Archive for: November, 2010

Monday Morning Stepback: On Reviewing Conspiracies…

Nov 29 2010 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

The Weekly Links, Opinion and Personal Updates Post

Links of Interest:

A new blog has popped up, Rights of Writers, run by an attorney who actually worked in publishing for a decade, and now represents media companies for a living. (via @San_remo_Ave)

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I have always hated grading, a fact of which I am reminded as I head into the final mad rush of the semester. So how pleased I was to see this in The Chronicle, an article on Grade Hatred by Mary Churchill with Michael Bron, the latter of whom writes:

The fact is, grading is not really assessing. It is giving a number to students that allows each to be compared to all others, a practice that is statistically misguided and counter-educational.

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From the BBC News Magazine, Does Reading Make Us Happier?, a really wonderful defense of libraries…

My defence should not be seen as the attempt merely to rescue a small building in a particular borough, or any other particular places threatened with closure. Rather it is a rallying call for the concept of free libraries. In our culture the library stands as tall and as significant as a parish church or the finest cathedral. It goes back to the times when ideas first began to circulate in the known world. I worry where wisdom will come from.

And of reading…

I live with the tensions between the world out there I want to see and even contemplate, and the inner world to which the book gives me access. It is the inner rewards of reading a book in a private and concentrated way that lead you into realms of your own imagination and thought that no other process offers. Something happens between the words and the brain that is unique to the moment and to your own sensibilities.

It is why, at such moments, it is so awful to be interrupted – and why I am frequently late at meetings because I find it hard to tear myself away. Any society that doesn’t value the richness of this encounter with ideas and the imagination will impoverish its citizens.

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Last week, I linked to one of a series of New York Times articles on the distractions of the digital age. Check out this terrific response from the Language Log. The intrepid folks there actually looked at the studies the Times cited, and found … a lot of problems with the breathy conclusions drawn on their basis, concluding:

The idea that new technology causes mental, moral, and social decay is an old one. Passing over in silence those who warned our ancestors about the disastrous effects of writing and printing, let’s pause briefly to note the role that the Times assigned in 1924 to the telephone, that “most persistent and the most penetrating” aspect of “the jagged city and its machines”, which “go by fits, forever speeding and slackening and speeding again, so that there is no certainty” (“And the town takes to dreaming”, 9/1/2010).

Great comments, too.

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From The Awl, Harry Potter and the Incredibly Conservative Children’s Club:

The most conservative element of Harry Potter’s world is that it is a materialist paradise, full of costly and rare magical artifacts, invisibility cloaks and piles of “wizard gold” at Gringott’s Bank. Things, that you can make toys out of, things that you can worship and desire and buy. There’s nothing in this story of alleged iconoclasts and rebels that would present the slightest challenge to the establishment. That’s why the story dovetails so easily into a series of Hollywood blockbusters.

I think the argument is a real stretch.

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Finally, from a long essay on poetry reviewing, in Contemporary Poetry Review, by poet David Yezzi, this intriguing way to divide up the pie:

One dusty testament to the bygone Golden Age is Stanley Edgar Hyman’s The Armed Vision, a survey of the New Criticism from Winters to Kenneth Burke. Hyman performs a useful triage, breaking prose about poetry into a Venn diagram of three overlapping categories—reviewing, criticism, and aesthetics. The reviewer, he writes, “more or less, is interested in books as commodities; the critic in books as literature or, in modern terms, as literary action or behavior; the aesthetician in literature in the abstract, not in specific books at all.” These categories are constantly shifting, Hyman explains, often within the same essay or review…

On Reviewing Conspiracies…

Is there a reviewing conspiracy? At Redlines and Deadlines, Raelene Gorlinsky claims there is:

As a reader (NOT wearing my editor or publisher hat) I’m getting a bit concerned about a particular aspect of online reviews. As in, how many of the reviewers actually thoroughly read and think about the books–or how many are just copying someone else’s review?

…

But I’m seeing multiple reviews with almost the same wording. And that’s not matching up with the diversity of comments from my fellow readers. For example, I just read a steampunk romance by a well-known author. The book got a lot of buzz and a number of online reviews. A lot of those reviewers had close to identical comments about the hero. Yet when I read the book, I saw the hero in a completely different light, I had a different understanding of his motivations and emotions. And when I talked to others who’d read the story, they had varying takes on and opinions of the hero. If a dozen readers voice a dozen different opinions, it seems odd that another dozen readers who happen to label themselves reviewers churn out almost identical opinions.

…

But some reviewers use several “pen names” to post on different sites. They just slightly modify the wording of the review to post it elsewhere as if they are a different reader. And it has always been rumored that some reviewers don’t read the books — they read the blurb, excerpt, and other reviews, and then post a review under their own name. So of course in such a case they’d be mimicking someone else’s comments and reflecting the same opinions.

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I appreciate insightful and informational reviews, I thank and applaud the dedicated reviewers who put time and effort into reading and analyzing a story. So it’s discouraging that I’m seeing less of that, more useless repetition from a minority who are diluting the value of the reviewing process to readers.

The author explicitly excludes AAR, SBTB, DA and TGU (TGTBTU?), but because she provides no examples, I have no idea which reviewers or sites she is talking about. My own experience is that there are some good reviewers and sites and some shit ones, and the ratio has stayed about the same since I started noticing. What do you think?

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Maybe she is referring to Amazon? The Daily Mail on corruption in the Amazon reviewing system:

…rival publishers are accused of hijacking the system to praise their own volumes and disparage the opposition.

Authors are turning on each other, agencies are charging up to £5,000 to place favourable fake reviews and Amazon has recruited a team of amateur critics to restore the balance.

…

Nathan Barker, of Reputation 24/7, offers a service starting at £5,000.

