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A new moralism is gripping the literary world

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Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#171

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

Pxtl wrote: post #66

I hate this kind of anti-woke reactionary stuff. ... but for aspiring writers, there is a problem. On the one hand, writers should write what they know. They shouldn't try to assume they know some minority's lived experiences. On the other hand, literature should be inclusive. That means including minorities, and not just as peripheral characters. We don't need more My Magical Gay Friend stories. I haven't heard a go…

I wouldn’t be surprised if Le Guin is tolerated because so many people assume, on the basis of other female authors from mid-century who wrote similar gender-questioning books, that Le Guin was a lesbian. As both a woman and a member of the LGBT community, she would therefore represent intersectionality, and in the current climate much can be forgiven such a person. (In actual fact, Le Guin was happily married to a man for decades, it just doesn’t get talked about that much because her career flourished independently of him.)

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#172

Post by zepto »

FrancizHam wrote: post #168

I always notice that when someone is upset about 'moralism' and 'cancel culture' against a text, they rarely engage with the actual criticism against said text. Has anyone actually looked at the drawings in Dr. Seuss' books? His political cartoons? Has anyone actually read American Dirt? I agree that we shouldn't be outright censoring books, but that hasn't happened yet. You can still read JK Rowling, you can still f…

> you can still find the six discontinued Dr. Seuss books quite easily

Can you? Even used copies are now banned even on eBay. Where do you ‘easily’ find them?

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#173

Post by xenocratus »

Pxtl wrote: post #66

I hate this kind of anti-woke reactionary stuff. ... but for aspiring writers, there is a problem. On the one hand, writers should write what they know. They shouldn't try to assume they know some minority's lived experiences. On the other hand, literature should be inclusive. That means including minorities, and not just as peripheral characters. We don't need more My Magical Gay Friend stories. I haven't heard a go…

> On the one hand, writers should write what they know. They shouldn't try to assume they know some minority's lived experiences.

To be a bit cynical, here's a quote from Goethe:

> No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else

Just because you're the same ethnicity/gender/whatever as someone else, does it mean you're "entitled" to claim you understand them? Or is it just some assumption that you can only write from experience and everything else should be disregarded?

Many great works of literature contain a large breadth of characters coming from different environments, classes, genders etc. - should they be discounted automatically because the author could not have been "authentic" when writing them?

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#174

Post by acdha »

zepto wrote: post #172
FrancizHam wrote: post #168

I always notice that when someone is upset about 'moralism' and 'cancel culture' against a text, they rarely engage with the actual criticism against said text. Has anyone actually looked at the drawings in Dr. Seuss' books? His political cartoons? Has anyone actually read American Dirt? I agree that we shouldn't be outright censoring books, but that hasn't happened yet. You can still read JK Rowling, you can still f…

> you can still find the six discontinued Dr. Seuss books quite easily Can you? Even used copies are now banned even on eBay. Where do you ‘easily’ find them?

Scans are widely available online, which is what most people have been using to discuss the works.

It also turns out that used bookstores still exist and that eBay is not the only site on the internet where you can buy things.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#175

Post by Aunche »

meanjeans wrote: post #24

I think the author here misrepresented the JK Rowling thing quite a bit. The idea is not to "scour" her texts for hidden anti-trans sentiment. The idea is that Rowling makes money off of selling her books and has built an empire, and the resultant power is now used by her as a platform to propagate anti-trans speech. Quite a different issue and also quite novel (pun unintended). Death of the Author is a concurrently…

I think that society has become so complicated that people have become detached with reality and started inventing useless solutions to rather minor problems. Now, if you so much as touch something that is problematic, you automatically become problematic, and the solution for this is just to complain about it as loudly as possible.

Correct or not, JK Rowling's thoughts about femininity are likely shared by the vast majority of the world. Exaggerating her beliefs by calling her transphobic and radical isn't going to progress trans rights in any way.

Note that this attitude is entirely monopolized by "woke culture." It happens in other spaces as well (e.g. encouragement to name and shame a company you had a bad interviewing experience with).

