#there's a bit about literary censorship

[kerryweaverlesbian]

Allegedly. According to my cursory research. There was an alleyway in London called Holywell street in the mid 1800s which had. Allegedly. 27 pornography shops. And one Lord was so pissed off with convicting this one guy so many times (the guy was dubbed "the ogre of holywell street") that the street and the ogre sparked off the creation of The Obscenity Act. And I found a newspaper article from a year later of someone going to Holywell street and they said the Act hadn't done anything and in fact even MORE shops featured erotic art and books now bc (the article posits, author information unavailable) the law wasn't very clearly defined so people were like oh okay so if my INTENT isn't to be corrupting then it's okay? Cool!

The law was eventually clarified in a case where the appropriately named Lord Cockburn stated that all published materials (for profit or not) must be appropriate. For a man to read out to his family. Which is a wild thing to expect. But this was the case until around 1960.

[your--isgayrights]

Hi idk if anyone has asked this before but do you think there are thematic implications to Sangah liking works from Murakami Haruki, Raymond Carver, Han Kang.

Yeah, I'm not super familiar with all of the authors myself but I did some basic research while writing Wall fic so I have an opinion about this. First of all, the internationality of these picks shows YSA is well read, but this different kind of well read than KDJ. Her interest in international literature is somewhat connected to her backstory of being from a richer family that wanted to marry her off in my mind bc international language education is somewhat status/wealth associated in modern South Korea. Second of all the kinds of authors she picks out are the type who write singular, artistic works that tend to start from a point of realism and make a comment about the characters' navigation of Society. So the type of reading she's doing isn't sitting down and obsessively following a 3000 chapter webnovel that can only exist through the conglomeration of niche trope after niche trope to be completely understood. I see her as a girlie who like. Will check the new York times best seller list and just buy or check out a new book to read if she hears good things. So this authors of singular works and short stories being her favorite shows she doesn't really follow extensive Series, she's not the type who needs constant updates to keep on living lol. She's the type who occasionally read novels for literature classes which graduated to occasionally reading novels in her free time. Not saying that she reads popular novels just to seem cultured like mister 'art of war on my desk' but I think she is someone who can see opening a book like stumbling upon a television program that just happens to be on you know it's not a major time commitment or something that will rewire her brain and then she'll have thoughts about language use and literary opinions you know.

Then the one author I'm more familiar with is Han Kang and I actually didn't remember her being listed by YSA but you're probably right and I just forgot bc I know Han Kang from reading the Vegetarian more than I know her from being referenced in ORV I guess lol. Han Kang is a popular modern author in South Korea who has both been somewhat of an icon for feminism (I think?) And is definitely a representative of the Trauma literature movement. She grew up in Gwangju and lived through the aftermath of the Gwangju uprising (the people suffered violent oppression and censorship under leadership at the time) and in an interview she once described herself as someone who writes to ask questions instead of answer them. The Vegetarian is an example of a work of hers that starts off very ingrained in reality and slowly becomes surreal in a way that could still exist in the real world but could be interpreted as containing fantasy elements. I think it's interesting to me to draw parallels to YSA here bc the vegetarian is a story about a traumatized woman being controlled and used by other people. Spoilers for the vegetarian I guess but the main character decides to be vegetarian one day without a 'societally acceptable' reason and this 'embarrasses' the people around her so much that they try to force her to change. After she is abused by her husband, father, and brother in law, this experience is held parallel to something she experienced as a child, when she was friends with a small dog and then the dog bit her. Local folk medicine said killing and eating the dog was the only way to cure sickness from a dog bite and she felt no remorse as everyone agreed the dog must be eaten. Forgetting 'the natural order' revokes the rights of personhood or humanity, when the main character of the Vegetarian descends into a psychosis trying to escape participating in the violence of the world around her by 'becoming a plant,' it's shown at the end how even her own sister struggles to see her as a person who can still be spoken with or make her own decisions. So yeah it's pretty fucked up and I have some more specific opinions on it ( like I've written essays about it) but as it relates to YSA the Vegetarian is very much about the POV of outsiders following another person's struggles which I find a very interesting in parallel to YSA leafing through KDJ's memories as his wall librarian. I also think her familiarity with trauma literature as a genre may be off-putting to KDJ specifically because these realistic type stories with a bit of fiction are quite similar in genre to the book his own mother wrote, in fact I find it extremely likely that in the world of ORV YSA read LSK's book somewhere before. I think they're also not the kind of books that get overly silly/ have a 'happy ending' by convention, which is interesting to me bc I see passivity vs agency as an important theme concerning YSA's arc throughout the story and whether or not she has an ability to create a happy ending or not is interesting. Like the little 'you knew??' moment in the epilogues is very important bc YSA and KDJ come from this same 'real world' and because of that neither of them really expected a Happy Ending you know. I like that YSA goes through the journey of beginning to Believe in it before KDJ comes back bc you know it shows that perspective can be changed before we even get to him it's really good.

[psalm22-6]

The difficulty of disliking Les Misérables when the year is 1862 and all your friends are fans

In this post, I want to explore a particular dimension to the politics involved in reviewing Les Misérables in 1862, through the writings of Horace de Lagardie. “Horace de Lagardie,” according to the 1884 book Les Pseudonymes du jour, was the pen name of one Madame de Peyronnet. Although there is some confusion over her identity (see here), I am fairly certain that the woman in question is Georgina Frances de Peyronnet (née Whitfield), a British journalist who lived and worked in France. Her father owned a slave plantation in the West Indies and she married a French count of little importance (it is believed that she was the author of the translations published under his name). She wrote a column called the Revue du Mois in Charpentier’s Revue nationale et étrangère. She also published a collection of those articles under the title Causeries parisiennes (Parisienne chit-chat). Lagardie disliked Les Misérables for a number of stylistic and ideological reasons that I won’t get into here (believe me, it would be a long list) but her articles also offer commentary on the constraints she felt on her ability to voice that dislike. In her first article about Fantine, she writes:

The arrival of the two volumes forming the first part of Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Misérables, has proved a useful diversion. All other subjects of conversation pale before this work, around which a unanimous chorus of praise is raised. Today he who would permit himself to utter the most minor discordant note would be very poorly received and the voice of criticism, even in the most respectful form, is rarely heard. To tell the truth, the passionate admiration that is being produced is a bit astounding to the observer who only sees this book as a literary work. It is difficult to understand how people who didn’t admire Notre Dame de Paris or le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné are so enthusiastic about a work that is similar to them in so many ways, both in its beauty and its faults. This cannot be explained either by admiration for its author or by sympathy for his social theories and it is evident that one must take into account the pedestal of exile from which Victor Hugo has not yet descended.

There’s so much to talk about in just that paragraph! First, there’s her assertation that there was a “unanimous chorus of praise” surrounding Les Mis. Despite the fact that there were negative reviews within three days of the publication of Les Misérables, Hugo’s (successful) advertising strategy (which consisted of asking friendly papers to publish praise alongside excerpts of the book) led to the accusation/impression that there was only praise for the book and that those papers were promoting Les Misérables not in support of the book (as a literary or philosophical work) but in opposition to Napoleon III. (This claim had some merit but the full extent to which it is true is not the subject of this post.)  The reference to Hugo’s exile was another common talking point in the same vein. The reason one might praise Les Mis to express one's dislike of Napoleon III is simply because it was not permitted to criticize Napoleon III in a newspaper. To evade censorship, praising Hugo would signal one’s political sympathies. Lagardie notes how adept journalists had become in this form of evasion:

It is certain that the art of saying without speaking and the use of innuendo have made great progress in France, and it is no longer with clarity that the French mind shines today.

Besides those who wrote disingenuous positive reviews of Les Misérables, there was a sizeable contingent of people who opted to say nothing at all rather than criticize Hugo. But only a few journalists who (ostensibly) shared (some) of Hugo's political views, Lagardie among them, opted to criticize his newest work. Lagardie observed that:

As soon as the work was published, and following the publishers' preliminary advertisements, we saw first articles by friends who praised universally and en bloc; then came the real critics, then finally the detractors, personal enemies or intolerant adversaries.