He said: ‘First we set up accounts. For a romance novel we’d pick seven female profiles and three males…

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Another conspiracy was floated by Author on Vacation, at Dear Author, in response to a negative review of Mating Call by Gail Stanley (comment #42):

The fact is I don’t need a stranger to tell me what’s good reading or not. I’ve also become very leery of on-line reviewers and review sites due to the lack of professionalism and ethics involved in their creation and maintenance. Until some kind of professional standards and code of ethics regulate e-reviewers, both the books and the reading public are at the mercy of the reviewer.

I released a menage erotic romance novel last year. Within a few months I was astonished to read a negative review on a pretty large, older romance review site. In a scant paragraph, the reviewer … claimed the “worst part” of the novel was its use of incestuous relationships.

The book didn’t feature any incestuous relationships, not even the kinda-sorta incest sometimes featured in erotic romance, i.e. a heroine taking on two brothers.

…

At that point, I had to recognize that if a reviewer lied about my book, who’s to say this reviewer and other reviewers don’t lie about other books? I’m not saying all reviewers are liars, just that a review site and its reviewers are only as good as the ethics and responsibility of people behind it. For now, at least, e-reviews are consequence-free (for the reviewer, anyway.) Most review sites don’t seem to require any particular qualifications or credentials from their reviewers.

There’s lots more to the thread, including a defense of the publisher, Siren, by at least two Siren authors. But I wanted to highlight this comment, by Mari (# 17):

That said…it occurs to me that some reviewers approach every book like its meant to be a literay (sic) masterpiece. And they employ the same kind of gimlet eye toward smutty trash like this book, as they would to something more “seriously written.” Don’t know how fair that is, but who says reviewers have to be fair?

I actually think that is a really interesting issue. Should romance (and genre fiction) reviewers lower the bar, in order to be more fair to the presumably lower aspirations of romance fiction? And what would that mean, I wonder? Or is it just a call to review each kind of book in terms of its own aspirations, without regard to whether, objectively some literary aims are higher than others?

I was wondering if I was the only person in blogland to be so entertained by Author on Vacation when Mrs. Giggles emerged from her obsession with Neopets (if only we can get Karen Scott to stop watching Big Brother, we’d really be back in business! ;) ) to post this in response to AOV’s call for for standards in reviewing:

And I’m sure we all know what those rules will call for, don’t we? No calling out authors on their abilities because that is a personal attack, no general statements, always remember the tears and hardships that went into creation of a book and therefore always mention good points about a book instead of bad points. I’m sure some authors will even go as far as to insist that only authors or professors in literature can review because only those people can relate to the tears and suffering of the author.

If we are to have rules for reviewers, I want the same rules to be applied to people who comment on reviews online too. Fair is fair, after all. Let’s see how they will fare under the same rules they set for reviewers, heh heh heh.

And then Stacia Kane made this comment:

I decided a while ago that I was no longer going to belittle genre fiction by acting like I didn’t put anything of myself into it, and my books are nothing to do with me, they’re this completely other thing that’s just work and I don’t care about it or think it’s special and/or important. I think there’s a huge expectation on genre authors, especially romance, that they distance themselves completely from their books. Of course there’s an element of distance that must be there; no, your book is not you, and more importantly a review is just one person’s opinion, and they’re entitled to it. I just think that can go too far, and I think pretending your work isn’t important to you is another way, and another reason, genre fiction gets belittled as formulaic crap: even its authors claim it’s just a book, not a piece of themselves or something they really put themselves into.

Until I read this comment, I would have said the opposite was true, that the stereotype is that it’s romance writers who supposedly cannot get critical distance, are so petty (women!), etc. but that literary writers (men, mostly) can view their work with a clear eye, are more professional and distanced.

Lots of interesting discussions about reviewing around. Something in the air, I guess.

Personal:

We spent the holiday with family in New York. On Wednesday night we went to the Macy’s Parade balloon viewing …

My sister in law sets a mean table

The kids came home with an XBox 360 with Kinect for their Hanukkah present from their New York relatives. It’s super fun, but I am still trying to figure out what to allow when it comes to “Live” play, something I had never heard about, which lets players in different locations to play each other. I am also under intense pressure to let the soon-to-be 11 year old get Halo. Makes me long for the days of hula hoops and jacks. Or at least the Wii.

Hanukkah begins Wednesday, and we’re having a party Saturday. It’s not a major holiday, but it’s a lot of fun, and the kids enjoy the heck out of it, not just the presents, but the nightly menorah lighting, the latkes, and the goofy decorations. Naturally, I still have to run out and get a few of their gifts (they get one each night).

It’s also a big week on this here blog. I start my 8 nights of Ham/mukah posts on Wednesday night. Be aware that most of the books are pretty explicit.

Also on Wednesday, I’ll also do a guest post for The Book Smugglers, kicking off their month long Smugglivus festival. If I don’t buckle under the pressure and email in sick, that is…

Finally, I am planning to do non-romance book reviews on Sundays. I started yesterday with Graham Greene. This Sunday, unless I am too hung over from drinking Manischewitz on Saturday night, I’ll have a review of Ziska, a late nineteenth century tale of love and revenge in Egypt, by Marie Corelli.

HAPPY WEEK!

29 responses so far

Review: The Human Factor, by Graham Greene

Nov 28 2010 Published by under Reviews

The Human Factor (1978) is one of Greene’s last novels. He was a prolific writer of plays, screenplays, stories, novels, reviews, travel books, and even children’s books. Prior to reading The Human Factor, I knew Greene’s work only from film adaptations such as Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949), with Orson Welles, and Neil Jordan’s The End of the Affair (1999), with Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore and Stephen Rea.

