fictional | i keep saying i'll have more cogent things to say about this, but till then...

... I've not read the post you mention but from your excerpt, I just thought - desire? and rational? Wot?

Perhaps I am obtuse - in fact, I probably am, and I beg you to explain to me the reasoning behind the need to reason out this desire for I am unable to see the need for, well, politicising (rationalising?) "desire" - you either give in to it, or you don't.

I love the St Clare, the Malory Towers, Whyteleafe, Chalet School, William, and the PG Wodehouse school stories. True, there are no people of colour, the only times a colony is mentioned are in the St Clare's series - Hillary's family goes to India, the girls watch a film called Clive of India, Pat and Isabel study Africa for geography exam, so would it be considered alienation of people of colour? And how are these stories by those who think of people of colour as sub-human? I am quite ignorant of this, so if you have the time and inclination, I beg you to enlighten me.

Some of the best Italian food is made by Ethiopians and some of the best sushi, I think, is made by Koreans. Colonization and conquest, while never pretty, often have complex features and exchanges that can't be reduced simply or easily.

My wife is Chinese, but she is the biggest Anglophile on the planet. The fact that the British empire fought the opium wars and colonized parts of China never really bothers her. Should it? Or does a new era mean that we can look at other things and move beyond the kinds of resentments that stem from a past we never participated in ourselves?

How does one cope with the politics of desire?

Well that's always the problem, isn't it?

Let's take gender, since I am far more qualified to talk about that within this perspective. For simplification purposes, I'm a woman with a strong preference for the stories of men. But so much of gendered dialogue completely sucks. I recognize this, even as I engage in it as a writer, consumer and queer person. How often do I talk about manning up or being angry at myself because I'm being such a _girl_ about something. That's pretty toxic shit, especially when you consider not just that I'm a woman, but that my partner is also a woman who loves women.

But! If I remove the ugly politics and privileges of gender, those stories that interest me? Not as interesting. The fun/power/pleasure of cross-dressing or being butch or being a girl who does boy things or establishing my gendered identity as belonging to some grouping of other (which are four different categories of action in my mind): all completely uninteresting in a world where "having a cunt doesn't make me less of a man" is an irrelevant sentence.

So what does this mean?

Bleakly, I think it underscores that humans like hierarchy, even when they are not in an advantageous position in the hierarchy. It's the swaddling to our identities and we do badly without it.

But, perhaps more disturbing to me, is that it suggests that desire is rooted, somehow, in shock value and/or contrariness, and I would like to think that our species is somehow more complex than merely being Tina the Troubled Teen en masse, but, the fact is, I suspect we're not.

I think that in addition to looking at why people are drawn to what might be called "colonialist genre fiction" instead of fiction deriving from experiences in the Third World or from immigrants. For example, why Harry Potter and NOT Zadie Smith? Why Dr. Who and NOT Rushdie? If you wanted to, you could spend your life fully immersed in more PC fare, and what is generally seen by critics and academics as more "literary" than genre oriented, but you don't.

I find this question curious myself because both you and

rm seem like amazingly intelligent and well-educated women to me - and women who betray little to no interest in the kind of literature that I might expect really cultured and well-educated women to be invested in. Why not Ahmed Alaidy, Isabel Allende, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala? Why so little interest in the stuff that actually address the other side of the equation?

I also want to say that no one has to do "literature" or genre all the time. You can have a little of both. I've noticed that the people who read more literary stuff tend to take breaks with genre novels, but the people who read genre seldom read other kinds of lit.

Wow, that was kind of an asshole post with more assumptions than you can throw an asshole at.

Let me try to put it another way:

If one kind of books produces "It's like Stockholm Syndrome" - then why not books and art that are not going to induce "Stockholm Syndrome"?

Oddly, the original essay addressed that concept. From several angles.

This seems to me to still ignore the amazingly rich literary output coming from Non-western sources.

