What’s the word for it, the Wokenment? Consciousness-expanding? Awareness-raising? We’ve had a lot of it, from the atheist schism that ultimately created this blog network to Me Too to Black Lives Matter and so on. Good stuff. A recurring theme of that all: that in lacking awareness, the privileged can cause various harms to the oppressed or less privileged. By knowing the issues, we can do better, and a more equitable world will be a better one.
A more interesting one at least. The art of the less enlightened (if not woke, asleep?) is all about the same white people we’ve been seeing all our lives – particularly dudes. How weird was that juncture in history where movies and TV had so many single fathers? The wall of thumbnails in video game stores featuring stubbly white guys? Time for other people to be seen, and I’m into it. I genuinely want to see them.
Had a comment on a recent article expressing that said commenter did not want to revisit books they’d read in the pre-wokenment days (my phrasing, i’m writing on fumes dogg), because the racism and misogyny in them would be more apparent now. This dovetailed in my head with a post I’d read on social media about works by problematic authors, works that felt important to somebody in their youth, becoming so distasteful as to become unapproachable now. There are some differences between the situations described, and in this other post from social media, I feel the response lacked nuance. My commentariat unintentionally reminded me I wanted to say something about that.
Even in a much better world than the one we’ve all been living through, in our better tomorrow, some art is going to have skeevy elements. This is in part an artifact of our history – we have a lot of feelings to work out, regarding every creepy thing we’ve experienced in culture. (in part it’s just because we ain’t burning books and still want to read classics.)
That processing isn’t always about getting through to the other side. Sometimes that’s just how it is in our brains now. Like, would forced-feminization crossdressing, humiliation fetish stuff work in a world where nobody was shamed for whatever gender expression they’re wearing at the moment? Maybe not, but until nobody remembers the world as it is now, some people are going to have that as part of their sexuality. (not me, i have different problems lol)
And some people are just going to find pleasure in art about things that are unhealthy, or even outlandishly evil. There is, as we speak, a subset of romantasy fans that are into unreal erotic gore scenarios, serial killer fetish carried into the realm of impossible things – characters that can still bone down while folded spindled and mutilated. Sexual fetishes aside, action adventure as a genre is all about the fantasy that there can be violence that is good, or at least cool. Romance vaunts the chase over the catch, no room for the real love that is nurturing each other in less novel or thrilling circumstances. Horror is a profoundly ableist genre and if you somehow stripped all of that out of it, what remains is still getting a thrill out of watching fictional guys get slaughtered in spooky ways.
Mark Twain said something like, “Censorship is telling a man he can’t eat steak because a baby can’t chew it.” Grown-ups get to drink a scotch nightcap in their crushed velvet smoking jackets while they read books about promiscuous spies shooting filthy commies. Just as long as those grown-ups know they might get the kinda cancer where their jaw gets removed, weigh the risks, it’s a freedom we should have, shouldn’t we? Art is generally less harmful than boozohol but it can still put some ill grooves on an uninformed mind. I say, know what’s messed up about your kicks, and get your kicks just the same.
On the separate but related issue, an author that you once liked turns out to be a scumbag. Can you still read what they wrote? Like my commenter, you may find it doesn’t hit the same as it did in your youth. The queen terf’s baby books are kinda gross, when read through a lens of understanding what she’s like. You might see things in them you didn’t see before, and things you don’t like. But if you can power through that, and the things you enjoy about problem artist’s art reward you for that effort, go for it. Just don’t give them any more money.
Sometimes that’s trickier than one would prefer. Probably if I’m listening to Biggie Smalls on yewchoob, it’s giving some fractional pennies to Puff Daddy’s legal defense, and you might not be aware, that guy is a nigh-Epstein-level piece of shit. Time to bootleg those tracks and get with mp3s like it’s 1999.