Greene is known as a writer who managed to garner both literary acclaim and popular appeal, elevating genres like the thriller and the espionage novel with meditations on morality, the meaning of life, and salvation (Greene himself converted to Catholicism as an adult). He divided his own work into two categories: serious fiction (The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American) and “entertainments” (Brighton Rock, Our Man in Havana).

Greene was a fascinating person, and if I’m not careful, this review will turn into a mini bio. But two biographical items that are relevant to a review of The Human Factor are that Greene traveled constantly and widely — often to war torn areas — and that he worked for British Secret Service during World War II in Sierra Leone, maintaining lifelong contacts with the outfit. Greene worked under Kim Philby in the MI6, who turned out to be a communist and double agent who eventually defected to the Soviet Union in 1963.

The Human Factor is the story of a 62 year old British intelligence agent, Maurice Castle, who looks forward to retirement and a quite life with his wife, Sarah, a black South African woman whom he met while on assignment, and her son, Sam. Complicating this plan is an investigation of a leak in Castle’s section. Of the book, Greene wrote:

My ambition after the war was to write a novel of espionage free from the conventional violence, which has not, in spite of James Bond, been a feature of the British Secret Service. I wanted to present the Service unromantically as a way of life, men going daily to their office to earn their pensions, the background much like that of any other profession — whether the bank clerk or the business director — an undangerous routine, and within each character the more important private life. When I had spent a few years in the Service during the war, first in West Africa and then in London, I had certainly found little excitement or melodrama coming my way.

Castle’s home in the suburbs where he was raised is his refuge. There he has his wife, his child, his dog, and his memories of a childhood fighting pretend guerrilla wars in the Common. It says something about life in the secret service that Castle’s attachment to all of this has to be kept as secret as the “quadruple measure” of whisky he drinks each evening: “to speak of it to others would be to invite danger. Love was a total risk. Literature had always proclaimed it.”

Literature turns out to be very important to this book. We discover relatively early on that it is Castle himself who is the double agent, and he uses books to communicate with the Communists to whom he provides information.  As he notes when reading War and Peace on the train, “It was a breach of security, even a small act of defiance, to read this book publicly, for pleasure.”

Later, when Castle is reading to Sam, he thinks:

Even a book could be a bridge. He opened the book at random, or so he believed, but a book is like a sandy path which keeps the indent of footsteps. He had read this one to Sam several times during the last two years, but the footprints of his own childhood had dug deeper and the book opened on a poem he had never read aloud before. After a line or two he realized he knew the verses almost by heart. There are verses in childhood, he thought, which shape one’s life more than any of the scriptures.

Although someone is killed, and there is a hectic climax, I wouldn’t read The Human Factor in the hopes of an exciting plot driven spy thriller. The strength of this book is in the writing, and the way Greene portrays the stifling nature of life for men like Castle. His desk job brings him nothing but drudgery, yet, like everyone in the office, he lives on edge. You might think that it’s Castle’s double agency that makes his life so tense, but in fact, it’s the attempt to live a human life while working in an inhuman environment, in which people are mere pawns in irrational and headless games of statesmanship. As Dr. Percival, an agency guy who doesn’t take the Hippocratic Oath very seriously, puts it, “we all live in boxes”.

“The human factor” is love, especially Castle’s love for his wife Sarah. Again and again, love is portrayed as the real danger in life:

“Daintry writes that here that you had some private trouble in Pretoria.”

“I wouldn’t call it trouble. I fell I love.”

“You’d do better to employ a man who doesn’t hate, Boris. Hate’s liable to make mistakes. It’s as dangerous as love.”

A man in love walks through the world like an anarchist, carrying a time bomb.

So, it’s a little disappointing that the object of Castle’s love, Sarah, remains a vague, ill defined presence throughout the book. Being a black African and being a mother are her main features, and, obviously, those qualities are more place markers for character than character. At one point she says, “sometimes I wonder if you love me only because of my colour”, and as a reader I wondered the same thing. Sarah represents an ideal of innocent suffering, to which Castle, who feels the guilt of years of service to a corrupt, relativistic, and opportunistic government, is drawn.

Despite a scathing review in the New York Times when it was published (“It doesn’t work. Mr. Greene, I am sorry to say, has done a lazy job.”) I think The Human Factor is well worth reading, not just for the dread and tenseness it so convincingly communicates, but for Greene’s “coolly cinematic style” (as Evelyn Waugh described it), and for the way it portrays cold war political games and the men who played them.

5 responses so far

Behind the Lines: Shiloh Walker on Beg Me

Nov 27 2010 Published by under Behind the Lines

Behind the Lines is a new feature in which I ask authors to talk about specific scenes or aspects of their work. It’s a kind of peek behind the curtain. I’m personally interested in writers’ processes, and I am also keen to reveal the craft and artistry that goes into genre writing. As per usual, I have no set schedule in mind for Behind the Lines posts, but they will usually follow a review of the book in question. So, the first one is by Shiloh Walker, talking about Beg Me.


So we’re looking behind the scenes, so to speak.  The book is BEG ME and I should probably point out that isn’t a book for everybody.  It’s…um…well, for one, it’s kinkier than hell, but it also deals with some very rough, raw material and it’s also pretty sensitive material.  For some background info…the blurb…
 
   

Beg me…there had been a time when those words made her burn with desire. But now, there was only fear.

Once, Tania Sinclair’s life was almost perfect…oh, it had its ups and downs but she was happily married to a guy that adored her, one who had no problem indulging every kinky fantasy she ever had. But a couple of tragedies later, she’s barely holding it together. A car accident took away her husband, and an attack from somebody she should have been able to trust has shaken not only her confidence, but it’s also stripped away her fantasies and even made it painful to look back on her memories of her husband without fear.

Two years after her attack, Tania is determined to take her life back and the first step is taking back herself…her fantasies, her dreams, her memories. There’s only one person she can trust to do it, too. One person she wants enough…Drake Bennett, her husband’s best friend.