But Lagardie positions herself as none of the above, stating: “I think the time has come to state my opinion [on the first volume]. I think it's essentially the opinion of many people who are not as well placed as I am to express it frankly.” Although I agree with basically nothing she has to say about the contents of the book, it is interesting to note that she was one of the few women positioned to have her opinion published. Maybe her relative anonymity is what gave her the freedom to express her dissent? (Side note: it’s possible that Hugo read Lagardie’s review of Fantine. Lacroix definitely did and mentions it to Hugo among a list of negative reviews. “So much the better!” he wrote. “A controversy around Les Misérables is excellent. It's the consecration of success and proof of the work's strength.”) In Lagardie’s review of Cosette and Marius (released simultaneously a month after Fantine), she wonders whether she should continue to publish her negative review since there are so many positive reviews from the journalists in her sphere:

I am beset by doubt over my own competence. Can I be correct, opposed as I am to so many people, especially journalists, and to the author himself; and will I be permitted to judge by the ordinary rules of good taste and good sense a work which, according to general consensus, should be placed above common law? Evidently, I have a different tuning fork than the other critics–at least different than the one they use to tune their writing.

Lagardie asserts that there is a gap between what critics are writing and what they are saying privately (which we know to be true to an extent).

When the public isn't there and the doors are closed, more than a few change their tune, and are more in unison than you might think with "the one who writes these lines," to borrow a favorite expression of the author of Les Misérables.

I've noticed this somewhat contradictory claim in quite a few reviews: that Hugo was buoyed by misguided supporters who made dissenters afraid to voice their opinions, but also that Hugo actually had no supporters at all. Lagardie notes Hugo’s strategy of courting positive reviews. He wrote letters of thanks to the authors of almost all the positive reviews (and this wasn’t new. There were already jokes about how he did this before the publication of Les Misérables). Specifically, she criticizes how in these letters of thanks Hugo encourages the recipients to support political reform.  She cites this letter from Hugo to the publisher of Le Théâtre, Anatole Cerfberr:

With auxiliaries such as yourself, the work I have undertaken will succeed: the recasting of the old world in the mold of the new; the purification of the reality in the crucible of the ideal.

(Note: I assume that Cerfberr, one of Hugo's most enthusiastic supporters, published this letter in Le Théâtre but there is no online archive of that paper, much to my disappointment so I can’t verify this. However, Hugo did use the phrase “with auxiliaries such as yourself” and expressed similar sentiments in several of these letters of thanks.) Lagardie wonders how Les Misérables could achieve the goal outlined in that letter:

As a plan, that’s not so bad; but as a call to action? Here is what I found by randomly opening the latest volumes: “This book is a drama whose main character is the Infinite. Man is the second.” How is it that I didn’t understand all that? Must I accept the explanation I received the other day from a devotee? “You don't understand it,” he told me, “because you don’t like it.”

In the case of Lagardie, based on her reviews, I think she probably did understand the book, it was just more radical than she would agree with. To this point, we can look at her commentary on the banquet held in Bruxelles in September 1862 to celebrate the success of Les Misérables. About 80 journalists (not all of them French) traveled to Belgium for the occasion.

Without a doubt many people will agree with me that the success of Les Misérable is no reason for Europe to rejoice; but we understand that, in spite of Les Misérables, they wanted to pay homage to a writer who has engaged two generations of enthusiastic readers, and we are saddened by the thought that they had to cross the border in order to do so. [emphasis original] 

Ouch. At the banquet, Hugo gave a speech in which he claimed that it was the role of the free press to bring down the old society and remake it. Lagardie argues that there are things worth preserving in society, essentially showing that despite their shared dislike of Napoleon III, she had more conservative aims. But in summary, I think this series of reviews is interesting for the insight it gives us into the different political strategies that informed people's decision to review or not review Les Misérables. In another post, I will explore the review by Edmond Schérer, who had a similar approach to Lagardie. Thanks for reading!

Sources: Revue nationale et étrangère Causeries parisiennes Lacroix to Hugo, 4 May 1862 My research into the ID for H. de Lagardie

[script-a-world]

Hi, I'm struggling to worldbuild a dystopia since I normally write fantasy. I'm not sure what to include in worldbuilding. Could you help me by suggesting what you'd include in dystopia worldbuilding or link me a dystopia worldbuilding template?

sorry for the awkward phrasing!

Utuabzu: The first, and perhaps most important thing to keep in mind is that both dystopia and utopia are literary devices for critiquing current society. The most successful dystopias had something to say about the culture they were written in. 1984 was written during a period of high censorship, in WWII Britain, and couldn't be published for several years after it was finished because it was considered potentially upsetting to the USSR, which was at the time an ally of the UK. The Hunger Games was written in the 2000s as a critique of the vast amount of reality tv shows and the pointlessness of the Iraq War.

The spray of frankly forgettable YA dystopia novels written in the late 2000s-early 2010s were forgettable because while they had the aesthetic of dystopia, they didn't really have anything to say about our current world. They weren't based on anything other than 'hey, wouldn't it be messed up if-', which just doesn't stick in your head like a dystopia that takes something in our current society and follows it to its logical, awful extreme. The Handmaid's Tale works because it takes the rise of Christian Fundamentalism and its inbuilt misogyny to the logical extreme, and given current events in the US that really resonates.

You also need to consider practicalities. People can live their lives in awful situations. In every dictatorship, no matter how oppressive or dysfunctional, people were still living their lives. Oppressive régimes collapse when the citizenry is no longer able to live their lives. Specifically, when the people upholding the régime are no longer able to get by day-to-day. Revolutions, to paraphrase Victor Hugo, ultimately, are always about bread. Ideals like freedom and justice and equality are just a nice bonus.

If you want your characters to be opposed to the system, you need to ask yourself why they're against it. People don't set themselves against an all-consuming society just for fun. Not really. They might play at being a rebel if there's little real consequence, but if there's serious consequences then most people will keep quiet until the system starts failing.

Common reasons for turning against the system could be falling through the cracks and seeing the hypocrisy of the ruling ideology, being the victim of the injustices of the system, having something to gain from the régime's fall. Or they could be part of an underclass that doesn't benefit from the system in any real way but is too beaten down to resist, in which case you need to ask what made this character's life under the system unbearable, when the rest of their group's life is terrible but bearable enough.

So, my checklist would be:

What is the dystopia critiquing? What does it want to say?

How does this work in practice? What do the people upholding the system gain from this? How is the system being upheld? Why are people putting up with this?

What are the system's flaws? What hypocrisies are in the underlying ideology? Why are most people not noticing them?

Why are characters against the system? What made them turn against it?

Is the dystopia going to collapse or endure? If it's going to fail, why and how? If it's going to endure, why and how?

Tex: To compare and contrast genres a bit, let’s look at J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth series (1930s to 1960s, ish) and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia (1940s to 1950s). These are major establishments for the modern interpretation of the fantasy genre, but also contained many dystopic elements as a part of their narrative.

Dystopia in Tolkien’s works was featured as the aftermath of terrible tragedy, and the people who lived in the times following it - the falling of great cities and civilizations brought a downfall of peace, economic stability, and certainty in the future. There are as many characters that lived in the times transitioning period that an apocalypse incurs as those who have never known the heights their world had reached in terms of prosperity.

Dystopia in Lewis’ works was used as a parallel - the main characters are children that came from a London in the middle of war and the accompanying poverty and existential fear, where the fantastical world of Narnia occupies a narrative place of distance that allows the characters to see a world equally as devastated but whose devastation occurred, comparatively, in the far past. The trauma that the characters have from living in a dystopia allows them the skills needed to navigate the fantasy world and bring about several critical plot points that allow the story to progress.

In a way, dystopia is the inverse of fantasy, where time is make-believe. The difference is that the past is perceived with different forms of wistfulness - in a fantasy it is romantic, in a dystopia it is tragic. Both are full of speculation and yearning for simpler times, but full of emotion of what could have been, and what could still be.

Because of this, there is no formula for a dystopia, as it is a genre built upon other genres that borrows others’ tropes and gives them a bit of a twist from a removed perspective.

[mademoiselle-red]

Hi, do you read danmei? Favourites?

Hi! I’ve read quite a bit of danmei over the years and my absolute faves are two pretty 古早 (1990s/2000s era) novellas:

北京故事 Beijing Story（read it in Chinese here）— It was adapted into an explicitly queer movie called 蓝于 Lan Yu in 2001. It’s a poignant and tragic story about a decades-long relationship between a young entrepreneur and a college student set against the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the economic miracle of the 1980s and 90s. (Yes, you read that right. And yes, it got made into a movie, with minimal censorship. The early 2000s were fun times in China.)

十年 Ten Years (read it in Chinese here) — It’s about a complicated and bittersweet decade-long relationship between two men who befriend each other in high school and come of age in early 2000s China (the early 2000s vibes are so on point in this novel ❤️). They end up together. But I’m not sure I’d call it a happy ending.