Nothing original in all this, but the issues I chose to highlight might be slightly different from what you’ve seen elsewhere, and different perspectives are always good to get, as I mentioned in the first paragraph. Shit, was this a complete thesis? Time to get back to shitposting…
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Welcome to literary post-modernism. Where a single work can be viewed, enjoyed or hated, when viewed from different perspectives. Where there is no single, valid, interpretation, but a multitude of interpretations which the reader can choose from. Including both a desire to understand what the writer intended, or something completely outside of he writer’s understanding/acknowledgement. Where there is no preferred interpretation, only interpretations which can be rationally justified by the text, or the process of writing the text. It’s not a free-for-all, where any interpretation is correct, every interpretation needs to be justified by evidence in the text, or (less importantly) by evidence from the process of writing the text which can be used to generate a viewpoint whereby to read the text.
For example, one of my favorite authors, R. Austin Freeman, wrote a series of murder mysteries with a detective who specialized in forensics rather than personalities or timetables. Freeman wrote these novels in the first half of the twentieth century in England. In them, particularly the early novels, you can find the stereotypical Jewish caricature of crooked criminal lawyers and moneylenders, complete with hooked noses and greasy hair. This stereotype is less frequent in later novels, but if a reader today finds that offensive, they are probably not going to enjoy the books. One viewpoint is to read these as the author intended, as interesting, but fictional detective novels. Another viewpoint is to read these novels and notice the propagation of a harmful prejudice. A third viewpoint would be to read these novels and find evidence to support preexisting bigotry and conclude that the stereotype is accurate. None of these viewpoints are necessarily wrong when interpreting the text, but there is a moral problem with adopting the third as an accurate view of reality.
And over time, as any literary work gets older, the casual reader will no longer recognize the somewhat veiled allusions to racism, prejudice, and bigotry contained in texts. The reason is that unless the bigotry is blatant, society has moved on and the allusions no longer have those connotations.
For example, I recently re-read P.G. Wodehouse’s Something New, which is, in my opinion, one of the better works by Wodehouse. Early in the novel, however, our protagonist is reading the want-ads section of a newspaper and found;
This is a joke which would be understood by British readers at the time, but may not be understood today. It is also not a very funny joke today. There are really two jokes here; 1) That a Scotsman would lend money without any security, and 2) It was commonly believed that Jewish moneylenders adopted Scottish names to deceive possible clients who wouldn’t want to borrow money from a Jewish person. See how a little additional knowledge changes that passage from something which isn’t really understood today (why would it even be there?), to a joke which readers probably found humorous at the time? Today we view it as being in very poor taste. This is the same reason stand up comics who stagnate, i.e. don’t update their routines to suit the current culture, tend to loose audiences. As an aside, this is also why I think we have a real disconnect between the politicians in our nation and the populous of our nation, the culture has moved on but the politician’s haven’t.
The choice to keep or remove from our shelves the books of authors which have views we find repugnant is a personal one. The books on my shelves are there for a number of possible reasons. Most are books I want to re-read, or reference materials I want to have on hand. I still find it more comfortable to pull out a copy of, say, The Complete Jefferson, assembled by Padover in 1943, when I want to refer to one of Thomas Jefferson’s essays than look it up on the internet. I have several copies of Montaigne’s essays because I like to read them in the wintertime in front of a fire in my comfy Queen Anne wingback chair. I also have books which are written by authors I detest, but were, are, considered influential. Ayn Rand’s works fall into that category. I doubt I’ll ever re-read Atlas Shrugged, I’ve read it twice already, but it still resides on my shelf. And there are a lot of books where from the evidence in the texts some unsavory conclusions about the author can be made. I don’t know if one of the greatest Fantasy and Science Fiction stylists had sexual fantasies about pre-pubescent girls. I know of no evidence that the author expressed this desire anywhere outside of his writings. But the writings abound with such characters and other major, heroic, characters in those same novels do view them sexually. Paying attention to patterns in an author’s corpus does not always lead to pleasant conclusions.
Literary postmodernism is about textual analysis, as well as understanding the author and the author’s environment to get additional clues about what the author was saying. Or what the text was saying that the author didn’t intend. To use a previous example from above, I know a lot of women wouldn’t enjoy the R. Austin Freeman novels simply because they portray women as dependent on husbands. Even the most well-developed and independent female characters in Freeman’s novels, and there are a few, are looking for a husband. Now, in Freeman’s defense, he was deliberately including romance in his books, it helped sell his novels. At the time romance without progression to marriage would have been seen as somewhat scandalous to his middle-class readers. So he might have written as he did simply because his audience expected it. I don’t know. Freeman is long dead and I don’t know if anything in his personal life or other writings could answer the question. But I do know that some people would not enjoy the novels simply due to the characterization of women. And there is nothing wrong with that view.
