administrative overheads.  Eventually Kreacher, who is the only person around here still doing his job right, brings Mundungus back, and he reveals that he gave the amulet to Dolores "Wasn't I Killed by Centaurs Already?" Umbridge as a bribe.  So Harry is off to the Ministry of magic.  Chapter Twelve: Magic is Might  In which we get yet another Polyjuice sequence. One thing I'll say for JK Rowling: you've got to respect her plot devices. While nothing will ever top the Room of Requirement for sheer brass-bollocked "yeah, this thing does whatever the hell I need it to" style, Polyjuice potion pulls its weight and then some.  So Harry, Ron and Hermione polyjuice themselves into Ministry employees and walk right in through the front door. This reminds us, as if we didn't know already, that the Ministry is run by morons who, despite Polyjuice potion being common enough that an above-average twelve year old can whip up a batch, haven't thought to take any precautions against their members being waylaid and replaced by rebellious seventeen year olds. Perhaps Voldemort couldn't increase security too much on account of his not wanting to "provoke open rebellion." He's just too damned clever for his own good, that Lord Voldemort.  This chapter is almost Tolkeinesque in its irrelevance. It essentially chronicles, in painstaking detail, the way in which Team Potter knock out some Ministry officials, polyjuice into them, and walk into the ministry. On their way in they hear terrible things about Mudbloods and Blood-Traitors being put on trial. For a Dark Lord, Voldemort is clearly very concerned about due process.  The chapter takes its name from an irrelevant but kinda cool piece of window-dressing. The phrase "Magic is Might" is engraved onto the base of the new (black) statue which has replaced the old frolicking magical creatures motif. 

Harry looked more closely and realised that what he had thought were decoratively carved thrones were actually mounds of carved humans: hundreds and hundreds of naked bodies, men, women and children, all with rather stupid, ugly faces, twisted and pressed together to support the weight of the handsomely robed wizards.

Now that's some serious Dark Lord style. But you'd think with his overall agenda of world conquest and crushing the Muggles and the Muggle-born beneath his pallid iron-shod heel, he'd be less concerned about hiding in the shadows.  Oh, also in this chapter we find out some more shit about Dumbledore or something. And Snape has been made headmaster of Hogwarts. And Voldemort is still looking for this wand-maker guy.  Next: The return of Dolores Umbridge, and more pointless backplot.

Themes: J.K. Rowling, Books, Young Adult / Children

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Comments (go to latest)

http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/ at 20:39 on 2009-02-08

That, my friend, was awesome. You had at least twice as many quotable lines in that piece as JKR managed throughout the entire book.

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Rami at 06:53 on 2009-02-09

Welcome to Dan's Fans -- meetings are every Saturday at 11... ;-)

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Arthur B at 09:16 on 2009-02-09

You realise, of course, that there's only one way this can end: sooner or later someone, somewhere, is going to write Harry Potter fanfic where Dan is a character. (He could teach all the kids physics and he could be in a big snark feud with Snape and Snape will challenge him to a duel and Harry will be all GO DAN SHOW THAT MEANY WHO'S BOSS and Hermione will be all OH WOW PHYSICS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN MAGIC I AM TOTALLY A SCIENCE NERD NOW and Ron is all MAN IF I WERE GROWN UP I WOULD TOTALLY SMOOCH DAN RIGHT NOW and Dumbledore is all MAN IF EVERYONE I KISSED DIDN'T TURN INTO HITLER I WOULD TOTALLY SMOOCH DAN RIGHT NOW and Dan beats Snape in duel with science and Snape is all I WAS WRONG TO SAY SCIENCE IS LAME YOU SHOULD STAY HERE AT HOGWARTS AND TEACH US ALL THE WAY OF THE MUGGLES and Dan is all like NO WAY THE KIDS OF ALL NATIONS NEED ME and he turns around and punches Voldemort in the jaw so hard his head comes off and then he takes off and flies away to the Moooooooooooooon....)

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Wardog at 10:54 on 2009-02-09

But Dan doesn't have long dark hair, skin like freshly poured cream and violet eyes....

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Arthur B at 11:03 on 2009-02-09

Aaaand there's my cue to post a link to the Sparklypoo comic.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/tjLTVHEducFb4rKDHU5DukBHtQcCbTVMEEq55v0CxV4-#5e156 at 19:43 on 2009-07-29

Brilliant, absolutely hilarious, I want to show the rest of the Harry Potter fanbase your review. I wonder if my inertia could ever be on a par with Voldemort's. "My inertia is with me like something that is with me."

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http://lunabell14.myopenid.com/ at 22:50 on 2010-07-27

For those of you who haven't been obsessively following everything that infuriating woman does, she is currently suing the guy behind the Harry Potter Lexicon.

Now I'll try to be fair here. If the guy has genuinely reproduced text from the Potter books without attribution, then he's breaking the law and he needs to correct that, but the guy's a professional librarian and frankly I trust his ability to credit sources properly far, far more than JKR's ability to identify genuine plagiarism.

On the other hand her complaints are so utterly asinine that, well, that I'm completely unsurprised but I'm going to be rude about them anyway.

I think the most telling example of JK Rolwing's complete failure to understand anything, ever, from birth is this:

For instance, she said, the Ogre entry simply said, "Ron and Hermione think they see an ogre at Three Broomsticks." A superior entry, Ms. Rowling testified, would have pointed out that "An ogre in European folklore was a flesh-eating giant."

Say it with me now.

What the fucking fucking fucking fuck?

Seriously JK: how fucking stupid are you, you stupid, stupid woman.

The Harry Potter Lexicon is a guide to the Harry Potter books. Your proposed encyclopaedia is probably going to be a guide to the Harry Potter world. The fact that you can't tell the difference is testimony to how utterly stupid, stupid, stupid you are. It is also why your books are so 

very, very bad

.

The only information we have about ogres in the 

actual text

 of Harry Potter (as opposed to the magical world of JK Rowling's brain, where Dumbledore is gay, and the series is a protracted plea for tolerance) is that which is provided in the lexicon: Ron and Hermione think they see an ogre at Three Broomsticks. Adding a pointless piece of trivial information would not, in fact, create a superior entry. It would create an inferior entry.

Rowling's objections to the Lexicon boil down to an inability to understand that "Harry Potter" is an artefact which exists in the world, it is a series of texts and commentaries on those texts by the author, and the purpose of the Lexicon is to catalogue and make accessible that 

textual

information. Rowling seems to somehow expect the Harry Potter Lexicon to contain information which is not contained in the Harry Potter books, but that simply isn't its purpose.

As far as Rowling is concerned, Harry Potter is not a series of cultural artefacts existing within the world, but a world that exists in her imagination. This is why she feels so free to amend, interpret, and justify the text after its publication. As far as she's concerned (and, as other FB articles have discussed, as far as a depressingly large number of other people are concerned) the Harry Potter universe has a distinct, external reality and the process of reading about Harry Potter is a process of bringing your understanding into line with this distinct, external reality. Essentially a person's appreciation of Harry Potter (as far as Rowling is concerned) can be judged exclusively in terms of how closely it matches her own.

The Harry Potter Lexicon is something altogether different. It is a guide to the 

text

 (and also the metatext and commentary). It does not seek to define or redefine the boundaries of the Wizarding world, merely to gather together, in one place, textual information about Harry Potter. Calling this "plagiarism" (or to use Rowling's infuriatingly cutesy term "pilfering") is roughly analogous to calling 

Easton's Bible Dictionary

 blasphemy. And just like the Harry Potter Lexicon, Easton's Bible Dictionary contains some very, very short entries, for example:

Pahath-Moab: Governor of Moab, a person whose descendants returned from the Captivity and assisted in rebuilding Jerusalem (Ezra 2:6; 8:4; 10:30).

No doubt JK would suggest that a superior entry would add "Moab is a place which appears in the bible".

It gets crazier. When the counsel for the defence pointed out to Ms Rowling that actually, putting a bunch of information into alphabetical order so that it would be easily accessible is exactly what lexicons, dictionaries, and encyclopaedias are supposed to do, the exchange went something like this:

"Have you ever read a dictionary, Miss Rowling?" Mr. Hammer demanded. Alphabetical order, he continued, "is what the Encyclopedia Britannica uses, isn't that true?"

To which Ms. Rowling retorted: "What are you accessing in these A-to-Z's? Aren't you being suckered out of your hard-earned cash?"

That's right folks, she actually just said that 

dictionaries, encyclopaedias and reference works

 are a waste of money. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the champion of children's literacy, the great new hope for the education of a generation, Ms Joanne "I don't think dictionaries are useful" Rowling.

Rowling has also said that the whole business has been crushing her creativity, and she is not sure if she has "the will or the heart" now to publish her own encyclopaedia.

I guess there's an upside to everything then.Themes: 

J.K. Rowling

, 

Books

, 

Topical

~

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Wardog

 at 12:20 on 2008-05-01Apparently Mr Vander Ark cried on the stand - I can't believe JK Rowling is suing this poor bastard librarian from nowhere. It's actually pitiful, he clearly adores her and the whole Harry Potter thing.

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empink

 at 22:39 on 2008-05-01

That's right folks, she actually just said that dictionaries, encyclopaedias and reference works are a waste of money. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the champion of children's literacy, the great new hope for the education of a generation, Ms Joanne "I don't think dictionaries are useful" Rowling.

*stares* This is more like shooting one sedated fish in a specially shaped barrel that only allows enough of an opening for your bullet to enter :P

Otherwise, though? I'm heartened to see you going against JKR here. I don't know if you've seen the commentary on the case in fandom sources, but considering the ridiculous nature of what she is trying to do here, the way so many people have come out in blistering support of her actions makes me boggle. The unfounded personal attacks against the other side are even worse, especially considering that this lawsuit should not have happened. Reference works of this kind are fair use, and no one has ever been this bothered about just for that reason. If she doesn't like the Lexicon reference book, nothing stops her from finishing her own encyclopaedia and releasing it. It just makes no sense.

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Dan H

 at 10:46 on 2008-05-02

I'm heartened to see you going against JKR here. I don't know if you've seen the commentary on the case in fandom sources, but considering the ridiculous nature of what she is trying to do here, the way so many people have come out in blistering support of her actions makes me boggle.

I like to think that I can be relied upon to come out against JK Rowling. It's practically my party trick. I'm not surprised that fandom is out in support. Hell, even Mr Vander Ark is out in support and he's the damned defendant

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Wardog

 at 17:01 on 2008-05-02(Yes, we have entertaining parties in this part of world)

I don't really pay much attention to fandom, except when they agree with me or when they write something exceptionally pretty (i.e. depressingly better than JK Rowling - which is actually pretty often) ... but I'm genuinely mind-boggled that they would *agree* with her actions on this one?

Surely she doesn't have a legal leg to stand on? (Is there a a lawyer in the house?) And it's just plain pissy.

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Jamie Johnston

 at 01:35 on 2008-05-07[Warning: simple answer to simple question turns into lengthy musings on the nature of stuff.]

Intellectual property may well be the area of law I know least about, but I think from what I've heard about the case that the problem is something like this:

If you published and sold one of the Potter books without permission (and without paying her royalties), you'd be making money from what would be almost entirely Rowling's work and very little of your own work. If you translated the same book into Klingon and then published and sold the translation, it would be more your work and less hers, but still the plot, characters, pacing, structure, and probably even some elements of the prose style would be hers and she should probably get a substantial cut of the proceeds. If you wrote a twenty-page summary of the book (in English) and published and sold it, the balance would be further in your favour, but still you'd be using a lot of her work, so arguably she should still get a share. You see where this goes: Warners are basically arguing that all Mr Vander Ark has done is summarize and rearrange Rowling's material.

Which is kind of true. Of course that seems to have nothing to do with what Rowling herself thinks is going on. Her comments quoted above have nothing to do with the legal issues in the case as far as I can see, and are pretty imbecilic. Of course there *is* a legitimate response to the question about encyclopedias, but it's not 'encyclopedias are a con', it's 'the things an encyclopedia puts in alphabetical order are facts about the real world, which nobody had to put any effort into inventing'.

But that raises another question, which is not so much about whether Rowling is stupid (no further debate needed there) as about whether intellectual property law is stupid. Is there really such a categorical difference between the statement "Quidditch is played up on broomsticks up in the air" (http://www.hp-lexicon.org/quidditch/quidditch.html#Rules) and the statement "A cricket match is played on a grass field, roughly oval in shape" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket)? In a sense one is a fictional statement and the other a factual statement; but you can put it another way and say that one is a factual statement about a fictional world and the other is a factual statement about a real world. Both are equally true, provided you read the former sentence with the implicit preface "In J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' books" (which obviously you do, because that's the whole point), and they have exactly the same ratio between the amount of work / inspiration / usefulness contributed by the person making the statement and the amount of work / inspiration / usefulness contributed by the person who invented the game in question. Yet we wouldn't say that the inventor of cricket (if cricket had been invented by one specific person) should be entitled to a share of any money made by the person making the statement about cricket pitches being grassy ovals.

So in a sense Mr Vander Ark has more or less just taken the products of Rowling's mind, paraphrased them, and arranged them in a thematic rather than a narrative order. His work relies entirely on Rowling's work and no one would want to read his book if hers didn't exist. But, at the same time, that's exactly what makes the case, and the law it's based on, ridiculous. His work is so entirely reliant on hers that it in no sense undermines, subsumes, or replaces her work. It won't stop anyone buying her books, and in fact it may well encourage more people to buy them. It doesn't take away any of the money she earned by writing the books, and it doesn't stop her earning more money every time another copy is sold. What she's really demanding here is that she be paid twice for inventing Quidditch: once for writing about it in the 'Potter' books, and a second time for Mr Vander Ark writing about it in the 'Lexicon'.

The problem is that the whole idea of intellectual property is a philosophical nightmare. Of course Rowling has to be able to make money from her ideas. Otherwise writers would starve. But on the other hand the whole exercise is based on the assumption that the more money Mr Vander Ark makes from her ideas, the less money she makes from her ideas. Money is ostensibly a zero-sum game. If I give you 10, I'm 10 worse off. There appears to be no way for me to cause you to acquire my 10 without myself losing my 10. But, we cry, ideas aren't like that. Ideas are infinitely reproducible and infinitely transferable. I have an idea, I tell it to you, now we each have that idea. Where before there was one person with one idea, there are now two people with one idea each. Arithmetic says there must now be two ideas, but of course there's still only one; and yet it's not that we have half each, or that we each own a half-share in one idea: no, each of us has one whole idea. Now, if my idea is worth 10, then here is how I can give you 10 without losing 10: I give you my idea, and then you can sell it for 10, and I still have my idea, which I can also sell for 10, and now we have 10 each. But wait, it's not so simple after all, because if I give you my idea for free then you can give it to someone else for free, and he can give it to someone else for free, and she can give it to someone else for free, and pretty soon everybody in the world has free access to my idea and nobody wants to pay be 10 or even 10p for it. Although giving you my idea didn't look like it would make me any worse off, it actually has. So now how am I supposed to make a living out of having ideas?

The most obvious solution is for me to refuse to give you my idea for free. In stead I charge you 10 for it. Now I am 10 better off. I still have my idea, however, so in theory I can go on doing this indefinitely, charging people 10 each for something that I don't lose by giving it away. I could get as many 10 notes as there are people who want my idea. But there's a flaw here too, because once I've sold you my idea you can then, if you want, give it away for free, and just as before anyone can get it free and no one needs to pay me for it. It's not as bad as the first scenario, because I've still for 10 from the first sale, but once might think I was entitled to more.

The intellectual property solution is to say that nobody is allowed to give away my idea. Anyone who gets it must get it from me, and if I want you to pay 10 for it then that's the only way you're going to get it. The problem is that this is (1) very very difficult in practice to enforce and (2) entirely contrary to the whole point and essence of ideas (which is, as mentioned some time earlier, that they can be given away without being lost). It effectively seeks to make ideas as easy to deal with as physical property by making it illegal to take advantage of what makes them different from physical property.

I can't claim to have a fully developed superior solution. It would seem more in tune with the nature of ideas if I were just to charge you a sufficiently massive amount of money when I first sell you the idea that I can survive quite happily until I get my next idea and I needn't care if I never make another penny out of that first idea again. The problem is that now you've invested a massive amount of money in my idea, and I can prevent you making any of it back by simply telling my idea for free to a bunch of other people. After all, I've already had all the money I'm going to make out of that idea, so there's no reason why I shouldn't give it away for free from now on. So what's your incentive for buying the idea from me in the first place, when you can wait for some other chump to fork over the cash while you wait in the queue to get the same idea for nothing? In fact, although it may be in everyone's collective interest for the idea to get bought, it's in nobody's individual interest to buy it. So if we carry on down this line of thinking the only solution seems to be for the state, being the representative of the collective good, to use tax-payers' money to pay writers one-off lump sums to write books that can then be distributed for free (or for nothing more than the cost of producing the physical copy of the book).

I don't know. It's very hard to see a solution. But it's not hard to see that there are some real problems with the current attempt at a solution, because if there weren't then people like Mr Vander Ark wouldn't be weeping in witness-boxes.

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Arthur B

 at 10:37 on 2008-05-07To be fair to intellectual property laws, you have to look at two aspects of the idea - the idea itself, and the presentation.

Pretty much none of the actual 

ideas

 in Rowling's books are her own. Kid who discovers magical abilities and goes to a special school? 

The Worst Witch

, come on down. Kid discovers that he is the last scion of a lost family and is destined to defeat the Dark Lord? Well, there's 

almost every epic fantasy written since the 1970s...

In copyright law, which is the specific area of the law we are dealing with here, it's not just the idea itself which is important but the presentation (in the case of the HP books, what Rowling actually sat down and wrote). If Rowling had just sat in that cafe and wrote "A boy discovers he is a wizard and goes to Wizard School; he fights the Dark Lord" on a napkin and tried to publish that nobody would buy it. What makes the Harry Potter stories valuable - and, in essence, what makes the copyright valuable - is the specific presentation, the fact that (at least in the earlier books) Rowling is actually capable of writing a good story that people are willing to pay money for.

Now, if Jill Murphy wrote 

The Worst Witch at the Inter-School Quiddich Match

, in which the Worst Witch and her school go off to a sporting event hosted by Hogwarts and she meets Harry and Snape and the rest, she'd clearly be breaching Rowling's intellectual property rights; even though the general idea of a magical school isn't new to Rowling, and the particular style of school arguably originated with Murphy, the particular presentation of the idea we see in the Potter novels - Hogwarts, Dumbledore, Snape, rotating cast of Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers and all - originates with Rowling.

On the other hand, I'm aware of several unofficial Harry Potter publications out there (I could have sworn I saw a "Guide to the Harry Potter World" in The Works a few years ago) which quote liberally (or as liberally as the law allows, which is more than sufficient for most criticism purposes) from the books. Heck, there's even books that are all about how Harry Potter is evil and Rowling is a foul temptress leading the youth of today astray. I don't see how the 

Lexicon

 is any different from those books except for these three points:

1: It's more thorough than earlier guides to the books, at least partially because it's based on all seven books.

2: It appears to be ambiguous as to whether it is a guide to the Harry Potter books (in which case it's just reporting a bunch of facts about them, and it's on somewhat sturdier ground) or whether it is a guide to the Harry Potter universe - in short, whether it is reporting on the word of Rowling, or whether it is attempting to claim an authorial authority over the Potter universe which only Rowling can really claim to have.

3: Rowling happened to want to do an encyclopedia of the Potter world herself, and feels that the 

Lexicon

 would either make such a project redundant or make it less profitable.

I suspect that point 2 is the origin of many of the legal arguments in the case, but that point 3 is the actual motivation; it'd be pretty weak to rely on point 3 in court, since it'd put Rowling in the difficult position of trying to assert intellectual property rights on the basis of a book she hasn't actually written yet.

Of course, if Rowling had just trademarked "Harry Potter" we wouldn't be in this mess; then you couldn't put something like 

The Harry Potter Lexicon

 out without being accused of "passing off" - making out that your product is an official Harry Potter (TM) product when it isn't. Actually, for all I know she has, and these are the grounds the suit is being brought under - but I suspect she hasn't. We'd have seen far less unofficial guides to the Potterverse were that the case...

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Dan H

 at 14:44 on 2008-05-07

Of course Rowling has to be able to make money from her ideas. Otherwise writers would starve.

Actually, I think that's where the problems arise. Legally speaking (as far as I understand) nobody is entitled to make money from their *ideas*, they're entitled to make money from their *works*.

It pretty much has to work this way, because otherwise Jill Murphy really could sue JK Rowling for use of the "magical school" idea and Joss Whedon could sue the makers of Alias, Tru Calling, Wonderfalls and Veronica Mars for the "Teenage girl kicks ass in a TV series" idea.

IP law only protects the presentation, not the idea.

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Arthur B

 at 18:15 on 2008-05-07Exactly. You can't patent a plot.

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Dan H

 at 19:32 on 2008-05-07

Of course, if Rowling had just trademarked "Harry Potter" we wouldn't be in this mess; then you couldn't put something like The Harry Potter Lexicon out without being accused of "passing off" - making out that your product is an official Harry Potter (TM) product when it isn't.

Actually, I'm not sure even that would make any difference. "McDonalds" is a registered trademark, so is "Microsoft", people write books about them all the time. That's basically where this problem seems to be coming from: you obviously have to be able to write *about* somebody else's intellectual property, otherwise there would be no such thing as literary criticism. It is, in fact, totally legitimate, for a third party to write a lexicon, guide, or criticism of any work of intellectual property. The *only* legal recourse JK could possibly have here is (a) if the poor bugger has used too much of her original text, but I doubt he has or (b) if she can show that he had somehow claimed that she endorsed the book when she didn't (you might recall that this second issue was the way that Fox News tried to sue "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them").

I suspect that point 2 is the origin of many of the legal arguments in the case, but that point 3 is the actual motivation; it'd be pretty weak to rely on point 3 in court, since it'd put Rowling in the difficult position of trying to assert intellectual property rights on the basis of a book she hasn't actually written yet.

Not only is she trying to assert her IP rights over a book she hasn't written yet, she's also trying to claim that those rights include the right to prevent the publication of competing product. It really is like Jill Murphy trying to sue Rowling because the Potter books might harm sales of the Worst Witch.

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Dan H

 at 19:52 on 2008-05-07

Yet we wouldn't say that the inventor of cricket (if cricket had been invented by one specific person) should be entitled to a share of any money made by the person making the statement about cricket pitches being grassy ovals.

Sorry to double post, but this actually highlights another important point (which admittedly we've already mentioned, but I thought I'd repeat anyway). Not only would Lord Sebastian Cricket, inventor of Cricket not be entitled to a cut of the profits from a dictionary which includes a description of a cricket pitch, he would 

also

 not be entitled to a cut of the profits of a cricket match.

Again, it comes down to the fact that you can't copyright an idea. Even if Cricket *had* been invented by one man, it would be impossible to say that the *idea* of playing a game where two teams of men hit a ball away from stumps in an effort to score runs was his and his alone. Contact juggling was pretty much invented by Michael Moschen (the guy who was David Bowie's arms in 

Labyrinth

) but it's grown well beyond him and he has no ownership over the idea.

In fact if you *could* copyright ideas, there'd be huge enormous problems. Since Mr Moschen, for example, has lost all interest in contact juggling (he just sees it as something he did for a while in the eighties), if he maintained exclusive rights to the idea, nobody would be able to do it. If you could patent not only inventions but also the ideas *behind* those inventions, there would be nothing stopping people developing ludicrous monopolies (imagine, for example, if Microsoft held not only the patents for "Windows" and "Microsoft Word" but also for the ideas of "Operating Systems" and "Word Processors").

Lord Sebastian Cricket would hold the copyright on 

Lord Cricket's Concise Rules to the Cricketing Sport

 or whatever other works he chose to publish about the game he had invented, but he would not and should not own the game itself, because that would give him the power to decide, on a whim, that nobody was allowed to play Cricket any more.

The scary thing about this case is that Rowling is claiming for herself not only the right to be acknowledged as the creator and originator of Harry Potter, but also to actually 

control what is said about it

 and that's actually rather scary.

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Arthur B

 at 21:58 on 2008-05-07

"McDonalds" is a registered trademark, so is "Microsoft", people write books about them all the time. That's basically where this problem seems to be coming from: you obviously have to be able to write *about* somebody else's intellectual property, otherwise there would be no such thing as literary criticism. It is, in fact, totally legitimate, for a third party to write a lexicon, guide, or criticism of any work of intellectual property.

This is very true.

I suspect that Rowling's lawyers will present the argument that the 

Lexicon

 does not fall into the category of criticism or discussion since it does not voice any actual opinions about the matters at hand; it simply provides a long list of details about the Harry Potter universe without comment. This is frankly a somewhat shaky argument - there's plenty of, say, unofficial episode guides for TV shows which rely on providing a list of facts about the shows in question, and I've never heard of any of them being taken down - but a) she's rich, she can afford good lawyers, they'll probably dress it up a bit and b) the fact that I can't think of any instances where people have tried to stop 

The Unofficial Guide To (Whatever)

might mean one of two things: either my memory is sloppy, and there have been instances, in which case there's precedent they can call on, or nobody's tried to prevent this sort of thing from happening before, in which case they might be hoping to set a precedent.