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#176

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

leephillips wrote: post #164
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the OP meant choosing (or being forced) to eschew mainstream publishers when publishing one’s book. Lolita and Ulysses both had to be put out by small presses in Paris where there was no censorship, though indeed this isn’t quite self-publishing because there was a publisher who took on the risk.

Letting a small publisher that was not your first choice publish your book isn’t just not “quite” self-publishing, it has nothing to do with self-publishing.

In practice, the concepts overlap more than you seem willing to admit, especially today. As a literary translator, I see this often: authors have a book they want to get out in a foreign language, but a mainstream publisher won’t touch it (due to the belief it won’t sell enough), so instead the author has to turn to a small press specializing in that kind of literature.

But here’s the thing: many of those small presses also double as vanity presses. Some of the manuscripts they publish they think are deserving literature and they take on the risk, but for other books they put out they simply accept the manuscript because the author is willing to pay them a few thousand euro (and in internal discussions with me as the translator, the publisher’s staff even admit that the book is author-funded crap). The ordinary consumer actually has no way of knowing which of the small press's books were published on literary merit, and which ones are vanity press. Also, due to the pressure on small presses to cut costs, both merit-published and vanity-press titles get the same lax proofreading and editing and poor typesetting.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#177

Post by andrewzah »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #83
scarecrowbob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been reading Alice Miller's book "For Your Own Good" this last week. Big chunks of her book excerpt "Mein Kampf", which I previous hadn't read at all. I have very little problem reading Hitler's text through my own critical lens, without adopting the authors intent. I have a very different view on the world than Hitler, and I have no problem at all saying that my views are less pathological than his and further,…

Actually my point is a tautological fallacy. You can never know what the author intended when writing. And every reader has a different subjective experience of a piece of literature or a work of art. So it's actually fucking impossible to even judge a work of art or writing based on the authors or readers perspective or in any thing beyond the aesthetic. Because what you think about something may not be what someone…

Everyone thinks that they're right (or on the right side of history, as it were). Things like book burning only become an issue when someone that they don't agree with is doing it.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#178

Post by FrancizHam »

zepto wrote: post #172
FrancizHam wrote: post #168

I always notice that when someone is upset about 'moralism' and 'cancel culture' against a text, they rarely engage with the actual criticism against said text. Has anyone actually looked at the drawings in Dr. Seuss' books? His political cartoons? Has anyone actually read American Dirt? I agree that we shouldn't be outright censoring books, but that hasn't happened yet. You can still read JK Rowling, you can still f…

> you can still find the six discontinued Dr. Seuss books quite easily Can you? Even used copies are now banned even on eBay. Where do you ‘easily’ find them?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nsXxt59szI

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#179

Post by potta_coffee »

shoemakersteve wrote: post #136
blub wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credibly accused is not a thing. You're either guilty or not guilty and he hasn't been found guilty.

Yes, the world is black and white. Definitely no grey areas in the legal system. Certainly no guilty people get off on technicalities.

We live in an imperfect world and justice is imperfectly applied, but for all of us to have a shot at being treated fairly when it's our turn to sit in front of a jury, it's pretty important that we let the system do it's job.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#180

Post by andrewzah »

hn8788 wrote: post #145
undefined1 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's like if Spotify suddenly started recommending Christian Rock.

Spotify is doing stuff like that. I kept getting a bunch of podcast recommendations for things like "stop asian hate" and "navigating the workplace as a person of color". Over the summer I was getting recommendations for albums and songs called "Black Lives Matter" by no name artists. I ended up cancelling my subscription and switching to amazon music because the amount of space used to push woke political podcasts a…

Is it that, or are people suddenly becoming aware of these specific podcasts/groups due to current events? Which is more likely: spotify pushing specific agendas, or spotify employing a recommendation engine that recommends things that see a surge in listening activity?

Regarding your example of "stop asian hate"- the asian instagram community has been talking about it a lot in wake of current events. It is entirely unsurprising that people would be checking it out after being previously unaware.

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