One final thought. Something to point people toward if they haven’t already read it. And that is Jorge Luis Borges short story, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. This brilliant story is in the form of a book review of a person re-writing Don Quixote in the 1930’s rather than in the 1600’s. And even though the work is identical, line for line, it is not a copy because the meaning of a book written in the 1930’s is necessarily different than a book written in 1605. That is the essence of literary post-modernism. Good reading!
https://ia801405.us.archive.org/10/items/HeliganSecretsOfTheLostGardens/BorgesJorgeLuis-PierreMenardAuthorOfDonQuixote.pdf
even my longest article must have a longer comment on it; this is the law. will read the whole thing asap, and thanks.
Have you encountered the concept of the “suck fairy”?
https://reactormag.com/the-suck-fairy/
@2, yes, ’tis the law.
But it should be expected. A long post necessarily contains more ideas and is more likely to either intersect with the ideas of others; or lead to introspection, contemplation, and if you are lucky epiphany, in others. Some of whom will want to share.
Your single ~850 word post is more likely to ignite a conversation than a dozen ~100 word posts. A succession of short posts will garner more clicks, but they are less likely to connect to people. Which would you prefer, clicks or conversations? Keeping in mind that you may have more personal goals; like getting accustomed to making a post a day.
Also, it probably doesn’t help that Sunday morning is about the only time I can take the time to write a longer, more reflective, comment without feeling guilty that I’m not doing something else. This doesn’t mean I don’t write long screeds at other times, only that I generally should be doing something else when I write them. Although there is a small guilty pleasure in doing something for your own enjoyment when there are other tasks pending (there’s probably a German or Swedish word for that feeling). It was just your bad luck that this morning you got tagged for one of my extraordinary prolix diatribes (in the archaic sense). 🙂
flex’s essay @ # 1 reminded me of reading John Buchan’s 1925 John McNab, a sort-of comic novel about upper-class Englishmen wagering on a hunting competition in a remote district of Scotland. Various complications ensue, but ultimately they work out their issues, solve their little mystery, and enjoy what the author surely considered a heart-warming reconciliation.
Almost a century later, to my jaundiced eye, that wrap-up screamed of bourgeois class solidarity against everyone else, and put me off from reading anything else by Buchan (though if I last long enough, I’ll probably pick up his Thirty-Nine Steps due to its reputation as a major milestone in espionage fiction).
flex, could you possibly drop another clue as to the identity of that “one of the greatest Fantasy and Science Fiction stylists”?
Oops @ my # 5 – than’s John MacNab, of course.
flex – the king in yellow might is a strong contender for the best thing i’ve ever read, but leads off with a long paragraph of racist nationalist fantasia, served with a dash of extreme antisemitism. you have the possible out, should you take it, of considering it the imagined world of an unreliable narrator, but i still doubt a writer of that time would produce those words if he didn’t believe them. seriously tho, tkiy is fucking excellent. may this century’s equivalent not have that century’s bullshit still janking up the proceedings.
the pedo sff guy, i think of piers anthony but would be sadly unsurprised to hear it’s true of somebody even more prominent. not well-read enough to have that knowledge on tap.
re: the borges thing, that is hilarious. good job surrealists.
and i don’t have a strong preference of clicks vs conversations at this time, but i can see how this article kinda seems like it was begging for a convo.
stewart – my personal suck fairy would be on metallica’s black album, heh.
pierce – in light of flex’s first essay, the scottish name raises an eyebrow, heh.
GAS
Romance as a genre has got more complicated, producing many sub-genres, and one of those does focus on the development of existing relationships.
On the Scottish names, Buchan was Scottish, and all of his books that I have read had Scottish heroes. At least one of my older relatives must have enjoyed Buchan as there were several of his books on the shelves when I was a kid all of which I read, though apart from the Thirty Nine Steps I couldn’t now tell you their titles.