Nowadays my Chinese fandom reading consists of fic for fandom pairings like

瓶邪 pingxie ( Zhang Qiling x Wu Xie from 盗墓笔记 The Grave Robbers’ Chronicles) — the Chinese multi-chapter longfics in this fandom are breathtakingly good. If you can read Chinese, I can recommend a few.

玄亮 xuanliang (Liu Bei x Zhu Geliang historical RPF set in the three kingdoms era)

元白 yuanbai (Yuan Zhen x Bai Juyi historical RPF set in the late Tang dynasty)

And of course 笛花 dihua fic from 莲花楼 Mysterious Lotus Casebook. The novel is actually mainstream wuxia and not danmei.

I’ve read or tried to read most of the popular danmei novels on 晋江 Jinjiang in the mid and late 2010s, and here are a few I’d recommend (that don’t already have officially released tv dramas)

二哈和他的白猫师尊 Erha and his white cat shizun

将进酒 Jiang Jing Jiu

杀破狼 Sha Po Lang: If you can read Chinese, you should definitely check out this author (Priest). She really knows her way around a sentence and has a solid grasp of literary Chinese

(二哈 Erha and 杀破狼 Sha Po Lang were adapted to TV and then cancelled)

And here is one that has a TV drama adaptation but the book is still worth checking out if you can read Chinese:

鬓边不是海棠红 Winter Begonia: the atmosphere of the novel is very different from the tv drama (which I also adore). It’s a lot more 妖娆妩媚 coy and seductive. It’s really good.

[a-mess-of-an-archive]

Morality and Media - a critique (yes this is about the toh fandom)

I’ve just read some insane takes on Twitter (first mistake) and I just want to talk a little bit about media analysis and how so much of fanon is tied to morality— and why that’s a slippery slope.

What I’ve noticed is that the importance of morality in liking a character is something *extremely* prevalent in fandom circles that attract younger teen audiences (toh, Amphibia, etc.). Basically, the idea that by enjoying a character, you’re complicit with the actions they do and the ideologies they hold. This is something that’s straight up dangerous because it implies that for a character to be “good”, they have to be completely politically, ideologically, morally perfect, ignoring all the nuances of what makes a character human and the fact that the world isn’t black and white.

Take the owl house. I’ve been seeing criticism towards people who enjoy Belos’ character and how people shouldn’t be calling him a blorbo because somehow, that means that they’re undermining his villainous actions. Which is absolutely insane for reasons I shouldn’t even have to state.

Just because a story has a villainous character and depicts a villainous regime does not mean that they agree with it. Tales of caution, villains are a thing for a reason. And even if they’re not clearly depicted as a villain, if it lies in the morally grey, it serves as a question to the audience to think and to reach their own conclusions, as media should. And that’s why people like Belos. He represents a corrupt regime and a man so up his own arse that he basically creates his own cult and planned a genocide of what he believes are inferior beings. People like him because he’s a depiction of how fucked up a person can be. And as a character, that’s interesting. How he got there, why he got there, and how the other characters are affected by such an ideology.

If people see Belos in a sympathetic light then well, that opens up a conversation about how charismatic such dictators can be, and how that’s dangerous. That opens up a conversation about how humans can be fucked up.

The sanitisation of what people think should be presented is scarily close to censorship, the very thing that we swore to destroy. If everything is moral, what’s the point of media criticism? Why does a plot exist in the first place?

This is why literary analysis is important and why it’s concerning to me that so many young people in fandom tie morality to liking a character. As a method of media consumption, it encourages taking things at face value and dismisses the why.

Please touch grass. Consume more media.

[adarkrainbow]

Some Brothers Grimm fairytales facts (1)

So, my mother has this old copy of the Brothers Grimm fairytales published in the 70s - a selection of Grimm fairytales translated by Marthe Robert. If you do not know Marthe Robert, she is one of the famous French literary critics of the 20th century, known for her many translations of German works (she is recognized as one of the experts of Kafka in France), as well for her numerous works about the psychanalitic interpretation of literature. 

And this edition also has a preface where she points out some things that are quite interesting... Now, I need to precise, I wouldn’t advise you to take everything in this preface. As I said, Marthe Robert had a psychanalysis-approach to fairytales (which was the one popularized and widespread by Bruno Bettelheim’s work). And while I, for myself, enjoy those interpretations (Bruno Bettelheim was actually how I got to first discover the depths and complexity of the fairytales), I also came to realize, by studying fairytales, that they are not the best to ACTUALLY understand fairytales. Mostly because psychanalytic readings and interpretations of fairytales are strongly intertwined with the folklorist reading of fairytales, and... as I keep pointing out, the folklorist point of view has been discovered to be quite flawed in several aspects. It doesn’t remove the beauty or poetry of these readings and interpretations, which provide a new richness and new meanings to the tales... But to be taken with a grain of salt.

However we are here talking about the Grimm fairytales, which due to being folktales in nature (though slightly edited to fit an ideology), are much more fitted for folklorist and psychanalytic readings. And as a translator of the works of Grimm, Robert brings some interestng points... So let’s see them.

(This is the painting on the cover of the book, so I’ll add it for a bit of illustration)

1) One thing that is very true, and that we should never forget - the Grimms might be criticized any way you like, but what can’t be robbed for them, is the fact that thanks to their hard-work and dedication they managed to survive and restore an entire oral folklore that was slowly dying out and about to be lost forever. Without the Brothers, we would have never have so many tales that are classics of our culture today. 

2)  A good illustration of the literary VS folklorist point of view. Marthe Robert, having written this preface in the 70s, was heavily influenced by the folklorist studies, and this shows in the text. Most notably, already at the beginning, we see the presence of a HUGE misconception spread by the folklorists. This misconception is that “While Perrault made the fairytales popular among scholars and people of taste, nobody until the Brothers Grimm thought of these stories as something more than just the charming, naive and simple products of a popular imagination, only fully enjoyable by old women and children”. This is a HUGE misconception. The thing is that the whole “These stories are just humble folk-tales told by old nurses, by the fireside during evenings are peasant homes” or “These tales were written and told with a child-like mind, and are just little nonsense for your entertainment” was present in the literary texts of fairytales we had (such as Perrault’s tales)... But it was a narrative and publishing strategy. Fairytales, as a literary genre, was a whole aesthetic, and Perrault, like others, were trying to imitate the folktales they took inspiration from - so of course they were going to add elements defending the “childishness” or “simple-mindedness” of their tales. It was also an excellent way to avoid censorship (which was strong, back in the days) and to deal with the very harsh world of critics and literary feuds at the time (you don’t know how strong it was back in 17th century France, worst than Internet dramas these days). By pretending that these tales were just “simple folktales of foolish old women and naive children”, the authors could avoid a lot of things that would have raised the ire of the censorship. But these things, half-hidden, were clearly spot-on by those in the known...

Because, I can’t tell it enough, while the pre-Grimm fairytales, especially the French fairytales, Perrault and others, were PRESENTED as simple folktales, they were not at all simple folktales written hastily. They were literary works, carefully planned, with several drafts. They were stories written by adults for adults, part of games, entertainments, discussions and debates in intellectual circles. They were filled with jokes, and wordplays, and innuendos, and dark undertones, and there were layers of hidden meanings and symbolism everywhere. Because it was part of the “game” of the fairytales back then. They weren’t just about “Who can invent the wackiest tale?”. The pleasure was also to try to understand what the author hid and wrapped under the costume of a “poor, naive folktale”. The way Little Red Riding Hood was an obvious metaphor for ill-intentioned seducers, the way that Diamonds and Toads is in truth a praise of flattery and politeness (which were key elements when living at the royal court), the way that Puss in Boots was an humoristic critique of the ascension to power of some and of the system of inheritance and rewards at the time, in Louis XIV′s France... 

All that being said, take the next sentence of Marthe Robert and you’ll understand what is wrong with it: “While people had fun reading them, or sometimes writing them, nobody actually wondered why they came to be, and their meaning was clear enough to be resumed in a short morality that, while making these tales useful, also justified their weirdness”. It is true that the Moralities were here as a “safety measure”, to justify the nonsense and bizareness of these tales (in late 17th century France, nonsense was considered garbage, and every literary work needed to have a reason to be and a usefulness to it, you didn’t actually just wrote something because you felt like it - if you did that, you were not perceived as a true author, or even as a writer, but just a scribbler). But the mistake here is to believe that these “Moralities” hold the entire, simplified meaning of the tales. Far, far from it, as French fairytales were purposefully designed to have a game of meaning and complex senses: the fun was all about decyphering them. 

