We’re back, again! Surprised? You shouldn’t be, because it’s a weekly show, after all. This week we bring back Torture Cinema for a second edition and talk about one of the most awful science fiction films ever made. There’s also a little talk about new genre-movies hitting your local theater. Prepare yourself. Bad things are about to happen to your brain… You can find episode eighteen here. I hope you enjoy the episode. It’s full of laughs!
There has been a lot of talk recently over the problem of the separation of an author from his or her work, and this has largely been so because of some rather alarming words written by Elizabeth Moon on Muslims and citizenship (in the U.S.). Bloggers, such as Gav over at NextRead, among others, have wondered whether we should separate the author from the work, or whether what an author writes should always be read within the context of what they think on a personal level (which, oddly enough, is discovered through what they write). My only problem with this discussion is that it avoids dealing with the other side of the divide; namely, the economic one and its relation to politics. But we’ll get to that second part in a minute. In a lot of cases, it is easy to separate the author from the work, particularly when the author is channeling a particular kind of idea or character. If an author is pro-gay rights, but writes a book about an anti-gay character, one shouldn’t ignore the book simply because of the author’s politics; on the contrary, you should read it to see how he or she deals with an alternative viewpoint. To give a more innocuous example, if the author is a pacifist and writes a novel about war, such as about soldiers, it shouldn’t be difficult to separate an author’s personal opinions on war from what they’ve written about in their books. After all, it is the author’s job to write about characters and situations that may or may not be in-tune with their ordinary lives. One could even argue that an author who can channel multiple viewpoints is an accomplished one. (If someone can come up with a better example of how this works, please leave a comment.) In that sense, I think it’s silly to reject an author’s work simply because of their personal viewpoint. There is value in exposing oneself to multiple worldviews, particularly since doing so means we are better prepared to deal with those we might disagree with, or might feel different from in some way or another. But, even more importantly, many authors write books that have nothing to do with their personal politics–at least, in an obvious way. Lewis Carroll, for example, has been called by many a pedophile (he wasn’t, by the standards of the time, but that’s neither here nor there); his work, however, shouldn’t be read within that context precisely because, as far as I can remember, his work has nothing to do with his supposed pedophilia. The same is true of many other authors, dead and alive. It is also important to note that authors are not born in vacuums, or brainwashed from a young age to fit a “writer template.” They come from all walks of life, from every continent and, I would hope, every country. If there is any question that the United States is the melting pot of the world, then we can all take solace in the fact that the writer’s world is an unflinching melting pot. But where I diverge from most on this particular subject is on the economic issue. Authors (and publishers) need readers to earn “money” (both in the physical currency sense and in the readers-as-currency/voice sense), and they use that money for various things. What should be of concern to anyone who cares about their own politics is that the “money” authors earn from us can also be used against our interests–here I’m specifically talking about living authors, rather than ones that have been dead for centuries. If your politics are not important to you, then you can ignore such things and continue supporting authors who would use their voices to deny things you rightfully deserve. If your politics are important, however, then it should quickly become obvious that separating an author from his or her work is an economic impossibility. Providing “monetary” gains to authors also provides incentive for them to continue doing what they do. In most cases, this isn’t an issue, since many of us want our favorite writers to keep writing and talking to us. But some authors use their “money” to push their political ideologies, to speak against issues that matter to us in the most bigoted way, and so on. To support such authors is tantamount to saying “I’m okay with you using your monetary and reader-ly currency to combat my personal interests.” If you’re okay with that, then you should continue buying new copies of books written by authors you vehemently disagree with. But I think that by doing so you become an accessory, which would be an insult if one could say that there is such as a thing as being not-an-accessory–which, I would argue, there is not, since we all purchase things that, somewhere down the line, work against our interests. Regardless, with authors, we have a very clear choice: we can support the ones we disagree with by giving them royalties and an audience, or we can cut them off like the diseased limb that they are and give more “money” to those who are both great writers and great people. I’ve made the choice for option two a number of times, such as in the case of Orson Scott Card and John C. Wright, both of which have said many an ignorant, disgusting word about the LGBT community, and both of which are good writers. I still own books by both of them, and will continue to do so, but I won’t purchase new copies of their books in the future, nor will I review their works, or provide them any sort of positive feedback which might, in some way, be used as “currency.” That’s something I’m not willing to do so long as their politics are so vehemently opposed to mine, and so long as they are so outwardly for the destruction of what matters to me–my family. I may make the same choice with Elizabeth
