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This is a beautifully crazy piece (not that I doubt any of it for a second) by Catherynne M Valente, related to a post of Jeff Vandermeer’s a while back on ‘how to write a novel in 2 months’.
Repeat after me: ‘I am a genius’…
I’m a little upset with Ursula Le Guin, which is not something I ever thought I’d say as I am a bit of a fan. You see, I just picked up my eagerly awaited copy of The Jack Vance Reader and unceremoniously cracked its collectible spine to get to ‘The Languages of Pao’, one of the few gaps left in my sadly shrinking still-to-read Vance list.
I was overjoyed to see that Le Guin had written the foreword, but I must say I winced when I noticed that she writes about Vance using the past tense. I hope I am still right in saying that he is alive. I know that he has had some serious problems with his eyesight and that he is getting on a bit, but I think it a little insensitive to refer to him as if he no longer exists.
In her piece, Le Guin says some thoughtful and generous things about Vance’s work and the novel in question. But later on she begins to attack it for its ideological failings, principally in terms of its ‘complete absence of active women characters’. Le Guin says that she ‘tried to see the story as a critique of male dominance’ but that because of this absence it was an ‘unconvincing’ reading. In the end, she sees the novel as ‘old-fashioned’ and inescapably masculinist, ‘an almost universal failing of the genre at that time’ – the book was first published in 1958.
I’m not so sure about this assessment. The absence of women seems to me to be so pronounced and their treatment in the story so awful (Le Guin is right when she says they are seen as mere appurtenances) that Vance is doing something deliberate, rather than just trundling obliviously down the chauvinistic super-highway. In the story, large numbers of women are procured by the megalomaniacal ‘Wizards’ for a period of ‘indenture’ during which they are expected to bear sons, and after which they are returned to their home planets with any daughters or other ‘defectives’ they have produced. Surely Vance is not simply unconsciously reflecting male mores of the day (I hope!) but consciously constructing a fictional society, a fable – like Animal Farm or The Left Hand of Darkness. Perhaps he exhibits a little too much of his trademark wry detachment and sometimes cruel irony, but, to me, the issue of the use and abuse of women by men fairly leaps off the pages of this novel screaming.
I do agree with Le Guin that is is a shame that there are no strong female roles here, but this is almost certainly intentional and it fits with the monstrous tone of the story. I know that Vance has been criticised for this before, but I would argue that, through almost all his work, the roles of men and women and their relative status, attitudes and treatment of one another are clearly addressed, though usually heavily satirized. For example, the ‘Flower of Cath’ episode in Planet of Adventure is a classic instance of his fictional portrayal of male-female relations, though not perhaps a very comfortable one. His oeuvre displays a range of finely nuanced and complex approaches to gender and other human issues and also has some notable examples of strong female lead characters: The Jacynth (largely holding her own in To Live Forever back in 1956), Wayness Tamm and Madouc spring to mind; there are many others.
I love Le Guin’s books. A Wizard of Earthsea (a novel that come to think of it is also notable for its lack of powerful women – Serret, Yarrow and the village witch notwithstanding – though I wouldn’t call it dated) is still one of my very favourite novels, as are The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. I’m glad Le Guin has expressed her views about Vance here – I’d love to know more – and it is refreshing to get some critical input in an anthology like this, as Vance has too often been afforded uncomfortable outpourings of sycophancy. But I am disappointed that she seems to be targeting this novel with resentments that may more justifiably have been pointed elsewhere.
I understand what everyone’s on about now. I got so used to just pressing the ‘delete all spam now’ button that I hadn’t stopped to smell the flowers. Just to be clear, here’s a sample before I zapped them. The first one could be relevant to Catherynne M Valente’s somewhat lewd posting involving inappropriate usage of vacuum cleaners by male poets.
Apologies to the Spam sensitive:
- Dianna Holliday: Which Ones Really Work? We List The Top Penis Enlargement Products! – Put on an average gain of 3.02 inches where it matters – and all gains are 100% permanent …
- Gun: Afghan rebels kill 102 US soldiers – Man refuses to help girl, gets killed…
- giff venkat: Finest adamo offer – look, medication overnite check out here…
- Tammie Wiseman: Last news for Ina Blount – Best Hottest video! All Over The Net…
- MacLellan: Kidnapper at large in NY, dangerous – Black dogs tear man apart…
- noest: How to get rid love dysfunction – Don’t be scared when you the size of my anaconda after 2 months …
- nickum: Bear attack kills 3 in Atlanta zoo – Playboy cover features Chelsea Clinton…
- Marisol Lovett: 3 FREE Bottles Of VPXL !! – Try it today – you have nothing to lose, just a lot to gain! “Ever since I started on your…
- Jaycob: Lucky draw for free cruise trip – FDA faulted over unapproved uses of medication – Fingernails found in hamburger…
There’s probably a fine story in there involving all the list elements…
Matt Staggs was talking about ludicrous spam with semi-inviting titles on his blog and at first I thought this email was an example. But it isn’t. It’s real and it looks too good to miss.
I cut and paste from my Gmail box:
Speaker: Dr Mark Norman
When: Monday 18 August at 9.20am
For: Primary and Secondary teachers and students, Grade 4 and up
Where: Online in Elluminate.
Sign up: http://knowledgebank.globalteacher.org.au to sign up.