3) Marthe Rober then proceeds to describe the thought-process that led to the rise of the “folklorist reading” of fairytales, and which was the point of view that dominated ever since the Grimms’ work became popular. And this thought process is: Let’s collect folktales and stories from all around the world, from various countries and continents. Then, let’s compare them, in how similar they are. Now, we see that they have a common structure, common narratives, with elements that are sometimes described and placed in identical fashons - except for a few exceptions. But beyond them, these striking similarities and identicalities prove a continuity of themes beyond countries and cultures. How to explain this? It can only be explained by a common source, a common origin: all the tales have a common ancestor.

[Note by me: This is the folklorist point of view. But the literary point of view that is now contradicting this one, if you are ever interested, is that maybe the “story-ancestor of all the tales” is a myth that never truly existed ; maybe these similarities and continuities are due to stories feeding of each other, and blooming and spreading from each other, due to an intertextuality and cross-cultural influence rather than a so-called “common ancestor” that had “children” everywhere - and unlike the folklorist viewpoint, which casts aside the unusual and pattern-breaking variations as “exceptions to the rules” or “one time weirdness”, the literary point of view considers that, on the contrary, they should be considered with as much importance as the stories that deviate from the “main mold”.] 

Marthe Robert even mentions the theory held by the Grimms themselves (though she doesn’t seem to fully adhere to it?), that the common ancestor of these stories was... Aryan stories. For them, the “aryan tribes” were the ancestors of the Hindus, the Persians, the Greek, the Romans, and the other people of Europe, and thus the common ancestor of all those folktales and fairytales were none other than the “ancient Aryan tales”... [Did I mention the Nazis had a huge liking of the Brothers Grimm and reinterpreted their books and works in perverse ways? Well, if I hadn’t before, now you’re warned.]

4) Moving on, Marthe Rober then explains that, once the origin of the tales are explained in this way, all that is left is to interpret these tales and get their meaning. And she offers us something she calls the “natural reading” of these tales. A type of interpretation that was REALLY popular for a time, that is quite poetic in itself I’ll admit, but that also gets really wacky and wonky sometimes, when pushed to its extreme limits. This “natural reading” is simply the interpretation of fairytales as descriptions and allegories of natural events and phenomenon. The first example she gives, and which is the one that is invoked a lot even today, and perhaps the most “solid” of them all, is Sleeping Beauty: the asleep princess represents spring or summer, her hundred-years sleep is winter, and the young prince that wakes her up must be the sun “waking up” nature in spring (Marthe Robert notes that this interpretation still has leftovers in the tale of Perrault, where the princess two children are “Day” and “Dawn”). Okay, so far so good... But then Robert adds two more “natural readings” which, for me, are completely off, and just stretching the concept heavily. There is the “natural reading” of Cinderella, where the titular heroine is the “hidden light”, some sort of solar figure whose light and shine is clouded or obscured by the ashes covering her - and who gets to only shine bright again by marrying her prince. Quite a stretch of a reading, but at least I get where it’s coming from. And then... Then there’s the worst offender. The natural reading of “Donkey Skin/A Hundred-Furs”. The reading where “the girl fleeing her father’s incestuous desires by hidng in a beast skin” is actually “dawn, hunted by the sun, of which she fears the burn”... Poetic, but really wacky. And not solid enough to hold what Marthe Robert adds - that “with this reading, all these tales come to have roughly the same meaning”, aka a description of a battle to restore light. 

5) Hopefully the “natural reading” paragraph was purposefully presented in a not-so-good light by Marthe Robert, since she immediately adds that this subject has been debated, discussed and debunked for a long time now - and is just a “historical fact”. She notably invokes how these theories, be it the “aryan theory” of the Grimm or the “natural readings”, only work for European folktales, and completely break down when it comes to fairytales from other continents. Comparing them to the European tales completely debunks the idea that all these stories have a supposedly common ancestor whose influence spans worldwide. (That’s something I enjoy with psychoanalysis interpretations of fairytales, while they completely miss the literary aspect, they are also detached enough from the folklorist one to see its most obvious flaws. Of course, then they go sometimes into far-fetched places themselves, but nothing is perfect). In Robert’s own words, the theory of the brothers Grimm was “far too narrow and yet far too large”, but it had the praise to actually make people realize and understand that the fairytales were actually just as important and meaningful as the myths of old. 

6) Marthe Robert then goes on to describe how, despite social and religious changes, the continuing fairytales keep carrying the same meanings behind the allegories, and the same “human experience” hidden by its images - she notably points out that, despite being developed in Christian cultures, fairytales still hold on dearly to many elements of paganism, through depictions of various rites, practices and customs - for her, these are more than just memories carried on by the tales, but rather instructions making the fairytales didactic, turning them into manuals and teachers. 

7) So, while she rejects the Grimm-brought idea that the “true meaning” of all fairytales is a mythological description of the cycles of nature and weather or astral phenomenon, she, as a psychanalyst-influenced literary critic, still believes in a “general meaning” behind fairytales, a “recurring sense”. And for her, the fairytales are all about a passage, a transition. A needed passages, a difficult transition, with a thousand obstacles on the way, preceeded by seemingly unbeatable trials, but that always ends up happily concluded. “Under all of the most incomprehensible fantasies, a real fact keeps appearing: the necessity for an individual to go from one state to another, to transition from one age to another, and to shape themselves through painful metamorphosis, that will only end when they reach a true maturity”. For her, in the “archaic” culture that the fairytale preserved, the rite of age-passage, be it from children to teenager, or from a teen to an adult, is a perilous transition, a trial that can only be won by an initiation beforehand. So this is why the child or the young man of the fairytale, finds suddely himself lost in a deep forest with no way out, and there meets a wise person, often older than him, whose advice will help him find his way back. [Note: You can see here that she is very influenced by the Märchen, of which she is writing a preface of and that she just translated. But this is a common thing with psychanalist readings of fairytales, they usually focused exclusively on the Grimms and Perrault, with a tiny bit of Basile on the aside, but that’s it.]

8) Another typical “folkorist slander” of French fairytales: “If the French tradition weakened the initiatic aspect of the fairytale to replace it by a barely-disguised eroticism and a conformist morality, the German fairytale, less “civilized”, keeps all of its strength”. Urg. “A barely-disguised eroticism”, I guess when you want to denounce the dangers the sexual abusers, you need to add some sexual elements lady! And have you seen Basile’s story? They are sex comedies, and scatological too, true medieval tales of Reynard! As for the “conformist moralities”, I talked about it before - the Moralities of Perrault (and she is clearly referring Perrault because he was the only one to put Moralities in all of his fairytales) only looked “conformist”, but the minute you pay attention to them, you realize they are in truth subversive moralities. 

9) Now, while she uses this element to exemplify her slander above, this part is deeply interesting, because she describes there one of the major differences between French fairytales and German fairytales, hightlighted by the comparison of duets (the two Cinderellas, the two Sleeping Beauty, the two Donkey Skins): the treatment of the “fairy” character. The French fairytale fairy, for Robert, is this “character with a shining dress, a star on her forehead and a magic wand in her hand, who arrives exactly when she is needed to solve the love problems of young people”. (This is a bit of a caricature, but that’s also kind of true...). But in the German fairytales? No fairies. They are rather replaced by... “the wise women”. 

An old woman, that doesn’t get any description, and who is very ambiguous - when she shows up, the reader can’t tell if she is a protective spirit, or an evil witch. This frightening hag does not have the “shine” of the fairies - she is not admired, she is not beloved. Even whe she is here to bring happiness, she is gaunt and dry. She is the very opposite of the “radiant fairy who, in front of orphans, fuses herself with the figure of the dead mother”. The “old woman” here appears briefly, when all hope is lost, and she is the godmother of no one. If she sometimes assists the birth of those she helps, she never appears for their wedding, and as soon as her task is done she disappears. And in German fairytales, this character is called the “wise-women”. A name with two meanings. She is of course a literal “wise woman”, a woman full of wisdom, but she is also a “midwife” - because “midwives” were traditionally called “wise women”, since it was believed that one needed to know the “rules of wisdom”, aka the strict obediance to the rites presiding over birth, to be able to deliver a baby safely. This is why the “old women” of the Grimms are guardians of rites and taditions, hence why they are feared but respected - before being witches or enchantresses, they were the Greek Moirai and the Germanic Norns, these embodiments of Fate presiding over the destiny of humans (which is why the märchen old woman is often seen weaving). Between the fairy and the witch, the “wise woman” can be good or bad depending on the situations, while neither fully eing one or the other - she only responds to the customs and rites of the great events of life, and is here to highlight their meaning.