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Rami

 at 10:23 on 2008-05-08

Actually, I think that's where the problems arise. Legally speaking (as far as I understand) nobody is entitled to make money from their *ideas*, they're entitled to make money from their *works*.

Yes, that's exactly how it should be. The law is rather less than clear about it :-( -- yet another argument for 

copyleft

 ;-)

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Arthur B

 at 15:00 on 2008-05-08To be honest, I'm glad that Harry Potter didn't come out under copyleft, on the basis that:

- The very thought of the sheer number of thinly-disguised Potter imitations makes me cringe. At least in the current situation anyone who wants to get onto the children's fantasy bandwagon needs to be creative enough to write something different.

- If anyone could write about Potter we would have a million Rowlings making ridiculous declarations about the series instead of one. And one is more than enough.

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Rami

 at 15:56 on 2008-05-08True enough, I expect the arguments in favor of / against copyright in literature are somewhat different from the arguments that are relevant in software ;-)

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Dan H

 at 09:15 on 2008-05-09

The very thought of the sheer number of thinly-disguised Potter imitations makes me cringe. At least in the current situation anyone who wants to get onto the children's fantasy bandwagon needs to be creative enough to write something different.

Actually, copyright doesn't protect against thinly disguised imitations at *all* - if it did half the Fantasy novels on the market would have to be taken down for ripping off Lord of the Rings.

The reason that copyright actually *is* a blessing is that otherwise 

every single publishing company in the world

 would be cranking out Harry Potter books at a furious pace. This would then give them no reason to look for new authors of their own, it would make it impossible for smaller companies to survive in the market (Bloomsbury was only saved because it "got" Rowling - if another company had just been able to decide to publish its own copies it would have sunk years ago).

Copyright and patent law exist to protect the investments of people who spend a lot of money developing things which then become instantly reproducible. Without it, publishing would become financially non-viable.

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Arthur B

 at 13:27 on 2008-05-09I meant imitations as in "things close enough to Harry Potter as to be actually indistinguishable." Like that Tanya Grotter series from Russia and the Chinese bootleg where Harry turns into a dwarf.

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I was not a fan of the Wheel of Time books, probably because I came to them in my twenties with my tastes already fairly developed. I was never able to get past the opening of the second book, and those of you who've known me for ages I'm sure absorbed my criticism and invective years ago. I once wrote at excruciating length upon the weaknesses of the books as I perceived them, and while I thought it was extremely clever and somehow necessary at the time, the years since have drastically mellowed my taste for mocking the work of other authors who aren't huge assholes in person or pushing a distasteful agenda with their work. About the best I can say for my mosquito bites is that I sincerely hope Jordan himself never had them called to his attention. Something tells me he would have given them the eye roll they deserved.

And the sheer decency of it has sort of shamed me to such an extent (especially since I am a non-achiever who hangs about on the internet criticising other people's work) that I can hardly bring myself to review Red Seas Under Red Skies, especially since my attempt to write about The Lies of Locke Lamora degenerated into a (semi-harmless) mock-fest of Scott Lynch's hair. By the way the important word in that sentence was "hardly." With this mind and all due humility, here are some thoughts on Red Thingies Over/Under Red Other Thingies, which I shall hereafter refer to as RSURS for the sake of my sanity. It's the second book in the Gentleman Bastard sequence which will, I understand, eventually form a septet. I have to say, this idea distresses me. Not only has Harry Potter soured me on the number seven for life but, given the fact the fantasy genre generally can't cope with trilogies, the idea of a septet seems utterly ludicrous to me. I mean, what do you have to say that takes seven books? Seriously?

For the moment, however, Scott Lynch seems to have something to say. Ultimately there's no point in reading RSURS if you haven't read The Lies of Locke Lamora not because it doesn't almost stand alone but because familiarity with the background, the setting and the characters deepens the experience of reading. To give it due credit: RSURS is reasonably satisfying on its own terms. You can feel the slow gathering of plot upon the horizon like distant clouds (and fear the coming storm) and there are some massive danglers just left hanging in a deliberately taunting and irritating fashion but, hey, thems the breaks with this kind of thing. And, as in Lies, the mysterious Sabetha, the apparent love of Locke's life, is alluded to but remains absent: for fuck's sake, Lynch, stop it. You know she's just going to be a total let down after a build up like this.

The problems evident in Lies are evident in RSURS, only slightly moreso because you don't have the novelty factor of being a first book to distract you from them. If you didn't like Locke the first time round, you won't like him here because he's exactly the same and still, some might argue, something of a Mary Sue or the male equivalent thereof. Although I don't personally object to the love affair Scott Lynch is tenderly enacting with his (anti)hero, I do struggle somewhat with the character. As I think I said in my review of Lies, he's absolutely the nicest bastard you could ever hope to meet: he never harms or kills anybody who doesn't thoroughly deserve it, his supposedly long-dead conscience miraculously reappears whenever he's confronted by any sort of cruelty or injustice and his unswerving and self-sacrificing loyalty to his friends is a virtue of such magnitude that it eclipses everything remotely unsympathetic about him. It shouldn't, but that's the way fiction works: if your character cares about the same people as the reader, it doesn't really matter how that character behaves, they're always going to garner a degree of support and approval.

I wouldn't mind this so much if I didn't have the feeling that Locke is supposed to be a shady character for a dark world. Perhaps I have the wrong end of the stick and Locke was never meant to be anything but a big bleeding heart beneath a thin veneer of survivalist criminality but I don't think so. I think the problem with Locke Lamora is that he's neither enough of one thing nor its opposite: he's neither selfish enough to be a convincing anti-hero nor virtuous enough to be a convincing hero. I know part of his shtick is his shifting sense of self and I'm not averse to complicated, contradictory characters but I find Locke incoherent rather than complex. I'm genuinely uncertain as to what Lynch is trying to do with the character or what we're meant to think. I'm not saying he doesn't do terrible things - he mutilates someone (who, admittedly, deserves it) in the first book - but everything he does that's vile and shocking is excusable whereas everything he does that's compassionate is extraordinary. For example, in RSURS, he and Jean, hanging out a decadent casino called the Sinspire, witness an entertainment in which a young nobleman, unable to pay his debts, has to survive in cage of stiletto wasps. Needless to say he doesn't and Locke secretly makes a blessing over the young man's forgotten corpse:

"Crooked Warden," Locke muttered under his breath, speaking quickly, "a glass poured on the ground for a stranger without friends. Lord of gallants and fools, ease this man's passage to the Lady of the Long Silence. This was a hell of a way to die. Do this for me and I'll try not to ask for anything for a while. I really do mean that this time."

There is no reason for this scene to be in the book (not that it isn't cool) - there are plenty examples of the upper classes being cruel and bloodthirsty to make the point and if the stiletto wasps are at all relevant beyond providing atmosphere they're certainly not to this book. In fact, its only purpose is to remind us that Locke Lamora is great and to show him, thief and conman that he is, being humane in the face of the world's inhumanity.

Unlike some of the reviews I've read, I've never had a problem with the snappy, modern dialogue and the very modern obscenity. In fact, I genuinely relish it. Unfortunately, it was during RSURS that I realised something that had passed me by in the first book: it's the only kind of dialogue Lynch can write. Everyone sounds the same. Pirates, noblemen, thieves, priests Locke, Jean: they're interchangeable. Witty but interchangeable.

"And now, my dear professional pessimist," said Locke... "my worry merchant, my tireless font of doubt and derision ... what do you have to say to that? "Oh very little to be sure... it's so hard to think, overawed as I am with the sublime genius of your plan." "That bears some resemblance to sarcasm." "Gods, forefend," said Jean. "You wound me! Your inexpressible criminal virtues have triumphed again, as inevitably as the tides comes and go. I cast myself at your feet and beg for absolution. Yours is the genius that nourishes the heart of the world." "And now you're-" "If only there was a leper handy," interrupted Jean, "so you could lay your hands on him and magically heal him-" "Oh you're just farting out of your mouth because you're jealous."

And so on. And here we have Jean talking to his ladylove:

"Have you really been practicing on barrels Jerome?" "Barrels. Yes. They never laugh, they never ridicule you and they offer no distractions." "Distractions?" "Barrels don't have breasts." "Ah. So what have you been telling these barrels?" "This bottle of brandy," said Jean, "is still too full for me to begin embarrassing myself like that." "Pretend I'm a barrel then." "Barrels don't have br-" "So I've heard. Find the nerve, Valora." "You want me to pretend that you're a barrel, so I can tell you what I was telling barrels back when I was pretending they were you." "Precisely." "Well ... you have ... you have such hoops as I have never seen in any cask on any ship, such shiny and well-fit hoops-" "Jerome-" "And your staves! Your staves ... so well planned, so tightly fit. You are as fine a cask as I ever seen, you marvellous little barrel. To say nothing of your bung-."

See what I mean?

I think in my review of Lies I commented on the deftness and subtlety of the world building - well, in RSURS, the action has moved from a city made of elderglass to a city consisting of islands made of elderglass. Astonishing. And sadly the delicacy of touch seems to have been replaced by the typical fantasy fiction obsession with geographic detail. It's nowhere near Perdido Street Stationbut, as much as I enjoy Lynch's world, there's a bit too much of this sort of thing:

Tal Verrar, the Rose of the Gods, at the westernmost edge of what the Therin people call the civilised world. If you could stand in thin air a thousand yards above Tal Verrar's tallest towers, or float in lazy circles there like the nations of gulls that infest the city's crevices and rooftops, you would see how its vast, dark islands have given this place its ancient nickname. They whirl outward from the city's heart, a series of crescents steadily increasing in size, like the stylised petals of a rose in an artist's mosaic.

And so on for two or more pages at a time. A bit like this review really.

Also it has to be said, the plot makes no sense whatsoever. It attempts to follow the embedded narrative format of the first book but it feels strained: Lynch occasionally plays with chronology, explaining how events came about after they occur, and offers a few reminiscences but it's noticeably a device now, rather than the most natural vehicle to tell the story. And, like the first book, it begins with Locke and Jean mid-heist only to drag them - reluctant and swearing as ever - into much bigger events, allowing the plot to twist, turn, double back on itself and eventually come full circle in a strangely satisfying manner. Except this time, it turns out that the Archon of Tal Verrar wants them to become ... wait for it ... pirates. Yes. Pirates. Two conmen from the streets of Camorr. Pirates. Now, I know that pirates are just inherently cool and you can't go wrong with them but still, come on. What's next? Locke Lamora and some ninjas? Locke Lamora and zombies? I don't know whether to respect the sheer brass bollocks ludicrousness of it or complain bitterly because it has to be the most spurious excuse for a plot I've ever encountered. And the fact that even main characters complain about the stupidity doesn't actually counteract that stupidity:

"Send us out to sea to find an excuse for you, that's what you said," said Locke. "Send us out to sea. Has your brain swelled against the inside of skull? How the screaming fucking hell do you expect the two of us to raise a bloody pirate armada in a place we've never been and convince it to come merrily die at the hands of the navy that bent it over the table and fucked it in the arse last time."

This is Lynch's latest technique, by the way, one I think he might have borrowed from JK Rowling. He seems have developed a tendency to address the inevitable plot holes of his novels by having his characters draw attention to it. To be honest,

fridge logic

doesn't bother me - I don't care how Buffy the Vampire slayer pays the mortgage on her dead mother's house or how Sydney Bristow circles the globe in half an episode - but attempting to pass it off as anything other than what it is offends me. Having the Archon blackmail Locke and Jean into mustering a pirate armada for political reasons is little more than a blatant excuse for the author to have them messing about with pirates, which is in itself fair enough. However, having Locke and Jean constantly bitching about the insanity of the plan even as they enact it only serves to induce bouts of fridge logic before you're even anywhere near the fridge. It also leads to odd little moments like this:

"Why not?" [said Jean] "Why not? We carry your precious misery with us like a holy fucking relic. Don't talk about Sabetha Belacoros. Don't talk about the plays. Don't talk about Jasmer or Espara or any of the schemes we ran. I lived with her for nine years, same as you, and I've pretended she doesn't fucking exist to avoid upsetting you. Well I'm not you. I'm not content to live like an oath-bond monk. I have a life outside your gods-damned shadow."

Err...actually Jean, you're a sidekick. Haven't you noticed? You actually do not have a life outside Locke Lamora's gods-damned shadow. The more Lynch tries to demonstrate to the reader that Jean is a person in his own right the less convincing it becomes. All it does is illustrate the fact that whatever Jean does on his own account is completely meaningless because his only relevance is tied to his supporting role, a role to which he will always return. His short-lived relationship - although actually moderately engaging, while it lasts - is only further evidence of this. You can see its inevitably tragic conclusion approaching on the horizon like the sails of the good ship Obvious.

The other thing I'm feeling a little bit peeved is Lynch's reliance on a technique he seems to have ganked from Alias. Now, I'm not sure if it continues in the later seasons but the early episodes of Alias always end with a cliff-hanger. And at first I used to get tremendously caught up in them. Oh no, I'd cry, Sydney is hanging from a cliff with only her suspender belt between her and certain death. Oh no, Sydney's rival has locked her in the poison-gas filled vault. Oh no, Sydney is being held at gunpoint by the bad guys. And then I'd insist that we watched another episode to find out what was going to happen, only to be faintly disappointed when the desperate, deadly situation resolved itself harmlessly in about two minutes of screen time. RSURS opens with Locke and Jean caught at crossbow-point on the docks and then, gasp, ever-faithful Jean turns on Locke. The novel then spools backwards in time to show you how they got themselves into this mess and, yes, it's arresting except that it's basically just like Alias, a cliff-hanger critical on the surface but ultimately completely meaningless and wrapped up quicker than a streaker at a tennis match. A couple of similar situations happen over the course of the book and, despite the satisfactory resolution of the plot, there's one left right at the end. I suspect I'd be more interested/frustrated by this Tense and Terrible State Of Affairs if the experience of the rest of the novel hadn't led me to the conviction that it's merely there for affect.

Okay, so I've just written four pages of bitching about RSURS but the fact remains that, despite its flaws, despite everything in it that doesn't quite work for me, I still heartily enjoyed it and very nearly loved it. Pirates, for God's sake, pirates! It's not quite as taut as the first book but once Locke and Jean hit the high seas the pace really picks up and the book becomes wonderful fun, sweeping you along on sheer exuberance and panache. And, damn it all, that's good enough for me. Roll on book three.Themes:

Books

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Arthur B

at 01:09 on 2008-02-02It strikes me that the Gentleman Bastard series embodies a problem I have with lots of fantasy series, namely that one book is really enough. I've felt absolutely no urge to go and read RSURS, and most of the things you point out in the review cement that; sure, it seems to be more of the same, and that's well and good - at least it's not a serious decline. On the other hand, one

Lies of Locke Lamora

is enough for me - having read one book, I don't feel as though anything the other books say can really add anything. (I'm also utterly unconvinced that there's enough juice in the Gentleman Bastards concepts to fill 7 books. I mean, for goodness' sake, he's only on the second book in the series and already he's resorted to pirates.)

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empink

at 02:49 on 2008-02-02@ ArthurB: Forsooth, he *will* go to ninjas next.

You know, I had more faith in this guy. I thought he'd at least 'fess up about Sabetha whatshername, or tie the book back to the first one, or do something other than send Jean and Locke to cavort with pirates for no good reason. It made for fantastic cavorting and rather dull and simplistic reading, though-- I won't be buying any more sequels in hardback, or holding on to them out of guilt either.

Oh, and Kyra, the DIALOGUE. Everyone does sound the same, it's so boring. No one is allowed to be stupid, or say frightening things without twisting themselves into witty shapes and cursing fit to kill themselves. It was all right in the first book, but in RSURS, it starts to look like lack of imagination on Lynch's part.

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Arthur B

at 12:04 on 2008-02-02Yeah, I can think of several points in the first book where I had to start reading a conversation again from the beginning because I lost track of who was who. It's this really weird blind spot in Lynch's writing; he can, when he tries, differentiate between characters in terms of disposition, personality, and so forth, and you can tell that by looking at their actions. (To pick the most obvious example, Jean is far more inclined to charge headlong into a fight like a raging bull than Locke is.) But he's chronically incapable of differentiating them when they're speaking.

I can only assume that he finds dialogue difficult (and to be fair, dialogue

is

difficult), and is trying to compensate by finding a style of dialogue he's quite good at and applying it to everyone.

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Wardog

at 14:23 on 2008-02-04I'm glad the dialogue thing isn't only me ... it's the main problem I have with the series to be honest, despite all my trivial bitching above. After a while, it gets really wearing and the characters all start blurring into each other because I find that it's language rather than behaviour that distinguishes people in books - heh, she says, massively generalising.

I think I must be less bothered by "more of the same" than Arthur is - I genuinely enjoyed both books and I'll happily read more (although I've never splashed out a hardback of either, so the cost of my good will is significantly cheaper than Empink's!) as long as they stay on this kind of level (or get better!). I do find them a nice antidote to ponderous, serious fantasy. I genuinely dig the exuberance and the irreverence.

Also I've been poking about Scott Lynch's personal sites and he seems like a pretty decent, charmingly humble guy...

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Cheriola

at 16:16 on 2014-07-26You know, oddly most of the things you mention didn't bother me at all. Except the utter pointlessness of the opening cliffhanger.

The only thing I did have a problem with is the way Jean shames Locke out of his depression, and Locke keeps apologising for "letting Jean down" in those few weeks for literally the next two years. I mean, in this book, it still reads like he's just mourning/recuperating a little too self-indulgently and maybe like he has a really short bout of alcoholism - but since the next book starts pretty much the same (except Locke has even more good reason to be depressed), and Jean then actually makes a reference to some kind of mental disorder (more something like Freud's innate death wish than depression, but still), it becomes problematic in hindsight. Especially since, either intentionally or not, Locke pretty much reads like a textbook case for bipolar disorder (spending most of each book in a manic phase), if you read all 3 books right after another. So for largely-neurotypical Jean to go "If I can handle our losses, why can't you?" and being sucessful at shaming/angering Locke out of suicidal depressive phases, that's rather problematic in my eyes. I know it fits with the setting that nobody has a clue about modern psychology and how Locke's mood issues are a disease, not willful misbehaviour, but Lynch should find a way to make at least narratively clear that Jean isn't right to do this. Besides, that kind of shaming would just make things worse with a real depressive person.

By the way, I'm fairly sure Locke is supposed to be a straight up trickster hero. Like Robin Hood, or the characters of the show "Leverage". He's not just a crook, he's also a priest and he really does believe in his duty to the dead and that holy mission for class revenge that Father Chains put them all on. (Even if this was retconned into this book and not in the first.) If anything he gets ever kinder from book to book. I think the third one literally points out that Camorr culture is particularly brutal, macho and homophobic compared to all the other city states, and much of Locke's initial darkness is part of his culture (like for example an extreme belief in having to take personal, blood-feud style vengeance) and that this is supposed to be a character flaw. But as he spends time in other cultures, he grows out of some of it. For example, in the first book, he calls the villain homophobic slurs several times. After encountering the queer-positive pirates in the second novel and that little discussion with "I'll try anything once - or 5 or 6 times" guy, he never does that again. And by book 3, when encountering a random pair of gay lovers making out in a garden and being tempted to go through their discarded clothing for their wallets, he stops his kleptomaniac impulse by reminding himself that doing malice to happy lovers would be bad karma.

Also, the losses of his friends, the brush with alcoholism and several with death have seemed to have made him a lot more sympathetic with other people's failings and tragedies. I actually really liked this character development. Yeah, he starts out as a bit of a cock-sure, obnoxious ass, but he does grow up and mellow out over the years, as one should expect.

Heh, but one character actually goes into a rant in the 3rd book about how Father Chains ruined them all for life as hardened, greed-motivated criminals by saddling them with a conscience. So I guess Lynch sees your problem.

By the way, can you really call a character a Mary Sue if literally none of his grand plans for cons ever work out, sometimes because of his own sheer stupidity (e.g. forgetting the cats), sometimes because his mark is just plain cleverer than him (e.g. the paintings), and the author takes an almost perverse delight in beating the crap out of him on a regular basis?

And, as in Lies, the mysterious Sabetha, the apparent love of Locke's life, is alluded to but remains absent: for fuck's sake, Lynch, stop it. You know she's just going to be a total let down after a build up like this.

I thought so, too, and got annoyed at the on-the-pedestal-putting. But now that I've read book 3, which features Sabetha both at about age 30 and when they were both teenagers: She's not. She's really, truly not. In fact, I was genuinely amazed at Sabetha - she's the best feminist (NOT straw-feminist!) character I've ever seen a male author write. And even if half of her discussions with Locke function mainly to introduce the male part of the audience to concepts like male entitlement to female sexuality, Nice Guy behaviour, Shroedinger's Rapist, victim blaming, the general frustration inherent in being an ambitious, highly talented woman in a patriarchal society and the frustration of being in love a with patriarchally socialised guy (who messes up occasionally even if he tries very, very hard not to, and who can't help the unfair male privilege that said society gives him), and that what feminists most want in a man is the ability to listen and learn - even if she's a bit of a mouthpiece in that regard: It's for a good and noble cause, and the author's heart is in the right place. And besides, there still is a clever, head-strong, angry, conflicted, and of course snarky character behind all the Issues. Her characterisation and reasons for leaving are thoroughly believeable, and also function as an Author's Saving Throw by actually pointing out in-text that the worldbuilding in the first book was problematic. Locke and Sabetha are still in love when they meet again, and they are surprisingly mature about their falling out and their attempts to fix it (if not in their professional rivalry...)

And Locke's adoring pedestal-putting, claiming her to be the love of his life, and his whole fixation on her are just that, quite literally - and the text seems aware that it is creepy, and the only thing that saves it is the fact that Locke is absolutely respectful of Sabetha's wishes and never, ever would force so much as a kiss on her. (I found the retconned-in reason for the fixation a bit sad, though: Until book 3, Locke could be read as demisexual for only ever being romantically/sexually attracted to one person. Then it's retconned as having creepy magical reasons that I don't want to spoil.)

The only thing about Sabetha I found a little... amusing, was that teenage Locke was almost too understanding and willing to accept anything feminism-related that she says and to change accordingly. Like I bet the author wishes he was at the age of 16, now that he finally gets it. Still, again, if it serves as a positive role model for male teenage readers, I'm fine with that kind of Mary-Sue-ism. Maybe it's a little preachy, especially since Lynch tries to cover so many topics, but I was just smiling through the whole thing. We do need more books like this.

The con plot of book 3 is a bit meh (basically it's a satire about 'democratic' elections, where Sabetha and Locke are press-ganged into controlling the campaign of one rivaling but politically indistinguishable party each, with all methods allowed short of murder, all ostensibly just for the entertainment of the people who really control the power in this 'republic' - their lives are being threatened to keep them in line, but it just doesn't have the personal stakes and sense of danger that the previous books had), and the teenage flashback is largely about the gang having to stage an annoyingly faux-Shakespearean play while conning a noble into paying for the production. So the relationship between Locke and Sabetha and the object lesson in how to make feminism 101 easily digestible in a fantasy novel, really are the main draws of the book. The meta plot for the series gets going right at the end, though. Which to me felt a bit like jumping the shark, but YMMV.

But I really do recommend the 3rd book, even if the plot is a little weak. Just for the sheer surrealness of reading a male author who manages to get practically everything right with regards to feminism. I mean, I've just read Elizabeth Bear's "Carnival" thinking she must have been the one to teach Lynch - but even she had like two dozen points in that ecofeminist polemic that made me headdesk.

(That book also needs a Ferret review, by the way. It's not thoroughly bad, as such, but the social philosophising made me uncomfortable and I wasn't always sure if I was supposed to be, and the worldbuilding has huge holes at least from my biologist/ecologist point of view. Still, queer protagonists are rare and deserve a mention.)

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Robinson L

at 20:15 on 2016-12-21

Cheriola: You know, oddly most of the things you mention didn't bother me at all. Except the utter pointlessness of the opening cliffhanger.

That pretty much sums up my feelings about the book, too. I guess I just think of this series as running on Rule of Cool and nothing else. Locke and Jean become pirates? Sure, why not? Doesn’t make sense? Who cares? And of course they’re going to complain about how ridiculous the Archon’s plan for them is, but that’s part of the fun.

Dialogue’s all the same? Ehn, so what? It’s all fun. And like you, I relish the modern snappiness/obscenity.

I mean, I don’t blame Wardog or Empink or anyone else who is bothered by this stuff, but just for myself, it seemed fine.

Wardog: I genuinely dig the exuberance and the irreverence.

That’s me, all the way (well, more like ~90% …)

I think the series is of two minds about whether Locke is actually supposed to be kind of an awful person or a stand up guy who happens to be a criminal—but as explained in my comment to the

Lies

review, I’ve chosen not to engage with those aspects and treat the whole thing as a rollicking adventure yarn. I will, however, once again point out a couple instances from this book of Character We’re Supposed to Root For Acts Like a Shitheel and Is In No Way Critiqued For It By the Text presently.

Re: description

And sadly the delicacy of touch seems to have been replaced by the typical fantasy fiction obsession with geographic detail.

Okay, here we come to a criticism I wholeheartedly agree with. Ye GODS but the description got tedious at times. It got tedious on

audiobook

; I shudder to think of trying to slog through it in text format.