Except the whole essay was about the failure of that supposedly rich literary output to impact on her childhood experiences with literature, "genre" literature or not, and thus on her ability to write from a valid perspective that reflects her own culture. And I would make an argument that a culture creative's strength is better measured in the breadth of its creative output and the access to that output than the few geniuses who prevail over circumstances, but -

- my original comment was about you being an asshole perpetrating pretty blatant passive aggressive superiority towards two women I respect, not about whether or not good literature exists outside of the West.

Not to insert myself unnecessarily, but tell me you're not having this conversation whilst using Nazi iconography.

I guess my confusion stems from the fact that each time I open the NYRoB or the New Yorker, there's a new piece about or by some amazing Third World or immigrant female novelist. If it's not a new author it's a piece about rediscovering an older one. Given that this is the case, I have a hard time understanding who is supposed to be invested in these folks if not the very people who come from these backgrounds or see the problems with just consuming colonialist culture. Who is this stuff to be for? White men in Europe and America? That makes no sense. Does Zadie Smith just suck compared to Enid Blyton? If she does, who is rhapsodizing about Zadie in literary magazines and who is all invested in Isabel Allende's books?

It's not that.

Mind indulging my curiosity then? I'm not one to jump to conclusions, but an icon entitled "Sieg!" depicting someone with a shield bearing that style of lightning bolt is a little iffy from where I sit.

The icon is taken from an album cover from a band called Der Blutharsch. The art derives, I recall, from an earlier era - WWI or before. Not all the rune people were Nazis and many people invested in the runes now would be offended by the immediate association of runes and the Nazis.

Futhark rune?

I'm not a rune guy, so I don't know.

Thanks for the clarification. I meant no offense to workers in runes, or to people whose heritage includes them.

However, please consider that the Sig rune was used extensively by the Nazis, and continues to be used among white supremacists. Combine it with military imagery, and that's going to raise eyebrows, regardless of your intent.

Context is everything.

I'm not offended.

I love all those stories too. Except William, haven't read him. Which is what I was trying to say.

But I was in Calcutta last winter, and stocking up on the Enid Blyton, which I hadn't read in years, and flipping through the ___ of Adventure series? And the one where they meet the savage little black boy, and he might as well be called Sambo? (Actually he probably was, and there was a lot of discussion about how they steal, they don't have our "good british ethics" etc etc) I used to love those books for the descriptions of sausages and tinned peaches and cakes and ginger beer. How do I respond to another book I loved, Kipling's Kim, and his depiction of the oily, verbose, shabby Bengali Babu -- that's my people there, specifically. How do I enjoy Hillary's family going to India, or the novels of Emily Eden, how am I such an anglophile, when I don't support the Raj?

These novels were written from a perspective of racism. Part of that is time-specific; they are of their time. But loving them so much sometimes feels like self-loathing. I feel like they wouldn't love me if they could know me. I feel like they weren't written for me.

Which is what I meant by alienation.

Does that make sense?

But then I also love the villains, right? Lucius Malfoy wouldn't love me either. Or Draco. So what to do with that?

*throws up hands*

I think I understand what you mean, though I might not be able to translate my thoughts into exact words. Not in English, that is. And I suppose that is somehow also part of the problematic.

I read the post, and there is no way to disagree with what

deepad said. My reality might be just slightly different, but it stills fits in that same scenario. And when you question how does one copes with the politics of desire - well, I keep asking myself the exact same thing.

I've taken a course about the portrayal of the Other, mostly in the movie industry. It basically covered the Latin Americans, black and homosexual groups. It's the kind of thing that makes you angry. I can't even watch, say, Aladdin the same way I used to, and I used to love it when I was a kid. I grew up watching those things, being part of it, dreaming of going to countries where they shut my fellow countrymen inside small airports' rooms for weeks like they're criminals before kicking them back to my country with no further explanation for the mere fact they are South Americans. And the scariest part of it all is that it's really easy for one to watch or hear or read about that and not find it disturbing in the slightest. Because that's what they're told, isn't it? That Brazilians are all dealers who want to steal their jobs.

Anyway….