Falling for your best friend’s wife—never smart. Drake’s watched Tania quietly for years, watched her…wanted her, knowing he’d never have her. First, she was taken. And then, that night two years ago—a night that still scars her, a night that’s left bruises on her that still haven’t healed. He does what he can, though, because he loves her too much not to. He’s her friend, there when she needs him.

And now she needs him. She’s asked him for a favor…one that just about blows his mind…

Warning: This book involves light bondage play, rape fantasy & role-playing. The acts between the hero & heroine are consensual, but they may not be ideal for all readers…

Easy to see it’s not going to appeal to all readers, not necessarily an easy read, period.

And there were definitely some scenes that were harder to write, but in the end, these two characters were already so vivid inside my head, once I got in their heads…telling their story wasn’t that hard.  It wasn’t enough, though, to just tell Tania’s side.  It wasn’t enough to just write how she was trying to heal, and that she wanted her life back, and her fantasies back.  Because not just any guy would have been able to help her find this. 
 
 

“Can you make it so I can’t remember?”
His throat went tight. He could barely manage to breathe. Slipping out of his booth, he moved to sit next to her. She leaned against him with a sigh. “No, baby. I can’t. I would if I could, though. I’d take it all away if I could.”
She sniffled. Then she sighed and reached down, touching his inner forearm, tracing a fingernail over the skin there, along the lines of his tattoo. The stylized S. “You would, wouldn’t you, Superman?”
“Yeah.” He kissed her brow. “I’d undo the past three years for you if I could figure out a way.”
“How about you just keep holding me for a little while instead?”
“Yeah.” He breathed in the scent of her hair, felt the crack in his heart widen. “I can do that.”

Yeah, the story is kinky, but it’s also a romance, and Drake’s the heart of it—getting inside his head was basically what I needed to get this story told.  He’s loved her for years.  Everything that has hurt her over the past few years has torn at him—he’d undo every pain for her.

This scene was actually written after I’d finished the book and I’d decided to add a little more, because I wanted readers to know Drake better.  I mean I know that the guy looks at her and feels his heart just about stop because of what he feels—and yeah, there is some serious physical desire there, too, but he loves her, so much—I wanted to make sure, going in, that the reader understood that.

There are all sorts of ways a story can bother me, and there are so many little things that a writer could have done to keep it from bothering me.

If the hero is being an idiot…tell me why.  (Or heroine)

If the hero does something knowing it would hurt the heroine…explain it—take me inside his head.  (Or hers.)

Is one of them being domineering?  Hey, I can handle that—people get domineering in real life all the time and it doesn’t mean they are evil—but make sure the reader knows the reasoning.

There aren’t really any moments in the story where Drake is an idiot.  But there are a couple of scenes of conflicts and for both of them, everything on

Drake’s side rose from how much he loves Tania, has always loved her, and after I finished the story, I realized that I hadn’t explained that early enough.  Even though I knew, and even though he knew…we needed to make sure the reader knew.  After all… *G* “Because I said so” only works with the kids, right?

And here are two follow up questions for Shiloh:

1. If I read it right, Drake loved Tania while her husband was alive. It can be difficult to make a hero who loves a married heroine sympathetic. How did you manage to walk that line?

Yes…he’d fallen in love with Tania years before her husband’s death–he just never let either of them know.  I don’t think it’s so hard to walk that line, unless you have the hero crossing that line.  Drake was an honorable guy-he wasn’t going to trespass, and he’d been friends with the guy for too long-he wasn’t going to walk away from the friendship either.  It’s when the hero starts resenting the guy who has the girl, so to speak, or sits there brooding all those years…Drake accepted how things were.  He didn’t like it, but he lived with it and he never let it interfere with his relationship with either of them.  They mattered too much.
2. Is there a difference between the fantasies Drake had anyway, as a man, and the lengths to which Tania asks him to go?

As you mentioned in your review, Drake’s already into what Tania likes…and right now, what she needs.  Up until a certain point in the story, there wasn’t much difference between his own desires and what she wants from him.  Drake wouldn’t go any further than she could handle and he was so careful to keep it that way.

But there does come a point when she actually pushes him past his point.  So yes…although a lot of it plays into what had happened to her.  If they’d come into their relationship with no baggage, no history, I don’t think those boundaries, those lines would have been such a hard thing for him.  Because those things are there, though, and because he loves her so much, it makes all the difference.

Thank you, Shiloh!

3 responses so far

Review: Beg Me, by Shiloh Walker

Nov 26 2010 Published by under Reviews

Beg Me is an edgy erotic romance self-published by Shiloh Walker. I purchased my copy for $2.99 at Smashwords, and moved it onto my Kindle the old fashioned way (i.e. by plugging my Kindle in to my Mac), but it is now available at Amazon’s Kindle store. I had read one other book by Walker, a paranormal/fantasy romance, which I liked, but I was intrigued by the rape fantasy aspect of Beg Me, and also felt like dipping my toe into the self-publishing pool with an author whose work I knew.

Tania Sinclair lost her husband, and she was brutally raped not long afterwards. She killed her attacker in self-defense, and has managed to put much of her life back together, but the memories of the attack have mingled with her memories of her husband, leaving her unable to move on in her romantic or sexual life. Tania enjoyed consensual and safe rough sex, as well as rape fantasies, with her husband, but what should linger as sexy memories of her beloved spouse have been tainted by the rape. She decides to ask her dear friend, Drake,who happens to be her late husband’s best friend, to help her put the past behind her by having a no strings attached affair. Tania knows she’ll be safe with Drake, and that he’ll understand if she freaks out or calls it off.