To place an example behind her development, Marthe Robert takes the Grimm version of Sleeping Beauty, “Briar-Rose”. In this story, there are thirteen wise-women in the kingdom that the king knows of, but he cannot actually invite them all due to him only having twelve golden plates - and apparently wise-women can only eat in this kind of plates. So the thirteenth wise-woman is purposefully “forgotten”, and this omission is a breaching of the rules of the rituals. This fault leads to the imposition of a serious ban over the baby girl: the prohibition to ever use a spindle. Which means, the inability to live a normal and regular young girl’s life. This prohibition leads to another omission, since all the spindles are destroyed except for one - one that stays in the hands of an old weaver-woman (in which one could reconize the thirteenth wise-woman, according to Robert). And from this second omission comes the last trial: an attenuated form of death, the Hundred-Years Sleep, which will only end with a nuptial rite. “Wrongly birthed”, since her birth is tied to a flawed act, the Beauty cannot develop herself without fearing death at every instant - her transition into teenagehood can only be done through a deep lethargy, and it is with great lateness that she finally “wakes up” through love. [Note: this is a REAL psychanalytic-reading. Having read Bettelheim, thus is pure psychanalysis-interpretation.]

A midwife, a scholar, a wizardess, the “wise-woman” is, for Marthe Robert, a better ancestor of her “ancestor from Antiquity”, than the romantic fairy of French fairytales: her role is to transmit to the individuals who need it the most (aka the children and teenagers) the knowledge of religious and social practices through which man becomes part of the “order of things”, through which man truly “comes into the world” and finds there his “place”. Once we understand that this is the function of the fairytale, it becomes very clear (again, all of this is Marthe Robert’s point of view) why the fairytale is such a paradoxical genre. It becomes clear for example why these stories supposedly for children keep treating a theme that is far away from being childish in nature: the erotic quest of the beloved, through a thousand painful trials. In truth, for Robert, this contradiction only exists for our modern eyes, according to the criteria of a moral pedagogy - but it disappears once we understand that the “wise-woman” character is the one causing the initiation, the advisor of the protagonist, and the keeper of rites. 

And this is also why fairytales are, at the same time, so innocents... and so cruel.

[More in my following post!]

[smokefalls]

Title: Fahrenheit 451 Author: Ray Bradbury Publication Year: 1953 Publisher: Del Rey Genre: fiction, science fiction, dystopian, classics

Fahrenheit 451 seems to be one of those novels that is regularly assigned in classrooms in the United States. I was never assigned the novel, so it was interesting to approach it without forced analyses coloring my reading experience. I can see why it's such a popular novel to assign though: it's loaded with symbolism and the messages are graspable concepts to dissect.

That being said, like many dystopian novels written by white authors, I found myself a bit dissatisfied with the world Bradbury presented. Put simply, Bradbury presents a dystopian world that has always been a reality for those who have been colonized and, relatedly, in the context of the United States, people of color. Considering this, I don't think it's entirely correct to say that Bradbury predicted the future (other than wireless earphones and flatscreen televisions), which I'm sure people have stated since the exponential rise of book banning in the United States. Knowledge suppression and censorship have always been present. It's just that it wasn't impacting the demographic Bradbury feared would be targeted.

I also found other things disappointing about this novel. I felt the worldbuilding and character development lacked, which could have been addressed pretty easily if the novel was longer. (That being said, I imagine not many people would be thrilled by that idea, considering the polarizing opinions on Bradbury's prose, ahaha.) I had too many questions that went unanswered. I wanted to know more about Clarisse (who I thought was one of the most one-dimensional characters I've come across in a while). Captain Beatty fascinated me because he was clearly well-read, yet stood on the side of burning books. I wanted a better understanding of why. I wanted to learn more about these wars that were happening, the rise of other forms of media and their last impact, among other things. I suppose I could always look at what's happening in the world to get some idea, but I wanted to learn more about the world Bradbury constructed.

I think I'm glad to have read this novel, just for the sake of knowing why it's part of the Western (specifically US) literary canon. I clearly got something out of it, but I don't think it's a novel I'd revisit.

Content Warning: fire, death, murder, suicide attempt, suicide, car accident, war

[persefoneshalott]

LES MIS CENSORSHIP ADVENTURES 8

lm 1.3.9 the horsie chapter :'

First of all, the old spanish translation does "Aspasias was created in the event that Prometheus needed for a mold ". ??? questionable. Aspesias gets described as the 'goddess prostitute' one line before, which I would think is more profane but all right?

(New one is "Aspasias was created in case Prometheus needed a whore." )

The word 'mâtin' in french seems like an equivalent to 'My God!' or 'Heavens!' that is used in surprise (that's why they say it's a "sacramental" word that the cartman barely has time to utter). The old translation cuts it and leaves an equivalent to 'Giddy up' (¡Arre!) instead. The new one goes with '¡Virgen!' which works really well because most of catholicism related exclamations in Spain are more about Virgin Mary than God. Also the 'sacramental word' (old translation) is faithful and good but instead of 'sacramental word' the new translation calls it 'a ritual blasphemy' which I really enjoy < 3 .

Tholomyes' poem is very interesting!! In the old spanish translation, they cut it down to "She was from this world, in which carts and carriages have the same fate." (I relate to the translator not knowing what cuckoo is there bc I don't get it either and going uhhh carts? Is it talking about a cuckoo's clock which turns up as a translation of coucous as well and saying time runs out, so does life or something? Someone help me thx). Anyway, it's similar to hapwood's translation but only keeps the two first lines.

When I copypasted the french poem it led me to a poem of the XVI century, written in memoriam of a father's daughter dying, and that poem had this bit. ""Et rose elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin." Which I think is something like (trusting google translator and my bad french): "and the rose lived what the roses live, only one morning"

And this is how that bit looks in the les mis chapter "Et, rosse, elle a vécu ce que vivant les rosses,     L’espace d’un mâtin" SO ! He's doing a pun there with "rosse" (nag /work horse) and "rose", as well as "matin" and "mâtin".

(I've been told the Donougher translation talks about these puns in the footnotes fyi)

I'm guessing the cuts happened because of the referenced poem's vibes of 'we will all die', and because the 'collige virgo rosas' literary trope of 'enjoy beauty while you have it because you will DIE' is uhh bad and might lead to sin? Also mentions the Fates as being in charge of death instead of God.

Anyway the poem is called "Consolation à M. Du Périer sur la mort de sa fille" by François de Malherbe if you want to check it out

The new spanish translation tries to keep the puns and the reference to the poem in using the collige, virgo, rosas ('pick up the roses, young woman while you can') literary trope, but with a horse instead of a woman.

"The morning star saw her born a young mare It saw her die a nag the coming night. Cut, virgin, the roses in their first bloom."

[readjthompson]

Well, since my novelette Cancel Toby Chalmers! (copyright me, now) has been sitting around, completed, for nearly 16 months, I’ve decided to share it for free, until it’s later released as part of a Toby Chalmers collection.

Here are Chapters 8 and 9.

Chapter 8

Yet again, his grip on his dwindling optimism weakening by the moment, Toby visited his Amazon Author Page. Only self-published efforts met his gaze.

He’d released improved edits of Fleshless Fingers and all of his bizarro books, and put together another collection, Mementoes of Madness II, to showcase his short fiction. Not being particularly artistic, he’d culled his cellphone gallery for drunkenly-shot photos of landscapes, spoiled fruit, stars and roadkill, and fashioned makeshift cover designs from them. Sadly, none of his efforts had resulted in so much as a single sale.

There’d been plenty of ratings and reviews, though, both on Amazon and Goodreads, each bearing but a single star out of five. None of the reviewers had bothered to read so much as a word of his prose, it seemed. They wrote, “Don’t buy from this racist,” “Each dollar spent on Toby Chalmers’ fiction gives Hitler’s ghost a boner,” “Nazi writers, fuck off,” and similar single-sentence contributions. Many listed black authors who consumers should consider, as if Toby was actively attempting to oppose such individuals. Some of the reviewers’ names he recognized, editors and authors now united against him.

Toby had deactivated his every social media account, hoping that his detractors would find someone new to disparage. But successive searches of his name continued to summon fresh vitriol. Alleged anarchists wanted him arrested. So-called liberals were calling for his suicide.