I didn’t so much resent the book ending on a cliffhanger – although by the time I got to it, <Republic of Thieveslt/i> was already out, so I knew I’d be reading the next installment in a few months. Mostly, though, I was just relieved the cliffhanger revolved around Locke’s survival rather than Jean’s, because there’s a chance, however slight, of the series killing off Locke’s sidekick before the final book, whereas there’s absolutely none with Locke. So I appreciate the book making it absolutely clear that it’s not really a question of

if

the poisoned character will survive, but

how

.

His [Jean’s] short-lived relationship - although actually moderately engaging, while it lasts - is only further evidence of this. You can see its inevitably tragic conclusion approaching on the horizon like the sails of the good ship Obvious.

I think you undersell the extent to which the tragic conclusion was telegraphed beforehand. We’re talking

a MegaBrooks at the very least

. And I don’t think it would be humanly possible for the way it played out to have been any more cliché. Not to mention the whole fridging angle. Easily the lowest point of the series so far for me.

I thought RSURS handled the aftermath of said inevitable tragic conclusion a heck of a lot less annoyingly than most other books with similar big deaths I’ve encountered, though (lookin’ at you,

Harry Potter

). Jean is, of course, grief-stricken, and the book portrays the depth of his unhappiness while mostly avoiding an Epic Angst Sequence (seriously, there are few things in fiction less engaging than characters sitting around moping), and even sets up some genuinely touching moments, such as in the immediate aftermath of Ezri’s death, when Locke talks Jean down by threatening to throw himself at Jean, forcing the latter to beat the crap out of him (Locke), “and then you’ll feel terrible.”

Yes, pretending Jean is anything more than Locke’s sidekick is on par with “suddenly, Harry realized Dumbledore had actually been a fully-fleshed, three-dimensional character the entire time.” (Book 3 confirms this, when, after Locke is all patched up, Jean slips happily back into his role as Locke’s Number 2 without a hint of lingering grief over Ezri’s death, even as he’s helping out his best buddy romance Sabetha.) However, I thought the conflict between Locke and Jean set off by this outburst of Jean’s you quote in the article was actually pretty decent in terms of a “tensions between the series’ Main Pairing” subplot, which are usually of the eye-bleedingly terrible variety.

And what’s this guff about “moderately engaging?” I found it one of the two most engrossing parts of the story, along with some of Locke and Jean’s interactions. Jean and Ezri are adorable in every single scene they’re together: they bond over martial arts (with Jean being impressed that tiny Ezri actually managed to take him down at first), and their mutual affection for the Gentleman Bastardverse’s Shakespeare analogue. And then there’s the celebration scene where the two of them officially get together, soon after Jean has had his argument with Locke. And he’s keeping his distance from Ezri and it seems like at first he’s heeding Locke’s “you need to stay away from her, bro” bullshit, but it turns out, no, he’s craning away because he’s near-blind and he’s trying to see her properly and it’s incredibly cute you guys, like seriously.

Another thing I really like about the Jean / Ezri relationship is that the presentation feels balanced. I instantly get why Ezri is attracted to Jean as much as why Jean is attracted to Ezri, and in that scene during the celebration where, of course, Jean is being all shy and awkward, there’s a part where we suddenly see Ezri being shy and awkward as well. I’ve read a lot of similar romance arcs—especially those told from the male perspective—where the viewpoint character is vulnerable and complex while their love interest is all strong and confident and basically put on a pedestal.

I actually found it more engaging than Locke’s relationship with Sabetha in

Republic of Thieves

. While I agree with Cheriola that Sabetha is a great character, we don’t get much sense of her interior life, and the only times she displays vulnerability are when it directly relates to Locke. Also, it takes a long time into the story for her to tell Locke and the reader why she’s attracted to him, and I don’t feel the text really

shows

her being attracted the way RSRUS does with Ezri.

RSURS opens with Locke and Jean caught at crossbow-point on the docks and then, gasp, ever-faithful Jean turns on Locke. The novel then spools backwards in time to show you how they got themselves into this mess and, yes, it's arresting except that it's basically just like Alias, a cliff-hanger critical on the surface but ultimately completely meaningless and wrapped up quicker than a streaker at a tennis match.

Oh my god, that was the worst; maybe even worse than Ezri’s death.

I detest flash-forward openings as a general rule. I feel like there

may

have been one or two I’ve encountered which actually worked okay, but if so I can’t remember them now. Those possible examples aside, at best, flash-forward openings contribute f***-all of substance to the story, and at worst they undermine immersion by distracting the reader from the current action with questions which aren’t going to be answered for another 200-400 pages.

To be fair, some flash-forward openings, while still crap, sometimes do something clever with the reader’s expectations (I remember one where a guy wakes up and wonders what the heck is going on, and when we get to that part of the book in turns out the original guy died, and this is a clone, so that waking up sequence is technically his birth). RSURS is not one of those stories, though. The sequence takes on no new significance or added meaning for having read the rest of the book up to that point.

But wait, it gets

better

! Jean turning on Locke is in itself not terribly surprising: they are master con artists, after all. The linchpin (no pun intended) of the tension to this scene is that Jean fails to give the hand signals which mean “this is a scam, play along,” leaving Locke, and the readers, to wonder if this is a real betrayal, after all. Then, after Jean has dispatched the two assassins he says: “Oh, yeah, didn’t you see me giving the hand signal which means ‘this is a scam, play along’?” and Locke is all like, “Gosh, man, I must’ve missed it.” And that’s an end to it. Are you f**king kidding me?

Granted, this sort of stuff happens all the time in real life, but narratively speaking, it’s the worst kind of cheap trick for creating false tension. It

might

have been forgivable if there were some long-term consequences to the whole business. Locke and Jean have both been dosed with a slow-acting poison at this point in the story, and I thought maybe Locke’s failure to notice the hand signal was an early warning sign that the poison is beginning to effect his perception. But

no

. Or maybe Jean really was considering turning on Locke for some reason or other and then had a change of heart, and made up the part about the hand signal. No sign of that, either.

Look, I’m glad Jean doesn’t actually betray Locke, because as story turns go, that would have been at least as irritating as Ezri’s death, probably worse. But first you hit me with this bullshit flash-forward, then you double down on the bullshit by revealing the whole thing was just a trifling misunderstanding with no effing consequences whatsoever? What a waste of time.

… So yeah, on balance, I was not well pleased or amused by this sequence, especially as our hook into the main story.

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Robinson L

at 20:30 on 2016-12-21And now it’s time for another installment of Robinson Dissects the Ethics of the

Gentleman Bastard

Books. This week’s episode: Captain Zamira Drakasha Edition.

So yeah, Zamira is all kinds of awesome, but like with the other main characters, it’s best to turn one’s critical thinking off when thinking about her actions, or it becomes very hard to think of her as any kind of hero.

Case in point: she takes Locke, Jean, and the rest of their sorry crew onto her ship as probationary pirates. You do good, you play by the rules, you become full crew members; you step out of line, you die. All pretty standard stuff, except it turns out when she says she will kill you for breaking the rules, she means it.

One of the guys who originally signed on with Locke and Jean now despises the two of them intensely and is kind of an asshole in general, so the reader is primed to dislike him. He’s getting picked on by some of Zamira’s crew members, and finally he gets pushed too far and grabs a weapon to defend himself with. But laying hands on a weapon is against Zamira’s rules, so she has him executed on the spot. For the kind of mistake that anybody could make. And the reader is supposed to be okay with this because the guy was made to be unlikable. It could just as easily have been someone like Jean or Locke making a similar mistake, prompting Zamira to execute them, and the reader to hate her, in turn. We’re not invited to judge her character based on her actions, but on how we feel about the characters she acts against.

Later, there’s the time when we first see Zamira’s

Poison Orchid

attack a merchant ship, which involves pretending to be in peril themselves. As the pirates are preparing to board the ship, one of Zamira’s lieutenants tells the new recruits “if any of you are feeling moral qualms about attacking these merchants, just remember that they thought we were in distress, and only came to help us when we signaled we were willing to give them unconditional salvage rights.” Which, if you stop to think about it, is a

really

clever rationalization to psych people up to potentially commit an atrocity. I mean, if that were the point of the sequence—which it isn’t—I would’ve said it was brilliant. For all they know, the captain of the merchant ship was just a huge asshole, and literally everyone else aboard was clamoring to help the

Poison Orchid

right from the beginning.

It also seemed like, in the three way struggle between the Archon, Stragos; the proprietor of the big gambling den, Requin; and the members of the Priori; Stragos winds up being the Designated Villain of the book, not because his actions are worse than those of Requin or the Priori (we’ve already established they can be equally vicious), but because it happens to be Stragos’ actions which got Jean’s girlfriend killed. He gets punished, whereas Requin and the Priori members get happy endings, only because Stragos hurt someone the reader is supposed to care about.

Locke and Jean are quick to forgive the Priori member who was sending assassins after them because the Bondsmages told him the two Gentleman Bastards were going to cause him trouble. Which, okay, the assassins all failed, and all got killed, but by the logic of this story they were probably all Bad Men who deserved what they got, so no harm, no foul, right? Except, no, there

was

harm. One of the attempts to kill Locke and Jean was a really convoluted scheme to give them free drinks which were laced with poison. And the thing about convoluted schemes is that they’re full of holes, as in this one where Locke and Jean weren’t interested in the drink in question, and passed theirs on to the dockworker at the next table, who proceeded to die in their stead. No one in the story ever gets any kind of comeuppance for this murder, ‘cause I guess we’re not supposed to care about red shirts.

So basically, what I’m trying to say here is that the ethics of this series are all kinds of messed up if you look closely.

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Robinson L

at 00:00 on 2016-12-22

Cheriola: book 3, when encountering a random pair of gay lovers making out in a garden and being tempted to go through their discarded clothing for their wallets, he stops his kleptomaniac impulse by reminding himself that doing malice to happy lovers would be bad karma.

That was cute. Another very minor point I appreciated from that book was in a scene where Locke has to hold Sabetha as part of this play they’re performing and the narrator (speaking broadly from Locke’s perspective) talks about what it’s like for someone to hold another person whom they’re attracted to. It would have been

so

easy to gender the subject of attraction in that sentence as female, or to say something like “a person of the opposite sex whom they’re attracted to.” But no, it’s a general statement, and so the book sticks with generalities, not making stereotypes about the genders or orientations involved. Again, a minor point, but one I’ve seen even a lot of nominally well-intentioned works fail at, so I was mildly impressed.

I was genuinely amazed at Sabetha - she's the best feminist (NOT straw-feminist!) character I've ever seen a male author write.

I think it was this part which finally clinched it for me to read the series. As a male author myself, I can’t help but take it as a challenge.

As mentioned earlier, though, I feel like we didn’t get much sense of Sabetha’s internal life, except as it relates to Locke, and she has to tell Locke (and the reader) what particularly attracts her to Locke, rather than the book showing us.

It probably was implausible to have 16-year-old Locke be so receptive to Sabetha’s Feminism 101 lectures, but for me it was preferable to the second hand embarrassment of having Locke throw out insipid, MRA-apologist arguments for Sabetha to shoot down.

Since I’m not seeing a

Republic of Thieves

review on the horizon, I suppose I might as well give my thoughts on the book in general. Overall, I liked it, and Sabetha is a fine addition to the series’ cast.

I also kind of dug the way the main caper of the book was not a high stakes life or death game of taking on some brutal, affluent, entitled snot or other, but rather fixing an upcoming election. It shows you can have all the same drama and intrigue without putting countless lives on the line, which comes as a nice change of pace. (Granted, it turns out there are countless lives on the line in the Bondsmagi’s larger game, but that only comes up after the whole thing is over, so in my view it still counts.)

My political sensibilities being what they are, I particularly liked the election angle to the plot because the book depicts it as 1) an aristocratic exercise with no pretense of populist input (only a small fraction of the city’s residents have the franchise), and 2) a complete farce in any case, because who gets elected has f**k all to do with who’s better leadership material or has the best policies – the book dispenses with such preposterous fig leaves and dives straight into the real heart of electoral politics: naked corruption, double dealing, and general chicanery. There’s also the implication that who gets elected is ultimately trivial in terms of how Karthain is actually run, because the real ruling elite (in this case, the Bondsmagi), make damn sure that in practice, it gets run exactly the way they believe produces the greatest benefit for the city’s inhabitants. (The book seems to suggest that what they think is best for Karthain really is, which is where its views and mine diverge, but other than that, I’m completely on board with the book’s representation.)

Synopsis

The Disney plot is rather different, and people might not be over-familiar with the details of Rapunzel anyway, so here's the gist. A drop of sunlight falls to earth and grows into a magical flower (just go with it, okay?). An old woman finds the flower, and discovers that if she sings a particular magical song to it, it glows with healing light that temporarily restores her youth (ditto). She hides it and uses it to stay young and beautiful for an unspecified but long time. The Queen becomes ill while pregnant, so they send the army to find the fabled flower. They make a healing potion from it, which works, and the child is born as a beautiful golden-haired daughter (it wasn't entirely clear when the mop of hair appeared, but stick with me here). One night, the old woman sneaks into the palace to steal a lock of hair, believing it'll have the same healing properties. But when she cuts it, the hair loses its power. In desperation, she steals the baby. Nobody knows what happened to the princess, and they never find her. Every year on her birthday, they release Chinese lanterns to remember her.

Eighteen years later, thieves break in and steal the princess' crown (presumably a traditional item from the treasury) which is handily kept on a cushion beneath a skylight with all the guards facing away. They're pursued, and one (Flynn) splits off from the others with the crown, escaping the guards but still followed by an angry horse. He finds a tower in a hidden valley, which seems like an ideal hiding place. Sadly, he's beaten unconscious by an 18-year-old Rapunzel with a pan, and stuffed in a cupboard. Rapunzel wants to go and see the floating lights she's spotted every year on her birthday, but her mother won't let her. After yet another argument, which dissuades her from revealing her prisoner to her mother, she decides to make the man take her instead while her mother's away. Wacky adventures and angst and excitement ensue. The two fall in love, and are followed by the old woman, who uses Flynn's betrayed partners to set an ambush, and sets it up to look like he's abandoned Rapunzel so she'll accept her mother's advice and won't try to leave the tower again. He escapes, comes to see her, is mortally wounded, and has a pointless heroic moment of sacrifice that is negated by Lurve. Old woman crumbles to dust, Rapunzel is reunited with her family, and all live happily ever after. Except the old woman, and presumably the now-imprisoned Stabbington Brothers.

Family Matters

One of the things that was vaguely interesting about the film was the family issues it brought up. The thing that really got my attention was right at the end, during the reuinion, when the narrator (i.e. Flynn) says something like: "...Rapunzel finally had a real family..."

Let's leave aside the likely problems for a girl brought up by a single parent in humble surroundings in a small tower, who's barely met a handful of people in her life, joining two unknown biological parents of immense wealth and power who live in a massive castle and incidentally becoming the biggest celebrity of all time. I'm sure there will be no issues whatsoever getting accustomed to that. Or long-term trauma associated with the violent death of the woman who brought her up and whom she sincerely loved. This is a fairy tale. However, it does get me thinking about families.

The old woman is never named in the story. I do wonder why; perhaps to stop us having any sympathy with her, though villains in other stories are named, or perhaps they simply couldn't be bothered inventing a name. It does dehumanize her a bit. Anyway, I'm going to call her Agnes. So Agnes has, indeed, kidnapped Rapunzel to use her supernatural power so she can live forever. This is Not Okay. And she keeps her trapped in the tower so she won't either leave her, or be found by anyone. The thing is, apart from that, she treats her as a daughter.

Now, I am not going to claim she's a great mother. She's controlling and emotionally manipulative, which I suppose isn't that surprising when she's keeping Rapunzel there basically by force of will. She's only tepidly affectionate. On the other hand, Rapunzel's very comfortable and, apart from a desire to see the outside world, she's pretty happy. She has nice furniture and playthings, nice clothes, and an apparently endless supply of hobby materials. They don't seem to have a luxurious diet, but neither do most peasants; and Agnes makes a point of cooking Rapunzel's favourite food when she visits. She's also educated her brilliantly: although a tad naive, she knows everything an ordinary, non-imprisoned girl would know. She recognises Flynn as a man, knows what birthdays mean, how drowning works, and when she's in danger. The outside world doesn't really phase her, so she must know about nature and geography, and she seems to have a decent grasp of society and normal behaviour too. She's articulate, intelligent and very pleasant. In fact, given the difficulties of the situation, Agnes is one of the most successful child-raisers I've ever heard of. It's very clear that, right until the end, Rapunzel is very fond of her mother. Regardless of Agnes' ultimate feelings towards the girl, she treats her extremely well so far as the situation allows. Compare, say, Cinderella or Snow White. Agnes may not be a great mother, but she's actually not a terrible one.

I was talking about this to Dan, and he summed up my argument here as basically: "Apart from kidnapping a baby, pretending to be her mother, bringing her up alone in a tower for eighteen years and deceiving her for her own selfish ends, she's not a particularly bad mother". The thing is, ridiculous as it sounds, I think that's about right. The things she's done wrong aren't really about how she raised Rapunzel, but more general wrongs that intertwine with that. The problem is that Agnes' dual status as adoptive mother and kidnapper rather complicates the issue.

As far as Rapunzel is concerned, at least, Agnes is her family. The thing that changes that is not really a shift in their relationship, or anything Agnes does; it's seeing a picture of the baby princess and then seeing herself in the mirror wearing the crown. It's a revelation of Objective Truth ('you are Really the Princess, the Queen and King are your Real Family'), rather than anything about the family itself - right until that moment, Rapunzel thinks of Agnes as her mother and loves her.

There's a decent argument that it's not a good family, because it's built on a tissue of lies. It's also possible that Agnes has no real affection for Rapunzel - she doesn't show any active affection in the film. On the other hand, she's brought the girl up for 18 years, and in that time, I'd have expected things to crystallise one way or the other. The first option is to view and treat her as a useful tool or a pet, in which case I wouldn't expect Rapunzel to be so well educated or comfortable; that's extra effort and liable to encourage further trouble, when you could bring her up cowed and ignorant so she won't get ideas. If, on the other hand, Agnes brings her up as though she was her daughter and treats her kindly, you'd expect some affection to arise on both sides.

Now, I don't think Disney thought much about this one throwaway line and I'm not that interested in decrying them. A fairly normative and slightly old-fashioned way of thinking is par for the course. I suppose the "real family" reference means one with honesty and love, rather than manipulation, deceit and using your daughter selfishly. It means the parents who wanted you and loved you unconditionally, rather than someone who stole you for selfish reasons, whether or not they've got fond of you. In context, though, it had a faint whiff of narrow-mindedness: that what really matters isn't who brought you up or how you felt about them, but your genes (and incidentally having two parents, not just one). The fact is though, Rapunzel actually had a pretty happy family life before all this kicked off.

From My Point of View, the Jedi are Arguably Morally Ambiguous

Although the story glosses over her, I was also quite interested in Agnes and her actions. We don't ever find out anything about her, other than her use of the flower and her relationship with Rapunzel. We don't know her background, her history, or what she does when she's not visiting Rapunzel. Why should we? Rapunzel doesn't either. She's presented pretty much exclusively as a manipulative, selfish woman, whose use of the flower is immoral, and who commits a string of selfish acts to keep herself young and live forever. I'm not sure how convinced I am by that portrayal, or the way morality is defined in this story as a whole.

Agnes is lucky enough to find the flower and discover its powers. She keeps it hidden and uses it to stay young (and therefore alive) for, well, a long time. She chooses to keep it to herself, which is selfish, but I wonder how long she'd get to keep it if people found out about it? She could legitimately have all kinds of worries about that, so keeping it hidden isn't that unreasonable. As it turns out, the first thing that happens when the flower's discovered is it gets taken - so her hypothetical suspicions are vindicated.

Now for a look at the Castle. When the Queen is ill, the Castle mount a frantic last-chance search for the rumoured magical flower, and due to carelessness on Agnes' part, find it. Under her very eyes, they carefully dig it up and take it away to the castle. Someone makes it into a magic potion, which heals the Queen and (probably) saves her daughter's life too.

The issue here is the magic flower. Who has the right to use it, and what uses are acceptable?

The flower just appears. There's no reason it belongs to anyone, but Agnes has as much claim to it as anyone. Agnes uses it to save her own life; the Castle use it to save the Queen's life (and her unborn daughter). While Agnes keeps the flower to herself, nobody else benefits; once the Castle destroy the flower, nobody else can ever benefit. There's a touch of criticism in the film's portrayal of Agnes' actions, as though it were a crime to seek immortality. I don't know much about ethics, but I suspect issues like immortality are much more complicated than "it's bad to try and live forever". The Castle's actions are presented straightforwardly as a good thing. To be honest, I can't really see much difference. From a purely practical perspective, the first is a much more efficient use of the flower. The only real difference I can see between them is that Agnes chooses to save herself, whereas someone else (the King?) chooses to save the Queen. The first is more obviously selfish; but the second involves destroying an item of fantastic potential benefit to the world, which doesn't actually belong to the King any more than it does to anyone else, to extend the life of his wife. Not entirely unselfish.

Once the flower is destroyed, Agnes is doomed. Having and then losing immortality is more of a blow than never having it. She works out that Rapunzel's hair could do the same job, and plans to steal a lock. It's a bit skeevy, and involves burglary; on the other hand, the Castle are responsible for her plight, and taking a lock of hair shouldn't actually harm anyone. I can't really see the Castle giving her one, so theft or death is pretty much the choice. It all goes downhill from there.

In a sense, the story is a series of choices that Agnes has to make, each one more morally questionable. Initially, she chooses to keep the flower's benefits for herself, rather than risk sharing it. Then she chooses to try and steal a lock of hair to regain her lost immortality, rather than dying to avoid a relatively minor crime that harms nobody. She's cheated of that option by the way the magic works. The real problem starts when, panicking, she chooses to steal the baby rather than die. Then she chooses to deceive and manipulate her stolen daughter rather than risk her running away. Then she chooses to genuinely betray her (by acting against Rapunzel's interests) to get Rapunzel and her own immortality back. Finally, when the truth comes out, she chooses to resort to force rather than lose Rapunzel and die. Agnes is stuck on a slippery slope, where each decision makes it harder to give up the immortality for which she's done so much, and makes it easier to take the next and wronger step. What she ends up doing, and her treatment of Rapunzel, is clearly wrong, but it's not nearly as simple as her being a wicked old woman.

One of my friends suggested that one reason why Agnes and the Queen are portrayed differently is that people find it creepy for old people to want to be young and live forever; but saving and extending the lives of young, beautiful people is fine. There might be something in that.

A Bit of a Lad

The other thing I found a bit off about Tangled was its hero. Aladdin had a thief hero, but it was a little different. He was clearly a destitute beggar who stole food to live. Flynn Rider, the hero of Tangled, is also from a humble background, but he's more of a professional thief - all we know is that he's conspiring to steal a crown from the palace.

Now, thieves as heroes are a well-established trope in literature. However, Flynn is clearly not only a thief, but an untrustworthy thief. In the film, he's sort of contrasted against the Stabbington Brothers, his partners, in a way that is clearly supposed to show him in a good light. However, if you look at the details, it's rather murkier. He is willingly engaged in the robbery at the palace, and makes it very clear that it's a chance to live in luxury rather than a matter of need. All three are chased by the soldiers and trapped in a dead-end gully. Flynn offers to climb up and help them after him; they don't trust him and insist he leaves the bag with the crown with them. However, once he gets to the top they clearly believe he'll help them escape too. Instead, he reveals the bag he's somehow managed to steal back, mocks them, and runs off to save his own hide. In other words, he betrays his partners and leaves them trapped in a gully to die at the hands of the soldiers. That is not the act of a hero, not even a thief. That is not being a rough diamond, or a rogue. That is being a treacherous backstabbing git. As it happens, the soldiers spot him and chase after him instead, but that's clearly not the intention.

Rather surprisingly, he does behave mostly honourably towards Rapunzel. He does try to deter her from going through with the plan, but since he's a wanted outlaw liable to be killed if he gets spotted in the kingdom, it's not that unreasonable. He's not doing it just to get the crown back. When she does offer him the crown later, he's in love with her and tries to give it to the Stabbington Brothers. To be honest, though, that came across more as a way to weasel out of any comeuppance for his betrayal and get them off his back, rather than a genuine attempt to face up to his actions or any real remorse. Unsurprisingly, they prefer to exact some revenge.

There's also a scene in the middle where they visit a dive. As part of his attempt to persuade Rapunzel to give up the excursion, he takes her to a wretched hive of etc. This being Disney, a bit of eyelid fluttering and a song show up all the murderous thugs as sweethearts deep down. The fact is, though, if it's even remotely as bad at it appears, he has no business taking her there. All the men there are clearly villainous and criminal, and there are no women there at all. Taking a naive 18-year old girl there, while (as we soon find out) not having the ability to protect either of you if there's trouble, is not only utterly stupid but an unforgivable failure of responsibility.

Despite all this, it's the Stabbingtons who are treated as the real criminals, who deserve only to be locked up. They're also the only characters, other than Agnes, who don't get a happy ending: the last we see of them, they're locked in the castle dungeon. Given that Flynn was about to be hanged for stealing the crown, I don't fancy their chances much.