@5, Pierce R. Butler,
I’ve written too much already. I am not going to mention the name because:
A) He’s dead, and would not be able to defend himself against Dame Rumor;
B) I know of no evidence that really had such urges, and clearly even less that he acted on them. What I know is that the situation appears many times in his novels and short stories which, when I noticed it, gave me something to think about;
C) I know that since I reached this conclusion I’ve had a harder time re-reading his works. That a personal belief that the possibility exists diminishes my pleasure in reading his word-smithing, I shouldn’t infect others with the same doubts. Especially as I have no evidence for the observation other than textual. It is entirely conceivable that my supposition is wrong.
Just as a note, it’s not Lieber. While Mouser had a character trait where he liked undeveloped women, if I recall correctly Lieber used the terms “waif” and “gammon”, however Fafhrd did not. It was a character trait, not a theme.
@7, Great American Satan,
Robert Chambers in on my shelf between Margaret Cavendish and C.J. Cherryh. This is the hardcover F/SF shelf, there are other authors in that alphabet range on my paperback shelf.
But if you like Chambers, who’s The King in Yellow directly inspired H.P. Lovecraft (as I’m certain you know if you’ve read Chambers), you really should read the works of Edward John Morton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany. Known as Lord Dunsany as an author, (I just love a name which includes both Drax and Plunkett). My favorite is The Food of Death, but his other works are great too. All of these are in public domain and available on the internets, although again, I have a few limp-leather bound editions for the personal enjoyment of reading a physical book.
In my opinion, you can avoid William Morris, he was a huge influence on Dunsany and Tolkien, but he was really trying to capture the spirit of Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queen. Unless you are really into comparative fantasy, I find both Morris and Spencer somewhat underwhelming. The Faerie Queen is deathless verse, but it could be condensed to a prose novel pretty easily. I image someone has done so. It has inspired a great many illustrators, but that really doesn’t tell you much about the text.
You might also try A. Merritt, Dwellers in the Mirage or The Moon Pool are good fantasies, even if they are a little like H Rider Haggard.
One of the most terrifying psychological SF novels I’ve ever read was Algis Budrys’ Rogue Moon. It’s pretty dense, but it has the best description of something truly alien I’ve ever read. Far beyond any other SF I’ve read. However I understand that Sagan’s novel Contact approaches the concept of something alien along the same lines. I haven’t read Contact so I can’t really comment on it.
As for Piers Anthony, I wouldn’t say his stuff is reminiscent of pedophilia, although I admit I haven’t read his works in many years now. I would call Anthony’s writings to be for teenagers, i.e. young adult literature. There are sexual themes, lots and lots of sexual themes, but most of them are dealing with characters discovering sex and dealing with those feelings themselves (usually by going into rut, but whatever), not desiring a specific sexual trait in others. At best (worst) It’s fap material.
flex @ # 9 – fair enough.
flex @ # 10: …You might also try A. Merritt, Dwellers in the Mirage or The Moon Pool …
Uh, if gross authorial bigotry discourages you from reading their oeuvre … hrrmm.
I’m fairly sure I recall a strong accusation of Merritt’s alleged anti-semitism, possibly in Sam Moskowitz’s Seekers of Tomorrow, or something from James Blish, but can’t find any substantiation online – maybe somebody overloaded with his purple prose just snapped.
@11, Pierce R. Butler,
Hmm. I don’t recall any overt anti-Semitism, but it has been many years since I’ve read the books and I am not the same person I was three decades ago, so I might have missed it. I remember them as well constructed fantasies with plots which were more aligned with myth than with reality. I also thought they were fairly good reads.
But I tell you what. I have three A. Merritt works on my shelf, and I’ll re-read them this week and get back to you. I have Dwellers in the Mirage, The Face in the Abyss, and The Fox Woman & Other Stories. I must have loaned out my copy of The Moon Pool and never gotten it back. A. Merritt did write in the period prior to WWII where anti-Semitism was ubiquitous, so it wouldn’t surprise me that it’s there. I might notice other things which I now find objectionable.
This might better fit in the prior post’s comment thread, but I don’t think it’s entirely out of place here…
On a contrast to the works that don’t hold up, how about works written long ago that have some elements/takes that are pretty progressive for now, let alone when they were written.