Only black-hating racists, none of whom had the slightest bit of interest in reading his fiction, defended him. They seemed to have adopted Toby as a member of the far right, though he’d never so much as registered to vote, out of disgust with both political parties.

“Don’t do it,” Toby muttered now, even as he visited social media and searched for his name yet again. The top result, new to him, had already attained over two million views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and thousands of replies and reposts. Wow, that’s the smuggest avatar photo that I’ve ever seen, Toby thought. This dude looks like he had his own cock removed, just so he could blow himself every time he sits down to pee. Why’s he wearing a dashiki? He’s whiter than I am. Joseph McCarthy Jr., huh. Runs Transylvoria, apparently. Didn’t I send that magazine a review copy of Fleshless Fingers all those years ago? Never heard back from ’em, or read an issue of theirs, for that matter. What’s this douche have to say about me?

He read:

A CALL TO ACTION

Hello, hi, and howdy again, my beautifully diverse followers. ’Tis I, your ally in all equality efforts, your genial genius, your longtime pal-o-roony, Transylvoria Joe. By now, you must know that I’d never let a single day go by without connecting with you, my horror brethren. And boy, do I have a sermon for you now.

Remember those terrible days when the literary community eschewed censorship? Straight, cisgender, racially challenged males filled books with their rightwing ideology and profited, flaunting their collective privilege in everyone’s faces. Perpetuating white supremacy, gender inequality, heteronormativity, and even worse, gender binarism, they gave us heroes only they could relate to. Ooh, I’m shaking just thinking about it.

When those authors filled their books with hate speech, claiming that they were practicing idiomatic realism, we, as a society, actually nodded our heads and said, “Well, I guess that makes sense.” Boy, were we ever wrong.

Those straight, cisgender, racially challenged males had us all fooled, you see. They wrote bigoted characters so well because they’re bigots themselves. Those of them who became editors only published people just like them. That’s why we at Transylvoria, along with countless likeminded horror fanatics, have spent the last few years pushing those has-beens aside, so that diverse authors can finally stand up and take their well-deserved bows.

Indeed, we’ve taken great strides forward in abolishing literary inequality. But if you think that it’s time to rest on our laurels, to abandon our egalitarian efforts and let the old guard strike back, I say to you not today!

Think about it for a moment. Sure, most straight, cisgender, racially challenged, male authors have seen their books go out of print. And most right-thinking publishers will no longer consider such men for publication. The problem is, with the self-publishing tools available these days, anyone can invent a publisher on the spot and self-publish whatever they want.

This means that straight, cisgender, racially challenged, male authors can reprint their old fiction, and even print new fiction, with impunity, and steal sales away from the far more deserving diverse authors. It’s sickening, really. One Stephen King is enough!

The onus is on us, united, to balance the scales in the horror lit scene. Books by straight, cisgender, racially challenged, male authors other than Stephen King must be removed from circulation, permanently. Libraries and book retailers, both online and brick and mortar, must be urged to destroy all such books in their possession immediately and never restock them.

No longer should straight, cisgender, racially challenged, male authors be allowed to self-publish horror fiction. No longer should they post short stories to their blogs or social media accounts. Their books’ Goodreads listings should be deleted, as should all mentions of them online. In fact, these guys should never be allowed to refer to themselves as authors again.

We can erase the literary scene’s past mistakes, one straight, cisgender, racially challenged, male author at a time. For our first target, I nominate Toby Chalmers. The man unequivocally stated that he hates black people. Well, we love black people and hate Toby Chalmers.

Contact Amazon today, all of you. Tell them that you’ll boycott their company if Toby Chalmers’ books aren’t removed from publication. Start a petition. March in the street. Recruit others to our cause. Silence anyone who stands up for Toby Chalmers.

As always, Transylvoria pride forever. I platonically love each and every one of you. Air kisses all around.

“Air kisses all around,” Toby muttered. “What a piece of shit.” Can this man and his lickspittles really do it? he wondered. Can they erase every trace of my fiction, make it as if I never wrote anything?

As he read reply after reply praising Joseph McCarthy Jr. and his position, and denigrating Toby as if he was Hitler reincarnated, the notion seemed far less than impossible. All of these insane, wretched fascists masquerading as liberals, he thought, shaking his head. How did society ever devolve to this?

My books can’t just disappear. I’ll beat cancel culture, somehow. For the moment, I’d better stockpile author copies of my books while they’re still in print. Guess it’s time to spend some money on this “career” of mine. Yippee.

 

Chapter 9

“Hey, Shadrach, someone’s callin’ me. Why don’t you run into the store and grab us some juice boxes and pickle-flavored cashews. Here’s twenty bucks. With the leftover money, you can buy some candy or a magazine, or whatever you want.”

“I don’t hear your phone ringing.”

“It’s on silent mode.”

Suspiciously, Shadrach squinted at his least favorite person, as Joe slid his phone from his pocket and pressed it to his ear. “You’ve got Joe,” he greeted. “Oh, hey there, buddy. What’s the good word?” His free hand made a shooing motion.

Reluctantly, Shadrach emerged from the Prius. What’s this psycho up to now? he wondered. His phone screen was dark. No one was calling him.

Thus far, Joe had limited his domination games to his own private property, but there was a first time for everything, and Shadrach didn’t trust him one iota. There were fourteen vehicles in the parking lot. Would anyone protect Shadrach if Joe went on the offensive again?

He entered the supermarket and grabbed a shopping basket. Rightward, flies buzzed in the produce section. Leftward, oldsters lingered to converse with cashiers, though their groceries were already bagged. Those sonances seemed strangely subdued.

The pickle-flavored cashews and juice boxes were easy enough to find—Shadrach had accompanied his uncle on many a shopping errand—and he wasn’t in the mood to purchase anything for himself. Still, the air conditioning felt good on his skin, and he was in no hurry to return to his uncle’s side, so he wandered from aisle to aisle, avoiding the eyes of his fellow shoppers.

Suddenly, just as Shadrach strode past shelves of dry noodles, a stiff forefinger met his shoulder. “Are you gonna buy anything, nigger?” hissed a voice in his ear.

Reluctantly pivoting on his heels, the boy beheld his uncle. Joe had changed his clothes in the car. The black hat and zipped-up windbreaker he now wore were emblazoned with the word SECURITY. Coiled tubing ascended from his collar to a phony earpiece.

Blushing furiously, more embarrassed than he’d ever been, Shadrach begged, “Please don’t do this.”

“I asked you a question, boy! We’ve had a report of theft on these premises! Do you plan to pay for those groceries?!”

Other shoppers had drifted over to observe the spectacle. Shadrach couldn’t read their expressions through his sudden tears.

“I…I have twenty dollars,” he whined, pulling the bill from his pocket.

“Dirty, stinkin’, thievin’ nigger! Twenty dollars was the exact amount reported stolen! I knew by the look of you that you were no good! Put down those groceries and put your hands behind your back!”

“Oh…I’m sorry, Uncle Jojo. I’ll be good from now on. I’ll only laugh at what you say I can laugh at. You don’t have to do this to me.”

“Save it for your court date, nigger! Put down those fuckin’ groceries! Put your fuckin’ hands behind your back! Right fuckin’ now!” Joe now brandished handcuffs and grinned from ear to ear.

Supermarket employees joined the shoppers at both ends of the aisle, swelling the audience to two dozen Caucasians, all of whom crept steadily closer.

“Um, excuse me, what’s all this about?” one elderly mop-gripper queried, squinting through cat eye glasses.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Joe, “this here’s my nephew. He was actin’ like a racist so I’m teaching him empathy for black people. He’s experiencing but a taste of what they’ve endured in this country for so long. Soon, he’ll love his fellow humans as much as I do.”

Surely, someone will stand up for me now, Shadrach thought, sniffling. They’ll call over a real security guard and get my uncle the help he needs. Maybe my mom can leave rehab early and take care of me again.

But as the grocery basket was torn from his grasp, as his arms were pinned behind his back so that his wrists could be handcuffed, as he was led from the store and shoved into the back seat of his uncle’s Prius, all Shadrach heard was a slow clap evolving into full-blown applause.

* * *

After lunch, after dinner, after tearful trembling in the bathtub until its water grew chilly, Shadrach raged his way across Joe’s guestroom, shrieking into a pillow that he held over his mouth. Grace Jones’ Vamp character bared her fangs on framed posters all around him. Shadrach wished that she’d climb into reality to make a meal of his uncle.