In a way, neither the Stabbingtons or Agnes are villains, any more than Flynn is really a hero. They're all people who are faced with decisions, and sometimes choose the wrong ones. Agnes does wrong to avoid dying, the Stabbingtons and Flynn do wrong for profit, and the Queen does no obvious wrong. The reason they come across differently is that everyone has different choices to make. Agnes has to choose between crime and death; the Queen doesn't have to make that choice. The Stabbingtons and Flynn all choose to steal the crown, but Flynn's the one who chooses to betray them to death. The Stabbingtons choose to seek revenge when it's offered, but Flynn doesn't have any revenge to seek. Flynn is kind to Rapunzel and falls in love with her, but the Stabbingtons don't get the opportunity. The Stabbingtons plan to capture Rapunzel and profit from her powers; Flynn doesn't find out about them until he's already her friend, she's saved his life and they're well on their way to falling in love. It's not that surprising that, treacherous git as he is, he doesn't take that option. Whether he would have or not, we don't know. But while falling in love might redeem people to one another, simply falling in love with Rapunzel doesn't turn Flynn from a thieving, untrustworthy scoundrel into a noble hero.

It seems to me that the difference between a piece of fiction being emotionally manipulative and emotionally effective is whether or not you think you can see the strings, and how much it matters to you if you can. And this is, of course, a very personal distinction. It is possible to argue that the death of Wash in Serenity, for example, was effective because it was so shockingly cruel and arbitrary; I, however, have always regarded it as rather cheap, firstly because I have little patience for that sort of justification and secondly because it was blatantly obvious that by that stage in the film Whedon didn’t need the character of Wash for anything other than generating pathos. Because of the highly individual nature of such judgment calls, I feel genuinely uncertain about my reaction to The Knife of Letting Go. I am not unable to see its merits – and it is, in many ways, a bold and powerful book – but I personally found it cheap and frustrating.

The hero (or, more accurately, protagonist) of The Knife of Letting Go is Todd Hewitt, the last boy in Prentisstown. Prentisstown is a settlement on New World, a planet colonized by people from Earth seeking a simpler, less corrupted life. However, New World was already inhabited by an alien race known to the colonists as the spackles, and, during the inevitable war, the spackles unleashed the Noise Germ, a biological weapon that killed all the women and made the men and animals broadcast their thoughts to each other. This outpouring of thoughts, images, words, emotions and fantasies is known as The Noise. And Todd tells us:

…the thing to remember, the thing that’s most important of all that I might say in this here telling of things is that Noise ain’t truth, Noise is what men want to be true, and there’s a difference twixt those two things so big that it could ruddy well kill you if you don’t watch out.

One month before he turns 13 – the point at which a boy in Prentisstown becomes a man - Todd encounters a strange area of silence in the swamp. This, of course, turns out be a girl and precipitates his flight from Prentisstown. The rest of the novel is basically one long chase. Todd and the girl, Viola, reel from security to danger and back again, propelled breathlessly from one event to the next. But gradually they come to understand each other, and Todd learns the dark truth of the world he inhabits. And also important lessons about, y’know, identity and manhood and all that jazz.

As I said above, there is good stuff in The Knife of Letting Go. It is most assuredly a stylish and gripping book. Todd, for example, has a very authentic voice. Here he is, at the beginning of the novel, thinking about his annoying dog:

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say. About anything…Ben’s sent me to pick him some swamp apples and he’s made me take Manchee with me, even tho we all know Cillian only bought him to stay on Mayor Prentiss’ good side and so suddenly here’s this brand-new dog as a present for my birthday last year when I never said I wanted any dog, that what I said I wanted was for Cillian to finally fix the fissionbike so I wouldn’t have to walk every forsaken place in this stupid town, but oh, no, happy birthday, Todd, here’s a brand new puppy, Todd, and even tho you don’t want him, even tho you never asked for him, guess who has to feed him and train him and wash him and take him for walks and listen to him jabber now he’s got old enough for the talking germ to set his mouth moving? Guess who? "Poo," Manchee barks quietly to himself. "Poo, poo, poo."

And the characterization – even of the dog – is generally pretty deft. I liked Todd, and I liked Viola, who is just as tough as Todd, and smarter too, and the cute, noble-hearted talking dog was, of course, utterly irresistible. They other thing that is well-handled about the presentation of the characters is that their portrayal, along with the characteristics that receive emphasis, changes over the course of the book, as Todd learns more about himself, more about his world and more about the people who surround him. Equally, Todd’s relationship with Viola develops in a plausible way and the apotheosis of their friendship, when Todd realises that caring for someone is the key to knowing them, even if you can’t hear their Noise, is rather touching:

I can read it. I can read her. Cuz she’s thinking about how her own parents also came here with hope like my ma. She’s wondering if the hope at the end of our hope is just as false as the one that was at the end of my ma’s. And she;s taking the words of my ma and putting them into the mouths of her own ma and pa and hearing them say that they love her and they miss her and they wish her the world. And she’s taking the song of my pa and she’s weaving it into everything else till it becomes a sad thing all her own. And it hurts her, but it’s an okay hurt, but it hurts still, but it’s good, but it hurts. She hurts. I know all this. I know it’s true. Cuz I can read her. I can read her Noise even tho she ain’t got none. I know who she is. I know Viola Eade.

And, of course, since it is primarily a chase, it is an action-heavy and fast-paced book, through which a detailed world gradually emerges. It’s so fast-paced, in fact, that I felt almost exhausted by the time I got to the end, and there’s so little time to process the information we are given (when, finally, we are given it) that I can’t tell whether it was a deliberate attempt to make the reader feel as numb and drained as the characters or a genuine problem with the telling.

However, the fact remains that although I am capable of seeing what is good about the book I still couldn’t like it. The Knife of Letting Go is basically one of those guys, one of the ones you know is going to mess you around and treat you badly, but you just can’t stop shagging – even though you know better - because he’s so gosh-darned hawt. I’m going to go into some of my problems with the book now, and they are naturally going to be spoiler heavy. If you want to stop reading here, however, you can take away a reluctant and dubious recommendation for The Knife of Letting Go.He's a good lay but don’t come crying to me when it turns out the time he said he was at the launderette he was actually banging your sister.

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To Say Nothing of the Dog

He kills the damn dog.

It’s very affecting. I cried.

But I absolutely hated Ness for doing it, not simply because I liked the dog – as I was bloody well meant to – but because it’s just about the cheapest trick in a box of cheap tricks.

It’s obvious from the beginning of the book the dog is going to die.

He nearly dies a couple of times.

Then he does die.

Of course, I’m aware that is something to which people will respond very personally. And I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong in doing things to cause an emotional reaction in the reader but I found it both manipulative and cowardly. Especially since in a text otherwise replete with violence and cruelty, having the bad guy kill the cute talking animal side-kick is little more than the fastest, easiest way to evoke pathos and grief without hindering the plot. Humans do die as well but in a very off-pagey sort of way.

Tune in next episode

The book ends on an enormous cliff-hanger. Such an overwhelmingly enormous cliff-hanger than it practically invalidates the act of reading the book. It’s the equivalent of buying one third of a season of Lost. Again, I don’t have a general problem with books being the “first in a trilogy” or even with some aspects of a text remaining unresolved at the end but The Knife of Never Letting Go is not the first in a trilogy, it’s the first third one very long book. And yes, relationships develop, dogs are killed, truths are revealed, one bad guy is dealt with but it’s all so obviously part of a more important, bigger arc that there’s no point in reading The Knife of Letting Go without also committing the next two. And I know there’s an extent to which you can argue this is a problem with trilogies in general but usually some attempt has been made to give the act of reading the first book some meaning on its own. For example, although The Hunger Games is clearly the first book in a trilogy, there is just enough arc, development and closure in the text that you could read it and stop. The Knife of Never Letting Go gives you a big fuck all.

Just kill him already

Given that The Knife of Never Letting Go practically makes an art of the unsubtle, it should come as no surprise that the villains are a manipulative politico who is trying to make himself figuratively into a God, and an unkillable, frothing preacher man who pursues Todd relentlessly for the entire book, getting increasingly maimed but yet in a manner that doesn't seem to hinder him the slightest. There's a very horror-movie feel to Aaron the psycho preacherman – the first few you times you think he's dead only to have him pop up unexpectedly, with another piece of his face missing, are genuinely shocking and scary. By the midway point, however, it's all become a bit routine, and the repetition of the device has not only dulled the tension it has rendered the whole process somewhat ludicrous.

For symbolic and personal reasons I'll go into later, the text can't permit Todd to kill Aaron, and therefore he has to be evaded and incapacitated in increasingly awkward ways. He doesn't actually get an anvil dropped on his head from a balcony but it feels like you're getting close to it. And as much as I understand the need for a book to define, and stick to, its own symbolic and ethical framework I also think there's a point at which not killing the murderous nutcase who has been after you for 500 hundred pages becomes an act of gross stupidity. It's the equivalent of the head cheerleader in a slasher movie hitting the bad guy over the head with a vase and running away, thus giving him time to regain consciousness and dismember her later. I know this is required by the slasher-movie narrative but The Knife of Never Letting Go is a roadtrip-sci-fi-western-chase-story, and consistently leaving Aaron alive to continue to fuck everything up not only strains credulity it strains the story.

I’ll tell you everything but first…

There is a lot of artificial deferral in The Knife of Letting Go – the truth, when it finally comes out, is pretty much what you think, but it’s withheld from the reader in ways that are as cheap and frustrating as you might expect from this text. I mean, there are actually scenes in which somebody looks intensely at Todd, says it’s time to tell him the truth and, oh noes, at that precise second they get interrupted by people trying to kill them:

He lets out a breath. “It’s time you knew, Todd,” he says. “Time you knew the truth.” There’s a snap of branches as Viola comes rushing back to us. “Horses on the road,” she says, outta breath.

Oh come on! Seriously?! This happens over and over again. Over-using an over-used device is a lot of over-use.

What’s even more frustrating is that Todd learns the truth about halfway through the book and refuses to tell us because he doesn’t want to wreck the tension…I mean… because he doesn’t know how to express it.

Again, perhaps I’m being unfair, but this strikes me a fundamental violation of the ‘rules’ of first person present tense narration. This seems to the de rigeur technique for young adult Dystopias, and I can see it has advantages: it’s dramatic and immediate, allows for an original and potentially very informal voice, and keeps the reader restricted to the knowledge and understanding of the protagonist. It also means we share the journey and feel close to the character, learning things and feeling things alongside the hero or heroine, which makes the inevitable sucker punch of “oh my God, all the time we thought it was like this but actually it was like THAT!” all the more painful. Ness really does milk this to the absolutely maximum, constantly pumping up the tension, and revealing snippets of information here and there, but I think doing this while deliberately denying the reader information already known to the protagonist constitutes a betrayal of trust and an exploitation fo the style.

Cheap, Mr Ness. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap.

Girls and Aliens

The Knife of Letting Go is a basically a book about manhood and masculinity. It is very much Todd's coming-of-age, not Viola's, and there's an extent to which the book just isn't all that interested in her. She's a decent character, in spite of this, but whereas Todd Hewitt grows, learns and changes, Viola Eade just is. Again, this largely a result of the fact the book is entirely told from Todd's perspective, and when he first encounters her, although he can instinctively recognise a girl, she might as well be an alien for all the understanding he has of her. And she is, of course, qualitatively different from him: she has no Noise, which initially leads him to conclude there is nothing inside her at all.

As a metaphor, I think it works. Just as in young adult paranormal romance for girls the seductive and dangerous otherness of boys is captured in making them a werewolf, a vampire or a fairy, here we have the unfathomable nature of the teenage girl to the teenage boy reflected by the presence, and absence, of Noise. However, the thing that troubles me about this is that it is a difference that genuinely exists in the book, and one that moreover defines all men and all women. The thing about the vampire boyfriend is that it's about one girl and one boy, making it a very personal metaphor about the inaccessible otherness of specific guys you fancy. Not all guys in general. I mean these books aren't devoid of awkward gender stuff either but it's a different flavour of awkward gender stuff.

But in the The Knife of Letting Go, all women are very literally Other to all men, and much of the backdrop to the rest of the book only serves to reinforce this as we see communities of men and women finding ways to deal with these differences which, in the context of the text, are absolute and innate. There are examples of healthy relationships (although actually the relationship given the most page time and thought is, I think, between two men, at least it's very strongly implied they're a homosexual couple) but the preoccupation always seems to be with the power differential of women being able to hear the Noise of men, while broadcasting no Noise themselves. This whole setup is grounded in an unquestioned Mars/Venus worldview, with men being essentially straightforward brutes while women are complicated and inscrutable.

It reminds me of something I read on the internet once. During a discussion of female superheroes on, I think, Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed), one commenter, afflicted with a terminal case of Nice Guy Syndrome, launched into an argument that, all things being equal, women simply wouldn't choose to be superheroes because they're “too sensible.” This is a beautiful example of somebody being profoundly offensive under the cover of deeply respecting women, man. And I got something of a similar vibe from The Knife of Letter Go. Women are solely defined in opposition to men: men are violent, women are not, men have Noise, women don't, men are simple, women are complicated, men have to work hard to understand women, women are instinctively able to understand men, and so on and so forth. Defining women purely through opposition with men is simply not okay, not even if you're saying they're better by comparison. It's equivalent of the Victorian notion that women were spiritually superior to men.

And given what happens to the women of Prentisstown (yeah, the men all kill them), what The Knife of Never Letting Go seems to be saying is that some men simply can't cope with the inherent unknowability and otherness of women. Thus we have a moral baseline in which not giving in to their own innately violent nature and killing a bunch of women is the best that can be hoped for from men. I know there's probably an extent to which I'm over-reacting to this, but it seems to me that the Noise Germ is not a metaphor for the extent to which a teenage boy feels women are an alien species, but a metaphor for the fundamental differences between the sexes. Relationships form when we overcome those differences, not when we learn that those differences are largely invented. The point is Todd learns to communicate with Viola despite the fact she has no Noise. He never comes to the conclusion that she is not from Venus. And this sort of unquestioned gender esentialism was genuinely problematic for me.

Killing In the Name Of

Another unquestioned assumption in The Knife of Never Letting Go concerns the intertwined nature of violence and manhood. A boy becomes a man in Prentisstown when he turns thirteen and kills for the first time. Todd spends the whole book rejecting this notion of masculinity forging for himself an adult identity that does not involve killing. My problems with this are very similar to my problems with the whole Women as Other theme: situating yourself in opposition to something else is predicated on acceptance of the original dichotomy. Thus women are Not-violent, and Not-Noisy (it rather reminds me of the Renassiance conception of female genitalia being characterised by an absence – a NoThing), and manhood becomes defined by killing or Not-killing. There is never any exploration of the idea that killing, or not killing, may simply be irrelevant to either manhood or adulthood.

The other irritating thing about Todd's refusal to kill is that he only gets away with it because Viola steps up to do the deed when things with Psycho Preacherman finally come to their inevitable, if much delayed, climax. It's pretty easy to take a moral stance, or indeed make something into a moral stance, if it doesn't actually interfere with your survival, or day to day life. I could take a moral stance against hoovering tomorrow – the hoover is an agent of the patriarchy, and as a woman I refuse to be oppressed – as long as I knew Dan was going to keep the carpets clean. Also, it's more than a little bit irritating that killing is massively definitive for Todd but Viola can throw someone off a cliff without batting an eye. Again, we come back to the gender essentialism: men are defined by violence, women by their lack of violence, so if a woman kills someone it doesn't matter, and doesn't affect her.

And, finally, of course, for all this hoo-hah over killing the local fundamentalist, nose-less psycho, Todd does actually murder someone in the middle of the book. He comes upon a Spackle, and, having been

carefully taught

to fear and hate, reacts on instinct and kills the poor guy stone dead. Needless to say, once he realises what he's done, he's pretty freaked about it but everybody else, and the novel as a whole, seems to disregard it. At least three people tell him basically it doesn't matter and it would be fair enough to see this as a reflection of the prejudices of the setting IF we weren't also expected to accept Todd's new definition of himself as a man-who-does-not-kill.

Since killing only counts if you're a woman or the victim doesn't look like you.

Ouch.Themes:

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Young Adult / Children

,

Minority Warrior

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Arthur B

at 16:24 on 2011-03-06I've not read this, but it sounds like the "I ain't gonna kill" thing would bother me too. It's easy to be a pacifist when your good buddy will do all that messy killing on your behalf.

Plus, maybe it's just that I've still got Elric on the brain, but it seems to me that it's just more interesting to take someone who lives by a simple and extremely reductive rule like "I won't kill" and then make them do it in a way which they can't deny or rationalise away than to let them live by that rule and let them actually succeed in not breaking it.

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Niall

at 20:43 on 2011-03-06As you say, Knife is the first part of a long book, not a complete work, so having read the other two parts it's tricky to respond to your criticisms here - though I'm happy to if you'd like. What I will say is that the last two points are central issues in the series, and on Noise specifically I'd say that's one reason why it's important this story is science fiction, as opposed to fantasy - because in a science fiction universe all rules are local. In this case, as the presence of Viola points out, the distinction that obtains between men and women on New World is definitionally *not* innate, or natural; it's a consequence of this particular place. So I take it as a general metaphor for difference between men and women, as you do, but I take it very precisely as a metaphor for *constructed* difference.

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Wardog

at 23:12 on 2011-03-06Firstly I don't like the idea that I have to read several books in order to "properly understand" one. I think a book should stand on its own - even if later books build on, and refine, what was initially presented. So if these criticisms arise from the fact I just didn't get it, I'm inclined to say it wasn't appropriately presented.

I don't mind spoilers incidentally - and I have no intention of reading the other two - so feel free to weigh right in.

I recognise that the Noise is a consequence of THAT germ and THAT place but I don't think you can divorce the specifics from the general by playing the "ah, it's science fiction" card. I mean he using THAT germ and THAT place to make more general points about the nature of men, and the nature of women, and the way they interact with each other.

The thing is - I can see your point, but to me it seems that it can't be about *constructed* difference because women literally ARE different in this world. They literally ARE unfathomable to men. And what we see through the relationships depicted in the book, as I said in the review, are not men and women recognising the fact that they aren't, in fact, utterly different, but finding ways to deal with the differences that are taken as read.

It's like Todd's relationship with Viola - he learns he doesn't have to hear her Noise to know her. But that's not the same as recognising that she is the same as he is.

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Wardog

at 23:19 on 2011-03-06Also, I'm not sure I quite understand what this means: "because in a science fiction universe all rules are local."

I'm not a big sci-fi reader, admittedly, but generally I don't think you can look at ideas in isolation like that? I mean all fiction, whether it's set in an imaginary world or not, relates to the real world.

I mean, The Left Hand of Darkness is partially about what it would be like if you lived in a gender-neutral society but it's ALSO about our gender constructions in this world. If it was only the former it would be a lesser book for it.

And by the same token, I don't think you can look at the Noise Germ and say "oh that's only about what it would be like if women could really hear what men were thinking." Since there are plenty of people here and now, in this world, Ness among them apparently, who already genuinely believe that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

Weirdly it reminds me of all those old 60s Star Trek episodes in which they tried to make valuable points about black people by using aliens as allegorical substitutes. No matter if the message is "we should respect these aliens and not kill them" you still ultimately have some members of the human race presented as green frog people. Which is not okay.

And I think it's a moral copout to turn round and say "oh no, no no, we're not reinforcing the otherness of human beings by associating them literally with a different, and potentially funny looking species, it's specifically about the political situation on Sigma VIII."

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Dan H

at 23:25 on 2011-03-06

in a science fiction universe all rules are local

Umm, according to whom?

Surely the point of science fiction is that it's in some way grounded in science, and surely one of the major defining features of science is that it's sort of universal.

the distinction that obtains between men and women on New World is definitionally *not* innate, or natural; it's a consequence of this particular place

Umm, unless it comes out in a later book that somebody *deliberately* went around and injected all the women with something so that they would react to the Noise differently, then how does the fact that men and women have a *fundamentally different reaction on a physiological level* count as a "constructed" difference.

To put it another way, I think you're putting the metaphor one level lower down than Kyra is - if I'm understanding you right, you're suggesting that the fact that men and women react to the noise differently is just a fact of the setting, but then the way in which the men in the world react to this is a metaphor for the way society reacts to artificially constructed gender stereotypes. This just doesn't seem like a coherent reading to me (whether "all rules are local" or not is neither here nor there).

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Arthur B

at 23:53 on 2011-03-06I think the big thing here is that, yes, whilst it's undeniable that the Noise affects men and women differently, it's also undeniable that it works that way because Ness decided to make it work that way.

You can analyse the way the society he depicts reacts to that one way or another, but that doesn't change the fact Ness created a situation where they

had

to react to it. He made the rules of the game, and the rules of the game (as explained here) seem stacked to reinforce gender essentialism.

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Niall

at 00:56 on 2011-03-07

Firstly I don't like the idea that I have to read several books in order to "properly understand" one.

Eh, I'm agnostic. You're right, it's not unfair to criticise book one in isolation for being problematic for reasons X, Y and Z ... I just don't think it's particularly interesting to do that, when it's clear that book one is not a complete artistic statement, it's only a convenience of marketing and publishing.

The first key spoiler is that book two has two narrators, Todd and Viola, and book three has three narrators, Todd, Viola, and a Spackle. So the series continually expands its (and Todd's) worldview; by the end of the series it's quite clear that Todd's murder of the Spackle is a murder, for instance. (Although the idea of Todd as The Boy Who Does Not Kill continues to be pushed, if in a more problematised fashion.) The second key spoiler is that the Mayor has a cure for noise; the third key spoiler is that the other colonists turn up, they don't have Noise when they arrive but the men catch it, and they look into their own kind of cure. And it's also revealed in the third volume that women can be given Noise, although this isn't followed up on as much as I might have liked.

"All rules are local" was hasty and badly phrased. To try to unpack it a bit more, what I mean is something like: a science fictional setting implies a connection to our present, and in turn implies a universe larger than the individual story being told. There is always an implicit "things can be different." Fantasy settings -- or I should say, the disconnected secondary world type of fantasy setting -- are more absolutist. What there is of a fantasy universe is as much as an author wants to show us. There is no necessary connection between this difference and the political content of a story, but there is a connection in this case. Right from the start, the very presence of Viola seemed to me to challenge the apparent essentialism of the setting -- she *proves* that things are different elsewhere -- and that challenge is only made more explicit and thorough as the books unfold.

To address Dan's point:

Umm, unless it comes out in a later book that somebody *deliberately* went around and injected all the women with something so that they would react to the Noise differently, then how does the fact that men and women have a *fundamentally different reaction on a physiological level* count as a "constructed" difference.

It seems to me that there are actual biological/physiological/biochemical differences between men and women, and that a lot of real-world sexism is rooted in exaggeration and distortion of the importance of those differences. Ness is playing with that notion, speculating that there is some biological difference that is inconsequential outside New World but massively consequential on New World, and then progressively revealing that even in the context of New World it's not nearly as absolute as it seems, and that much of its consequentiality comes from human action and choice.

(I'm actually trying to remember whether or not the Spackle deliberately infected humans in an attempt to communicate. I think it's floated as a theory at one point but proves to be wrong? Or it may just have been something I speculated as I was reading the books.)

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Arthur B

at 01:02 on 2011-03-07

Eh, I'm agnostic. You're right, it's not unfair to criticise book one in isolation for being problematic for reasons X, Y and Z ... I just don't think it's particularly interesting to do that, when it's clear that book one is not a complete artistic statement, it's only a convenience of marketing and publishing.

How is that relevant? All sorts of works have ended up horribly compromised as a result of conveniences of marketing and publishing. Should we not point out that they are, in fact, compromised as a result?

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Niall

at 01:13 on 2011-03-07That's why I'm agnostic. It should be pointed out. But I personally find it hard to care that much, if the overall work is coherent.

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Niall

at 01:15 on 2011-03-07Also, and entirely unrelated to the current thrust of the discussion, I meant to comment on this:

It seems to me that the difference between a piece of fiction being emotionally manipulative and emotionally effective is whether or not you think you can see the strings, and how much it matters to you if you can. And this is, of course, a very personal distinction.

And say, yes, absolutely, this is very well expressed. I don't mind seeing the strings. I'd even go so far as to say I can admire a good set of strings! But Ness is very transparently a manipulative writer. The other two books in the trilogy aren't chases -- they're more of a war story -- but they're very nearly as obvious in their ploys.

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Arthur B

at 01:20 on 2011-03-07

But I personally find it hard to care that much, if the overall work is coherent.

Personally, I don't give a toss whether the overall work is coherent: if I have to wade through shit in order to see the coherence, I'd rather not bother.

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Dan H

at 10:39 on 2011-03-07

"All rules are local" was hasty and badly phrased. To try to unpack it a bit more, what I mean is something like: a science fictional setting implies a connection to our present, and in turn implies a universe larger than the individual story being told. There is always an implicit "things can be different."

I don't think that's particularly true.

I mean yes it's obviously the case that a lot of science fiction is about exploring possibilities rather than certainties, but it's still rooted in a set of basic assumptions about how the world works. Star Trek for example, is based around Gene Rodenberry's idea of what a perfect future society would look like and because of this there is no room within the text to explore the idea that his society may be far from perfect.