In the past ~10-15 years or so, I’ve been reading some of Octavia Butler’s and Ursula K. Leguin’s works here and there, and if they weren’t published literally decades ago, I’m sure the various anti-woke “puppies” sci-fi contingents would be decrying and railing against them as much as any current author.
I’ve read both The Left Hand Of Darkness, and The Dispossessed relatively recently, and although they were written half a century ago (!), I feel have some pretty progressive elements in them by today’s metrics.
Butler may have been a little less prolific in her publishing, but I felt the Parables were eerily prescient in the prediction of the effects of climate change and capitalism. And the Lilith’s Brood/Xenogenesis Books had some pretty interesting questions/examinations about the idea of consent.
Maybe some of their works holding up has something to do with them being women (and one a black woman, at that), when the sci-fi publishing industry was outright hostile to women’s voices…
Okay. I’ve re-read the first 80 pages of Dwellers in the Mirage (of 192) there isn’t any overt or implied anti-Semitism yet, but a huge amount of pro-Aryanism. I know that pro-Aryanism has been construed, particularly in the decades after WWII, as anti-Semitism. I do not accept unconditionally accept that view.
As I see it, pro-Aryanism does not discriminate between non-Aryan ethnicities. That is, a person who professes the idea that the Aryan ethnicity is superior to all other ethnicities isn’t singling out Semitic ethnicities. They not only view Jewish people as inferior, but also Negroid and Asian people as inferior. This doesn’t make this position correct, in a scientific or moral sense, but it does not single out Semites.
Now, within the novel thus far, the protagonist, who is an Aryan avatar, seems to be siding with the non-Aryan people he is dealing with, those who live in the mirage. Further, his companion and best friend is Cherokee (with the caveat that the author knows less about Cherokee culture than I do and I know almost nothing). Which also suggests that the author isn’t setting up the reader for a anti-Semitic reveal.
I have to head to dreamland now in preparation for my day job tomorrow, but I’ll read more of the novel tomorrow evening and provide my opinion of it. I mentioned earlier that my memory of it was that it was reminiscent of Haggard? I’ll confirm that memory, but I think the writing is at a better level than Haggard ever reached. That does not mean that any bigotry is excused. Although there are some obvious bloopers from our current knowledge of reality. One example, is that Merritt mentions the concept that people only use about 10% of their brains, and I hadn’t realized that this particular fallacious idea was considered scientifically valid as early as 1932. The idea was probably older than that, but that was when this book was written. Some day I’ll spend the time to track down that crazy idea and see why scientists thought that was true. Something to look forward to.
Good reading!
kinda ugly on the eyes even seeing the words of that nonsensical old race theory
but thanks for recs everybody. lately i’ve been into old public domain stuff.
_lunchbreak_
@15, which read,
Yeah, and it’s ubiquitous in works written between 1900 and WWII. It shows up in SF from that period a lot more than anyone today would like because it was popularized as a scientific truth during that period. The reason it was seen as a scientific truth was the popularization of mendelian genetics by William Bateson in 1900. The popularization of mendelian genetics also was a severe simplification of it, and the public (and SF writers) didn’t recognize how many additional factors determined development. This was the period of strenuously argued debates on nature vs. nurture.
You will also find, during this period a lot of SF writers advancing recapitulation theory, which is that an embryo develops through stages representing earlier adult forms along their evolutionary path. This theory makes no sense, but was considered scientific at the time and was re-popularized with the discovery of Home Erectus in the 1890’s.
This all makes me wonder what popular scientific theories we currently believe in will be shown to be inaccurate in 50-100 years. But that’s no excuse to not take any action, we have do our best with the information at our disposal at the time.
Now, back to work.
i just remembered seeing it in flash gordon comics, in a big scholarly book about the history of comics. half a century after those comics came out, max von sydow was doing yellowface in space
flex @ #s 12 & 14 – I’m impressed by your assiduity (assiduousness?).
Good point about the limits of scientific understanding(s) then and now.
If you want to read something good in sf from 1920, consider (Project Gutenberg link) A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay. “Hard” sf rarely ages well; this isn’t, and does.