Drake is shocked when Tania approaches him. They’ve been spending a lot of time together since her husband’s death, but it’s been purely platonic. What Tania doesn’t know is that Drake has been in love with her forever. He desires her desperately, and just so happens (one of those erotic romance conveniences. A lot of guys would be totally turned off by Tania’s fantasy.) to enjoy the kind of sexual role playing she envisions, but he’s not sure he can stand knowing he’s just Tania’s training ground.

Drake’s love for Tania, paradoxically, provides the conflict in the book, not just because he’s afraid to get hurt, but because he is afraid to hurt her. It’s clear that Tania has a number of psychological hurdles to overcome, and their sex scenes have a tense and dangerous edge as a result. I am a sucker for the “hero loves her already” set up, and I thought the book was strongest when the story was told from Drake’s conflicted perspective.

Tania is defined pretty much by her need to start enjoying rape fanasies again, but this is common in erotic romance   —  making a sexual issue central to one’s whole identity. As is the notion that having good sex will help wipe away the memory of rape. And more specifically, that playacting a rape can help a woman overcome a real rape. The same idea was played out in another romance I just read, from 1989, Linda Howard’s Mackenzie’s Mountain.  It’s also present in Caine’s Reckoning by Sarah McCarty.

 More overt in this book than in the other two I mentioned, is the idea that the heroine’s rape fantasies are good for her, and that being able to enjoy them again is not only about getting a part of herself back, but about taking control: control both of her memories from the rapist, and control of Drake himself, who — at a certian point — doesn’t much want to do it, but is pushed by Tania to play along. Unlike the heroines in the Howard and McCarty, Tania has been in therapy and has done all the other things she’s supposed to do to recover from her loss and trauma. But like any good erotic romance, complete healing requires romantic love and sexual fulfillment.

Having Tania and Drake’s relationship extend back five years in the past made it much more believable that things would progress rapidly, but Beg Me is not a long book — about the length of a category romance — and so Tania’s move from like to lust to love felt a bit rushed to me.  There is also an external conflict, a kind of lingering suspense, that felt a little extraneous, although it did not pull me out of the story.

As an erotic romance, Drake’s desire for Tania was extremely convincing and compelling. It may sound surprising, but I actually empathized with his conflict more strongly than Tania’s.  Beg Me’s many explicit scenes were very well written and, surprisingly, for such a short book, revealed character and moved the relationship along. In other words, Beg Me is a real romance, not a bunch of sex scenes strung together. I enjoyed it very much. It raises, but does not belabor, the problem that a woman who enjoys rape fantasies is specially vulnerable to both rape and to having her testimony doubted by authorities, something I’ll be thinking about for a while.

14 responses so far

Fear of a Big Penis

Nov 23 2010 Published by under Genre musings

In which I ponder a certain kind of heroine reaction to a certain kind of hero endowment.

*This is one of those adult only posts*

Continue Reading »

35 responses so far

Monday Morning Stepback: The Acheron doll, Academic Publishing Scams, and the Real Regency Bosom

Nov 22 2010 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

The Weekly Links, Opinion, and Personal Updates Post

Links of Interest

From Jane Austen’s World, The Heaving Regency Bosom, or Was It? Some Facts Laid Bare. Fantastic!

Internet Stunts versus Blurbs: Is There a Difference? from the Millions. Just when an author thinks she’s done everything possible to promote her book, some other author takes it one step further:

Since 2005, Lin has dutifully maintained a blog that antagonizes and engages readers. Recently he ran a contest where his devotees were asked to watch a video of him reading and then guess what drug he was on (mushrooms).

Wondering if it’s your imagination that your students or kids don’t pay attention? Read Growing Up Digital, Wired For Distraction in 11/21′s NYT.

Huffington Post readers have picked the 15 Most Unfilmable Books, including Maus and The Waves. No argument from me on those.

Over at A Piece of Monologue (aka the Best Looking Blog I Have Ever Seen), a review of historian Robert Darnton’s The Case for Books. I thought this passage was especially relevant given some of the arguments over the pedophile book at Amazon last week:

Darnton remains cautious of the electronic format as a publishing medium, and raises concerns about the corporate administration of digital libraries and archival resources. One might weigh the removal, replacement or destruction of original hard copies against greater electronic accessibility. But is this necessarily the case? Darnton questions the legitimacy of the claim, and wonders whether corporate ownership might in fact limit public access to important literary and historical texts.  Could a greater reliance on digitization become a barrier to future scholars?

From OverthinkingIt, In Defense of One Dimensional Characters. Skip the first page on political evaluation of art if you want to just get to the topic of character. The best thing about this post is that the author prefers the original, 1971 film adaptation of Raold Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as, of course, any sane person would.

Sarah of MonkeyBearReviews admits to skimming sex scenes in romance novels. More controversially, she adds:

I am of the firm opinion that the vast majority of romance novels shouldn’t contain more than one sex scene. Beyond the couple’s First Encounter, most of the extra sex scenes are tedious and take away too much time from the rest of the story.

Sonomalass found an out of print copy of Carolyn Jewel’s Lord Ruin and a special note written by the book’s previous owner had me giggling.

Nicola of Alpha Heroes wrote a brilliant post on how perfectionism can paralyze bloggers. I have definitely been suffering from that this semester. Nicola plans to just give herself permission to write more frequent, but less ambitious posts, which is a great idea I just may copy.

In fact, stay tuned for another post TODAY!!!

Over at DIK Ladies, a post on whether book reviews are like tomatoes: do they have a “sell by” date?

Looking for a holiday gift for someone you hate? Order your Dark Hunter Dolls, inspired by Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunters. Only $149.

Acheron

Self Publishing scams aren’t just for novelists

I received an email the other day:

Dear Dr. [Tripler],

I contacted you by email last week, and since we have not as yet received a response from you, I am taking the liberty of resending as we are aware that you may be engaged in other activities or my message may not have successfully reached you. If you are interested in participating, may I respectfully ask that you respond at your convenience in order to secure your participation in this project.

