On Writing – Page 46 – Further Annotations

#BLAThoughtOfTheDay: Only dipping your toe

Posted on September 20, 2015March 21, 2024 by blablablaandgabbler

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Gabbler recently recommended Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis. I, however, have reservations about recommending the book (yes, I have read it too).

As someone who may be particularly knowledgeable about what it is to be a non-human animal, let me say this. While the fable itself is fine, and the scenario is certainly interesting (Hermes and Apollo give human intelligence to fifteen dogs they find at a veterinary clinic for a bet to see whether or not even one of those dogs will die happy), the story ultimately has little impact on how we understand our own said “intelligence” or the human-animal relationship.

Dogs were chosen as the subject for the experiment, and, since so, a population from a more diverse pool should have been employed. I was disappointed that no dogs from, say, a kill shelter were involved, no dogs from a dog fighting ring were involved, no dogs from the meat trade were even thoughts. The dog characters did not have diverse backgrounds, and how might that have changed the story? This was one way Apollo, Hermes, and Alexis himself avoided real dog-specific issues. None of the dogs really had to grapple with the higher forms of exploitation and oppression their own species faces every day at the hands of human intelligence. Instead, we get a thought about what dog culture might be if dogs could analyze it as such. But what is culture when in reality there are so few instances of allowing them to even exist together? Perhaps Alexis should have considered rez dogs or even wolves. They already have a social structure that need not be contrived.

The story focuses on the symbol of the collar and leash, dominance in a pack/household, the existential nature of dogs trying to be dogs despite a human mind. This dance around the real plights a canine faces in our world ultimately made it a too-comfortable read, and, I think, kept the humans in the story (and the humans reading the story) from being confronted with the evils and sadness “human intelligence” is capable of.

But the bet itself was cool. Gods should gamble more often. Oh wait, that’s all they do.

[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]

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This post was updated in 2024.

Does this mean I can quit and go home now?

Posted on September 20, 2015 by blablablaandgabbler

Gabbler Recommmends: Not Here To Make Friends

Posted on September 19, 2015September 22, 2015 by blablablaandgabbler

“That the question of likability even exists in literary conversations is odd. It implies we are engaging in a courtship. When characters are unlikable, they don’t meet our mutable, varying standards. Certainly, we can find kinship in fiction, but literary merit shouldn’t be dictated by whether or not we want to be friends or lovers with those about whom we read.

…

Writers are often told a character isn’t likable as literary criticism, as if a character’s likability is directly proportional to the quality of a novel’s writing. This is particularly true for women in fiction. In literature as in life, the rules are all too often different for girls. There are many instances where an unlikable man is billed as an anti-hero, earning a special term to explain those ways in which he deviates from the norm, the traditionally likable. Beginning with Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, the list is long. An unlikable man is inscrutably interesting, dark, or tormented but ultimately compelling even when he might behave in distasteful ways. This is the only explanation I can come up with for the popularity of, say, the novels of Philip Roth who is one hell of a writer, but also a writer who practically revels in the unlikability of his men, their neuroses and self-loathing (and, of course humanity) boldly on display from one page to the next.

When women are unlikable, it becomes a point of obsession in critical conversations by professional and amateur critics alike. Why are these women daring to flaunt convention? Why aren’t they making themselves likable (and therefore acceptable) to polite society? In a Publisher’s Weekly interview with Claire Messud about her recent novel The Woman Upstairs, which features a rather “unlikable” protagonist named Nora who is bitter, bereft, and downright angry about what her life has become, the interviewer said, “I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.” And there we have it. A reader was here to make friends with the characters in a book and she didn’t like what she found.

Messud, for her part, had a sharp response for her interviewer. “For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘Is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘Is this character alive?’

…

It is a seductive position a writer puts the reader in when they create an interesting, unlikable character — they make you complicit, in ways that are both uncomfortable and intriguing.”

-Roxanne Gay, BuzzFeed Books.

Irony in the Irony

Posted on September 15, 2015September 15, 2015 by blablablaandgabbler

‘To begin with, Pearson admitted to using a pseudonym, and his rationale—explained in an “interview” published by Cow Eye Press—echoed Pynchon’s stance on literary fame and public figuredom. “I’ve always had a severe distaste for all the mindless biographical drivel that serves to prop up this or that writer,” said Pearson. “So much effort goes into credentialing the creator that we lose sight of the creation itself, with the consequence being that we tend to read authors instead of their works. In fact, we’d probably prefer to read a crap book by a well-known writer than a great book by a writer who may happen to be obscure.”’

Read the rest.

[The ironic thing is, if he didn’t want his True Author Name to distract from the creation, his Fake Author Name is distracting from it. But perhaps that is the point, as I haven’t read the novel yet (the mystery being potentially so much more entertaining than any fiction right now). -The Author]

[Author-as-God, Author-as-Brand]

Posted on September 15, 2015September 15, 2015 by blablablaandgabbler

8) With the mock interviews and reviews, were you aiming to start a conversation about authorial identity and the problem of readers reading authors rather than books?

That would be lovely, yes. Because that’s exactly what we do: we read authors. At present I am being interviewed by the New York Times not for the quality of my writing (which, by any standard, is tremendous and perhaps even “top-notch”) but because I may or may not be Thomas Pynchon. This is unfair to my work – especially if I am not Thomas Pynchon – as well as to the many other writers out there who are being denied access to their own possible readerships on the grounds that they are not Thomas Pynchon.

Read the rest.

[Self-published author gets interviewed and the main point isn’t that they self-published? Spoof gets treated like the real deal for NOT being the real deal? Am I in heaven?]

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