Okay, I’ve finished Dwellers in the Mirage.
The conceit of the novel is that a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, man of exceptional height and strength, and a gift for languages, visits the Gobi desert and an unusual cult informs him that he is the reincarnation of an ancient warrior. Later, he, along with his Native American friend are hiking in Alaska and discover a valley heated by volcanic vents. The hot air from the vents is heavy in CO2, and so forms a layer which from above looks like inhospitable stone, this is the mirage.
Our hero and companion go into the valley, are hunted by a woman who speaks to wolves, and manage to cross a river with giant man-eating slugs to join “The Little People”. The little people are apparently a separate race of humanoids which, while resembling mankind in most aspects, are only about three feet tall and their skin is a golden color. Out hero encounters a human woman, who escaped from humans across the river, the same ones who were hunting our hero. Of course, our hero falls in love and gets married. Implied sex follows. The woman is not an Arian type, but black-haired with brown eyes. She, like all heroines, does run to a bit of height however. The little people speak a different language, and do a lot of communication through drumming.
Our hero starts having weird memories, as if remembering being another person. The little people lead him back to the river to test the prophecy that the ancient hero will return. The mind which has been welling up inside our hero takes over, and our hero crosses the river to join the humans on the other side, forgetting that he was married. Our hero is seduced/seduces by the witch-woman who controls a pack of white wolves. Implied sex lasting several days. Next, our hero witnesses a ceremony where a dozen pregnant woman are dissolved by a creature summoned through an image on a stone face, and in fact the mind controlling our hero is the summoner. But our hero is betrayed by the high priest, who tries to get the tentacle beast to dissolve our hero as well. Our hero sends the high priest into the creature from beyond.
In fairly rapid succession, our hero launches an attack on a fortified city filled with people who fled the human sacrifices, is betrayed by his best general, watches his Native American comrade die (who is defending the city), comes to his senses, kills the general in a duel. Then interrupts the which-woman trying to sacrifice the women he married to the creature from beyond. Our hero reflects on the nature of the creature, and decides it’s not the god of death like the ancient cultists believed, but some sort of alien which can be summoned. Reflections on Einstein’s theories occur (albeit poorly). Our hero saves the girl, kills the witch, and shatters the portal while the creature from beyond is trying to get through, the usual hero stuff. He then stops all human sacrifice, frees the slaves, and negotiates lasting peace all in about two pages. Finally, our hero decides not to stay in the valley as a king, but climbs out of it with his new wife. Undoubtedly finding difficulties in explaining to any authorities how he walked into the Alaskan backwoods with a friend, and walked out of it with a woman who speaks debased Tibetan.
I’d say this yarn was more of a boy’s adventure novel, like Doc Savage, than hard SF. But it’s definitely not a fantasy. One detail which kept coming up all the time was that most of the warriors, and the rest of the population, of the human dwellers in the mirage were woman. The ratio was about 80% woman to 20% men. Talk about hitting the fantasy button for many young boys.
Science Fiction themes: Hypnotism, Post-hypnotic suggestion, properties of heat-bubbles to form mirages, world which time forgot, alternative ethnology, alternative human evolution (close cousins), reincarnation, Cthulhu mythos (stylistically), Einstein, multiple dimensions, and religious mysteries have scientific causes (i.e. there is no real supernatural).
Stereotypes and prejudices: Our hero is Aryan, but the big bads also turn out to be Aryan, so I think that may be a wash. Although the fact that the all the holders of major power, our hero and the antagonists, are Aryan does suggest a bias toward people of Aryan descent being more capable.
The attitude toward women is somewhat patronizing, but not too bad. Much of the interactions among all the players were about power. The cast was probably more than half-woman. But there was a strong unwritten undercurrent that suggested that our hero could have had sex with any of the women he meets, that they all fall in love with him, even if they know they will attempt to kill him later.
Our hero’s attitude toward other races suggest that he views them as equals, not that he is superior. Rather, he knows he is superior in physical strength and mental acuity, but he knows he is superior to other white men too. He’s an arrogant bastard, but not particularly bigoted.