To put it another way, I think you're taking an over-literal interpretation of the interaction between a fictional world and the real world. You seem to be arguing that because a science fiction novel is supposed to be connected to the real world, that we can therefore assume that the text encompasses and is aware of all of the subtleties and complexities of the real world. This seems silly. The vast majority of fiction is set in the real world, does that mean that - for example - we can't complain about 24 having an extremely trigger-happy attitude to torture, on the grounds that it's set in the real world, and some people in the real world *don't* have that attitude to torture?

It seems to me that there are actual biological/physiological/biochemical differences between men and women, and that a lot of real-world sexism is rooted in exaggeration and distortion of the importance of those differences.

I see that. Where I think we disagree is that I believe "women and men are so fundamentally different that an alien germ produces radically different physiological and psychological effects on people depending on their sex" *does* constitute an exaggeration and distortion of the importance of those differences.

Ultimately there's some room for legitimate disagreement here, but what Kyra is objecting to is the fact that tKoNLG treats the innate differences between men and women as something which *concretely exist* when she belives they don't (and I would happen to agree with her).

To put it another way: if you were to read a book about a virus which turned black people (and only black people) into mindless savages that went around raping and devouring white women, then I don't think you could really claim that the book was "exploring socially constructed ideas about race".

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Wardog

at 11:21 on 2011-03-07I think it's probably quite difficult to discuss Ness's book without, y'know, having read the book...

You're right, it's not unfair to criticise book one in isolation for being problematic for reasons X, Y and Z ... I just don't think it's particularly interesting to do that, when it's clear that book one is not a complete artistic statement, it's only a convenience of marketing and publishing.

Again, I think this is a complicated issue. I think providing a coherent artistic statement within the limitations of the medium in which you have chosen to make that statement is, well, it's what an artist does. And I don't think it's necessarily uninteresting to analyse a text *for what it is* rather than *what it will be* or *what you think the author meant it to be*; sorry to get all Barthes about it but I don't think it's my role to assemble the artistic statement. I think it's my role to evaluate the artistic statement as presented to me.

In terms of the rules being local - I think I get what you're saying but I'm not sure I'm on board with it :) I'd probably just be slightly wary, on principle, on trying to define that science fiction works like this, and fantasy works like that. I just don't think it's possible to divorce the story being told from the context in which it was written.

And perhaps Viola becomes more a challenge in the other two books but I actually read her as largely supporting the essentialism of the setting. As I said in the review, all Todd seems to learn that the fact women are inherently and absolutely difference is not necessarily a problem for getting on with them.

At the end of the first book the "truth" about the Germ was that it was a naturally occurring virus on New World. I don't know if this "truth" gets later modified.

But Ness is very transparently a manipulative writer. The other two books in the trilogy aren't chases -- they're more of a war story -- but they're very nearly as obvious in their ploys.

I'm conscious that my bad-reaction to this text was pretty personal. I mean the thing that bothered me over and above what I suspect was skeevy gender and spackle politics was the blatant manipulation. I guess that shows I have dodgy priorities but knowing Ness was taking me for a ride and didn't give a damn genuinely hindered my pleasure in the story.

Given what you've said here, it's probably for the best I've resolved not to read the next two :)

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Niall

at 12:07 on 2011-03-07Dan:

I don't think that's particularly true.

Evidently. But we've been round similar houses before, and I don't think we're going to convert each other to different ways of reading at this point! In any case, the general argument isn't necessary for my specific argument about Chaos Walking.

Where I think we disagree is that I believe "women and men are so fundamentally different that an alien germ produces radically different physiological and psychological effects on people depending on their sex" *does* constitute an exaggeration and distortion of the importance of those differences.

No, we agree on that. Where *I* think we disagree is in what the argument that develops from the fact of that difference is.

There are innate biological differences between male and female human beings. (There are also intersex human beings, different again.) What's up for debate is the extent of these biological differences, and the extent to which they shape behaviour -- how "men" and "women" are created. I agree with you that the evidence strongly suggests that, in our world, the differences are limited, any shaping effect of biology is small, and on an individual level outweighed both by other genetic variation and by social influences.

What Ness has done is create a situation where a new biological factor shifts the balance. What he has not done is change the underlying perception: ultimately, there is a balance between social and biological factors, and ultimately the social outweighs even the enlarged biological difference.

Kyra:

I think it's my role to evaluate the artistic statement as presented to me.

I agree. But I don't see Knife as a complete artistic statement. The artistic statement as presented to you encompasses the other two volumes as well. Neither publisher nor author tries to hide the fact that Knife is not a complete work. (Put another way, it's entirely possible that we're both correct -- that Knife is problematic and that Chaos Walking is coherent.)

In other words, I read Knife as setting up starting positions, not making definitive statements -- I felt there was too much up in the air at the end of book one to say where the text was going to come down on all these issues. Although obviously I felt there were indications in the text about where it was going to go. On that point:

As I said in the review, all Todd seems to learn that the fact women are inherently and absolutely difference is not necessarily a problem for getting on with them.

I take "I can read her Noise even tho she ain’t got none" as a recognition that the difference of Noise is superficial, actually. But I don't think that's the main way Viola undermines the apparent essentialism, because we know Todd's perception and understanding of the situation is limited. What's important to me is simply the fact of her presence. (Which is where I got sidetracked into the general argument above.) Viola is a constant reminder that New World is a limited, distinct space, and that the constructions of "men" and "women" there are not universal constructions. (Which is a larger barrier to Todd understanding Viola? The fact that she doesn't have Noise, or the fact that she's from a different planet?) It's a matter of when the other colonists are going to arrive, not if. From my point of view, ignoring this is to divorce the story from its context. That larger context is part of the story from the start.

(I went to see if the Tiptree judges made any useful comments about why they gave this book an award; they often do, but

not really this time

.)

I guess that shows I have dodgy priorities

I don't think so; as you say, it's a personal preference. I don't think there's a right or wrong there.

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Wardog

at 12:48 on 2011-03-07

But I don't see Knife as a complete artistic statement. The artistic statement as presented to you encompasses the other two volumes as well. Neither publisher nor author tries to hide the fact that Knife is not a complete work

Well, no, it's obviously not a complete artistic statement but, nevertheless, in *being a book* it is expected to constitute one. Again, I'm not trying to define arbitrarily what a book should be but only reading the first book of the Chaos Walking Trilogy is *not* equivalent to, I don't know, only choosing to look at half the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It is kind of the equivalent to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel being spread across two different chapels, in different countries.

As I said, I think it's reasonable for future installments of a trilogy to refine on an theme or present new ideas, or a different take on old ideas, but equally if you want to argue that my interpretation of the events presented to me in one book is *factually incorrect* because of later elucidation in a later book ... that strikes me as a problem in the telling, not the reading.

Equally, an argument that you should read the next two in order to be permitted to have a valid opinon during discussions strikes me as simply another layer of meta-textual manipulation.

I take "I can read her Noise even tho she ain’t got none"

Again, I read the same problem into this as I did Todd's unquestioning acceptance of the binary of man-who-kills / man-who-does-not-kill. We're still always operating within the structure: man and not-man, violence and non-violence, noise and not-noise.

Viola is a constant reminder that New World is a limited, distinct space, and that the constructions of "men" and "women" there are not universal constructions.

Yes, but even in the distinct space of New World, Ness's constructions are still informed by the constructions of *this* world. It's all very well to *attempt* to write a story, as I believe he does with Todd and Viola, about a relationship between a man and a woman that is not founded on preconceived notions about gender and the relations between the sexes. I believe he fails in this - not least because I think Knife does reinforce the gender-essentialism of his setting.

And because as much as you argue that it is important not to divorce the story from its context, it is equally important not to divorce the text from the context in which it was written. Trying to do something is not the same as actually doing it. And one of the massive massive problems in trying to present a world without constructions of gender is that we are, of course, at the mercy of our own.

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Niall

at 13:13 on 2011-03-07

It is kind of the equivalent to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel being spread across two different chapels, in different countries.

I guess I just don't get this. The number of sets of covers is entirely arbitrary, as far as I can see. Plenty of sf books get split into two volumes against the ideal wishes of the authors (The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe, for example; Mary Gentle's Ash, in the US). It's almost routine for large fantasies to be published in one volume in hardback and two in paperback these days; the same happened to Peter F Hamilton's space operas in the US. The Lord of the Rings gets published in one volume, or three, or six. It's clear from the text itself what the complete work is, so that's what I tend to default to. In the case of Chaos Walking, clearly Ness did write to a publishing schedule that chopped the story into three parts. But equally clearly (at least, so it seems to me) that division is arbitrary.

an argument that you should read the next two in order to be permitted to have a valid opinon during discussions

Well, that's why I said we can both be right. An American reader who thinks the first book of Ash raises issues that it doesn't resolve is not wrong; but a British reader who thinks everything raised at the start of Ash is beautifully paid off at the end isn't wrong, either.

I'm not sure I see what you're getting at in the last part either, I'm afraid. I don't think Chaos Walking is a story about a relationship between a man and a woman that is not founded on contemporary preconceived notions about gender; I think it is in part a story that is absolutely founded on those notions -- that appears to embed them in reality -- and then confronts them and starts to break them down. So I'm not sure how my reading is divorced from the context in which the story was written; to the contrary, I think Chaos Walking is more consciously and directly engaged with the contemporary world around us than most sf I've read in the last five years. But I think the existence and origin of Viola, and the larger fictive universe she implies, is vital for that reading.

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Arthur B

at 13:25 on 2011-03-07

Plenty of sf books get split into two volumes against the ideal wishes of the authors (The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe, for example; Mary Gentle's Ash, in the US). It's almost routine for large fantasies to be published in one volume in hardback and two in paperback these days; the same happened to Peter F Hamilton's space operas in the US. The Lord of the Rings gets published in one volume, or three, or six.

Speaking with regards to

The Wizard Knight

and

Lord of the Rings

, though, although the individual parts are clearly components of a whole they're also (as far as I'm concerned) good and enjoyable reads whose flaws aren't sufficient to dissuade me from reading the rest. Sure, the individual books might not completely stand on their own, but they should at least pull their weight in maintaining the reader's interest.

Also, if I learned anything from Text Factor, it's that reading the first third or so of a work is usually a good pointer as to whether you're going to like the last two thirds. The way Chaos Walking's structured just leaves more tangible jumping-off points where the reader can stop and consider whether they want to keep going - reading the rest of the series involves buying or borrowing the next volumes rather than simply turning the page and continuing.

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Dan H

at 13:25 on 2011-03-07

No, we agree on that. Where *I* think we disagree is in what the argument that develops from the fact of that difference is.

Not quite, I think that where we disagree is that you view the "fact of that difference" as independent of the argument, whereas I view it as part *of* the argument. Or to put it another way, the book *might well* be arguing that the innate biological differences between men and women are unimportant in the overall scheme of things, but what I'm objecting to is the bald assertion that those differences exist in the first place.

I think we basically agree on what the argument of the book is, roughly it's something like: "to what extent does it matter that women are predisposed to be more caring, intuitive and non-violent than men?" Even if the answer it comes out with is "not at all" that doesn't change the fact that the argument itself is grounded in an assumption I don't actually buy.

You only get to ask "to what extent does it matter that X" once you have established categorically that X is the case. You can't write a book that's based around the question "how much does it matter that black people are less intelligent than white people?" and not have some people annoyed at the terms of the question.

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Niall

at 13:39 on 2011-03-07Arthur:

they should at least pull their weight in maintaining the reader's interest.

Well, there's no doubt Ness's books do that, pace the discussion about manipulation above.

Dan:

it's that reading the first third or so of a work is usually a good pointer as to whether you're going to like the last two thirds

Mmm. I find this is true for bad books, much less true for good ones. Which is inconvenient, I know.

the book *might well* be arguing that the innate biological differences between men and women are unimportant in the overall scheme of things, but what I'm objecting to is the bald assertion that those differences exist in the first place.

You can't possibly actually mean this at face value, unless you didn't study any biology in school, or are using "biological differences" to mean something very different to what I understand it to mean.

I'd phrase Chaos Walking's question as something more like, "How do we get past what the world around us constantly tells us are fundamental differences?" I can certainly see feeling like you're already past the point at which that would be a useful question to ask. On the other hand, this is a book written for a young adult audience.

(The idea that the question might be "to what extent..." actually made me laugh out loud. There's no way Chaos Walking thinks women are predisposed to be more caring, or men are predisposed to be more warlike. The war in books two and three falls along gender lines, and characters on both sides display the full range of human behaviour.)

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Arthur B

at 13:42 on 2011-03-07

Mmm. I find this is true for bad books, much less true for good ones. Which is inconvenient, I know.

Do you want to cite a few good books whose first third or so are actually kind of lousy? Because to be honest, I can't think of any. I can think of plenty that have a fairly slow buildup, but even there quality shows.

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Niall

at 13:52 on 2011-03-07I can't think of any books that are technically incompetent in the first third that then improve dramatically. I can think of plenty that didn't click with me in the first third, or which seemed to be going in directions that I didn't care for, and then came around and ended up impressing me: Light by M John Harrison; The Prestige by Christopher Priest; Graceling; Acacia by David Anthony Durham; The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway; Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity series (final volume at the top of the TBR, so opinion may be revised again, of course) ... which is why I very rarely abandon books. But of course we run into the problem that "lousy" is entirely subjective -- I don't think Chaos Walking falls into this category, and I suspect most of you loved Graceling from the first page, whereas it felt awfully thin and cliche to me to start with, and only the number of recommendations I'd received induced me to continue with it. (And they were right, of course.)

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Wardog

at 13:59 on 2011-03-07I certainly wouldn't deny Knife is *interesting* - it's just manipulatively interesting :)

I guess I just don't get this. The number of sets of covers is entirely arbitrary, as far as I can see. Plenty of sf books get split into two volumes against the ideal wishes of the authors (The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe, for example; Mary Gentle's Ash, in the US).

No, I know this - but I guess there are two different issues at stake here, one about the literalities of publishing a book, and one about the nature of what a book is. I mean I know one of George RR Martin's books got split into two because it was so big paper couldn't cope but that's not the same as how Knife functions as an artefact in its own right. I mean The Fellowship of the Rings is *entirely* readable in its own right - yes there's obviously a lot more to come, but, y'know, it has beginning and middle and end. I obviously have no insight into the publication of Chaos Walking, or Ness's writing schedule, and actually I have no insight either: as far as I'm concerned if you publish a book it should have some validity as a book, even if it's not a complete plot arc.

It's a bit like TV shows when every episode, and every season, does nothing but contribute to a wider arc - you feel a bit cheated, and the show feels shallow. But generally what happens in arc-based television (BSG, The Sopranos) is that you get a coherently satisfying story AND a contribution to a wider arc, and the way the two inserct is interesting and engaging.

Knife is all arc, and fuck all else.

I'm not sure I see what you're getting at in the last part either, I'm afraid. I don't think Chaos Walking is a story about a relationship between a man and a woman that is not founded on contemporary preconceived notions about gender;

This was a tangential musing - basically when Todd meets Viola he has never met a woman, never seen a man interact with a woman, and therefore has no idea what the relationship between a man and woman might be like. So there is an extent to which their relationship, as it develops, is (or should be, or could be) de-anchored from an established social or cultural setting. I'm not saying that this is what Knife is "about" - I'm just saying it's an aspect of the text.

I think it is in part a story that is absolutely founded on those notions -- that appears to embed them in reality -- and then confronts them and starts to break them down

Again, I don't really see that in action - to me I only see people working about unquestioned difference rather than breaking down the difference.

There's no way Chaos Walking thinks women are predisposed to be more caring, or men are predisposed to be more warlike. The war in books two and three falls along gender lines, and characters on both sides display the full range of human behaviour.

Again, I don't quite see that. I mean, how does that work with the fact Todd cannot kill Aaron because he must be The Man Who Does Kill, whereas Viola can. That seems to me to reinforce the notion that violence is central to the definition of man, but not to a woman. Equally what about the role of Todd's *grotesquely saccharine* mother, being all "I wuv you, darling, I wuv you so much, and teh world is beautiful and the sun is shining and I have a vague sense we're all going to get horribly murdered but no, that's not going to happen because everybody is fundamentally nice and the world is so beautiful and did I say I wuv you so much yet?" in the diary.

I mean Todd's mother's diary is the only authentic, unmediated female voice we hear in the whole book and it's practically a parody of the care-giving woman. I'm not saying she should be all "hey, you in my womb, i hate you" or anything but it is presented as this extreme opposition to all the horrible violent men going around killing each other.

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Arthur B

at 14:11 on 2011-03-07

I can think of plenty that didn't click with me in the first third, or which seemed to be going in directions that I didn't care for, and then came around and ended up impressing me: Light by M John Harrison; The Prestige by Christopher Priest; Graceling; Acacia by David Anthony Durham; The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway; Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity series (final volume at the top of the TBR, so opinion may be revised again, of course) ... which is why I very rarely abandon books.

But presumably even before they "clicked" with you they had you intrigued and interested enough to keep going, right? You didn't just keep slogging on thinking "I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this

oh!

Now I like it!", did you?

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Niall

at 14:13 on 2011-03-07

therefore has no idea what the relationship between a man and woman might be like

Er, doesn't he have the Noise of the men in his village having blasted him for years with horribly distorted images of what the relationship between a man and a woman might be like? He may be aware intellectually that Noise ain't true, but emotionally and psychologically he's not.

That seems to me to reinforce the notion that violence is central to the definition of man, but not to a woman.

Two thoughts here: first, an expectation of violence *is* something men have to confront growing up; to that extent, violence *is* central to our culture's definition of what makes a man. It shouldn't be, but culturally, it is. Given that Chaos Walking isn't a wipe-the-slate-clean story (in contrast to, say, Graceling), that has to be factored into its initial givens.

Second, the number of characters increases dramatically in books two and three. This helps make it clear that what violence/non-violence is actually central to is the definition of *Todd*, and that Todd is not all men. (Equally, nurturing/women/Todd's mother/Viola becoming a narrator in book two.) I mean, once again I'd argue these things are there embryonically in Knife -- Ben is a man but violence is not a central part of his definition, ditto the guy who gives them a ride on his cart, and you have Hildy (I'm fuzzy on the names, but the woman Todd initially assumes is a man because she has a gun) and Viola to counterpoint Todd's mother for ideas of women -- but having more characters around certainly makes things clearer.

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Niall

at 14:15 on 2011-03-07

You didn't just keep slogging on thinking "I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this oh! Now I like it!", did you?

Yes, I did. Several of those were award nominees -- I wanted to see what others had seen in them, or at least have a fully informed opinion of my own. Others were for review.

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http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/

at 14:17 on 2011-03-07I don't want to interrupt anyone's conversation, but I just thought I'd point out that my reaction to

The Knife of Never Letting Go

was very similar to Kyra's, and that Niall and I had a very similar conversation in the comments to my

post

about it.

On the whole, I'm more positive towards

Knife

than Kyra and, if memory serves, a lot less positive towards

The Hunger Games

, which I discuss in the same review. As Kyra says, the success or failure of the novel comes down to whether its manipulation works for you, and for me Ness was successfully manipulative while Collins wasn't. I do think it's significant that the two sequels give Viola and the Spackles a voice, but that doesn't negate the fact that

Knife

buys into the otherness of women - I haven't read the concluding volume,

Monsters of Men

, yet, but

The Ask and the Answer

seems to leave the issue of the nature of women by the wayside. It is, as Niall says, a war story, and more concerned with how Todd and Viola deal with being prisoners of war (Viola becomes a terrorist, Todd becomes a collaborator). It's as if Ness thinks that having given Viola a voice completely addresses the otherness with which she's viewed in

Knife

, which I don't think it does.

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Arthur B

at 14:23 on 2011-03-07

Yes, I did. Several of those were award nominees -- I wanted to see what others had seen in them, or at least have a fully informed opinion of my own. Others were for review.

OK, I think this just comes down to personal tastes here. For me, if a book has me thinking "I hate this this is dull why don't you fucking shut up stupid author" for a third of it I tend to hold that against it, even if the last two thirds end up being good. No mercy, no second chances, an eye for an eye, blood calls out for blood, etc.

Sometimes multi-part works are structured that you can actually pick and choose what you want to take from them - see my Elric review where I tell people to ditch about three-quarters of the series because it's unworthy of the quarter that remains. Sometimes they just aren't; you can't just watch two out of the six episodes of the original

Edge of Darkness

and expect that to form a coherent and satisfying experience.

A friend once told me "If you put piss in wine, you get piss; if you put wine in piss, you get piss." I just don't have the time or the energy these days to slog through a book of which a third is made of tedium and dull based solely on the promise of good stuff being just around the corner; no matter how fine the wine is, that doesn't change the fact I'm being asked to drink piss with it.

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Niall

at 14:24 on 2011-03-07I'd forgotten that discussion! Interesting, especially since I'd only read Knife at that point.

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Niall

at 14:26 on 2011-03-07

OK, I think this just comes down to personal tastes here.

Indeed. For me it's more like acquiring a taste -- when I do these sorts of re-evaluations, it's usually not the case that I end up thinking the first third was terrible but the end was great; rather I end up thinking the whole is good, and I just didn't get what the first third was doing.

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Wardog

at 14:32 on 2011-03-07

Er, doesn't he have the Noise of the men in his village having blasted him for years with horribly distorted images of what the relationship between a man and a woman might be like?

No, fair point. But, again, we have that sort of Noise if you like around us all the time *now* but it we also have specific demonstrations of relationships between men and women going on. I mean people see their parents before they seen pornography. I would hope.

Two thoughts here: first, an expectation of violence *is* something men have to confront growing up; to that extent, violence *is* central to our culture's definition of what makes a man.

Okay, now I'm really confused. Doesn't that go against the all rules are local principle you were stating earlier? I mean, yes, I do there is a perception in our culture that Men Are For Violence, and that this is somehow innate to being a man. But this looks a little bit like you're saying what our culture says about men is relevant to interpreting this text but what our culture says about women is not because of the specifics of the situation.

But, regardless, this continues to niggle at me for being problematic in that accepts the dichotomy as presented by the surrounding culture. I mean even though it is just the definition of Todd it is still a definition entirely reliant on the presence, or absence, of violence. Thus violence is still utterly central in Todd's understanding of himself as a man, and thus to the concept of men as a whole.

It never seems to occur to anyone that violence might be irrelevant. Or equally relevant, or irrelevant, to women.

And about Ben and Cillian - they are, once again, defined by violence or the absence of it, specifically they can't fight in Prentisstown to protect the women because, instead, they have to protect Todd. They're both - Cillian in particular - consequently shown to be quite messed up about this. Obviously Ben and Cillian aren't around very much, although I always kind of liked Cillian, so it's hard to analyse them but I think there's an implication that not fighting is not just against their moral codes, it's against their natures.

With regard to books getting better, this is an entirely frivolous point but I sometimes fear you (as in one, not you personally) get a sort of Stockholm syndrome if you force yourself through a text you're not enjoying. The thing is, if you read 500 pages of rubbish you hated, you either have to accept the fact you, in essence, wasted your time OR convince yourself the book had some value after all. There is something quite liberating in decided not to finish a book - although I'm not nearly as good at it as I would like.

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Arthur B

at 14:35 on 2011-03-07See, I take the view that even if I'm not sure what the first third of a book is getting at, it still shouldn't be boring or irritating me whilst it's doing it. And if you enjoy the first third of a book better once you know what's going on, that's an argument for letting the reader in on what's going on at the start so they can get that enjoyment on the first go-around. Life is short and time is precious, too precious to reread 500 page tomes to reappraise them in the light of something revealed on page 499.

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Niall

at 14:46 on 2011-03-07

Doesn't that go against the all rules are local principle you were stating earlier?

No, it's pretty much a restatement of what I meant -- that in setting Knife on another planet, with an intrusive reminder that it is only one planet, Ness is pointing out that the rules of that planet (and by extension our contemporary rules) are not the only rules there can be. That goes for the female characters as much as the male. I expressed myself even less clearly than I thought!

It never seems to occur to anyone that violence might be irrelevant.

Well, that's because they're not living at a time and a place where that's an option; life on New World is structured by violence, and you have to reject violence before it can become irrelevant. If you want to chalk this up as another example of Ness being manipulative, I'm happy to do that.

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Wardog

at 14:59 on 2011-03-07

No, it's pretty much a restatement of what I meant

I have a feeling we're simply not going to meet in the middle on this one :/ But trying acknowledging that "things do not have to be this way" does not change the fact that Ness has essentially presented a world in which things are problematically (to me) like this world, and he has done this without any awareness of it. I think maybe it comes down to this: you think Ness is questioning the slightly skeevy gender essentialism of his setting through the Noise device and I think he is reinforcing our own ideas of slightly skeevy gender essentialism by the way he has deployed the Noise device.

Well, that's because they're not living at a time and a place where that's an option; life on New World is structured by violence, and you have to reject violence before it can become irrelevant.

Sorry, irrelevant to personal identity. My turn to suck at articulation.

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Niall

at 15:08 on 2011-03-07

I think maybe it comes down to this: you think Ness is questioning the slightly skeevy gender essentialism of his setting through the Noise device and I think he is reinforcing our own ideas of slightly skeevy gender essentialism by the way he has deployed the Noise device.