The lack of respect for the culture of others (mainly for the culture of former colonies) is so impregnate on societies that it kind of becomes a comforting zone or something. Like you don't have to understand the other, even if you are to speak or write about them, you just have to be aware of stereotypes and that is enough. It's like thinking Americans are all burger eaters with two neurons called Chip and Dale, or that the French are all poofs with berets. Brazilians equals soccer, samba and lack of clothing? Really? I don't think you have to understand everything and everyone, because really, you can't. No one can. If things were that easy we wouldn't be discussing this right now. But if you are going to write about a different kind of person, with different kinds of vision and beliefs, you really shouldn't assume that you understand that person based on a vision that is constructed by your own universe. It doesn't work like that. Shouldn't the fact that it will get people pissed somewhere represent a problem? It can be really toxic.

What

deepad says goes further than that, I know. And I do find a lot of similarities in what deepad said and my own life and society, but there are differences, important differences, that I guess I'm thankful for, on some ways. However, in the end, one way or another, it's still all the same thing. I grew up with Zé Carioca's comics (I don't know if that's his name in English, but I suppose it is. He's the green bird, Donald Duck's friend). He's a crook. He does bad things, he's bad mannered, he doesn't work, spends his entire days on bars, dancing and drinking. But he's a nice guy, sympathetic, and that makes you generally like him (of course he uses his likeability to take advantage of people). But what defines him essentially is that he's a carioca. And that is the image everyone has of cariocas. A carioca is a person who is born in Rio de Janeiro. Well, basically, the rest of the country hates us, because of our accent, and because of the damn Zé Carioca's imagery. Argentineans hates Brazilians, because they think we are all Zé Cariocas, except there is a very large part of Brazil that actually resembles Argentina in everything. It doesn't make any sense. But that's what media and its poor and reckless representation does.

And then there's the part where I, or we, feel guilty about it. Because I can’t help loving things and universes and characters and writers and movies that are not really made for me, but I can’t get away from it. Because it's there. I grow up with that, I learn from that, I am used to that. And then there are the times when I even feel like I’m part of something that is, in reality, alien to me. Makes me feel like I know it, when I don't. I underestimate, on some ways, realities and people as though they’re so familiar to me, I’m free to judge or argue over it reasonably. That’s what flares this whole thing. It’s an endless cycle. Know the thing about a lie being told several times until it becomes the truth? Works the same way, I guess. My situation here is a bit different, but walks the same road. It’s a matter of how natural things become, of how easily familiarized you are, and, most of all, of how intense and disrupting an intervention of that type can be, regardless of the intent.

It's not completely bad to have stereotypes, because stereotypes, one way or another, create a mutual feeling of belonging. It's by generalizing that you are made part of something, right? Part of a group, part of a people, part of a country – and people might disagree here, but I have absolutely nothing against being me, with my thoughts and opinions and individualities, and being a Brazilian, sharing certain marks of expression that identify me as part of the syncretism that has formed my birthplace’s traditions. But there are limits to generalizing and the creation of stereotypes and that is the line, or distorting factor, that keeps being transcended all the time. Like deepad said,

how difficult it is to growing up reading books (and watching movies) about a culture alien to you, and how pernicious the influences thereof can be.

(I'm sorry for such a gigantic comment that might have, and probably did, wander so far away from your original comment and purpose of discussion. And I'm also deeply sorry for raping your language.)

As another person who fits the demographic of "amazingly intelligent and well-educated woman," and the recent recipient of a master's degree in librarianship, I find literary fiction actively boring. It's not that I can't understand it or that I don't think it has value in helping people get inside each others' cultural skins.

It's that no one can live forever or fly, and really, I just have trouble getting into media where no one can live forever or fly. Or die nobly, sometimes that'll overcome the lack of actual superpowers.

I only have so much time to read in my lifetime. I'm not going to spend it on things I find actively boring. If I want me some queer/minority/female/subversive viewpoints, I'll go for Ursula LeGuin or Octavia Butler. They have minority viewpoints and psychics.

I've spent a lot of my life learning to own my reading desires, which is what this post was about. The impression I take from your comments is that we should start eating our literary vegetables for the good of the world.

"Who is this stuff to be for? White men in Europe and America?"