I may have missed a few prejudices or stereotypes simply because of my own blinders.
Final thoughts:
It’s a pot-boiler, but I’m glad to have re-acquainted myself with it. I’ve certainly read much worse.
flex @ # 20 – Thanks for the review – and for (at least in part) disproving those allegations from whomever back when!
I’ve now finished The Fox Woman & Other Stories.
I was actually more interested in these as short stories have a different structure than novels, can be more difficult to write, and are often more revealing of the author’s prejudices. In this case there was also a seperation of many years between the stories, with some written just after WWI (1917 and 1919) and some written twenty years later in 1934. The title piece, The Fox Woman was written just before Merritt’s death. So the stories should show a certain developmental progression.
However, with the exception that Merritt tends to keep his female subjects scantily clad, I didn’t find much prejudice/bigotry. In fact, a surprisingly little amount. Less then his contemporary authors. This could be related to the subject matter, Merritt is dealing with supernatural or mythological subjects, so there is less opportunity for common bigotry to be expressed. There is only one story which is of, in my opinion, real literary merit: The Women of the Wood. This short story, written in 1934, concerns a man seduced by dryads to murder three other men who were plotting on cutting down the woods the dryads lived in.
Since I’ve been reading Merritt, I’ve done a little research about him as well. There is apparently a biography of him, which I haven’t read and do not have enough desire to do so to seek it out. However, other reviewers state that he is known for his purple prose, and supernaturalism. He was apparently an influence on Lovecraft, which I can see. But in my opinion he isn’t not as florid as the reviewers make him out to be. He isn’t another Bulwer-Lytton, who is famous for starting a novel with the phrase, “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Interestingly enough, in the readily available on-line information about Merritt there is little about his family and background. But the “A” in A. Merritt does stand for Abraham. Which leads me to an interesting speculation. But to explain the speculation I must needs reveal a little personal family history.
When my grandfather was around nine years old, his mother gave birth to another son. Now my great-grandfather was Jewish, while my great-grandmother was Episcopalian. When my uncle, once-removed, was born, my great-grandfather named him Abraham. Three days later my great-grandmother changed his name to Arthur. My great uncle was too young to notice, he was only a few days old, but my grandfather did. When asked why, my great-grandmother indicated that a Jewish name would make it harder for his brother to succeed. So, without discussing it with my great-grandfather, she changed his name to a non-Jewish one, solely to avoid the prejudice and bigotry against Jews at the time. This was about the time of WWI. The fallout from that decision to rename his brother, even from the best of motives, convinced my grandfather that religion was a human construct and there was no deity, and he never called his bother Arthur, but always referred to him as “The Duke” (where the nickname came from the family stories do not say). Because of this seemingly minor action by my great-grandmother, I am a third-generation atheist.
So, here is the speculation. Abraham Merritt may have been of Jewish cultural descent. There is some evidence that Christian families avoided giving their children names which would be seen as Jewish (see my own family stories), and Merritt did not use his full name as an author, but abbreviated it into “A. Merritt”. It is clear from his writings and from what little is known about the other parts of his life (he was actually quite successful in the publishing business and was a very wealthy man when he died), that he was an atheist. But his cultural background may well have been Jewish.
To counter that, there is clear evidence from his writings that his favorite protagonist was a Arian type, usually from the Scandinavian countries. That may have led to accusations that he was anti-Semitic. But what I haven’t found in what I’ve read thus far are any obvious or subtle stereotypes or bigotry against Jewish people or Black people. Which, considering when he was writing, is actually somewhat unusual. I have noticed a few Oriental stereotypes in his work, both positive (ancient knowledge from the east), and negative (immoral slit-eyed bandits). But when looking for bigotry, to find so little in literature from the pulp era was kind of surprising.
As far as the charge that Merritt’s work is unreadable because of the extensive purple prose is concerned, I admit I’m not a good judge. I am not a fan of Hemmingway, or the school which says the best literature is the most concise. You do not read The Golden Journey to Samarkand for crisp details on the amount of road traffic, you read it for the scenes and emotions it invokes (and yet, that is poem which calls Jews worthless dogs). I would not rank Merritt as an author everyone should be familiar with, as I do with Borges, Eco, Saki, and Austen, but I’d put him at the same level as E.E. “Doc” Smith, Chalker, Wells, Verne, and Christie.