My name is Mrs. S________ and I am contacting you regarding a new InTech book project under the working title “Bioethics”, ISBN _______.

This book will be published by InTech – an Open Access publisher covering the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine.

You are invited to participate in this book project based on your paper *****, your publishing history and the quality of your research. However, we are not asking you to republish your work, but we would like you to prepare a new paper on one of the topics this book project covers.

I am a big fan of open source, but this is “pay to play” … $600 to have your article published, no peer review, a ridiculous waste of time, and a dangerous pursuit, especially for any graduate student who wants a good looking cv for the job market, or junior academic whose tenure clock is ticking. A 2009 thread with lots of info and links here.

Personal

I plan to debut a New Feature called “Behind the Lines” on the blog this week. Stay tuned.

I have a short teaching week, and we’re heading to New York to celebrate Thanksgiving with family. I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving this week has a great holiday.

HAPPY WEEK!!

19 responses so far

Feminist Theory Syllabus

Nov 17 2010 Published by under Academia, Feminist contentions

A few readers have emailed me to ask for it, so this is my undergraduate feminist theory reading schedule for Fall 2010. Notice I have yet to choose a reading for the second class on postmodern and  third wave feminism. Feel free to make suggestions.

Course Description: This course is an introduction to feminist theory. We will read a popular history of the Second (and Third) Waves of American feminist movement. We will study different feminist theories from multiple perspectives, including liberal,Marxist, socialist, psychoanalytic, care focused, ecofeminist, postcolonial, third wave, and global feminisms. We will also spend significant time on feminist critiques of science, especially the science of gender differences as conducted by evolutionary psychologists, biologists, neuroscientists, and sociologists.

Course Objectives:

By the end of the course, students will be expected:

1. To understand what feminist theory is, its breadth and depth, and its variety.

2. To learn to use feminist theories to engage with pressing social issues.

3. To understand the ways in which multiculturalism, global, postmodern and third wave feminisms challenge and enrich the notion of feminist theory.

4. To “do theory”, i.e. to achieve the ability to participate thoughtfully in discussions of the issues at stake, to learn to critically evaluate theoretical assumptions, and to use theoretical tools in written and oral course-related activities.

Required Textbooks:



When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, Gail Collins (New York: Little, Brown, 2009)

Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction (3rd Edition), Rosemarie Tong (Westview Press, 2009)

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, Cordelia Fine, (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010)

Tu 8/31 Introduction to Course

Th 9/2 Tong, Ch 1 Liberal Feminism

Tu 9/7 Collins, Introduction – Chapter 4

Th 9/9 Collins, Ch 5-8

Tu 9/14 Tong, Ch 2: Radical Feminism

Th 9/16 Cheshire Calhoun, “Separating Lesbian from Feminist Theory” Ethics 104, (April 1994), 558-591  (first page here)

Tu 9/21 Tong, Ch 3: Marxist and Socialist Feminism

Th 9/23 What is Socialist Feminism by Barbara Ehrenreich
Progress in women’s liberation in Latin America, by Lulu Garcia Larque
Freedom Socialist Party FAQ

Tu 9/28 Fine, Ch 1-4

Th 9/30 Fine, Ch 5-8

Tu 10/5 Collins, Ch 9-12

Th 10/7 Class cancelled – Professor at conference

Th 10/14 Tong, Ch 4: Psychoanalytic Feminism

Tu 10/19  “Psychoanalysis, Politics and the Future of Feminism: A Conversation“, Juliet Mitchell; Jacqueline Rose; Jean Radford, Women: A Cultural Review, Volume 21, Issue 1, April 2010 , pages 75 – 103.

Th 10/21 Class cancelled – Professor at conference

Tu 10/26 Tong, Ch. 5: Care Focused Feminism

Th 10/28 Film: A Walk to Beautiful

Tu 11/2  “The Personal is Philosophical is Political: A Philosopher and Mother of a Cognitively Disabled Person, Sends Notes from the Battlefield”, Eva Feder Kittay, METAPHILOSOPHY, Vol. 40, Nos. 3–4, July 2009 (link to abstract here)

“Care and Justice in the Global Context”, Virginia Held, Ratio Juris, Vol. 17 No. 2 June 2004 (141–55)

Th 11/4 Fine, Ch 9-12

Tu 11/9 Fine, Ch 13-16

Th 11/11 Collins, Chapter 13-Epilogue

Tu 11/16 Tong, Ch 6: Multicultural, Global, and Postcolonial Feminism

Th 11/18 “Recasting Global Feminisms: Toward a Comparative Historical Approach to Women’s Activism and Feminist Scholarship”, Jayati Lal, Kristin McGuire, Abigail J. Stewart, Magdalena Zaborowska, and Justine M. Pas, Feminist Studies, 34.1/2 (Spring 2010)

Tu 11/23 Fine, Ch 17-21

Tu 11/29 Tong, Ch 7: Ecofeminism

Th 12/2 Twine, Richard. 2010. “Intersectional disgust? Animals and (eco)feminism.” Feminism & Psychology 20, no. 3: 397-406. (abstract here), and Mallory, Chaone. 2010. “What Is Ecofeminist Political Philosophy? Gender, Nature, and the Political.” Environmental Ethics 32, no. 3: 305-322. 

