reading this weekI read Light

reading this week

I read Light by M. John Harrison. It was okay but not mind-blowingly great. Read book 3 of the "Series of Unfortunate Events". Finished Mary Kingsley; unfortunately the book fell apart as I was reading it. Read most of boring and out of date book about Ancient Peru; "The Ancient Civilizations of Peru" by J. Alden Mason. I keep reading it because it's interesting to look up stuff and see how wrong it was. Reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Read the first three Tom Swift novels, and will probably continue to consume them - how did I miss this series? I think when I saw it as a kid, I only had access to the 2nd series and they weren't as good as the 1st. Tom Swift and his Motor-Boat was just fabulous, like the Bobbsey Twins with wrenches and gasoline. Read Across the Acheron (Virgil, non) by Monique Wittig. Read "Gunner Cade" by C.M. Kornbluth and Judith Merril, and it was awful. Read The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling and it was almost as bad as those "Teddy Bear Stuffers" pictured below. One more coy reference to Flashman and I will personally fly out to Arizona and smack Stirling upside the head. It's so fucking lame when people are supposedly trying not to be all sexist but then they pull a "Podkayne of Mars" equivalent out of their asses. Why is it that guys write these alternate histories and they just happen to turn out to be yet another just-happens-to-be-all-sexist world? What gives? When women analyze gender it's called "dystopian" or "radical feminist" or whatever the new polite non-freudian word for "castrating bitch" is. When men do it it's called alternate history. I think I have bitched about this before but I've had it with just-happens-to-be-all-nazis-and-confederates-world creators. I can forgive Merril and Kornbluth more easily for their dorky romance novel sexism. Stirling gets a virtual slap.

Speaking of non radical non feminists, I went last week to hear Margaret Atwood talk at Kepler's books; wondering all the while, "Why am I doing this?" Am maybe looking for a little of that "writers have green sparks whizzing around their heads" mystique - or maybe that they don't. Atwood trotted out some pat answers and anecdotes, pitching herself like a politician as a simple woman raised in the backwoods of canada with no flush toilet, gutting fish with aplomb, yet she was still girly in her very macho family because she knew how to knit. Whatever. It must be really dreary to tell those stories over and over. Claims never to have thought about whether she is feminist or not. Grrrrreat. That'll make you popular! Another elitist success story, another token, "I just made it because I worked hard" person. If this seems feminist to people then I hate to think how they were brought up.

dude. In general what passes for radical is so, so, so lame. I am not radical, and yet I might as well have had a metaphorical dirty bomb strapped to my belly if Atwood is considered even mildly challenging to the status quo.

Would rather read Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon than even think anymore about Atwood. I liked her early poetry, anyway. But hearing the media laud Handmaid's Tale made me fairly nauseous. There is so much better stuff out there. I guess I should be talking about that good stuff instead of snarling ineffectively and unconvincingly about more famous people.

But for a moment, back to Tom Swift. The awfulness of its racism is so blatant that it is eye-rollingly funny - maybe only from where I am sitting in my whiteness though. But I wouldn't be able to, say, let M. read these in future without pointing out the racism. I wouldn't edit out Bumpo from Dr. Doolittle as was done in the 80s, but I would also not be able to read him picture books like "Little Black Sambo" or that one about Epaminondas - books that my grandmother and probably my parents read to me as a toddler. I don't remember them turning a hair over it, but I like to think they'd notice the racism of those today and that they'd be uncomfortable. I shudder to say that I can still hear my grandma doing the voice of Epaminondas's Auntie. I hope to god that 20 years from now, most of the books and movies we bombard ourselves with will look just as fucking stupid. Maybe 50 years from now it'll be funny and campy to watch a disney movie's weird concept of gender, just as I am open mouthed with disbelief at "Eradicate Sampson and his balky mule Boomerang" in Tom Swift. "Laws a massy Master Tom" Eradicate says, rolling his eyes and throwing up his hands. "I spect to b'lieve I'se strong as Sampson hisself". Silly Eradicate, he doesn't realize he can lift up the Giant Airship because it's already buoyant with whatever gas it's full of... he goes and tries to lift up his old mule and can't! Doh! Let's hope that the prehensile hair and eyelash batting of the Little Mermaid will look just as fucked up to future generations as the stereotype-creating-and-reinforcing racist caricatures of Eradicate or Delilah the Cook (bobbseys) or Aunt Chloe (Elsie Dinsmore's mammy" look to us. Sometimes I feel very alone in being bothered by it all.