I tried to keep this comment shorter, but I see that I failed. I’ll read and comment on The Face in the Abyss next. The 1978 Avon paperback I have of this work has a picture of a lamia on the front, so it’s bound to be good. 😉
sweet cracky christ, thou art a literate sunuvagun. outta curiosity, was this part of your education and/or profession, or just an abiding interest? edit to add: this is all quite interesting, whether i have time to say much about it or not.
and i forgot to say to jazzlet specifically, that’s nice to know there are romances about LTRs, aww.
It’s nothing special, my primary hobby and the activity which gives me the most pleasure is reading. After doing this for fifty years, it turns out that I’ve read a lot of books. I once averaged about 200 books a year, but since my marriage ten years ago its been closer to 180. I usually am reading 3-5 books at a time, so throwing a book into the rotation isn’t difficult. The slowing down since may marriage has it’s compensations though, as my wife also introduced me to Octavia Butler and a number of other great authors I’d never read before. I’ll never run out of things to read.
But I’m glad you find it interesting, because more people should read Saki.
flex,
I think I have the entire works of Saki, I haven’t reread in years, but I think I would still rate him highly. I must try and work out where I’ve put the books so I can do a reread.
As FTB was down for a couple days I haven’t posted my review of the last A. Merritt book on my shelf. But as I suspect most people have gotten tired of reading these reviews, I’ll keep it short.
The Face in the Abyss is much closer to Burroughs’ Pellucidar series. In this story a mining engineer discovers a lost world in the Andes, complete with ancient Atlantean (called Yu-Atlanchi) snake people who co-existed with the dinosaurs. (Which are still around and used as mounts.) The ancient snake people lived in Antarctica, and with their advanced technology created a superior race of humans, as well as lizardmen and spider people. Our hero bounces between the good snake mother’s faction and the disembodied sprit of ultimate evil (who wants to possess him for his body), like a ping-pong ball. This confused me until I read about the book in Wikipedia and found that the last half was written as a serial. E-yup, every chapter ends on a cliff-hanger. The snake mother finally defeats the hideous evil through the use of rays! The green rays destroy people, the purple rays destroy lizardmen, or something like that.
There is significantly more misogyny, in the sense that women are weak things, objects to be owned, than in the other works. No evident anti-Semitism, but a little of what we would call racism by modern standards. Very little for the time, however. Recapitulation theory makes an appearance. This was written prior to the theory of continental drift being accepted (looking it up, it appears Alfred Wegener used the term ‘continental drift’ first in 1915, only a few years before this story was written.), so the move to the Andes was explained being caused by Antarctica freezing over. There are some hints of psychic powers, and there is a little moralizing about modern humanity needs to stop building advanced machines until they have also spent time advancing their minds. That passage was somewhat ambiguous; by today’s standards we would say it was about morality, but I suspect it was more about psychic powers. I may be misinterpreting it though. Modern humanity does compare favorably to the created superior humans, in everything other than beauty. This may be a callback to Wells. Interestingly, the superior human inhabitants do not age (but they can be killed), but the snake people who granted them unending youth took away their ability to have children to avoid overpopulation. One of the plot points is that some of the superior humans want to change this, that having children is worth getting old and dying of old age.
In comparison to the other novel and the book of short stories, I think this is much more of a traditional early SF adventure story, along the lines of Burroughs and “Doc” Smith.
If you want a really good sendup of early SF, try Harry Harrison’s Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Harrison doesn’t just stop at the pulps, as the book progresses it also passes through all the stages of SF from the pulps to the new wave SF of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. You get anti-commie SF, you get military SF, you get beatnik SF, you get hallucinogenic SF, and you get free-love SF. It’s a great romp, if you know what Harrison is doing. If you don’t get that Harrison is shattering the fourth wall, then it’s a very disjointed read. Just about as frustrating as Gene Wolfe’s Castleview if you don’t figure out what Wolfe is doing.
Tails up!
fantastic, tho. you turned my comment section into a useful resource here, thanks.