(no subject)

[skygiants]

Back when I was writing up Half of a Yellow Sun a little while back, I happened to stumble over this course syllabus from a class at Brandeis a few years ago on Writing Twenty-First Century Revolutions.

And I happen to be writing . . . a thing . . . that involves revolutions . . . which I would like to have a nuanced and not necessarily nineteenth-century view on . . . and also, I am having a strange nostalgia for English classes . . .

So, in short, my brain appears to have decided I need to read that syllabus. THE WHOLE THING.

Uh, slowly, and in between reading stuff for my thesis, and reading stuff for classes, and reading stuff that gives me the necessary brain break from reading stuff for my thesis and classes, which basically means that so far I have read one, which is Jack London's The Iron Heel.

I was actually really excited for this! Wikipedia bragged about it, all "Jack London wrote a first-person lady protagonist! Turn-of-the-century dudes NEVER did that!"

Unfortunately, the book has its priorities all wrong, so 75% of it looks like this:

OUR HEROINE AVIS EVERHARD: So let me tell you about my super-dreamy socialist husband!

(AVIS' SUPER-DREAMY SOCIALIST HUSBAND-TO-BE: Avis, you're hot and all, but FYI, the dresses you own are STAINED WITH THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT.
OUR HEROINE AVIS EVERHARD: Wow, what a dreamboat!)

OUR HEROINE AVIS EVERHARD: Oh, how he opened my eyes to oppression! And everybody else's eyes, too!

(AVIS' SUPER-DREAMY SOCIALIST HUSBAND: And then I took the kindly bishop on a tour of misery until he decided to throw away everything he owned in order to lecture people about helping the poor! Ha, all his efforts are so useless and doomed and are going to lead to SUCH a tragic mental breakdown.
OUR HEROINE AVIS EVERHARD: So why are you not encouraging him to do something more productive instead . . .?
AVIS' SUPER-DREAMY SOCIALIST HUSBAND: It's a valuable life lesson! End-of-life lesson. Whatever.)

OUR HEROINE AVIS EVERHARD: Ha, and how he TROLLED those capitalists, it was a joy to watch!

(AVIS' AMAZING HOT SOCIALIST HUSBAND-TO-BE: Hey capitalists, just fyi, we're coming to murder you all in our beds.
CAPITALISTS: . . . . well, I guess it's coming about time to active Operation Oppressive Oligarchy! Thanks for the heads-up, dude.)

Then, like, 60% of the way through the book, after you've been listening to Avis extol the virtues of her super dreamy husband for SO MANY pages, Operation Oppressive Oligarchy finally takes over! And then 75% of the way through the book Avis is like "ALL RIGHT IT IS TIME FOR ME TO BECOME A MASTER SPY. Oh, and meanwhile let me tell you about my buddy Anna Roylston, who broke the heart of EVERY BOY, and also assassinated some of them, and shot one of the leading figures of the government when she was sixty-nine, and died happily in her bed at the age of ninety-one!"

And just when you're starting to tentatively think "HELL YEAH" it's time for an ill-advised plebe revolt, and everything gets really depressing and classist (because in dystopia-land there are oligarchs, and enlightened socialists who are working secretly to free everyone, and then sad uneducated plebes who don't know any better than to rampage mindlessly) . . .

. . . and then suddenly the book ends literally mid-sentence, and you're left sort of sadly thinking "but why was I not reading The Adventures of Avis Everhard and Anna Roylston FROM THE BEGINNING?"

Comments

[ceitfianna]

Well, that sounds disappointing, clearly there needs to be fixit fanfiction of those awesome ladies.

Oh and A Cluster of Separate Sparks is weirdly reminding me of Dick Francis' mysteries because they tend to have plots with lots of forward momentum. The only problem is I keep looking at the plot and the main character and going, why are you still alive and I don't like you? Joan Aiken is one of those authors that always leaves me headtilting and wondering how she's going to pull it off.

[skygiants]

I was considering a Yuletide request! But I think I have things I care more about to ask for Yuletide.

Haha, but I LOVE the heroine of A Cluster of Separate Sparks! She is the only literary character in all of ever who spends her time asking "What would Esther Summerhouse do?"

[ceitfianna]

In reading so far, I go between going liking her take on the world and wondering how is she still alive? She's this odd mixture of being cautious and going, I shouldn't do this and then does kind of stupid stuff while being really lucky or unlucky. I also read the first sixty or so pages in one go before bed, which provides a weird impression.

[thistleingrey]

Oh no, Jack London. Sometimes he writes nifty stories, but I have noticed that those tend not to involve women much. (I don't care about the big books--there's a couple of good stories in the somewhat mistitled The Science Fiction of Jack London, IIRC.)