No, I’m not talking about Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly or Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity or their democratic equivalents (Keith Olberman, Rachel Maddow, et al.). In fact, this post is based on a book that is, I think, far less controversial than the usual fair from the authors I just mentioned–a book that, by all accounts, should be fairly easy to argue without being clouded by bias or political affiliation. I’m talking about Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano. It’s a book with an innocuous cover (friendly, might be the word–see the bottom of this post for more on the cover, which apparently comes in two versions) and a forward by Ron Paul, who, at least to me, is more reasonable than most politicians, especially if you base that only on the fact that he’s one of the few politicians to have publicly stated that he thinks the fiasco over the “9/11 Mosque” is based on an innate desire by some to paint Islam with a broad brush. The book’s cover synopsis even paints it as a book that might be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the extensive history of our political system and its persistence to lie, without clear ties to any particular political slant: What new crisis will the federal government manufacture in order to acquire more power over individuals? What new lies will it tell? Throughout our history, the federal government has lied to send our children off to war, lied to take our money, lied to steal our property, lied to gain our trust, and lied to enhance its power over us. Not only does the government lie to us, we lie to ourselves. We won’t admit that each time we let the government get away with misleading us, we are allowing it to increase in size and power and decrease our personal liberty. In acquiescing to the government’s continuous fraudulent behavior, we bear partial responsibility for the erosion of our individual liberties and the ever-expanding federal regulation of private behavior. This book attacks the culture in government that facilitates lying, and it challenges readers to recognize that culture, to confront it, and to be rid of it. You might say that the book isn’t really saying anything we didn’t already know. After all, our politicians routinely lie to us and to their colleagues on all manner of issues, so much so that it’s often hard to discern what is and is not the truth. But then you open the book and read the first couple of pages of the introduction, in which Judge Napolitano says as an example of his argument: [A] male drug dealer with a heavy foreign accent and minimal understanding of English stupidly tells his FBI agent that his name is Nancy Reagan, and he is arrested, prosecuted, and jailed for lying to the government. Another FBI agent tells the cultural guru Martha Stewart, in an informal conversation in the presence of others, that she is not a target of a federal criminal probe, and she replies that she did not sell a certain stock on a certain day. They both lied, but she went to jail and the FBI agent kept his job. If you didn’t do a double-take when reading this paragraph, then you might have missed the logical problems here. There are two primary issues: In the first example, the FBI agent hasn’t committed any crime, nor committed a moral crime, which you might attach to the ethics of lying. In fact, the drug dealer is the one committing the crime, and while his inability to speak English might be a product of his ignorance of the law, he is still to be held accountable for the laws he is breaking–in this case, there are two: selling drugs and lying to a federal officer (which, correct me if I’m wrong, is similar to committing perjury on the witness stand).In the second example, one should be questioning why Martha Stewart would tell an FBI agent anything to do with the crime she says she hasn’t committed, which speaks more about her intelligence in the above situation than about the ethical or moral qualities of the agent or the government. It doesn’t really matter if the FBI agent lied in this case, since she should have reasonably assumed that anything she might have said in the presence of said agent might have been used against her in some future case. He is a witness to the lie, regardless of his part in the acquisition of said lie. The drug dealer and Martha Stewart have both committed crimes punishable by the law, and while there are ethical implications for the actions of the FBI agents, the fact still remains that the FBI agents aren’t lying about something they shouldn’t be doing. FBI agents investigate things, and are expected to do so for the sake of the country (though, understandably, they don’t always do a good job). The author seems to be implying that Martha Stewart’s lie and subsequent punishment are somehow unjust in the face of the FBI agent’s lie, as if somehow two wrongs make a right. Martha Stewart in this logic, then, shouldn’t have been held accountable for violating economic laws, and the same seems to apply to the drug dealer.(Note: In no way am I suggesting that lying on the part of the FBI agent is an appropriate action. That’s an entirely different issue than the one I’m trying to raise here.) It’s at this point that I stopped reading. I don’t generally read political books, but if you’re going to write one, you should at least make arguments that have some sense to them (and perhaps that’s a mistaken hope on my part). Having an obviously fallacious argument in the first few pages of the book is a great way to toss away any credibility you might have received from everything else that preceded
And you know what, Scalzi hits the nail on the head with this one: This is why at this point in time I have really very little patience for people who say they want to write but then come up with all sorts of excuses as to why they don’t have the time. You know what, today is the day my friend Jay Lake goes into surgery to remove a huge chunk of his liver. After which he goes into chemo. For the third time in two years. Between chemo and everything else, he still does work for his day job. And when I last saw him, he was telling me about the novel he was just finishing up. Let me repeat that for you: Jay Lake has been fighting cancer and has had poison running through his system for two years, still does work for his day job and has written novels. So will you please just shut the fuck up about how hard it is for you to find the time and inspiration to write, and just do it or not. The same logic also applies to “I don’t have time to do my homework” and “I don’t have time to eat healthy.” To the former, I have personal experience, being a teacher. I’ve been tempted to bring all of my weekly work load with me every day I teach in hopes that someone will bring up that argument. That way I can offload the 400 pages of theory I read every week, the reading I do in preparation for the days I teach, and the essays I have to read, grade, and so on, among other educational responsibilities. Anyone who says they don’t have the time to write (meaning that they don’t write at all, not that they haven’t a lot of time, but are still writing some) are either not all that interested in writing, or delusional, or both. Like Mr. Scalzi said: either do it or STFU. If Jay Lake can do it, then so can you. And if that’s not inspiration enough, then please stop flooding the Interwebs with your cries for pity.