You ask this rhetorically, as if the answer is obviously going to be no, and it will be up to members of minority groups who already have a vested interest to keep these books in print. There's a subtle and insulting implication here, that these stories wouldn't be interesting enough to stand on their own merit without special interest group readers propping them up.

I know a number of white men who love reading lit fic. And women, and transgender mixed-race furries. But it's a taste for lit fic they have in common, not a background. Mostly they read it to get under the skins of people who aren't like themselves. So yes, the white men would be totally into getting under the skin of a woman from Zimbabwe.

I'll be over here, getting under the skin of Bigby Wolf, the modern private detective incarnation of the villain from the Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood. (Check out Fables sometime, it's awesome.)

You seem to have a number of erroneous assumptions here.
1. I am not interested in/familiar with "more literary fare" i.e. the authors that you mention and "fiction derived from experience."
2. The authors that you mention don't write "genre fiction."
3. That critics and academics agree with you about what is "literary".
4. That the authors you mention sufficiently address "the other side of the equation."

Some of them might be predicated on the fact that you don't actually know me or my background. I am, in fact, an academic. And a critic. I do have little interest in "fiction deriving from experience," though your assumption that I have not read the authors you mention is wrong. I am quite fond of Allende, for instance (who often writes magical realism, which is sort of like genre fiction that can sometimes win the Nobel Prize), and I greatly dislike Jhabvala and all her works (but I have read them), both for stylistic reasons, as well as political ones (not actually addressing the "other side of the equation"). Rushdie is another author I am fond of; Zadie Smith does not speak to me.

I also have extensive training in the early modern period, as well as 19th century literature. I've chosen however, to also examine genre fiction, children's literature, popular culture with these same critical lenses. I find the distinction between high culture and low culture to be mostly fictional, and this attitude is reflected both in my leisure-time activities as well as my work - & the distinctions between these two aspects of my life grow less pronounced by the day.

It is curious to me how much literary weight you seem to place on the aforesaid "fiction derived from experience." I am almost entirely uninterested in it. I have experience. I have spent a good portion of my life in the "third world." I am the daughter of immigrants. Those stories do not tell me anything new; they are not the exotic transports to other worlds that they may be to some. I enjoy the literature of fantasy because stories are doorways, and I don't want to walk in rooms I could get to on foot. I find it rather boring, to be frank. Literary style can be found anywhere (though rarely) and for something I'll enjoy aesthetically, I'll go pretty far. But that kind of perfection is just as often found in the parts of the canon which I prefer. Jane Austen, incomparable stylist. That's fine though - she counts as literary, right? Though still denigrated by many as "frilly dresses & romance." But for the turn of a sentence -- there are few to match. And I'd stack Georgette Heyer (genre) up there too. Films too. Do I not see the limited releases? Of course. Do I think a lot of mass market stuff is tripe? Certainly. But the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie? BRILLIANT. Perfect timing, perfect chemistry, perfect pace, perfect dialogue, beautiful performances. Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn in How to Steal A Million? Ditto.

Many of my students enjoy reality tv & "fiction derived from experience" in the same way; they look, in fiction, for things that could, they think, happen to them, for recognizability, for "facts." I find this attitude immensely depressing. How sad to be so tied down to this world? In one of my favorite works by Rushdie -- perhaps you've not read it; it's called Haroun and the Sea of Stories -- his villain asks, "what is the point of stories that aren't even true?" The heroes think differently, of course. In my opinion, (with apologies to Boswell & Johnson) a person who is tired of fantasy, is tired of fiction, for there is in fantasy all that fiction can afford.

But Rushdie could never, would never have written that novel without The Wizard of Oz, without The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Which is the point being brought up in the essay I'm citing in the post.

women who betray little to no interest in the kind of literature that I might expect really cultured and well-educated women to be invested in.

Incidentally, a question: Are women meant to be particularly interested in "fiction deriving from experiences"? Why? What does being a woman have to do with anything you've brought up here? Why not just people?

I came home from this play, and check my email, and am all like, wait, runes, nazis, WHUT? What happened to the internets! lol.

♥

that is all.

i keep saying i'll have more cogent things to say about this, but till then...

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I don't like kale, either.

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