Tu 12/7 Tong, Ch 8: Postmodern and Third Wave Feminism

Th 12/9 Reading on Postmodern and Third Wave Feminism TBA

7 responses so far

Monday Morning Stepback: Book Banners versus Pedo Lovers

Nov 15 2010 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

The Weekly Links, Opinion and Personal Updates Post

Links of Interest:

Interested in joining an online book club focused on the Women of Science Fiction for 2011? Sign up here. (via @fantasycafe)

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If SFF doesn’t light yer saber, how about a Year of Feminist Classics? I’ve read 11 of the 12 books on the list. One feminist fiction classic I have always wanted to read is Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, but it’s not on the list.

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Amy of My Friend Amy is seeking book recs for her 2011 readalongs, coming up in April and October.

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At the Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal responds to Zadie Smith’s critique of Facebook culture (Generation Why? from the NYTRB). Both are long discussions, but here are two quotations which give you the flavor:

Smith: When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears. It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don’t look more free, they just look more owned.

Madrigal: Smith wants to say, “You are who you appear to be on Facebook.” But who believes that of themselves or anyone else? She makes the drastic overstatement only to serve as her grounds for outright rejection of the service. Facebook, the way I see it, is an API to your person. APIs are what programs use to pull information from Google Maps or something like that. When she faults Facebook for not caring about the “quality” of the connections that it generates, I have to ask: Isn’t there a box that allows you to enter text? Should Facebook be responsible for making humans better friends, better lovers, more magnanimous, more prone to checking in on grandma?

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There is No Such Thing as a Lesbian Book at Ask Nicola (via @colleenlindsay) (You know how I link to posts I don’t agree with? There’s a lot I don’t agree with in this one.)

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What week would be complete without at least one meditation on meanness in reviewing? Barbara Vey wrote a post at PW’s Beyond Her Book, complaining about personal attack comments left about an author featured in one of her video interviews, and Lori Foster and others took it as an opportunity to turn the discussion into one about mean reviewers (via @katiebabs).

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Author Shiloh Walker weighs in on geographical restrictions and ebooks.

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The Big Lie About Abortion and Mental Health by Brenda Major, talking about a recent study that we can add to the sky high pile of all the other studies.

Rigorous U.S. scientific studies have not substantiated the claim that abortion, compared with its alternatives, causes an increased incidence of mental health problems. The same conclusion was reached in 2008 by an American Psychological Association task force, which I chaired, as well as by an independent team of scholars at Johns Hopkins University. As recently as September, Oregon State University researchers announced the results of a national study showing that teenagers who have an abortion are no more likely to become depressed or to have low self-esteem one year or five years later, compared with their peers who deliver.

*****

In preparation for the release of the 7th film installment of the Harry Potter series, a lot of websites have been doing retrospectives on Rowling. Nathan Bransford has a fun post with five writing tips from Harry Potter. I really enjoyed it.

*****

The steampunk backlash has begun:

I am becoming annoyed by the current glut of Steampunk that is being foisted on the SF-reading public via the likes of Tor.com and io9.

It’s not that I actively dislike steampunk … I don’t have that much to say against the aesthetic and costumery other than, gosh, that must be rather hot and hard to perambulate in. (I will confess to being a big fan of Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius.) It’s just that there’s too damn much of it about right now, and furthermore, it’s in danger of vanishing up its own arse due to second artist effect. (The first artist sees a landscape and paints what they see; the second artist sees the first artist’s work and paints that, instead of a real landscape.)

by Charles Stross. As you might guess, 350 comments and counting.

Opinion: Pedo-Gate

As you likely know, someone found an ebook for sale at Amazon.com, The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct, by Phillip R. Greaves II, that appears to be a guide to practicing pedophilia.

For those who are wondering if everyone is jumping to wrong conclusions about the book’s content, check out these posts at TechCrunch,  MSNBC and Gawker, news outlets who are reporting with first hand experience of Greaves’ books, having purchased them prior to their removal. Here is what MSNBC had to say:

Msnbc.com purchased the “Pedophile’s Guide” for purpose of review before it was removed from the site. Greaves’ self-published work contains six academically titled chapters in which the author attempts to add cultural context and express sympathy’s for his intended audience’s cultural plight.

Also included in the e-book are tips for “safe sex” with a child, as well as an emphasis on self-gratification using legal material such as teen magazines. To that end, the two sexually graphic stories “presented as an adult’s recollection of his youthful experience” could be interpreted as thinly veiled examples of pedophilic-themed erotica.

Outrage erupted on the net. At first, Amazon released a statement that it wouldn’t censor any of its books:

Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable. Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions.

Within 24 hours, however — exactly the amount of time it took the story to hit major news networks –  the book was gone. Amazon did not release a second statement, but it appears the book violated Amazon’s own content guidelines:

If Amazon Digital Services, Inc. determines that the content of a Title is prohibited, we may summarily remove or alter it without returning any fees. Amazon Digital Services, Inc. reserves the right to make judgments about whether or not content is appropriate. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with some examples of prohibited content:

Pornography
Pornography and hard-core material that depicts graphic sexual acts.

Offensive Material
What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect. Amazon Digital Services, Inc. reserves the right to determine the appropriateness of Titles sold on our site.

Illegal Items
Titles sold through the Digital Text Platform Program must adhere to all applicable laws. Some Titles that may not be sold include any Titles which may lead to the production of an illegal item or illegal activity.

The discussion quickly degenerated, with First Amendment defenders accusing those who called for Amazon to remove the book “book banners”. Their tone was often patronizing, as if the folks who wanted to remove the Pedophile’s Guide were confuzzled ignoramuses who just couldn’t get their tiny brains to grasp the importance of Free Speech. On the other hand, those who objected to the book tended to get righteous, confusing a free speech defense of Amazon’s right to sell the Pedo Guide with a defense of pedophilia itself.