Earlier this month, Melbourne Museum held its first ever public dissection of the largest giant squid Australian researchers have encountered. In this seminar, world-renowned squid expert and Deputy Head of Science at Museum Victoria, Dr Mark Norman, will be talking about what was learned in the public dissection and how it might contribute to greater awareness and understanding of these little-known and rarely seen deep-sea creatures.
This seminar follows our hugely successful “Meet the Motherfish” seminar with Dr John Long where we had more than six teacher-led classes join us online giving their kids a chance to speak direct to Dr Long. This second Science Superstars event is a great opportunity for science teachers to attend with their classes by joining in via electronic whiteboards. Participants will get an opportunity to talk direct with Dr Norman about the squid and what it can teach us.
This event is free but you need to sign up. For more information and to sign up go to:
http://knowledgebank.globalteacher.org.au
Thanks to Knowledgebank for this! I expect all you squid-crazy kids to get on down there and sign up at once.
The Holy Grail by Richard Barber is a detailed study of the history of an enduring, yet mutable, legend.
The book is structured into three main sections. The first part describes the creation of the grail, based on a close reading of the original source texts by Chretien de Troyes and his successors, by Robert de Boron and others and by Wolfram von Eschenbach, author of Parsifal.
The survey provides the reader with a solid working knowledge of the key textual sources of the legend and Barber quotes some lengthy passages to this end. He emphasises the importance of direct evidence from the texts over speculation and inference, as well as the key role of the author’s imagination in their creation.
The second section examines a set of themes as they arise from the sources: the grail itself, its setting, the historical and religious contexts – the importance of relics and the grail’s relationship to the eucharist – and how these themes were carried through into later grail literature.
This moves us on to the third section, which narrates the grail’s entrance to the modern world: its discovery and embellishment by scholarship, its revival within the European cultural landscape and its adoption by modern mystics and conspiracy hunters, though he does note the strong relationship between such works and ‘urban myths’.
Most surprising to me was Barber’s refutation of the Celtic origins of the legend, something that was simply ingrained in my understanding of the grail. His case is pretty convincing though.
Barber has some devastating things to say about The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, ‘…essentially a text which proceeds by innuendo, not by refutable scholarly debate’ (p.310). But most damning are the quotes he takes from the work itself, where the authors describe their procedures: ‘By means of cryptic asides and footnotes, each piece… enlarges and confirms the others’; and later: ‘What is necessary is an interdisciplinary approach to one’s chosen material – a mobile and flexible approach… (where) it is not sufficient to confine oneself exclusively to facts’ (p.310-11).
For me, this is probably the most interesting part of the book. Conspiracy history can perhaps be regarded as a form of speculative fiction, although its practitioners seldom, if ever, recognize or admit this – Carlos Castaneda being a possible exception. In some (largely superficial) senses all history can be characterised as fictional, but there are useful distinctions to be drawn between writers who allow refutation and work within a critical framework, and those who glory in their ‘outsider’ status, taking any denial of their assertions as evidence of a plot against them. I particularly recommend Richard Evans’ work if anyone need reminding how important responsible history is and that it can have foundations beyond taste or preference, especially his book In Defence of History.
I enjoy reading conspiracy histories – they can be a lot of fun, but in the end careful scholarship is nearly always more interesting and rewarding. Did the Maya migrate into space, or did they survive on in their region after the Classic period decline, where they still live today? Were the Egyptian pyramids built by aliens, or perhaps by local inhabitants?
I suppose that people usually have an agenda behind their beliefs, as well as an ego stake and the need for mystery, for something more, is clearly extremely potent. Indeed, that is the very origin of the grail stories themselves, though Barber argues that this was largely from within medieval Christian orthodoxy, pretty mysterious in its own right.
What bothers me is that the ‘conspiracy’ stories tend to be so much less rich than interesting than the ‘mainstream’ theories that they deride. Isn’t it more amazing to suppose that humans built the pyramids, or that millions of people still speak Mayan languages? As for the Holy Grail, it is ironic that such a powerul work of the imagination has spawned the compulsion to insist on its physical reality, thus leaching it of its true magic.
It reminds me of the character in Philip K Dick’s A Maze of Death, after he’s been watching a rendition of a Tolkien story on holo-vid or some such device. He stops the film and speaks to the image of Gandalf, wondering whether he ever really existed or not. Maybe one day people will be writing books (or holo-vids) about a secret key pointing to the survival of the One Ring, which didn’t actually fall into the crater of Mount Etna after all.
Now there’s a short story plot…
In summary, I would really recommend this book. The material it explores is actually quite seriously strange in its own right and the author manages to take us through a lot of confusing material and abstruse imagery with remarkable clarity and narrative skill. Some of the hidden gems he uncovers are worth further investigation, for example the writer Mary Butts (‘an interesting and neglected figure’ p.329) and her novel Armed with Madness, which sounds truly amazing.
Futurismic directed me to this site that critiques SF criticism. It makes me giddy just thinking about it. Great title for a site, though, and it looks really interesting. I hope it doesn’t really prove ‘fruitless’, I suppose the name is ironic.
I am a little slow on the uptake on this whole internet thing, always one step behind and out-of-date. Oh well, never mind.
This magazine site has probably been linked to and mentioned hundreds of times on Enter the Octopus and Ecstatic Days, among others, but I seem only now to have fully appreciated its existence.
Nevertheless, I shall mention it again, myself, as it is excellent, nice and wonderful. I got there from following up Vandermeer’s link to the new guest blogger Cathrynne M Valente, which took me first to her site and then to her sublime story A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica.
Fabulous.