Also, you undertake great reading projects, and I look forward to additional posts if you write them. :)

[skygiants]

I actually somehow managed to skip Jack London almost entirely in my childhood -- no Wilderness Dog books or anything. So I wasn't entirely sure what to expect!

And hah, there will be! Someday, but there will be. :D

[elsane]

That sounds like the most awesome class. Except I don't think I could take a whole semester reading books like this.

(My reading list got abruptly shorter when I decided life was just too short to read books by men who don't think women are people.)

[metaphortunate]

Right? Your reading list gets shorter, but your life gets better.

Also, conveniently, you don't have to miss any of the good or important ideas that are unfortunately buried in those books you're choosing not to read, because PEOPLE NEVER STOP TELLING YOU ABOUT THEM.

[skygiants]

I'm not gonna lie, I'm really sort of marking time through the early stuff until I can get to the "choices for final presentation" section, because that's where all the coolest stuff seems to be! But perhaps Lawrence and Bowles will surprise me, and I guess it's not actually a bad thing to finally read For Whom the Bell Tolls, if only to have a proper opinion on Hemingway beyond a seventh-grade side-eyeing of The Old Man and the Sea and Hills Like White Elephants.

(Life IS too short for that. Life is really too short to read . . . a lot of things that I grimly read anyway, honestly. Dammit, completionist urges!)

[cyphomandra]

I was actually really excited for this! Wikipedia bragged about it, all "Jack London wrote a first-person lady protagonist! Turn-of-the-century dudes NEVER did that!"

Disgruntled Dickens fan would like to point out to whoever edited Wiki that Dickens did this over fifty years earlier in Bleak House (admittedly alternating with third person omniscient, and his only female narrator, but still). Ahem.

I really liked Jack London's People of the Abyss, where he disguises himself as an American sailor and goes undercover in the East End of London, where the average lifespan at the time was about 30, and it's a very impressively angry book that is particularly good about all those annoying people who tell the poor how to better manage their inadequate amounts of money. I read it when I was trying to write Connie Willis fanfic for Yuletide, though, and it had a terrible effect on my tone. I kept having to go back and cut all the polemic out of my time-travelling rom-com.

Does Avis'SUPER-DREAMY SOCIALIST HUSBAND get crushed by the boot of a CAPITALIST OLIGARCH? I feel that this could partially make up for the lack of female revolutionary bonding experiences.

[skygiants]

YES HE DID. And I love Bleak House! And there are bits where Dickens gets a lady POV exactly right -- like, he had the Nice Guy SPOT ON, it's eerie -- even if there are times where he also gets it exactly wrong.

Yeah, I'm kind of curious about People of the Abyss now; my understanding is that he drew on that experience heavily to write this book (and Avis just straight-up calls the emerging slave underclass the people of the abyss.) Aheh, though I can see how that would not necessarily suit the Connie Willis . . .

He does, but we don't get to SEE it! Like, we're told it happens at the beginning, and I spent ALL BOOK waiting for him to get dramatically shot, and then the narrative (it's a 'found narrative' conceit with someone adding footnotes from six hundred years on) ends without us getting to see any of the crushing, and the footnote-er adds another sad footnote that Mr. Everhard's execution is a MYSTERY and it's a shame it will never be cleared up.

[qian]

Jack London, you have the worst priorities :O

What is the last sentence?

[skygiants]

"The magnitude of the task may be understood when it is taken into -" says Avis, and then a six-hundred-centuries-on interlocutor adds a sad footnote to the effect that it is a shame she didn't have time to complete. It seriously looks like that trick that people do when they want extra time to finish an essay, so they write a bogus half last sentence and then leave a ripped-off corner of a page after that and claim the last couple pages must have got lost. Like, I imagine Jack London just getting bored of writing the book and dropping it off at his agent's all "Here you go! Don't worry about the lack of ending, it's part of the CONCEIT!"

[luzula]

Um, yeah, I tried to read that a while ago (or rather, listen to it) and shut off my mp3-player in frustration before I got very far. It's a pity, because it sounded from the summary like it could really have some potential. : (

[skygiants]

Right?! Like, the second half is better than the first half, and I understand that Jack London had a lot of feelings about socialism he wanted to talk out and all, but . . . that is what essays are for!

[batyatoon]

It sounds to me like he may have a first-person lady narrator, but ... possibly not necessarily the protagonist of the story she's narrating?

[skygiants]

Towards the last third of the book she is! BUT ONLY TOWARDS THE LAST THIRD. I just want to travel back in time and give Jack London a gentle suggestion that, you know, maybe he should have started there instead of ending there . . .?