More or less, yes. I'm planning to re-read the whole trilogy soon, though -- I've only read them all once -- and I'll be bearing this discussion in mind when I do.

Sorry, irrelevant to personal identity

I don't think that makes much of a difference? I still don't think Todd the space or the experience to even consider that a possibility. Which may be your point.

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Wardog

at 15:16 on 2011-03-07@Wrongquestions

Oh, you expressed that so much better than I did...

Actually looking Knife in the context of The Hunger Games is actually fascinating - for me it was very much the other way round, Ness was unsuccessfully manipulative, and Collins was successfully so. But, yes, that's largely personal.

I also think Collins got away with more because I glutted myself on YA Dystopias after The Hunger Games. I think I read that trilogy, and then Uglies (which I disliked - urgh), and so I came to Ness basically in a bad mood with the genre.

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Wardog

at 15:23 on 2011-03-07

Which may be your point.

At this stage, I'm even starting to wonder what my point was :D

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Dan H

at 19:09 on 2011-03-07

You can't possibly actually mean this at face value, unless you didn't study any biology in school, or are using "biological differences" to mean something very different to what I understand it to mean.

I'm using it to mean "specific, biological differences related to specific, identifiable parts of the body or genetic structure *which account for gendered behaviour stereotypes*".

Obviously there are biological differences between men and women in the same way that there are biological differences between tall people and short people and as long as you define "biological differences" as being "differences that are vaguely related to the body".

Specifically, I do *not* believe that there is any evidence *whatsoever* to support the idea that the brains of men and women operate differently, or that men and women have different ways of seeing or interacting with the world (all of which many people believe to be literally true). The idea that men's brains and women's brains are somehow differently wired is as far as I can tell a harmful, essentialist myth.

I'd phrase Chaos Walking's question as something more like, "How do we get past what the world around us constantly tells us are fundamental differences?"

You see, I don't see where you're getting the "what the world around us constantly tell us" bit. There *are* fundamental differences between men and women in the setting, men have Noise and women don't and that's rooted in an absolute biological (and presumably neurological) difference.

Now you can make the argument that the book is interested in the ways such differences can be overcome in the face of a society that declares them to be insurmountable, but if what bothers you about the book is the fact that it presupposes the *existence* of those differences then that problem can't be resolved by declaring that those differences can be overcome.

I can certainly see feeling like you're already past the point at which that would be a useful question to ask. On the other hand, this is a book written for a young adult audience.

I think you're falling for the fallacy of balance here. It's not like there's a spectrum of opinions along which people must be carefully led lest their tiny minds explode. It's not like everybody has to start out believing that women are aliens, then gradually learn that they are aliens with whom we can communicate, before finally coming to the realization that they're people.

What Kyra and Abigail objected to in tKoNLG was the Othering of women - something the book very clearly does by positing real, pseudoscientifically justified differences between the sexes. This isn't something you can compromise on - if you say it's not okay to treat women like an alien species, and I say it *is* okay to treat women like an alien species, then you can't split the difference and agree to treat women like an alien species with whom one can never the less have a fulfilling relationship.

What it reminds me of a lot (and I think Kyra's used this metaphor as well) is the way that fantasy novels try to explore real-world prejudice by substituting some kind of non-human species for the minority in question. Sometimes this works, but nine times out of ten the non-human species is presented as either genuinely dangerous or literally inferior.

Basically I think the problem we have here is that several people are saying "My issue with this book is that it says X, and X isn't true" and your response seems to be "but it's okay, because the book says that X doesn't matter anyway." It's perfectly reasonable for you not to be bothered by X, or to believe that X is in fact true after all, but it doesn't really address the original issue.

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Niall

at 19:59 on 2011-03-07

Basically I think the problem we have here is that several people are saying "My issue with this book is that it says X, and X isn't true" and your response seems to be "but it's okay, because the book says that X doesn't matter anyway."

No, my response is "I don't think this story says X." But I don't think I can put my case any more clearly than I already have, and what you're rebutting here is a case I didn't make, so we're stuck.

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Dan H

at 21:01 on 2011-03-07

No, my response is "I don't think this story says X." But I don't think I can put my case any more clearly than I already have, and what you're rebutting here is a case I didn't make, so we're stuck.

I am sorry if I misrepresented you, but I genuinely can't work out the case you're making.

The complaint leveled against the book is that it's extremely Othering of women. Your case seems to be that the book doesn't Other women because Todd eventually gets past Viola's essential Otherness. Or perhaps you're arguing that Viola is not presented as possessing an essential Otherness (except that he's forced to interact with her in a way that is completely different to the way he interacts with everybody else) or that the perceived Otherness of Viola is shown to be a social construction (except it *isn't* it's a concrete, biological phenomenon).

I really don't understand how you can take a book which has, as its premise, the idea that men and women have differences in their neuropsychological makeup which cause them to perceive the world in observably different ways, and argue that it does not support the common misconception that men and women have differences in their neuropsychological makeup which cause them to perceive the world in observably different ways (this being the basis of the "Mars and Venus" mentality which Kyra and Abigail both observed and objected to).

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Niall

at 22:17 on 2011-03-07OK, one last try, since:

The complaint leveled against the book is that it's extremely Othering of women.

Aha! There are by my reading several different complaints leveled against the book in Kyra's post, and the one I was interested in defending it from is the one about essentialism, not the one about othering. (My first comment: "... the distinction that obtains between men and women on New World is definitionally *not* innate, or natural; it's a consequence of this particular place.") I don't think these things are equivalent or inherently linked; that is, I think it's possible for a book to be essentialist and othering, or essentialist but not othering, or othering but not essentialist.

Knife is clearly othering, yes. The viewpoint is male and has been raised to believe all sorts of bizarre and horrible things about women; the primary female character is an alien that he has to learn to understand. All given.

Where I start my defense is (a) this is not reflective of the totality of Chaos Walking -- indeed one of the points of the series is to break down such othering, per the introduction of additional narrative viewpoints and other developments; and (b) the othering is not essentialist in nature, though it appears to be.

On (a), I think we've pretty much gone round the houses in this thread about whether or not it's OK for a series to continue to unpack its world to that degree after the first volume; I think it's fine, I think the hints are there (as evidenced by my comments in Abigail's thread), many people here disagree with me, fair enough.

On (b):

a book which has, as its premise, the idea that men and women have differences in their neuropsychological makeup which cause them to perceive the world in observably different ways

This is not the premise of the series. The premise of the series is that there is a place in the universe where an otherwise inconsequential biological difference becomes consequential. In Chaos Walking men and women do not, as a starting point, perceive the world in different ways. A difference in how they perceive the world is created when men are infected by an external agent. That is, men and women

on New World

have differences in their neuropsychological makeup which cause them to perceive the world in observably different ways

when untreated

. In Knife, the "on New World" part of this statement is clear; in the later books, it is explored further, and the "when untreated" part also becomes a focus.

This is not essentialist because it is limited and modifiable and not defining; that is, it is not an essential characteristic of all men in Ness's universe that they have Noise, it's not even an essential characteristic of all men on New World that they have Noise, and the presence of Noise does not axiomatically mean that women become incomprehensible to men. What this setup

does

do, however, is create the circumstances for essentialist ideology to run riot -- as exploited and propagated by the Mayor -- which is how you end up with Todd's othering perspective. And also how I get to the notion that the story is asking us to consider how

we

resist what our world around us constantly tells us.

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Dan H

at 23:01 on 2011-03-07@Niall - Okay, that's somewhat clearer, I still think we disagree (although I should point out that I've not actually read the book, I'm just working on the details that you and others have presented to me).

Knife is clearly othering, yes. The viewpoint is male and has been raised to believe all sorts of bizarre and horrible things about women; the primary female character is an alien that he has to learn to understand. All given.

I think this clears up a lot of the issues here: on the other hand, I think there is a difference between "this book presents women as Other" and "this book is about a character who views women as Other". I don't actually think you *need* to have one to have the other.

This is not the premise of the series. The premise of the series is that there is a place in the universe where an otherwise inconsequential biological difference becomes consequential.

I can see where you're coming from here. The reason that it bugs me is because while it might be an inconsequential biological difference, from my point of view it's this "inconsequential biological difference" which makes the whole thing essentialist.

The very fact that the Noise affects men and women differently implies, to me, that the book assumes that men and women are in fact *innately different* on a neurological level. Otherwise, why didn't the Noise affect everybody the same way?

It doesn't help that the way the noise is set up conforms *directly* to Mars/Venus assumptions about the way men and women are "wired". Men send out these big, obvious, easy to read signals, while women are much more subtle and opaque. The symptoms of the Noise really do seem like they were cribbed directly from MAFMWAFV.

Again, I don't buy the idea that the fact that all of this is restricted to New World makes a difference because, well, the story you choose to write is the story you choose to write. And either way, what bugs me about the whole Noise setup is not the (local) effects of the noise on the population of New World but rather the (universal) principle that the Noise affects men one way and women another, in such a way that it dovetails with conventional stereotypes about masculinity and femininity.

Again, and sorry to keep using race analogies but I really think they highlight the problem, if the Noise had the effect of turning black people and only black people into violent maniacs, I don't think you could legitimately argue that it wasn't racist on the grounds that the Noise was a local phenomenon.

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Niall

at 23:43 on 2011-03-07

rather the (universal) principle that the Noise affects men one way and women another

From my second comment: "And it's also revealed in the third volume that women can be given Noise, although this isn't followed up on as much as I might have liked." By which I mean that we get the theoretical discussion, but not an actual demonstration. Anyway, the upshot is that it's not impossible in women. Sex differentials in infection and disease rates are reasonably common; Noise is exaggeratedly one-sided, but not unprecedented.

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Dan H

at 12:13 on 2011-03-08

Sex differentials in infection and disease rates are reasonably common; Noise is exaggeratedly one-sided, but not unprecedented.

But still exaggerated.

Again I think what bugs a lot of people is that Ness ultimately chose to explore his ideas about masculinity through a metaphor which unnecessarily exaggerates the differences between men and women.

This gets into counter-factual criticism, but there was ultimately no reason for Ness' misogynistic, gender-segregated society to have had its basis in an observable biological difference, there was no reason for Viola to feel so *innately* alien to Todd (as you observe further up - she's already from another planet, the fact that she also has no Noise isn't really here or there). If what Ness was really interested in was exploring *purely socially constructed* gender differences, it seems like a peculiar and ultimately unsuccessful way to do it.

Again I can see that if you come at this from a pure-sf "well that's just how it is in that universe" perspective then, well, that's just how it is in that universe. It's just that I feel authors can still be held responsible for the facts of their fictional realities.

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Andy G

at 13:10 on 2011-03-08I'm reminded a bit of what Daniel Abrahams said in the interview Kyra linked to in the Playpen:

"Wherever the story is set, it’s going to be read here, by folks in this era and culture. If you have your made-up magical race have black skin and live in slavery, you’re going to be talking about the history of the American south whether you mean to or not. It doesn’t matter if the perfect thing for the story I’m writing is to have gigantic phoenixes throw themselves into the High Towers of Khathe. It’s going to read like a 9/11 comment. If it isn’t, it’s got to go."

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Niall

at 13:30 on 2011-03-08Are we now disagreeing about the definition of "purely"? I don't think the gender stereotypes that obtain in our society are "purely socially constructed". I think, as I said upthread, that they are often rooted in exaggeration and distortion of the significance of biological differences. That means, to me, that biology is a component of their construction. It doesn't mean the biology is significant or explanatory.

To go back to what you said earlier about biological difference:

I'm using it to mean "specific, biological differences related to specific, identifiable parts of the body or genetic structure *which account for gendered behaviour stereotypes*".

I'm not. I'm using it to mean actual biological difference. Difference in reproductive system, hormone balance, all that. "Which account for gendered behaviour stereotypes" is social construction being placed on top of biological difference.

So to my mind, the mechanism at work in the construction of difference in Chaos Walking is the same as the mechanism at work in the construction of difference in our world. It is necessary that it involve exaggeration of our stereotypes [1], and it is necessary that there be a biological difference at the root of it.

[1] Although to be honest I think mapping it straight on to "Men send out these big, obvious, easy to read signals, while women are much more subtle and opaque" is an oversimplification. There are times early on when that's how the relationship plays, certainly; there are also times, more and more once Todd has learned that Viola is not after all inscrutable, when it plays as an

inversion

of another relationship trope, that of the taciturn man and the garrulous woman. And then there are times when Todd

is

the taciturn one, because his Noise is switched off; and times when Todd finds Viola utterly transparent and ... you get the point. They both occupy a lot of positions in relation to each other, and while those positions are shaped by Noise, they are not defined by it in a straightforward way.

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Niall

at 13:31 on 2011-03-08Andy: oh, hell yes. Per

this review

, on the racial point, "just because Ness is confronting civil war doesn't mean he is afraid to address genocide and slavery as well. He is facing the whole of American history head on."

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Arthur B

at 13:50 on 2011-03-08

I don't think the gender stereotypes that obtain in our society are "purely socially constructed". I think, as I said upthread, that they are often rooted in exaggeration and distortion of the significance of biological differences.

Really? If you think it is true of some but not others (which is the implication I'm taking from the use of the term "often"), which do you think it is true of?

Also, do you think this is specifically true of gender stereotypes, or is it also the case with (for example) racial stereotypes, or stereotypes about sexuality?

I ask because, as Dan's pointed out in an article which I can't find right now, it's easy to get lulled into believing the old "no smoke without fire" line and convincing yourself that stereotypes tend to be based on real trends and tendencies which they just exaggerate and distort, when in fact a lot of the time they're just demonstrably false.

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Niall

at 14:00 on 2011-03-08

Really? If you think it is true of some but not others (which is the implication I'm taking from the use of the term "often"), which do you think it is true of?

Women are weak because they menstruate. Women are nurturing because they bear children.

Also, do you think this is specifically true of gender stereotypes, or is it also the case with (for example) racial stereotypes, or stereotypes about sexuality?

Of course. Black people are monstrous because their skin is a different colour. Homosexual people are deviant because they are less common than heterosexual people.

convincing yourself that stereotypes tend to be based on real trends and tendencies which they just exaggerate and distort, when in fact a lot of the time they're just demonstrably false.

If it would help to make things clearer, feel free to substitute "lying about" for "exaggerating and distorting"; less nuance, but same basic meaning. All of the statements above are lies; they have inserted a socially constructed judgement into a biologically descriptive sentence.

As I already said, the fact that there is a biological difference at the root of a stereotype does not mean the biological difference is significant or explanatory; in your terms, it does not mean there is a real trend or tendency, just that there is a difference that by malice and ignorance can be mythologised into prejudice.

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Arthur B

at 14:05 on 2011-03-08

Women are weak because they menstruate. Women are nurturing because they bear children. ... Black people are monstrous because their skin is a different colour. Homosexual people are deviant because they are less common than heterosexual people.

Yeah, I think these are all examples of "blatant lying" as opposed to "exaggerating and distorting". The latter implies a connection to reality which just ain't there.

So, what's the biological difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals?

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Arthur B

at 14:12 on 2011-03-08Sorry to double post but I wanted to make clear why I meant by asking that:

Declaring that all of these stereotypes are somehow

caused by

the empirical facts cited to support them is dangerous. Again, it suggests the whole "no smoke without fire" thing. Sometimes - often, I'd say - stereotypes have no root cause aside from people's natural tendency to be abhorrent to each other. It was convenient to white people to believe that black people were monstrous brutes because that meant that there was no reason to feel guilty about enslaving them. It is convenient for homophobes to believe that gay people are fuck-crazed moral deviants because that makes it OK to object to them on the basis of who they choose to have sex with. It is convenient for men to believe that women are soft and nurturing and best off staying at home looking after kids because then it's OK to keep them at home and shut them out of important stuff like war and business and politics.

Stereotypes didn't come about because men, or white people, or straight people were stupid and had to come up with simplistic little rules to get their heads around the idea of "ladies" or "foreigners" or "homosexuals". They came about because people are awfully clever at coming up with ways to feel better about the terrible shit they do.

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Niall

at 14:15 on 2011-03-08

The latter implies a connection to reality which just ain't there.

I disagree. A lie still has a connection to reality. But now we really are into semantics!

So, what's the biological difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals?

God knows, given the mess that is current research on the topic, but I'd be amazed if there isn't one. Probably not a straightforward one, though -- my bet would be on a complex of genetic factors that, given certain environmental conditions, predispose to homosexuality. But you're right, my example there is actually a lie based on differing phenotype, not on differing biology.

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Niall

at 14:18 on 2011-03-08

Declaring that all of these stereotypes are somehow caused by the empirical facts cited to support them is dangerous.

That would be why I didn't do that. (To go back to Chaos Walking, Noise isn't

caused by

whatever the permissive biological difference between men and women is; it's caused by a germ native to New World.) But in their pursuit of ways to feel better about the terrible shit they do, I do believe people have a tendency to latch on to visible difference, which is often biological difference.

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Wardog

at 14:20 on 2011-03-08

Andy: oh, hell yes. Per this review, on the racial point, "just because Ness is confronting civil war doesn't mean he is afraid to address genocide and slavery as well. He is facing the whole of American history head on."

Um... Daniel Abraham being TOTALLY COOL AND AWESOME BECAUSE HE JUST IS AND I WUV HIM does not somehow miraculously apply to Ness. Unless by "facing the whole of American history head on" the reviewer meant "embraces the idea that killing only counts if you kill someone the same colour as you."

Also quoting a reviewer who happens to agree with you does not actually address the criticisms raised here.

You've said that it is later emphasised that Todd killing the Spackle is *murder* - but this cannot be the case if the text simultaneously reinforces, and approves, Todd's self-definition as a man-who-does-not-kill.

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Niall

at 14:26 on 2011-03-08

You've said that it is later emphasised that Todd killing the Spackle is *murder* - but this cannot be the case if the text simultaneously reinforces, and approves, Todd's self-definition as a man-who-does-not-kill.

Sure it can. Acknowledging you are a man-who-has-killed doesn't mean you can't aspire to be a man-who-does-not-kill.

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Arthur B

at 14:29 on 2011-03-08

I disagree. A lie still has a connection to reality.

Only in the sense that it's contrary to reality though. The point is that so many stereotypes have no basis in fact at all, they're pure fictions. It's when people are challenged at them that they start crawling towards the facts to try to cobble together a justification (and even then they usually have to mangle the facts extra hard to do so).

But in their pursuit of ways to feel better about the terrible shit they do, I do believe people have a tendency to latch on to visible difference, which is often biological difference.

I think you have the sequence of events almost entirely wrong. I think it goes like this (to use the "Women are weak because they menstruate" argument as an example):

- Men suppress women.

- Men declare that this is the right thing to do because women are the weaker sex.

- People ask men what basis they have for declaring women the weaker sex.

- Men um and ah a bit and then say "Well, they menstruate!"

Either way, I think the stereotype comes first, and then the perceived explanation for the stereotype comes in later. You seem to be suggesting that the perceived explanation for the stereotype precedes the stereotype, which would imply that people were actively looking for a question ("Why do we believe this stereotype in the first place?") which couldn't have been asked yet because the stereotype hadn't arisen yet.

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Wardog

at 14:40 on 2011-03-08

Sure it can. Acknowledging you are a man-who-has-killed doesn't mean you can't aspire to be a man-who-does-not-kill.

But it's not a question of aspiration is it? He doesn't go around self-defining as "a man who will try very hard not to kill again."

Also can you two stop bickering about definitions of lies or whatever - I'd actually like to talk about the text.

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Niall

at 14:42 on 2011-03-08

You seem to be suggesting that the perceived explanation for the stereotype precedes the stereotype

On evolutionary timescales, of course it does. Menstruation precedes patriarchy. As to how the two became intertwined, I doubt it was a linear process, but I really have no idea, and I don't know what research exists on the topic -- would be interested in pointers, though.

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Niall

at 14:51 on 2011-03-08

He doesn't go around self-defining as "a man who will try very hard not to kill again."

He goes back and forth and up and down and side to side on his position in relationship to killing, over the course of Chaos Walking. At various points he is a man who has not killed, a man who has killed, a man who cannot choose to kill, a man who wants to kill, and a man who does not want to kill. And probably other things as well.

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Wardog

at 14:55 on 2011-03-08Fair enough, but the presentation of the event during the first book is still relevant for discussion I think. Also I think the fact it is portrayed as being *open to question* is mildly problematic anyway - but then I can't comment on the relationship between Todd's position and the text's position without reading the books. Nor is that something someone else can tell me.

Regardless we're going round in circles.

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Dan H

at 17:29 on 2011-03-08@Kyra

Also I think the fact it is portrayed as being *open to question* is mildly problematic

Just pitching in to say that this is often a problem I have with this sort of text. It's sort of like the "teach the controversy" thing that you get from Creationists: a lot of time merely implying that there exists room for doubt about something is too great a compromise.

It's a problem I often have when a book seems to be asking "to what extent X?" when my personal answer is "no X, at all" or "all X, always."

@Niall

Are we now disagreeing about the definition of "purely"? I don't think the gender stereotypes that obtain in our society are "purely socially constructed". I think, as I said upthread, that they are often rooted in exaggeration and distortion of the significance of biological differences.

This is pretty much where we hit the "teach the controversy" problem. I do, in fact, believe that gender stereotypes are purely socially constructed. I do not believe that stereotypes about men and women (or black people and white people, or straight people and gay people) have any grounding in biology *whatsoever*.

I also think that part of the problem here is that you aren't doing well at distinguishing between *exaggeration* and *fabrication* when there's actually a very big difference.

One of the examples you give of an "exaggeration based on a real biological difference" is "black people are monstrous because they have dark skin". I sincerely hope that *exaggeration* is not the word you mean to use here. If it is, then that implies to me that you believe that the dark skin of black people makes them *a little bit* monstrous (or at least less attractive than white people) and that racisim consists of *exaggerating* the monstrousness of that dark skin.

Assuming that isn't what you mean (and I certainly hope it isn't) then you *aren't* looking at steretypes being based on real biological differences. You're looking at stereotypes being based on *nothing at all* and then justified by *post hoc reference* to biological differences. There is a really important difference between these two things.

Again, sorry to bring this back to race analogies, but I think it helps get our point across.

Suppose the narrative of the book had been as follows:

- The Noise makes all the black people devolve into bulging-eyed bloodthirsty savages.

- The white people respond by rounding up all the black people and enslaving them.

- Our hero makes friends with a black person, and finds that although they have bulging eyes and are quite bloodthirsty, they can never the less have a real human relationship.

- We discover that some Bad White People have a cure for the noise, but are deliberately keeping the Black People in their degenerate state in order to continue using them as slave labour.

Now the thing is, I can absolutely see how this would look to some people like a heartwarming pean against racism, an analysis, in fact, of the way in which society exaggerates the importance of superficial differences between the races. On the other hand, a lot of people would read it as being grounded in some creepy, racist assumptions about the innate savagery of black people and I don't think "but it's specifially only caused by the virus" really helps matters.

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Niall

at 17:33 on 2011-03-08

I think it helps get our point across.

I think it just makes it clearer that you haven't read the books, and that I'm apparently incapable of expressing myself. Kyra's right, we're going round in circles. Sorry. :-(

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Dan H

at 22:22 on 2011-03-08

I think it just makes it clearer that you haven't read the books

Perhaps, but since what we're arguing here is a general point I'm not convinced it matters.

Several people (including *you*) observe that the Noise exaggerates commonly perceived differences between men and women. You argue that this is okay, on the grounds that these differences are shown to be unimportant and, ultimately, to be created artificially by a virus which can be cured anyway (and possibly also by society).

I simply attempted to construct an analogy which would apply the same principle to one of the other "exaggerated biological differences" which, again, you yourself identified (the perceived monstrousness of black people). My hypothetical plot summary includes pretty much all of the elements which you insist make Chaos Walking into an interesting deconstruction of socially enforced difference, yet somehow it still comes across as *really quite racist*.

The thing is I can genuinely see how Planet of the Zombie Slaves could be defended as a condemnation of racism, or an exploration of the ways in which people justify slavery. It might even *be* that to a lot of people, but a lot of people are still going to react badly to the central metaphor because no matter how externally enforced, locally contained, or artificial your exaggerated difference is, there is a point at the beginning of your story in which an offensive stereotype is the literal truth.

What I find most bizarre about this whole thing is that you admit yourself that The Knife of Never Letting Go is grounded in an intense Othering of women, which is sort of the central complaint anyway. The question of whether its Othering can technically be called "essentialist" is irrelevant, the question of whether it gets better later is irrelevant, the fact that it later includes a female viewpoint character is irrelevant. The fact that people think the books are good or that it won an award is irrelevant.

Nobody is saying this makes them bad books, just that it's a thing which bothers some people (most of them, funnily enough, women). It's perfectly okay for you to say that it didn't bother you, but you seem to have spent a long time arguing that people who *are* bothered by it are just wrong.

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Niall

at 09:01 on 2011-03-09

"exaggerated biological differences"

Please stop putting things in quotes that I didn't say. I didn't say this; I didn't say "exaggeration based on a real biological difference", as you put in your previous comment. I wrote "exaggeration and distortion of the importance [later I said significance] of [biological] differences." The

and distortion

is important to my meaning. The

the importance of

is important to my meaning. That is, I am talking about biological differences that are unimportant, but get distorted to seem important; and I am talking about exaggeration of those distortions. That is, as I have already said to Arthur but which you seem intent on ignoring, I am talking about lies.