The room, which he’d been staying in ever since his mom entered rehab, always smelled like rotted onions and bad milk, no matter how wide he opened its window. If ever it had been vacuumed, he’d never witnessed it. Neither had the bedsheets been washed, nor the cobwebs swept from the ceiling corners, since his arrival. Shadrach wouldn’t miss the place, he decided.

He’d swiped a garbage bag from the garage, which he now filled with clothes, everything but his hated Transylvoria attire. With grim satisfaction, he kicked the window screen from its frame. He wanted to punch holes into the walls and urinate onto the carpet, but feared that his uncle would burst into the room at any minute and chain him to the bed.

“Fuck you, Uncle Joseph,” Shadrach muttered, climbing out of the window, into the night. “I’ll hate you for the rest of my life.”

[princetonsjp]

Are Archives the Cousins of the Literary Canon?

By Daniel Seog

John Milton, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare. What do all these writers have in common? They are all widely celebrated in the literary canon – a credible list of notable works and authors that permeate archives across the world. But the primary inhabitants of the literary canon are white men. 

The literary canon is notorious for this elitism, but does this exclusion further get enforced in archival work? What is the influence that the literary canon has on archives, if at all?

It all starts with how archivists select prospective implementations. Alexis Durante, an Archives Technician in the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, broke down her strategy.

“It's the same idea as the criterion collection of films,” Durante said. “There are these films that everybody needs to see, like It's a Wonderful Life. Films that are culturally significant films that have been in the zeitgeist, right?”

Durante’s main target when it comes to book archival stems from the work’s “cultural resonance or significance.” Specific literature gets implemented into the literary canon for the same reason. The “cultural resonance or significance” of Milton’s Areopagítica relates to its sentiments against censorship and analogizing such a censorship to God’s instructions to Eve detailing to not eat the forbidden apple. 

Although many of these white authors’ works are archived and simultaneously praised in the literary canon, archives seem to be a home for underrepresented or under-celebrated works.

“I love to go to weird, old used bookstores because they have a lot of books that are not on their 10th edition,” Durante said.

Pride and Prejudice has over 100 editions per the National Library of Scotland. It seems unnecessary to archive another copy when Austen’s work has already permeated shelves across the globe. Durante’s personal tastes seem to be an ode to a more diverse archive. She’s read a book named Black Talk, a book about “how the music of Black America created a radical alternative to the values of Western literary tradition.”

The diversity the literary canon lacks but the archive seems to promote has more to do with other factors than just the race or gender of these authors. 

“Older books have a bit of crass language,” Durantes said. “But I think you're going to find that they have the most diverse information.”

Durantes makes a valid point regarding time period in relation to discovering the new facets of how our civilizations previously worked, but books that have withstood the literary canon and archives are mostly works created by white authors, with minor exceptions such as James Baldwin or Alexandre Dumas. 

“A lot of the indigenous cultures that were nearly wiped out were purposefully left off the written page for a long time,” Durantes said. 

So do archives really have room for more diversity? The United States is notorious for constantly failing the recognition of indigenous cultures, and the literary canon has reflected this too. But in a world where the literary canon and archives work hand in hand to select books that should stay relevant in society, it’s an issue when this lack of acknowledgement translates from the former to the latter.

One way this can be observed is what books are being sold in local bookstores. At Labyrinth Books, the literature section holds more than just white titles. Furthermore, authors that are renowned for their contributions to LGBTQ+ literature, such as André Aciman, were not void in shelves. 

In Labyrinth Books’ basement, there are more antique editions of books especially on the classics. This included not just the Greeks. In addition to Homer, The Art of War by Sun Tzu was proudly displayed among its equally celebrated literary companions.

However, these works have been ingrained into the canon for decades and even centuries. So the archives’ and canons’ share of titles may explain the gravity of the situation – maybe they are inherently related.

The literary canon was built on the foundation of white, Christian, straight, and male authors. But now, the canon is more diverse. Take, James Baldwin and Alexandre Dumas – they were both black writers that have works that still resonate with society today. And while the canon has expanded, the archive seems to be a place for newer titles to thrive. Newer titles that “are not on their tenth edition.”

So John Milton, Charles Dickens, and William Shakespeare can all have a safe place in the nestles of both the literary canon and archive. But the latter is a refreshed pallet that extends beyond the limited and, at times, conservative canon. So they might be distant cousins. Or family friends.

[eclipsewriting]

Pinned

- August H.

- 19 y/o

- Amateur Writer

- Reading Goal for 2024: 3/52

- I write horror, literary, and historical fiction :)

AO3: eclipseboy

About this account:

- I don't care what your beliefs are regarding censorship, I am anti-censorship and will post about it freely

- I'm trans and queer, lgbtphobes of all kind will be blocked

- I will mainly post about my writing goals with a little bit of advice sprinkled here and there

- I block freely. Just be nice and you won't get blocked.

[qu-film-history-to-1968]

Different Methods of Delivering Horror

     There are many different methods to create an effective horror movie. The Old Dark House released in 1932 by Universal Pictures and The Devil Bat released in 1940 by Producer's Releasing Corporation both have many similarities and differences between each other in how they deliver their horror. Each gives insight into how their respective studio develops horror in their own way. As stated by Peter Fitting about horror movies of the 30s, the two films both "follow literary gothic conventions by dealing with characterization over action," (Fitting 98). How each of them deal with their characters differs giving each film its own approach.

     Both of the films hold back on showing much on screen violence. Due to the time period, both had to fight against heavy censorship, which prohibited graphic violence in these films. Due to that being quite common in horror seen today, the studios behind these films had to work around this to still deliver horror to their audience. In The Old Dark House the horror element mostly comes from the eerie nature of the house and its residents. It’s difficult to fully understand any of their motivations, which makes it scary for the audience and main characters as we don’t know who to trust or what will happen next. Some of the residents like Horace Femm are in themselves scared of having to stay in the home, which makes the stay more terrifying as Horace won’t reveal why he is so scared. The two main threats of the household, Morgan and Saul, are built up to be scary by the other characters. Morgan is the first person we see from the home, and due to him not being able to speak and his strange design, it’s hard to grasp what he’s thinking. Saul is directly stated to be a murderous individual, so when he’s set free the tension is at its highest point. So while the film does avoid having much graphic violence, the eerie mystery surrounding the home keeps the tension high.

     The Devil Bat in comparison mostly forgoes the mystery element. While the main characters don’t know who is behind the Devil Bat murders until the end of the film, the audience is shown that the murderer is Dr. Paul Carruthers and he is motivated to kill out of revenge for not becoming rich. His method of killing is very unique, but it’s great at setting tension and having the audience nervous for the characters. He claims to have created a new lotion and gets his victims to test it for him, however that lotion has a strong scent that attracts the Devil Bat he created, which then results in the devil bat killing them. Since this lotion is set up right at the start of the film, any time a character puts it on it feels as though they are on the clock. It’s only a matter of time before the bat strikes after that, so as an audience we are queued to start getting nervous whenever a character puts that on. That countdown element is also built onto by the main characters trying to solve the mystery behind this case, as the more time they waste the more people get killed. So despite not having much mystery for the audience like The Old Dark House, The Devil Bat was still able to create a strong sense of tension by establishing a timer for each of their characters. The Devil Bat does also show a bit more violence than The Old Dark House, but not much more than a quick glimpse at the bat landing on its victim. These films both show that horror can be created without needing to resort to that, and through their differences also show that there are many ways to go about sharing horror.

    Michael Jones

  Work Cited:

  Fitting, Peter Analysis and Interpretation Link

[inapat16]

Similar stories of girls in uniform: 1. Mädchen in uniform

Portraying two women loving each other on screen has not always been an easy thing, and we can even say that, unfortunately, it is still occasional today. But there is a recurrent narrative form that allowed some movies to depict lesbians in cinema, more or less clearly. It came from the literary genre of the “boarding school story” that became popular in the late XIXth century and at the beginning of the XXth. In this genre, there are in particular similar stories written by women about their teenage years in all-girl boarding school and their awakening to love in this feminine context. Because these books were well-liked, some directors decided to adapt them on screen.

One of the first to be adapted for the cinema was the German play Gestern und Heute (“Yesterday and today”), written by Christa Winsloe in 1930. It depicts the awakening to love of Manuela, a teenage girl in a Prussian boarding school, towards one of her teachers, Elisabeth von Bernburg.