What always helps me when I am thinking about a dispute like this is to focus on specific moral actors. Who can take action, and what action can s/he take? So let’s start with those who object to Amazon’s selling this book. Are they “book banners” because they are asking Amazon to remove a book? We all know the First Amendment doesn’t actually say anything about private corporations — it refers to what Congress may not do. And even if the issue was passing a law, well, many great legal minds have judged that our right to free speech can be abridged when there are other key values at stake. Clear and present danger, obscenity, etc. But since we are talking about what a private retailer may sell, it doesn’t seem to me that the author’s First Amendment rights, or the consumers’ First Amendment rights, will be violated if Amazon removes the book. Especially in the age of the internet, the author has any number of options for disseminating his book. He may have a right to publish it, but he doesn’t have the right that a third party help him do so. So, I don’t think we can claim that people who are asking that Amazon remove the book are asking that the First Amendment be violated.

Rather, they are exercising their right to use their influence as buyers to convince a company with which they do business to make a decision not to carry a product they consider harmful and offensive in the extreme.  I don’t see this as different from writing letters to Walmart or choosing not to shop at Walmart because of its business practices. Or writing a letter to the Gap or Old Navy voicing concerns about clothing manufacturing conditions, or to KFC on environmental degradation and animal abuse.

Is it hypocritical to ask Amazon to remove one pedophile book and not all the others? Maybe, but I doubt it, for a few reasons. First, some people have written letters that make it pretty clear they object to any book with similar content. Second, it isn’t a customer’s duty to go through Amazon’s catalog looking for offensive books.  Are the folks who are worried that Amazon may not carry the Pedo Guide also worried about what Walmart and Target carry or refuse to carry? No, they addressed instance of “book banning” that showed up in front of them, just like the Amazon customers addressed the book that showed up in front of them. Third, it may be that other books about pedophilia are perfectly alright, perhaps because they don’t cross the line into “how to”, or for some other principled reason. I would think this last point — dealing with one book at a time– would be one the free speech folks would be happy about.

[Another wrinkle is that Amazon is a global retailer. Restrictions on speech are tighter in different parts of the world. How should this be handled?]

The term “book banner” has gotten thrown around a little too loosely. I think everyone can agree that if I refuse to allow women-degrading porn into my house, I am not thereby a “book banner”.  If a local reading group decides that they will not read thrillers because they object to violence, they are not “book banners”.  If a used book shop chooses not to sell romance novels because it thinks they are trash, it is not a “book banner”. Rather, these are moral actors making reasoned choices within their legitimate sphere of control and influence.

Having said that, unlike an individual, a book group, or a used book shop, whose choices affect a few individuals, and don’t prevent others from obtaining or reading “banned” books, Amazon has a widespread and significant influence on book availability. So Amazon has to weigh its choices about what to carry more carefully than a local used book store, both because its size will make a book like the Pedophile’s Guide much more widely available, and because if it chooses not to carry it, it will be making the book that much harder to obtain. To the extent that Amazon’s decisions affect the availability of books, I do understand why people are using the term “book banner”. Amazon may be a private entity, but it should have — and seems to have –  a commitment to supporting free speech.

But it also has other commitments, which have a strong pull. And I think what is so infuriating to those who want Amazon to remove the book is the idea that they are somehow anti free speech ninnies for even suggesting these other values get a place in the debate. Folks who want the book gone have noticed that the opposing side seems very uncomfortable talking about any moral values other than free speech. And I don’t blame them for noticing this, when so many of the blogs and tweets I read on the subject defend the free speech claim with the idea that “morals are subjective anyway, and since we can’t be sure we are right, we’d better not ban.” Those values might include not making it easier for pedophiles to get away with molesting children, and also refusing to help promote books which express values so inconsistent with the majority of its customer base, and so wrong.

On the first argument, I am not convinced that carrying the book will encourage a culture of pedophilia. People who molest children don’t need a handbook. But I do think there is merit to the idea that Amazon should, in a sense, stand up for children — some of the most vulnerable members of our community — by refusing to be the vehicle through which this kind of book is promoted, just on principle, even if not one fewer child is victimized as a result.

[I doubt Amazon has an ethics committee that chooses which values have the stronger pull, by the way. Its decision probably had a lot to do with avoiding a costly PR problem as the holiday shopping season commences.]

How about the “slippery slope” argument? This is the fear that if Amazon removes the Pedo Guide from its virtual shelves, who knows what will be next. Look in any logic textbook, and you will find “slippery slopes” in the chapter on fallacies — errors in reasoning. Slippery slope arguments depend on a psychological claim: that moral actors will not be able to stop moving in a certain direction once they start. First of all, that’s very hard to prove — it’s a forward looking empirical argument. Second, the history of “book banning” suggests that banning one book does not necessarily lead to the banning of more books and still more books, even when governments and government agencies themselves do it.

The slippery slope issue does remind us to be aware of mistakes that could be made on this kind of issue. Amazon may get it wrong. But that’s why it is so important not to attempt to stifle the conversation with the supposed trump card of free speech. Saying, “well, Amazon has a right to sell it”, and throwing up your hands, is inadequate. The point many free speech advocates are missing is that free speech is only one of several values a good corporate citizen should promote, and only one of many values a good consumer should be worried about. It would be a very impoverished moral landscape if our only concern was deciding what, strictly, speaking, someone has a right to do.

I felt the arguments were almost equally strong (and, it must be said, equally weak) on both sides, and that neither side was really producing the kind of context-dependent detail and information I would personally want to have in hand to be able to decide finally one way or another.  What I most lamented was how the cultural image of “the pedophile” seemed to spur people to action when many of us have become practically inured to the daily first person sightings we have of neglected, abused, needy, and hungry children in our own communities.

Personal

We had a power outage this morning on campus, and the overcast skies offered little classroom light, but, being the hard ass professor that I am, I taught my classes anyway. Gives new meaning to Descartes’s phrase “lumen naturalis”.

HAPPY WEEK!

19 responses so far

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