The question of whether its Othering can technically be called "essentialist" is irrelevant

I don't think it is. Kyra's original argument was that the Othering led directly to "unquestioned gender essentialism". I think there are grounds for disagreeing with that reading -- of Knife on its own, but more strongly through the rest of the trilogy -- i.e. that there are broad hints that women are neither Other nor essentially different than men which become the actuality of the text later on -- and I've been saying so. I'd like to think this means I've convinced you that it's not an essentialist text, though.

the question of whether it gets better later is irrelevant

I don't think it is. Knife is not a complete work, and not intended to be treated as such. You say "there is a point at the beginning of your story in which an offensive stereotype is the literal truth": no, there is never a point at which it

is

the literal truth, only a point at which it

looks like

the literal truth. To steal a phrase, there’s a difference twixt those two things so big that it could ruddy well kill you if you don’t watch out.

The fact that people think the books are good or that it won an award is irrelevant.

I don't think the fact that it was awarded the James Tiptree Jr Award, "for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender", by a panel of judges who have track records of being very smart readers (Grant, Bradford, Kaveney and Valente; I don't know the fifth judge for that year, Leslie Howle) is irrelevant, unless you're so arrogant as to think that you can never be mistaken about a book that you haven't read. I don't think it definitively proves my case, either, mind. I think it is another datapoint it is useful to take on board.

You may have the last word!

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Wardog

at 11:18 on 2011-03-09

Kyra's original argument was that the Othering led directly to "unquestioned gender essentialism".

Did it? I don't *think* was saying that. I was raising them both as things I found problematic in the text. I think there's an extent they're connected, yes, as being part of the wider issue Dan has attempted to address here.

I don't think the fact that it was awarded the James Tiptree Jr Award, "for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender", by a panel of judges who have track records of being very smart readers (Grant, Bradford, Kaveney and Valente; I don't know the fifth judge for that year, Leslie Howle) is irrelevant, unless you're so arrogant as to think that you can never be mistaken about a book that you haven't read

Oh come on, you're just wilfully bitching at each other now.

For fucks's sake, I will read the other two since it seems any point I attempt to raise on this matter will be met by "ah but in the context of the whole artistic statement..." which is honestly starting to bring me out in hives. It is not, I say again, unreasonable to judge something based on what is presented to you - and if reading two whole other books is *essential* to proving Ness's worldview is not based on an intense othering of women, he shouldn't be charging me an extra £20 for the priviledge of enlightening me. And don't play the "publication / marketing" card at me either - an author has to take some responsibility for the implication of what he writes.

And equally I guess what 'datapoints' we consider relevant is an entirely personal matter. I have to admit, I don't factor awards and accolades into my interpretation of a text either. And this has nothing to do with my respect, or lack thereof, for the panel of judges - I might be more inclined to read a book because Daniel Abraham said it was worth reading, but that alone is not going to make me think well of it.

Also I don't know by what standard you judge a "smart" reader. I fear it might be a meaningless compliment because we attribute intelligence to those we agree with, and the opposite to those we don't. And I'm not saying a well-turned argument can't change a mind but ultimately we are more likely to accept well-turned arguments from those we have already "decided" are smart readers. Sorry if this sounds cynical. It's not meant to be. But I guess the question one must always ask when it comes to issues of authority is: "who says?" And I don't *automatically* consider prominance in a community to be a sign of value, although, of course, it can be an indicator.

The thing is, perhaps it is arrogance, but I think I have a reasonably coherently expressed and textually supported argument as to why The Knife of Letting Go didn't work for me, and why I found some aspects of the text problematic, specifically the textual manipulations and the gender politics. This is not a case of "IT'S MY OPINION AND OPINIONS CAN'T BE WRONG" - it's me presenting my case and backing it up with reference to the text.

I am, in no way, disputing the relevance or the value or the existence of other readings. I'm not making a judgement on people who like the book, or who don't agree with my criticisms - although as a general rule one of the problems with trying to challenge implied or inherent sexism is that there are always a lot of people who want to brush it under the carpet. Nor have I had any point claimed Knife was a bad book, or made unsupported criticisms. Nobody, for example, has tried to convince me killing the dog was deeply subtle and mature. And when you have challenged my reading, with direct reference to the text, I have, at the very least, taken onboard your points. And had the judges of the Wossname Award actually bothered to articulate *why* Knife whatevers our understanding of gender (rather than reinforcing, as I believe, an unhelpful Mars/Venus paradigm rooted in a literal biological difference) then there might have been some relevance to mentioning the award at all.

But "the text says this because this reviewer says so" or "the text has a good attitude to gender politics because it won an award for it" doesn't work for me as a counter-argument to, well, anything. I know you say you're presenting these things as, err, datapoints but, to me at least, it always comes across as argument-from-authority, which I think, as a general rule, makes people get twitchy. And, again, I know you think this is arrogance (if x thinks y, who the hell am I to insist on thinking z) but we have to treat secondary criticism at the same as we treat primary texts: by asking questions about what it's saying, and why.

Actually, it's like the review you cite in response to Andy's comment above. I'm not disputing the quality of the review or anything like that, and I certainly mean no disrespect to the reviewer, but here's the full quote:

"However, I have heard criticisms of the depiction of these indigenous people so I will say that just because Ness is confronting civil war doesn't mean he is afraid to address genocide and slavery as well. He is facing the whole of American history head on."

I find this quite frustrating, to be honest, because to me that does not constitute a response to criticisms of the spackle. He says he doesn't want to give away spoilers - which I understand - but ultimately you can't mention a criticism and attempt to rebut it with an unfounded, blanket statement. This basically amounts to "However, I have heard criticisms of the depiction of these indigenous people but they're wrong." And you quoting it again just reinforces the problem - there's still no *actual* (by which I mean a textually supported) answer to the criticism there.

I know we've had this slightly tense and awkward discussion before - and I can only think it comes down to a fundamentally different approach to texts, or perhaps a way of talking about them. And I know you probably think you only have to put your head round the door here and you get dogpiled by people yelling at you - I hope you don't feel like that, I would hate to think that, but I do feel we seem to have some kind of ... I don't know ... profound communicative barrier. Omg, I othered Niall.

Perhaps it's because you are so conscious of an established community of discussion and criticism whereas I have no pretensions to be anything other than someone who reads things and writes about them sometimes - but I think it often feels as though you're basically coming at the discussion from two streets ahead of me. I mean I do read reviews, and contrary to what you might think, I don't just read them just to think they're wrong. But it's almost as if while I'm still looking at the text, figuring out what it means and what I thought about it, you want to present to me with an already established canon reading. As you did with the quote I just mentioned.

Again, I apologise if I have misread your intentions, or your approach. I am simply trying to figure out why any time we try to talk about anything it goes horribly wrong :P And if I come across as arrogant, I can, again, only apologise.

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Wardog

at 11:18 on 2011-03-09Also this is not an attempt to have the last word.

*kills a dog*.

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Dan H

at 11:29 on 2011-03-09

That is, I am talking about biological differences that are unimportant, but get distorted to seem important

No, I get that, I still think the language you're using misrepresents your position (or at least, I hope it does).

I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to stick with the race examples because, as you persist in pointing out, I haven't actually read The Knife of Never Letting Goand I repeat I am trying to make a *general point* here. I don't think this is a problem because I'm trying to make the *same* point which at least two people who *have* read the book have tried to make.

To my mind: "Black people have darker skin than white people" is a biological difference. "Black people have really really dark skin and massive thick lips and bulging eyes" is an exaggeration and of a biological difference. "Black people are less intelligent than white people" is not a biological difference at all, it's just a myth. It is in no way related to any biological difference, and to describe it as an exaggeration of a biological difference is, arguably, offensive because it admits to the existence of a biological differece *which affects intelligence*, which almost certainly does not exist.

Similarly, in terms of gender, "women are on average slightly shorter than men" is a real biological difference. "Women are small and fragile and men are big and strong" is an exaggeration of a biological difference. "Women are better at communicating than men" is nothing to do with biological difference at all.

Again, I think what we actually have here is a fundamental disagreement about how the real world works. You read the Noise as a metaphor for superficial biological differences which really exist, and of which society exaggerates and distorts the importance. Kyra reads it as a metaphor for specific innate (and possibly biological) differences which *do not* exist, and which should not be presumed to exist.

This is one of those subtle differences of opinion which is never the less profoundly important. "Society exaggerates and distorts real differences" is a different message to "society creates differences out of whole cloth when really none exist." Everything I have heard about The Knife of Never Letting Go(including, I should add, from you) implies to me that it supports the first reading but not the second. Now the difference between those two readings is very *small* but it matters to some people - it matters to Kyra, I suspect it mattered to Abigail, and it matters to me.

I don't think it is. Kyra's original argument was that the Othering led directly to "unquestioned gender essentialism" ... I'd like to think this means I've convinced you that it's not an essentialist text, though.

I think you've convinced me that there's room for argument, and that your definition of "essentialism" is sufficiently different from my own that I don't think any further discussion is going to be fruitful.

Basically I read the fact that the Noise has a different effect on men and women as de facto essentialist. You don't. This comes down to the fact that we define "essentialism" slightly differently. Broadly speaking, I would define gender essentialism as the notion that social stereotypes about the sexes are grounded in innate (possibly biological although it's a very old concept) differences and that (crucially) this definition is broad enough to include "sex-differentiated reactions to foreign substances" as an innate difference.

I'd also add that my definition of "grounded in" is broad enough to include "are exaggerations of the importance of".

I don't think it is. Knife is not a complete work, and not intended to be treated as such. You say "there is a point at the beginning of your story in which an offensive stereotype is the literal truth": no, there is never a point at which it is the literal truth, only a point at which it looks like the literal truth.

Once again, I think we might be might be getting tripped up over definitions, in this case the definition of "literal".

In the text as it has been described to me, it is *literally true* that Viola is not only the first person, but the first *entity* which Todd has met that does not have Noise.

This *on its own* gives you a situation in which an offensive stereotype (girls are fundamentally different to boys) is literal truth. The fact that Noise is a local phenomenon, or that it is curable, or that it can be given to women *does not matter*. The Noise functions, in the first book, to highlight how alien Viola feels to Todd, and this is not a result of cultural or social pressures, it is a direct result of her being *literally* and *observably* different from him.

Again, all of this tallies *exactly* not only with other people's criticisms of the book, but *also* with your defence of it. You think the book's analysis of gender issues is *good* because it highlights the way in which society exaggerates and distorts the importance of superficial differences. Kyra believes (and on the basis of what she has told me I agree) that it is bad, because it posits the existence of differences which do not read to her as superficial.

Again to use an analogy which I, Kyra and Abigal have all independently used in this situation: it feels a hell of a lot like those fantasy novels that use Orcs or the equivalent as an analogy for black people. It doesn't matter how wrong you're saying racism is, some people will insist that it isn't okay for you to use non-human species to represent non-white races.

I don't think the fact that it was awarded the James Tiptree Jr Award, "for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender", by a panel of judges who have track records of being very smart readers (Grant, Bradford, Kaveney and Valente; I don't know the fifth judge for that year, Leslie Howle) is irrelevant, unless you're so arrogant as to think that you can never be mistaken about a book that you haven't read.

I'm really not sure how to respond to this because this is so utterly alien to my whole way of engaging with fiction.

I do, in fact believe I can never be mistaken about a book I haven't read. I don't believe this is arrogance, I believe it's the way fiction *works*. Barring actual issues of fact (of which there are actually very few in fiction), I don't believe it is possible for *anybody* to be mistaken about a book *at all*.

Those guys who thought that Dumbledore was Ron from the future? They weren't "mistaken" about Harry Potter - they had a perfectly legitimate interpretation of the text that actually explained a lot of things better than Rowling's actual backstory.

Allecto's insistence that Joss Whedon's shows are full of rapists? Again, not mistaken. An extreme reading of the text but a valid one.

People who said that The Thirteenth Child whitewashed American history through its removal of the Native Americans? Not mistaken. And for what it's worth, most of those people hadn't read the book *either* because if your objections to a book are based on *factual statements about its contents* you don't need to read it to object to it.

Could I be mistaken about The Knife of Never Letting Go. Yes I could. It could, for example, be the case that Kyra, Abigail and in fact *you* have all deliberately liedto me about its contents. It's possible, for example, that the book contains no concept called "Noise", or that it doesn't affect men and women differently, or that Viola actually has Noise just like everybody else. Unless I am mistaken on one of those three points, the treatment of gender in the book bothers me - and it bothers me purely on the basis of those elements which have been described to me.

I don't think it definitively proves my case, either, mind. I think it is another datapoint it is useful to take on board.

Data point?

Sorry, are you actually saying that you believe the act of responding to a work of fiction is some kind of *data analysis* exercise? That if you somehow line up enough Very Clever People to say that a book is good that this somehow "proves" it?

Not only does literary criticism not work that way, nothing works that way. The fact that a lot of clever people believe something *is not and never has been* any kind of evidence that it is true. Lots of clever people believe in God, that doesn't prove He exists. Lots of clever people believe in evolution, that doesn't prove that evolution is real either (there's quite a lot of *actual evidence* that proves evolution is real, but weight of scholarly opinion is *not* evidence and never has been).

You cannot address specific criticisms of a text by citing the fact that other people felt broadly positive about it. You cannot even address specific criticisms of a text by citing the fact that other people felt those criticisms were invalid. You have to present an *actual argument* which addresses those criticisms. You have in fact done that ("The Noise is Local" and "The Noise is shown to be curable" both address the issue of essentialism to some extent) but a lot of people still have an essential problem with the *whole premise* of the Noise and still feel it to be grounded in essentialist assumptions *even given* its local nature.

Again you seem to be coming at this from the position that there is some kind of objectively correct interpretation of the book, which can be reached by sufficient analysis of the available data - that if you can cite enough people who agree with you that this will somehow "prove" that your interpretation of the book is correct, or at least more valid than Kyra's and Abigail's. Again that just isn't how reading works.

You have in fact provided some perfectly good arguments from the text that the Noise is less gender essentialist than it might originally seem. For me personally, that's still more essentialist than I'm comfortable with. You seem to be intent on trying to prove that the text cannot be described as essentialist *at all* and that's not something we're going to be able to do, because things really do just get subjective here.

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Niall

at 13:22 on 2011-03-09

profound communicative barrier

The irony of this had not escaped me, either. I agree with you: we have different styles of reading, different preferences in reading, and (especially me and Dan) different ways of arguing our case. I'm interested in those, which I think is why I keep getting sucked into these discussions here; it's almost enough to make me volunteer to write an FB article about those issues, entirely divorced from any text. But not quite, not least because I'm not at all confident that I could find a way to express my perceptions of those differences that wouldn't sound (against my wishes) pejorative.

But on one point: I don't mean, by citing Martin's review or the Tiptree win, to try to establish that there is an inviolable Truth about the book out there that can be proved. As you say, I am very conscious of an established community of discussion, I always want to test my response against other responses that are out there. I take something like winning an award I respect as a challenge: what did those other readers see in this book? (By no means do I agree with all of that year's Tiptree judges about everything, but I certainly respect them enough to ask that question. As I respect you enough to bear all this in mind when I reread Chaos Walking. Smart readers are ones that provoke me, not just ones I agree with.) Martin's quote I cited because his phrasing had stuck in my mind and I didn't want to plagiarise; it wasn't meant to comment on the success or failure of Ness's handling of the Spackle so much as to say that it seems absolutely clear to me that the resonances with our world and history are deliberate. On the other hand, up until Dan's last comment there, I would have said that he was convinced that there is an objectively correct interpretation of The Knife of Never Letting Go.

I sort of hate the idea that you're now going to go and read the other two books, because as was said way up above, they're just as manipulative as the first one and you're going to be frustrated with them on that level, even if you agree with every bit of my interpretation of them -- which, let's face it, is unlikely. No, I think it would be much better for Dan to read the whole lot and get his rant on properly. I won't comment on his article, though. Probably.

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Wardog

at 11:16 on 2011-03-10Don't worry, I'm going to read a bunch of books I actually want to read first. And I may just not be arsed. Life is too short to read books you don't like for the priviledge of discussing them.

There's quite a lot to address in your comment, and I'd like to talk about community and criticism but as much as I think it's bad form to be a selective respondent I kind of want to focus on what seems to me the most important thing.

On the other hand, up until Dan's last comment there, I would have said that he was convinced that there is an objectively correct interpretation of The Knife of Never Letting Go.

This strikes me as a little bit strange, since we are all actually in agreement about the interpretation of the Noise. Where we differ is the extent to which it's a problem.

The Noise is, as we have largely agreed over the course of this discussion, a metaphor for the way social stereotypes are constructed by the distortion and exaggeration of biological difference.

What Dan, and to a lesser extent I (lesser in the sense that I can't be arsed, not that I feel less strongly, if anything I feel more strongly), have been painfully arguing over the past three days is this is problematic because it taps into, and reinforces, the idea that biological difference is a base cause of sexist and racist stereotypes, rather than it being something cited *after the fact* as justification for them.

And this is where you move from a subjective and interpretative space of the text, into a more objective one - because, for many people, issues of race and gender politics are *not* subjective. There is a right and a wrong at stake here.

As far as I can tell there are maybe four reasons why you might argue the Noise is not problematic as a device:

1. The *very real* biological difference it posits is actually superfical (I would dispute this with reference to the text - the fact Viola is so very other to Todd, but that is a matter for interpretation, however, I think my interpretation is more arguable than the alternative)

2. It's not a problem because that's how stereotyping in the real world works (problem! it isn't! and it is utterly offensive to suggest that it is, as it buys into the justification rather than the reality and *only emphasises* why the Noise-metaphor makes me uncomfortable to the degree it does)

3. A whiff of lowkey sexism doesn't personally bother you (again, I have no issues with this, there's entirely the reader's call)

4. It's a specific planet with a specific germ on it so it doesn't matter(irrelevant - as you yourself have stated texts resonant with our world, we cannot close them off like this).

Also I wouldn't have categorised someone giving a damn about the presentation of socially constructed difference as 'getting his rant on.'

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Niall

at 15:50 on 2011-03-10

As far as I can tell there are maybe four reasons why you might argue the Noise is not problematic as a device:

I think (2) is the real sticking point here -- (1) is where we get into Knife vs Chaos Walking, in which I say that your reading is supportable (but also arguable) for the former, and not really supportable (though probably arguable) for the latter, and you say Knife must be judged on its own; (3) is certainly true, although I do try to become more bothered; (4) is irrelevant, as you say -- but I'm having a horrendous time trying to find something to address it that doesn't just involve repeating myself. (e.g. pointing out that you too have dropped "the importance of" from your restatement of my position, which I continue to insist matters to the sense!) So perhaps we should just go direct to each others' sources, instead, and see if that gets us anywhere. I recommend Daniel Lord Smail's

On Deep History and the Brain

, in particular the third and fourth chapters, as something that has informed my views on the relationship between biology and culture. I've only checked a few of the references, but they seem pretty sound. What would you recommend as a good summary of research informing your views, in particular the model for the evolution of prejudice you're arguing for?

Also I wouldn't have categorised someone giving a damn about the presentation of socially constructed difference as 'getting his rant on.'

I wasn't, I was categorising Dan on a tear as getting his rant on. Subject matter seems to have very little to do with it, so far as I can tell.

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Arthur B

at 16:00 on 2011-03-10I'm not sure either side of this writing a recommended books list is necessarily going to help the debate.

However, reading summaries of On Deep History I note that its essential premise is that a lot of cultural developments appear to Smail to be influenced by neurochemistry. If that's true, though, then that surely bolsters the argument that many cultural features, like prejudices and stereotypes, do not arise from cold, rational analysis but from essentially irrational instincts prompted by neurochemistry, and that any "explanation" a person from said culture may offer for why they happen to be prejudiced is a post-hoc explanation of the sort that you're trying to argue doesn't happen?

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Niall

at 16:18 on 2011-03-10

do not arise from cold, rational analysis

I'm not arguing that they do.

a post-hoc explanation of the sort that you're trying to argue doesn't happen?

I'm also not arguing that post-hoc rationalisations play no role in the construction of prejudice.

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Arthur B

at 17:24 on 2011-03-10Ok, so when you're saying that the people in

Knife

are exaggerating the "importance of" biological differences, you're saying they are citing the biological differences as a post hoc rationalisation of prejudice?

Because if that is true we've been arguing at cross-purposes a bit. But only a bit. It still seems that - in

Knife

, at least - Ness has constructed a scenario in which treating men and women differently as a consequence of their varying reaction to Noise is actually a rational response to the facts of the setting. It's almost unthinkable that a world in which men are telepaths and women aren't

wouldn't

give rise to a culture which treated men and women inherently differently, because on a fundamental level - again, just from the scenario we see in

Knife

- there is a seriously major difference there. And maybe Todd is a good guy who looks beyond that culture in order to try and treat Viola as an equal, but that doesn't change the fact that he's got Noise and she doesn't and as far as can be told that's something they're always going to have to deal with.

Ness might be saying that these inherent differences should not be cause for stereotyping. But he's still saying that, in that scenario, those inherent differences exist in the first place. And if the Noise is a metaphor for the stereotype of women as being these inscrutable creatures which inherently think differently from men, then he's effectively saying "Yeah, OK, women do think differently from men and are inherently hard for us guys to understand. But that's no reason we shouldn't try extra hard to understand them, and it's certainly no excuse for being mean!"

Whereas many people (including myself) would say "Rubbish, women don't come from a different planet, if a guy finds it difficult to understand women that's a problem with him, not a problem inherent in all women."

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Dan H

at 18:49 on 2011-03-10

So perhaps we should just go direct to each others' sources, instead, and see if that gets us anywhere. I recommend Daniel Lord Smail's On Deep History and the Brain, in particular the third and fourth chapters, as something that has informed my views on the relationship between biology and culture. I've only checked a few of the references, but they seem pretty sound. What would you recommend as a good summary of research informing your views, in particular the model for the evolution of prejudice you're arguing for?

Niall. Do you realize how *utterly* condescending you are being right now.

You are now actually insisting that we have to do *research* just to be able to have a conversation with you. Because apparently your beliefs are subtle, so complex, and so deeply grounded in serious scholarly research that we cannot hope to engage with them unless we do actual *homework*.

Sorry. No. Not going to happen. Not only do I not have the time but you are, once again, resorting to argument from authority. Your beliefs about the relationship between biology and culture should stand on their *own merits* and you should be able to argue them from *your own* understanding of the evidence. Telling me that there is this book (a book, I should note, written by a historian, not a neuroscientist) which apparently informed the beliefs which you have so far *failed to articulate* does not help.

Basically, when it comes to the evolution of prejudice, you keep making two arguments that seem contradictory. The phrase we keep coming back to is "exaggeration and distortion of the importance" (which yes, I have occasionally trimmed down to "exaggeration" - I don't think this changes the meaning as much as you do). As far as I can tell, by this you can mean one of two things:

One. You can mean that biological variation creates difference markers. Black people have dark skin, gay people are sexually attracted to members of their own sex, men and women have different secondary sexual characteristics. Society "exaggerates and distorts the importance" of those markers, leading to prejudice and, crucially, to other stereotypes which have no basis in biology whatsoever (black people have huge penises, gay people are all paedophiles, women's brains overheat if they read too many books).

Two. You mean that biological variation creates real, but small differences between people which to some extent tally with stereotypes. Black people are slightly less intelligent than white people, women are slightly less rational than men, gay people are slightly more sexually promiscuous than straight people. Society then "exaggerates and distorts the importance" of these differences (black people are all stupid and dangerous, women are all hysterical bitches, gay people are all paedophiles).

Now if what you mean is option one (which I think is what you generally claim you mean) that's pretty uncontroversial, but in that case I don't think the Noise is a good way of exploring this phenomenon because, as Kyra observes above, Noise is a big freaking deal (at least in Knife) and I think drawing parallels between genuinely superficial differences like skin colour and sexual orientation, and major differences like the presence or absence of telepathy does *in and of itself* constitute and "exaggeration and distortion of the importance" of those superficial differences. There is a world of difference between "women are on average slightly shorter than men" and "women tend not to have Noise and men do."

If what you mean is something more like two, then you're on rather thinner ice, because then you basically are arguing that "stereotypes are based on fact" and that causes some really quite serious issues. You generally don't seem to be saying that this is the kind of biological difference you're talking about, but at the same time, this seems to me to be more the kind of biological difference that the Noise *is*. So when you say that the Noise is a metaphor for real biological differences between men and women, the importance of which is "exaggerated and distorted" by society it sounds to me like you're arguing something more like two than one.

If you're arguing one, then we have a basic disagreement about the interpretation of the text. If you're arguing two, then we have a basic disagreement about the real world.

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Niall

at 20:12 on 2011-03-10

Do you realize how *utterly* condescending you are being right now.

I apologise. That was not my intent.

you should be able to argue them from *your own* understanding of the evidence.