WrittenWyrdd has apparently started up a new book meme. Since I haven’t done a meme in a while, I thought I’d do this one (it looked silly and fun). If you’d like to join in, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your version. The challenge: Complete the following sentences with book titles that you have read this year. Put the author of the book in parenthesis. Simple enough, right? I am: The Palm-wine Drinkard (Amos Tutuola) I will never be: Harbinger (Jack Skillingstead) I fear: The Left Hand of God (Paul Hoffman) My best friend is: Ray in Reverse (Daniel Wallace) What’s the weather like? This World We Live In… (Susan Beth Pfeffer) Best Advice: Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe) I’ve never been to: The City of Saints and Madmen (Jeff VanderMeer) Favorite form of transport: Flight (Kazu Kibuishi) I’ll never fit in at: In the Castle in My Skin (George Lamming) How I’d like to die: An Idle King (J. W. Benford) You and your friends are: The Reapers Are the Angels (Alden Bell) Thought for the day: Why Darwin Matters (Michael Shermer) Your soul’s present condition: Irreligion (John Allen Paulos) A few of those don’t fit so well, but I did my best. Any thoughts? Update (the following are folks who have added their own versions to their blogs) The Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf and Review
A few days ago I had a conversation with a friend about book obsession. Specifically, I was curious about Harry Potter and similar franchises, which developed a fanbase of obsessed kids and adults, all open about their excitement about the next book in the series. I experienced the same obsession, as did a number of my friends, though to varying degrees. To this day, I can’t quite explain why that series drew me in. The topic of book obsession came up because I was concerned (or, perhaps, curious) about the relative paucity of excited feelings about books released since the Harry Potter. By “excited” I meant the “ravenous desire to consume a literary product to the extent that it occupies a good portion of my daily life.” I wondered whether I could re-experience the “Harry Potter moment” again in what remains of my life (likely 20-25 years, but knowing my luck, I’ll live to be 150). I miss the obsession and the excitement. When the announcement came that the final installment of HP7 had an official publication date, I recall making silly sounds and bouncing up and down in my computer chair; my excitement boiled over when the book finally arrived in my mailbox, and the experience of reading the book in such a short period of time (48 hours) sticks with me today. But I haven’t had that experience again. There are plenty of books and series that I enjoy, and certainly books that I consume at alarming rates (for me), but since 2007, I have remained somewhat neutral about book releases, with some minor bumps on my excitement scale here or there. I’m not saying that I haven’t had interest in anything since 2007, because I have. Instead, I’m trying to relay my discomfort with a personal lack, and wondering where that lack develops from. It’s been suggested to me that this problem has to do with the process of aging. I wouldn’t say that I’m old, in terms of the number of years I’ve been on this planet, but I have certainly seen a lot of things, experienced much, and moved on from the childish teenage years (and the childish 20s that followed it) and found a more secure place in this thing we call “adulthood” (an absurd thing, by the way, because the name itself implies that one cannot exhibit anything from our “childhoods” without leaving “adulthood,” which is an unspoken rule that I refuse to follow). But does adulthood, or the process of being adult, or the security of being in a stable “adult life” lead one to the lack implied above? Does getting older mean we aren’t able to experience the utter joy in the moment of excitement for a literary product? Do we displace the excitement to something else (and what would that thing be–movies, perhaps, or ties)? I want to say that age has little to do with it for some of us, particularly myself, but maybe the world neutralizes with age, and you don’t have much choice in the matter. Or perhaps the field of books is shifting away from what Harry Potter created all those years ago, and what exists now are echoes, in much the same way that a great quantity of fantasy novels have been echoes of Tolkien. Echoes don’t necessarily inspire the same love as the original product–at least, not for those that once experienced that love with the original, which explains, perhaps, why we see cycles of excitement with each new generation. Or maybe I’m simply waiting for that next special book to come along that sucks me in and spits me back out impressed and shocked. Out of curiosity, how many of you have experienced this lack? I know many of you, like myself, do get a little excitement for the occasional book, and we all likely enjoy much of what we read, but have you been able to find many books to become obsessed over in the last few years? If so, what were they, and why did you latch onto them? And also pressing: what is it about Harry Potter, or *insert the series you became obsessed with once upon a time,* that creates that obsessive excitement, that sucks people in and spits them out impressed and shocked? Is there an objective quality we can look for, or is that just the nature of the beast?