It was first brilliantly adapted by Leontine Sagan in 1931 under the title Mädchen in uniform (“Girls in uniform”) which was a huge commercial success at the time and was really appreciated across Europe. Its popularity is in particular due to the fact that it is a talking picture. It was released at the beginning of the sound era, but if some of these films had really theatrical stagings, this one is played more authentically, almost in the same way than what we can see in contemporary cinema, so it aged well. This movie is also singular with its all female cast! It treats its female characters with great respect, which can be a bit surprising for the time considering the subject, but it is most likely because Christa Winsloe, the writer of the play which was inspired by her life, and Leontine Sagan, the director of the movie, were both lesbians.

This movie may seem modern for its time (especially the scene where the teacher comes to say goodnight to the heroine by kissing her) but the context of Germany after World War 1 helped to produce such a film: it was the Roaring Twenties.

If today we can be shocked to see an adult seducing young girls, and also sense the imbalance in this type of relationship, it was absolutely not something that was discussed at the time the movie came out. The critics of the time did not mention that aspect of the movie at all. If the movie was later put under censorship, it is not for its luxurious aspect but because it also condemns fascism. When the German Reich appeared in 1933, they even tried to burn all of the existing prints of the movie but, fortunately, we are still able to see it today.

Maybe that was what the director had in mind in the 1958 remake, Mädchen in uniform, directed by Géza von Radványi. This version, in colour, is really softer on all its political aspects. The choice of the young actress Romy Schneider, who had just finished portraying the Empress Elizabeth of Austria in Sissi, also shows that this film was thought for all kinds of audience. The condemnation of Prussian fascism is softened, and the lesbian aspect of the movie is less visible: the teacher Elisabeth Von Bernburg can be seen as, instead of a lover, a motherly figure.

Nevertheless, this version is still beautiful and allowed another generation to discover this story, which helped the first movie to gain a cult status.

These two examples of boarding school movies are not the only ones to depict women loving each other, and I will continue with another similar story adapted from another book next time!

Zoé Richard

[captainseaweedbrains]

obviously feel free to completely ignore this but I'm currently studying librarianship and I have a paper to write on Subscription Libraries/Reading Societies in the USA and Europe during the 18th and the 19th century. Unfortunately it has been really hard to find enough material, even with the help of the libraries near me so I was just wondering do you know some good books/articles about this theme since I know that you are also a librarian. again completely understand if you can't do this I'm just desperate and thank you in advance if you do answer.

Hello, friend!

Okay, so I and a couple of my coworkers did a bit of digging and these were what we were able to find. The subscription libraries were a bit easier to find than the reading societies. As I am unclear on what exactly your thesis is focusing on, hopefully these will help.

The first place I would honestly start is Wikipedia and going straight down to their reference section. Wikipedia is also a GREAT source--don't let educators say otherwise! In my reference class in library school it was thoroughly discussed how Wikipedia is a legit source.

The next place I would look is JSTOR. It is great and I lived there throughout my time in undergrad and when getting my Masters. I would also see if your school and public libraries are part of an Inter-Library Loan (ILL) program. You can access different books and journals this way, as well!

Here are the articles we were currently able to find. Tumblr was being dumb. So I linked them via numbers. I'm also going to put it under a Read More because we got carried away:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Here are some titles:

Books, Borrowers, and Shareholders: Scottish Circulating and Subscription Libraries Before 1825 by K. A. Manley

Jeremy Bentham has been Banned: Contention and Censorship in Private Subscription Libraries before 1825 - Library & information history, 2013, Vol.29 (3), p.170-181

The library : a fragile history / Andrew Pettegree and Arthur Der Weduwen.

McHenry, Elizabeth. 1996. "Dreaded eloquence": The origins and rise of African American literary societies and libraries. Harvard Library Bulletin 6 (2), Summer 1995: 32-56. Harris, M. H. (1995). History of libraries in the western world / Michael H. Harris. (Fourth edition.). Scarecrow Press.

[niobefurens]

Censory Deprivation.

Why stop at fatness? If you are going to put a red pen through Roald Dahl—as his publisher, Puffin, did recently—there are so many better bits to choose. The sensitivity readers contented themselves with excising such words as “fat”, “flabby”, “ugly” and “Kipling”. But Dahl doesn’t merely offer sexism, racism and colonialism; in his adult fiction you can find sins so frankly filthsome and swigpilling there has yet to be an -ism coined to cover them. There is violence, voyeurism and an unforgettably frightsome story in which a scorpion collector accidentally has sex with a leper. Not for nothing did his family call him “Roald the Rotten” and—more bluntly—“Roald the Bastard”. Listen to this story.

Something seems to be changing in British publishing. You can see it in the sheepish announcement from Puffin after news of its edits prompted a backlash, that Roald the Revolting will still roll off the presses unaltered, alongside the works of Roald the Redacted. You can see it, too, in almost-silenced books that are now thriving. “Time to Think”, a book by Hannah Barnes about the Tavistock’s gender-identity clinic in London, which referred children as young as nine for puberty blockers, was rejected by 22 publishers. Swift Press, a nimble newcomer, took it on and it made the bestseller lists. People in the industry suggest that the red pen is being wielded less freely. As one publishing executive puts it, there is a sense that things “had gone too far”. (Though since this person did not want to be quoted by name, not far enough.)

A change is overdue. The editing of Dahl by Puffin, an imprint of Penguin, was a symptom of something frogglehumping in the publishing world, but far from the only one. Authors have been dropped; books have been buried; people have lost jobs; sensitivity readers have been employed to ensure modern morals are adhered to. James Bond has even been edited to make him less vile—the literary equivalent of trying to make water less wet. 

There is a line of argument that says that this isn’t really a problem. Suppression of speech, this argument runs, is the preserve of totalitarian, Orwellian-style states and institutions that use force to stop people speaking out. In a country like Britain, speech is still free. This is pure gobblefunk and Orwell’s “1984” is the wrong Orwellian work to understand why. 

Better by far to turn to an introduction Orwell wrote for “Animal Farm”. Orwell had finished his satire on the Soviet Union—which many consider his masterpiece—in 1943, whereupon it was promptly rejected by four publishers. As with Ms Barnes’s 22 rejections, some offered reasons. One publisher pleasingly suggested Orwell might want to rethink the pigs. Having swine as the ruling class might “give offence…particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are”. Orwell kept the pigs; “Animal Farm” sold half a million copies in two years. 

He later reflected on all this in that introduction. There is, he wrote, a “veiled censorship” in British publishing. “At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.” It is “not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it”. Anyone who tries to do so “finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness”. They still do. A book on colonialism by Nigel Biggar, an emeritus professor of theology at Oxford University, was welcomed by its publisher, Bloomsbury, as a work of “major importance” and then postponed, apparently indefinitely, because “public feeling…does not currently support the publication of the book”. It is now out under a different publisher.

What is striking is how apparently mild the sanctions are for speaking out. People think, as one author puts it, that you are afraid of Twitter death threats. You aren’t: what really terrifies you is that your colleagues will think a little less of you. Most people do not require the threat of being burned at the stake to shut them up; being flamed by their peers on Twitter is more than enough. 

This is true of more typically Orwellian states, too. When Anne Applebaum studied the Sovietisation of central Europe, the historian found political conformity was “the result not of violence or direct state coercion, but rather of intense peer pressure”. Publishing, an industry in which every third person is called Sophie, seems particularly susceptible to such pressure. 

All this involves no laws, no police, nor even any obvious threats. Polite people write polite emails and books are politely buried. “The sinister fact about literary censorship in England”, Orwell wrote, “is that it is largely voluntary.” To go against that ominously amorphous “public feeling” is deeply uncomfortable. Ms Barnes found writing her book about the Tavistock’s clinic hard not because she thought it was wrong but because “I thought: ‘People are not going to like me.’” Publishers are equally nervy. In the name of looking likeable they panic and pre-empt offence: they cull the pigs; drop the book on colonialism; cut the foulsome bits.

The problem with all this nervousness—this desire-to-look-nice-ness—is that it has very nasty results. In “Fahrenheit 451”, a novel by Ray Bradbury, a society has taken to burning all books lest any cause offence. As one character explains: “Don’t step on the toes of the…second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen….” This book-burning wasn’t mandated by the government. “There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with, no! Technology…and minority pressure carried the trick.” Now the books have all gone. Now “thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time.”

Penguin, incidentally, offers an audiobook of “Fahrenheit 451”. Perhaps its executives might be encouraged to listen to it before they get their red pens out. Then again, they might be tempted to edit it as well; after all, Puffin took the words “Japanese” and “Norway people” and “Yankee-Doodles” out of Dahl. Best be sure we can all stay happy all the time. ■