I should, and I've been trying to do that all week. Self-evidently, it has not been working. At the same time, however, you haven't been convincing me from your own understanding, either. And since I agree with you that this is an important area, one where I do work to improve my knowledge, I'd like to know where your understanding came from. I want

you

to set

me

homework. I mentioned one example that I've read because I thought it would seem arrogant to ask for references without showing my own. Oh, irony.

I don't think your option one is complex enough, but I don't think your option two is true at all.

There is a world of difference between "women are on average slightly shorter than men" and "women tend not to have Noise and men do."

And yeah, this is where we fundamentally disagree. What are the consequences of women being on average slightly shorter than men? Our culture associates height with authority (hence the well-known correlations between the height of a presidential candidate and their chance of victory); our culture associates height with athleticism (which contributes to the dominance of mens' sport over womens') and with health (which contributes to the perception of women as "the weaker sex"). Are those insignificant consequences? I don't think so. Are they comparably consequential to Noise? I think it's at least arguable.

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Arthur B

at 20:34 on 2011-03-10

Are those insignificant consequences? I don't think so. Are they comparably consequential to Noise? I think it's at least arguable.

But the thing is, the

objective, universal, not culturally-constructed

consequences of possessing or not possessing Noise are absolutely massive, whereas there's no reason aside from the cultural ones you've mentioned that a person who happened to be short couldn't exert authority. You can imagine a culture where shortness is associated with authority, for example, whereas the effects of Noise are not culturally specific at all - regardless of your background, if you've got the Noise you're broadcasting your thoughts, if you're not infected you're not going to be able to broadcast anything no matter how hard you try, that's kind of a really fucking huge deal.

The Noise is a bad way to say that these differences between men and women shouldn't matter because the consequences of having Noise are actually vastly and objectively more important than the consequences of having an extra millimetre or two of height, regardless of culture. It's not a minor, trivial, easy to ignore difference that is tied in with major, important differences, it's a major and important difference

in and of itself

.

(Note that I said "tied in" there as opposed to "leading to"; I don't think a small statistical variation in height led to women being sidelined and portrayed as weak, I think the cultural bias came first and then the height thing crept in as a means of rationalising and reinforcing it.)

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Niall

at 20:41 on 2011-03-10

that's kind of a really fucking huge deal.

But it's not. That -- to me -- is the point of Todd's conceptual breakthrough re: Viola that's quoted in Kyra's post. And of the next two books. And the effects are

hugely

culturally specific. It's the combination of Noise plus evangelical Christian morality that's toxic, not the Noise in itself -- one of the other movements going on over the final volume is towards imagining a world where Noise is a good and productive thing, not a stigma and an inhibition.

I think the cultural bias came first

Out of interest, what do you think the origin of the cultural bias was?

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Dan H

at 20:46 on 2011-03-10

And yeah, this is where we fundamentally disagree. What are the consequences of women being on average slightly shorter than men?

The consequences are that they have a slightly harder time getting things off of high shelves, on average.

Our culture associates height with authority (hence the well-known correlations between the height of a presidential candidate and their chance of victory); our culture associates height with athleticism (which contributes to the dominance of mens' sport over womens') and with health (which contributes to the perception of women as "the weaker sex").

Okay, I see where you're coming from but I think you're getting into circular territory here. Yes, our culture associates height with a bunch of different things, but that does not make those cultural associations a *consequence* of height. In particular, height tends to correlated strongly with income (because height is strongly influenced by diet) which in turn makes it correlate strongly with pretty much every desirable quality you might care to name (tall people do, on average, have a higher IQ than short people).

I also do not believe for one *femtosecond* that the popularity of men's sports over women's has anything to do with the men being taller on average. I'm also not really sure you can say that there's a cultural association between height and health. Thinness and health, possibly, but not height and health.

And regardless I think there's still quite a big difference between "the fact that women are, on average, very slightly shorter than men may be a minor contributing factor to some gender stereotypes" and "men can read the minds of other men but not of women and this leads to the men freaking out and murdering them".

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Arthur B

at 20:56 on 2011-03-10I'm finding the idea that telepathy - even the sort of involuntary telepathy the Noise produces - isn't in and of itself a really big deal kind of baffling.

I mean, I know I haven't read the book and all. The thing is, you have, and you've just told me that the Noise (coupled with the cultural reaction to the noise) is presented as being a key component in making the world either a hellhole or a paradise. That would suggest to me that Ness considers it a majorly huge deal as well.

Yes, the reaction to the Noise might be very culturally specific, but the Noise is such a huge deal that

no culture

presented with the issue could possibly fail to react to it in one way or another. It simply isn't something you can ignore or brush over like, oh, I don't know, whether your bellybutton is an "innie" or "outie".

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Niall

at 23:48 on 2011-03-10I suddenly feel like we're getting somewhere! Dan, thank you for "difference markers", that's a good phrase. Arthur, thank you for "You can imagine a culture where shortness is associated with authority" -- yes, that's crucial. It's much harder, I submit, to imagine a culture where height is truly irrelevant. It's possible to imagine all sorts of meaning being attached to difference markers; possible to imagine different sets of difference markers being paramount; harder to imagine difference markers being meaningless.

Similarly, Noise is a honking great difference marker, you're right. But it's possible to imagine a situation where men get infected by Noise, and women start to see them as monsters, and the women from one village kill all of their men; and then you have a story about a girl encountering a boy with Noise, that she's been taught all her life to fear and hate ... or it's possible to imagine a culture where Silence is what is talked about, is the default, and the men kill their women for being Noisy (tell me

that

wouldn't play into stereotypes...) ... yes, I agree with you that Noise is something that will have an effect on a culture. When I say that it's not a big deal, I mean that its effect is not absolutely deterministic. It is not a given that a man with Noise will find women to be baffling and strange -- it does not make them alien -- Todd finds Viola alien because of the way he's raised, but plenty of other men and women are living together in other places on New World and communicating just fine.

Dan:

I'm also not really sure you can say that there's a cultural association between height and health.

Aw, I missed the "cultural" there and was all ready to throw a couple of studies at you that find an inverse association between height and mortality. But my argument would be this: certainly, height is strongly correlated with quality of diet, which is correlated with a bunch of other factors. But height is the visible difference marker, much more so than diet; so cultural associations accrue to height, and not diet; so it's meaningful to talk of cultural associations being a consequence of height.

(Still interested in where the cultural bias came from. And still interested in the homework.)

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Arthur B

at 23:59 on 2011-03-10

It's much harder, I submit, to imagine a culture where height is truly irrelevant.

Harder, but possible. Definitely possible.

I would submit it is nigh-impossible to imagine a culture where Noise is not relevant. Because dude: telepathy. Te. Le. Pa. Thy. Kind of a big deal.

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http://everythingisnice.wordpress.com/

at 21:29 on 2011-03-11Kyra:

This basically amounts to "However, I have heard criticisms of the depiction of these indigenous people but they're wrong."

That is what I believe but that is not what I was trying to say. The criticisms I vaguely refer to are ones I have seen indirectly or heard anecdotally and for that reason have not engaged with them directly. I do think I could respond to such criticism but since I had no specific argument to rebut I did not think that review was the right venue for going into detail. So you are right that this is not a meaningful or successful attempt to respond directly to such criticism. Rather my intent was to signpost to those who found the treatment of the Spackle in

Never Letting Go

problematic that they may find some evidence to change their minds. In this I was motivated by the fact I think

The Ask And The Asnwer

is an impressive work of fiction and I think it would be of interest to those who have read the first novel, even if they didn't like it. (I am entirely alive to the idea that any work published as an individual volume should stand in its own right regardless of it relation to other words the author has written.)

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Wardog

at 23:08 on 2011-03-11I, err, didn't meant to lay into your review - hope it didn't come across that way. And what you say here is entirely fair, I'm certainly not trying to tell you how to write a review! And, yes, of course there is a place for rebuttals of specific analyses of a text, and reviews are probably not one of them. The only reason I referenced it at all was because I perceived Niall as quoting that review in support of his interpretation, which struck me as somewhat unfair since, as you have said above, you weren't trying to present an argument at all.

I am coming round to the idea that I might read the second book, just out of curiosity now. Although weirdly you were much more critical of the second book but you seemed to like it more - I wonder if that's because it seems like a more ambitious text.

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Dan H

at 23:52 on 2011-03-11

yes, I agree with you that Noise is something that will have an effect on a culture. When I say that it's not a big deal, I mean that its effect is not absolutely deterministic.

Okay, I get where you're coming from, I think the problem with that is that while it's possible to imagine ways in which a phenomenon like the Noise could have affected society *differently* the way in which it *actually* affected society in Knife followed patterns which read to some people like they're based on common pseudoscientific beliefs about biologically-based gender roles.

Basically I think that (from what I've seen expressed by other people) the presentation of gender roles in Knife falls down a bit of an uncanny valley, because it presents a situation in which a large (albeit circumstantial) biological difference appears between men and women which closely parallels real-world gender stereotypes.

To put it another way, it feels like the book is using too many metaphors at once. Todd is clearly supposed to find Viola alien, and to an extent "the opposite sex can seem alien" is a perfectly reasonable idea to explore in a children's book. The problem is that it double-dips, Viola seems alien to Todd because of his upbringing, but she *also* seems alien to him because of her lack of Noise. This makes it seem like instead of saying "girls might seem alien, but they aren't" the book is saying, "girls might seem alien, and to some extent they are". Essentially because the Noise isn't needed to make Viola *seem* alien to Todd, it creates the impression that she is supposed to be *genuinely* alien to Todd.

I think either element on its own - highly gender segregated society / extreme biological difference between the sexes - would provide room for effective exploration of how apparent differences are really artificial. Both together makes it seem (to me at least, and to several others as well) more like an exploration of differences that are presumed to really exist.

But height is the visible difference marker, much more so than diet; so cultural associations accrue to height, and not diet; so it's meaningful to talk of cultural associations being a consequence of height.

I know I keep doing the "focus on specific words" thing but I think it depends on what you mean by "consequence". I know it's an over-specific meaning of the word, but because I do read a fair number of social justice blogs I tend to steer away from words like "consequence" because they can seem to carry connotations of blame or responsibility (as in "the consequences of your actions").

Height is a good example here actually. Most positive qualities are associated directly with height, both in terms of cultural stereotypes and also in terms of real statistical correlation. A lot of this simply comes down to the correlation between height and diet, diet and income. So it's not really that the cultural associations are a consequence of height, rather they're a consequence of a third factor which correlates with both height, and the thing with which it is associated.

A good example here is lice: several hundred years ago, lice were culturally associated with good health. The reason for this was that lice generally prefer to live on healthy people and will naturally leave the (uncomfortably hot or cold) bodies of the sick or dying. It would not really be true to say that the cultural association between lice and health was a consequence of lice, rather it was a consequence of a hidden third factor.

The same is true of, for example, racism. Racism isn't caused by the fact that some people have dark skin, it's caused by the fact that people instinctively band together against those they perceive as different (there are a great many sociological and psychological reasons for this). Again, there's a hidden third factor which is very important. Racism is very much *not* caused by skin colour.

The problem with the Noise is that (to a lot of people) it feels like the hidden third factor is missing (particularly since the manifestations of the Noise seem to parallel real-world gender stereotypes). The reaction of the men of Prentisstown to the Noise feels rather different to - say - the reaction of white people to black people or men to women. Here you have a large and *unambiguously significant* difference between the sexes. Although the reaction of the men of Prentisstown is extreme to the point of psychotic, it still comes across as a *direct consequence* of the Noise, which makes it feel, to me, qualitatively different from real world sexism or racism.

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Robinson L

at 20:30 on 2011-03-16Oh wow, talk about your freaky coincidences. I also reviewed this book

a couple days before you posted this

. At the time I put it up, I told myself 'nobody's going to care by this point, what with the final book having come out last year and everything.' Weird.

But anyway,

thank you

, Kyra, for devoting the time and brainpower to articulating so many of my issues with this book—and so much better than I could've, too. Also, it's nice to know another reader had such an ambivalent, even negative reaction to this book.

One thing I'll never understand is why neither you, Niall, Abigail, nor any other reviewer I've read so far has brought up the novel's most damning trait: the effing awful writing. Oh sure, the narrative voice is good (if a bit too repetitive and ungrammatical at times), but where the blue burning bison's bollocks does Ness get off with that godsawful phonetic dialect in the

effing first person narration?

For those of you who haven't read the book, that passage quoted in the review is mild stuff. Sure, it can get irritating reading “tho” and “thru” when it should be “though” and “through,” but just wait until you get to “direkshun,” “explozhun,” “payshunce,” etc.. It's unrelenting, at least in the first book. “Cuz e's a hick, d'ya see?” Rinse and repeat for

almost five HUNDRED PAGES!

Ness did an excellent job of keeping me turning pages, but I seriously considered giving up on the book about a hundred pages in to spare my brain and my eyeballs this torment. Ultimately, I let my desire to know what happens next get the better of me, a decision I now sorely regret.

What’s even more frustrating is that Todd learns the truth about halfway through the book and refuses to tell us because he doesn’t want to wreck the tension…I mean… because he doesn’t know how to express it.

It's worse than that. If Todd knew the truth and were just trying to come to terms with it, that'd be one thing. But it's more like as soon as his mind took the information in and then suppressed it on the spot. For the rest of the book up to the reveal, (as in his encounter with Ben) Todd acts as if he not only doesn't know the truth, but he doesn't even have the faintest suggestion of a suspicion of a clue as to what the truth might be.

That's an interesting point you make, about the ending, Kyra—I hadn't even considered it beforehand. Now I do think about it, it strikes me as more the sort of ending I associate with the middle book in a YA trilogy. It seems to me when it comes to YA trilogies, the first book tends to be incredibly self-contained, whereas the second ties off some plot threads while still leading directly into the final book. While you can read

The Hunger Games

and stop there, I don't think you can really say the same for

Catching Fire

.

I've just read

The Ask and the Answer

, and it, ironically, has more of a proper ending than

The Knife of Never Letting Go

, though it still ends on a major cliffhanger.

While it delves deeper into the point that Spackles Are People Too, I've yet to see Ness satisfactorily address Todd's murder of the Spackle in book 1. It comes up, sure, but it still doesn't

count

, kind of like Mad Dog Tannen in

Back to the Future III

boasting of having killed something like 12 people, “not counting Indians and Chinamen.” Towards the end, even the effing Mayor affirms that “For all my efforts, I have been unable to turn this boy to the Dark Side,” and acknowledges Todd as “the man who doesn't kill.” Apparently, murdering a Spackle doesn't push one toward turning to the Dark Side the way murdering a human does.

The Ask and the Answer

tones down the horrible spelling—partly by making Viola a co-narrator, and partly, I'm convinced, by Ness cutting back to bearable (though still irritating) levels. And it turns out that Todd apparently can say “explosion” properly, but he usually says it wrong anyway to preserve

“that wonderful, dialect-heavy voice”

(seriously, Martin Lewis, what the flaming hell?). It gets surreal when the highly emotional (and manipulative) climax is constantly undermined by the ridiculously misspellings.

Niall: The other two books in the trilogy aren't chases -- they're more of a war story -- but they're very nearly as obvious in their ploys.

Really? If you asked me, I'd identify

The Ask and the Answer

as the point where Ness ditched all the subtlety of the previous book (/sarcasm) and started laying in with the Themehammer. The themes he's tackling—the slow process by which good people are co-opted into and perpetuate tyrannical regimes, and the way the two opposing sides in an armed conflict grow increasingly alike in terms of brutality—are good and all, and he illustrates them brilliantly.

The problem is that 1) I don't for a minute believe Ness has the understanding to suggest a realistic alternative to the second point, and 2) more importantly, this involves putting the main characters in a situation where they are either totally at the mercy of tyrannical forces or actively working for them – both of which repel me as a reader. I read through the whole thing because Ness is so goddamn good at his manipulations and making me need to know what happens next, but I didn't enjoy the actual reading process one little bit. By the time I'd reached the end, Ness had taken third place in my list of Most Cussed-At Authors.

(In this book, some humans do die on-page, and at least twice, it's almost as blatant as Manchee.)

Book Three,

Monsters of Men

, is 603 pages long. Gods help me.

Dan: It's a problem I often have when a book seems to be asking "to what extent X?" when my personal answer is "no X, at all" or "all X, always."

I think you'll be pleased to hear you're right in line with our old friend Arundhati Roy on this one. In an interview several years ago, she mentioned turning down an offer to participate in a debate on the merits of Empire, because the point isn't even debatable. She asked “would you debate the merits of child abuse?”/tangent

I think it's perfectly legitimate to weigh the faults and merits of a series in total - I think it's equally legitimate to weigh the faults and merits of an individual instalment in the series.

I'm on the fence about whether "Chaos Walking" or any of the individual books preach an innate relationship between violence and manhood. I think I could be persuaded to Niall's "that's just the setting" argument on that score, or the other way.

As for gender essentialism: I find the idea that all male humans and only male humans have Noise, and no female humans

at all

have Noise pretty damning.

I can't find it now, but somewhere Niall pointed out some diseases progress faster depending on their victim's gender. Right, but 1) that's just a tendency, not absolute statement ("disease X takes 1 day longer to develop symptoms in

every single man exposed

than it does for

every single woman exposed

). 2) I find

13 years

difference strains my Willing Suspension of Disbelief well past breaking point. 3) Especially if the discussion of women's Noise in

Monsters of Men

doesn't come out at one point and say "by the way, women's and men's brains absolutely are not wired radically differently, despite the peculiar behavior of the Noise," because a lot of real-world readers probably do believe that already.

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Wardog

at 23:19 on 2011-03-16Thanks for the comment :)

Oh sure, the narrative voice is good (if a bit too repetitive and ungrammatical at times), but where the blue burning bison's bollocks does Ness get off with that godsawful phonetic dialect in the effing first person narration?

Heh, actually I didn't mind that at all - I mean I guess it doesn't make *literal* sense in that it's first person present tense narration, not a written account, and we're left asking ourselves why Todd's stream of consciousness can't spell. But I felt it made a sort of literary sense - in that it creates a fitting picture of Todd. I actually quite liked Todd's voice - I mean, yes, it's overdone like everything else in the book. But y'know... Also I don't think it was meant to reflect on Todd's intelligence, or constantly reinforce the idea he's a hick - merely to demonstrate that he's passionate, smart and reasonably eloquent but not formally educated.

For the rest of the book up to the reveal, (as in his encounter with Ben) Todd acts as if he not only doesn't know the truth, but he doesn't even have the faintest suggestion of a suspicion of a clue as to what the truth might be.

Yes, you're right. As I said in the review I really hated this particular device, not only because it was manipulative but because it seemed to me it was *cheating*.

That's an interesting point you make, about the ending, Kyra

I'd just read Uglies so I was feeling INCREDIBLY PISSED OFF with self-conscious cliff-hanger endings.

It gets surreal when the highly emotional (and manipulative) climax is constantly undermined by the ridiculously misspellings.

Again, I'm with Martin - the voice was one of the few aspects of Knife that didn't bother me. And I never found it got in the way of drama or emotion - the scene I quoted between Todd and Viola is a good example, I think, of it being really quite effective. Also, although I think it's fair enough to say "this narrative voice didn't work for me" - I don't necessarily think it means all the people for whom it did work have been lobotomised :)

I'll have a think about the other stuff when I've read the next book (eek).

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http://everythingisnice.wordpress.com/

at 16:58 on 2011-03-17

Heh, actually I didn't mind that at all - I mean I guess it doesn't make *literal* sense in that it's first person present tense narration, not a written account

It had never occured to me that this would be an issue since it is a pretty noble tradition in literature. You particularly see it amongst writers who are not operating in English in a non-majority culture. Black American writers, for example. Or Scots: say, Iain M Banks in

Feersum Endjinn

or more trad realists like James Kelman and Irvine Welsh. Is Scots just mispelled English? A lot of people would probably say it is but the boundary between dialect and language is pretty blurred and when it comes to first person narration the boundary between written and spoken is equally unclear. What form do thoughts take? There is a lot to unpick here but I don't think there is anything unusual or problematic about such narration.

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Sonia Mitchell

at 22:30 on 2011-03-17A general point not a response to the book (haven't read it)...

It had never occured to me that this would be an issue since it is a pretty noble tradition in literature.

I wouldn't say literary precedent excludes the possibility of a technique raising issues. There's phonetic dialogue in Wuthering Heights, but that doesn't stop it being problematic that despite being set in Yorkshire and filtered through anything between one and three narrators, Joseph the servant is the only one to have his dialect rendered.

I'd suggest that in general (again, not read the book) when an author uses phonetics they're *inviting* you to question why, given that it's one of the more obvious stylistic choices.

I quite liked the extracts Kyra chose though. Great article.

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http://everythingisnice.wordpress.com/

at 09:27 on 2011-03-18Oh, I agree entirely. There is always a

why?

for every artistic decision and as readers we should be thinking about these. But that is a question of considering the execution/intent/etc of the specific deployment of a technique. Robinson, on the other hand, is suggesting that there is something a priori wrong with using dialect in the first person. This is what I'm refering to when I say I don't see it as an issue.

On your point, there is probably lots of stuff to get into. What is Ness trying to signal in terms of class and intelligence? How much is Ness explicitly trying to evoke something like

Huckleberry Finn

? Is Todd's voice purely American or a Transatlantic amalgam that reflects Ness's own journey?

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Wardog

at 13:03 on 2011-03-18With the whole "literal sense" angle, I was trying to see both sides of it but, honestly, it had never crossed my mind as being a problem either. I could see it could be *personally* annoying, but I can't actually think of a sensible argument as to why artful-stream-of-consciousness-first-person-present-tense narration would be actively a mistake. I mean I know there are some people who just can't get their head around present tense first person anyway but, again, that's down to reading preferences.

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Arthur B

at 14:15 on 2011-03-18When I was a lot younger, first person tended to throw me and first person present tense threw me a

lot

. I kept trying to work out when the protagonist had the opportunity to write all of this down, and in the case of present stuff why they didn't write it down in the past tense.

I eventually realised that a first person narrative doesn't imply the existence of an actual text written by said person in their world, but it was kind of an intuitive leap.

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Robinson L

at 15:02 on 2011-03-18@ Kyra: Yeah, sometimes the narrative voice works very well, though I'll note that the passage you quote doesn't include any of Ness' most egregious spelling, such as “stayshun.” I was referring specifically to the end of

The Ask and the Answer

when I talked about the spelling undermining the (melo)drama. Hmm, maybe it was more glaring in that book because those kinds of misspellings were less ubiquitous.

@ Martin: Huh, I hadn't even considered any of that. Which I guess goes to show that in some respects, I'm a very sheltered reader.

I never said that phonetic dialect should be rejected in all cases

a priori

in first-person narration or anywhere else—I only indicated that Ness' particular method really, really didn't work for me. (I think you could make the argument that it also doesn't make literal sense in that it's not consistent—if Todd and also Davy can't spell “-tion” words right, how come they don't have trouble with “thought” or “enough,” or any of the myriad other weird spelling conventions we have in English?)

I do think there's a difference between faithfully recording an existing dialect phonetically and making up your own, but not having read from the examples you cite, I can't comment on how they'd affect me. (I suspect that if

Feersum Endjinn

is consistent in its spelling throughout, I'll wait for the audiobook.)

I can only figure my obsessive-compulsive streak runs deeper than I thought, because unlike everyone else I found the spelling in

The Knife of Never Letting Go

actively painful to read through.

Kyra: I'll have a think about the other stuff when I've read the next book (eek).

Personally, I'd recommend against reading it, but mostly because I can't stand narratives where the main characters are at the mercy of the villains for a significant amount of pagespace, or where the main characters spend a lot of time doing something which the text makes perfectly clear to the reader is Evil (and not fun evil either, but evil evil). Those two together pretty much describe

The Ask and the Answer

in a nutshell.

If you're not as bothered by that sort of thing you may find it enjoyable, though it's at least as manipulative and heavy-handed as the first book.

I'd just read Uglies so I was feeling INCREDIBLY PISSED OFF with self-conscious cliff-hanger endings.

Huh, it actually didn't bother me. Then again, I listened to the whole

Uglies

series on audio—I tend to be more indulgent towards books which remove most of the effort of reading, and I'm chronically low on audiobooks. (Which isn't to say that I didn't get royally pissed with some other aspects of the books …)

Again, though, this has got me pondering. I'll agree the ending of

Uglies

was a bit much of a cliffhanger (he did better with

Leviathan

), but would you characterize the ending to

Pretties

as similarly excessive? I admit I don't recall

Pretties

as strongly, but from what I do remember, it doesn't strike me as a more egregious cliffhanger than most second-volume-in-the-trilogy books have.

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Janne Kirjasniemi

at 08:33 on 2012-04-12I've just stumbled upon Nicola Griffith's novel Ammonite, which I haven't yet read, although I'm planning on purchasing it post haste. It seems to have a striking similarity to this Ness story or at least to the setting, as it seems it is a book focusing more on the contemplative, more thoughtful scifi rather than the action packed, suspenseful stuff. But basically it tells of a colonized planet where a local disease kills off all the men (and some women) and the women who are left have developed a shared Jungian consciousness as the disease's result. It also won the Tiptree award, but I haven't found much thoughts on connecting these two, perhaps because the similarities are kind of superficial. But still, it does seem rather striking that the settings are so similar. Does anyone have any knowledge regarding this?

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