Reading Update

[jaggedwolf]

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

The third long, long Chernow biography. Was a good read, would recommend, and left me with two major thoughts 1. Chernow is a fantastic biographer, as always 2. Fuck Washington, the hell.

As always, Chernow's great at painting a picture of his subject's personality and psychology, how they evaluated situations and makes decisions, what their life looked and felt like, from Washington's revolutionary war experience to how his dentures worked over the years.

He makes a convincing argument that Washington's strength as a general was less in being a battlefield tactician, and more by holding the (often starving, half-dressed) army together via the force of his personality. And that it was with the expectation that said personality would helm the first Presidency that the constitution was written, with more hopes to it than fears from the executive. It's evident he took that responsibility seriously. He thrived in his term by letting his cabinet secretaries have the strong ideological opinions and argue it out, so that he could take his time coming to a judgement. (Obviously, he was far more aligned with Hamilton than Jefferson by the end.)

Though, Chernow doesn't let Washington completely off the hook for his inaction on slavery, both personally and politically. He still gives more leeway in judgement than I would. It feels evident from the letters Chernow relates that, for all the big game Washington talked about the ills of slavery, he went no further than talk precisely because it would impinge on his economic self-interest, make his already not-very-viable plantation even more difficult to run. A simple, base motive, at the end of the day. It's made even clearer by repeated anecdotes of Washington acting as if his slaves were employees that could be cheating him somehow. Ugh.

The Forbidden Stars by Tim Pratt

The last book in the Axiom series. I said the previous book was a little light on plot; this one is packed to the brim with it. The stakes were higher, we see the terrifying consequences the humans and Liars face in a subjugated system. I swear Callie almost dies five times. It's always a good thrill reading her outsmart, outfight and outbullshit her opponents, as well as those moments of terror and acceptance. A great protagonist. I might start requesting these books in exchanges, there are so many characters I wanted more of, and I do want more Callie/Elena. And more Lantern! Who continued to be the best alien <3

I need more people to read this series already.

My only complaint about this last book is rather spoilery, so under the cut it goes...

I don't think Ashok needed to die. :( It happened so close to the end of the book that it felt like a betrayal, and while that might've been the intended effect because Callie also feels that way, it was so very jarring. I also don't believe Callie wouldn't have made sure absolutely everyone was safe if she was already paranoid to the point of warning Lantern. The AI possibility didn't make me feel any better, either. Maybe if there'd been a fourth book, with Ashok's death at the beginning and an AI slowly getting to know everyone across it?

Though, I'd still have been dissatisfied. I've become a bit of a softie about major character deaths, especially best friend deaths, so it's probably just a me thing.

I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter by Isabel Fall

I saw...a lot of discussion about this short story, and so I gave it a read. (Before it got pulled down.) It's interesting - nothing about it strikes me as written in bad-faith, or a false flag operation. It's gender and sci-fi and a military complex all bundled together, co-opting a person's very real needs and wants into something useful, about the eternal human urge to be more, to fit right. It wouldn't have been out of place of the short stories of the Queers Destroy Science Fiction issue of Lightspeed I read a few years ago. It wouldn't have been my favourite story of the bunch. It certainly wouldn't be my least favourite.

I think a common strain of the criticisms I've seen, the one that frustrates me the most, is the essential idea that no real woman would write about gender this way, or no real trans person would interrogate the (genuinely transphobic) Attack Helicopter meme in this way.

The first claim leaves me baffled. People have a lot of different feelings about their gender and what it imposes on them. Many of the concrete details of womanhood the story peppers in I felt no connection to - that tends to be the case for uh, most media I consume, this story is not unique in that regard - but this one part was a surprise, and did resonate: I was always aware of being small: aware that people could hurt me. I spent a lot of time thinking about things that had happened right before something awful.

The second claim I understand the gut level reaction of, but still find flawed. When I was a teenager, I thrilled in taking the most absurd homophobic arguments and dismantling them. (As exercises in logic, and as an easy fill-in for school projects, because gay people still counted as ~controversial~ enough for debate. Probably still does at my old school.) I probably thrilled in it because I'm gay, not in spite of it. Fiction is a different angle of approach, but no less understandable. Nor is wanting the first search result for "identify as an attack helicopter" to be a story that engages in ideas of gender, not a bunch of transphobic memes. Hell, that's the same reason Cameron Esposito named her comedy special "Rape Jokes".

And finally, I guess, here's where I differ from a lot of people's perspectives - the author's identity doesn't make this story better or worse to me. It'd be interesting to know how it led them to writing it, but the story is as it is.

I think what I'm fundamentally frustrated by, though, is the idea that the appropriate solution to a messy piece of work that works in ambiguity, that sparks very different feelings in different people is: Redact it entirely. It shouldn't be accessible. (This is not a criticism of the author, who I'm sure has been dealing with a whole lot and should do whatever the author's gotta, but of the people applauding this redaction.)

It'd take a lot for me to agree with that reaction about a piece of fiction, and this work definitely isn't it.

Comments

[delphi]

It'd take a lot for me to agree with that reaction about a piece of fiction, and this work definitely isn't it.

My thoughts exactly. I found the story thought-provoking, and I've been deeply dismayed by the way the reaction has played out.

[jaggedwolf]

It's been very disheartening - the conspiracy theories, the notion that the author had a responsibility to out themselves, etc. I can understand hesitance, given the title, but I can't understand the absolute conviction that the worst-faith reading of the story is the only possible one, complete with the vehemence directed at the author herself.

I appreciated that the Clarkesworld statement about the story didn't throw the story or the author under the bus, at least.

[brigdh]

I really like your thought on "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter", and they are basically the same thoughts I have. I'd love to read more work by the author, but god, who knows if she will ever publish again after this, or at least not under the same name.

[jaggedwolf]

Yeah, I hope she's doing alright and isn't discouraged from writing more, even if it has to be under a different name. Those bad-faith allegations were already pretty unfun before they got so viral.