A decrepit fleet sails from Germany to play its role in a futile war, crewed by sailors who seem more eager to kill each other than the perfidious Australians.
Click through to see the video. You really, really should. Sound is irrelevant.
Text: "Tanks, fighting vehicles and howitzers arrive in Washington, D.C. ahead of next week's military parade. They departed from Texas on June 2." Two minutes and forty seconds.
Allegedly that train is a mile long and is transporting:
I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking that maybe the guy who attempted one coup already bringing a well-armed military force into our capitol city and, crucually, within artillery-range of the Pentagon, is just throwing himself a birthday party, but also maybe not.
Best Novel: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia UK)
Best Novella: The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui (Neon Hemlock)
Best Novelette: Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being, A.W. Prihandita (Clarkesworld 11/24)
Short Story: Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole, Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld 2/24)
Andre Norton Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction: The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts, Vanessa Ricci-Thode (self-published)
Best Game Writing: A Death in Hyperspace, Stewart C Baker, Phoebe Barton, James Beamon, Kate Heartfield, Isabel J. Kim, Sara S. Messenger, Naca Rat, Natalia Theodoridou, M. Darusha Wehm, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Infomancy.net)
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Dune: Part Two by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve (Warner Bros)
Kevin O'Donnell, Jr Special Service Award: C.J. Lavigne
As you read this I’m on stage in Kansas City accepting the honour of becoming SFWA’s 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master. Traditionally, those few minutes on stage are the new Grand Master’s opportunity to reflect on their career and thank all those who helped them on the way. I’ve chosen to do things a little differently.
First, I did the reflection-upon and lessons-learnt-from career stuff yesterday in a 90-minute conversation and AMA with Kelley and anyone in the room in person or virtually. Second, instead of gabbling a bunch of names without context in an effort to squeeze everyone in before the Nebula nominees expire from irritation and stress as they wait for me to just be done, and go away, so they can find out whether they’ve won, I’m going to thank people here, now. And third (and I’m sure regular readers of this blog will be shocked—shocked!—to hear it), I want to use those few precious minutes with the microphone to say a few things.
But we can talk about all that later. Right here and right now I want to thank people who have helped me in my writing career in ways great and small. There are a lot. I apologise to all those I’ve missed.
The first person who helped me was Carol, my partner for ten years in England, whose love and support were vital in those first years—who never once suggested I was unrealistic in trying to write books that won awards even though a) I didn’t know any writers b) had never studied writing and c) couldn’t even type—and didn’t even know you couldn’t submit manuscripts handwritten in blue fountain pen on lined paper.
The second person is, or perhaps was, a man I never met (and whose name I’m not entirely sure I remember correctly) at a publisher in London.1 When I was 23 or 24 I sent him a handwritten manuscript of a science fiction novel called Greenstorm, and instead of tossing the paper in the bin, or keeping it around to laugh over with his friends, he wrote back to me explaining all the very many things I’d done wrong—and suggesting the name of an editor who might actually like this book. Once it was typed. That was an act of extraordinary generosity. And it made a huge difference, because the name he suggested was Malcolm Edwards.
We’ll get to him in a minute. The next person to help was my mother, Margot Griffith.2 She didn’t approve of this novel-writing nonsense; she wanted me to get a real job. If I had to write, why not be a journalist—steady employment. Nonetheless when I explained that I needed to be able to type my book before I sent it out again, she bought me a secondhand IBM Selectric. And I got a book from the library and taught myself to touch-type.
David Pringle bought my first story, “Mirrors and Burnstone”—that is, the fourth story I’d written and sent him. He supported my career for years, first at Interzone and then by hiring me to write for Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy universe.
Malcolm bought Ammonite—a first, mass market paperback from a complete unknown. That in itself isn’t unheard of; what amazes me is how much attention and how many publisher resources he used to launch it. He got me radio interviews, newspaper reviews, he put me—and my mother—up at the Groucho Club for three nights. And he basically let me suggest the design for that very first cover and found an artist who could realise my vision. And then he bought Slow River.
In between selling “Mirrors and Burnstone” and Ammonite, I met Kelley at Clarion. She’s the one I owe most to, but there isn’t a blog post in the world long enough to list all the ways. Instead, I’ll name the other workshop people I met there. Obviously the friends I made and still see—Mark Tiedemann, Brooks Caruthers, Daryl Gregory—but also all those I lost touch with but still think about sometimes. (If you’re reading this, please say hello!) Then of course there were the teachers. Tim Powers was the one who taught me when to really give your opinion of another writer’s book and when to be blandly polite—also, he brought beer! Lisa Goldstein brought into focus for me what it means to speak your mind at the right time. Chip Delany pretty much saved the experience for me: he found me food I could eat (I was starving), bought it, and brought it to my room; he made me feel less alien (another queer person!); and he introduced to me a writing concept that Kelley and I have refined and now call narrative and emotional grammar. Stan Robinson was the one who told us that writing should not be showy for its own sake: that good prose should be the feather on the arrow that sinks into the reader rather than a feather in the writer’s cap.3 And then there is Kate and Damon. Obviously I owe them the most. Even before Clarion I’d read their work—Damon Knight’s criticism as much as his fiction and soaked it up like a sponge. Kate Wilhelm—despite all her awards—was criminally underrated. But the thing I really owe them was their anger at my waste of talent.
Let me explain. I’ve always been a good writer—and I knew it. But while I knew I was good I never took it seriously: I played with it; I was clever with it; if something didn’t immediately work I gave up and moved onto to something else. And, hey, if writing didn’t work then I’d find something else. (Even going to Clarion itself was a toss-up: I’d also applied for a 4-week women’s martial arts camp in the Netherlands-it was just luck that Clarion wrote back first and offered me a scholarship.) When we had our teacher/student conference they offered me a plastic cup and some wine—a gallon jug of Gallo; I’d never tasted anything as awful in my life, but they thought I was going to need it; they were right—and then tore into me. Minute after minute they smacked me about, coming from different directions with each sentence, but what it boiled down to was this: they were really, really angry that I was wasting my talent. They set aside my submission stories (Mirrors and Burnstone, and Down the Path of the Sun) then lifted the stack of workshop stories and tossed them on the floor. They were disgusted. Why? Why was I writing such unserious crap when I could write stories like Burnstone and Path of the Sun? How dare I? How dare I waste my time, their time, and my talent when there were people in that workshop who would kill for a tenth of what I was just frittering away? On and on, minute after minute—Damon getting louder; Kate red in the face. What, they shouted, was I afraid of? I stood there, quite blank, and then they told me to just go away, and come back when I had something to say.
I went away and spent the afternoon and early evening drinking beer and thinking. They were right. I’m still not sure ‘afraid’ is the right word, but it’s not entirely the wrong one. either. I hadn’t committed; I wasn’t taking the work seriously; uncharacteristically (why?) I wasn’t stretching to my limit, I wasn’t taking risks. I wasn’t reaching with all my will and focus. I wasn’t being brave.4 That conversation changed my trajectory; I owe Kate and Damon a lot.
In UK: two local fans introduced me to the Hull SF community (via a ritual viewing of ST:TNG) they told me about an sf festival in Beverley, where I met Gwyneth Jones and Lisa Tuttle. I also met Brian Aldiss—but that’s a whole other story…
—and then I met some of the Leeds SF community, including Charlie Stross—to whom my first words, sadly (it’s a long story—I’ll tell it some day), “Oh, just fuck off!” (Things improved from there.)
After Beverley where I met so many people who wished there was something like Clarion in the UK, I thought, Well why not make one? And created the first SF writers weekend funded by Arts Council Britain—and invited Lisa and Iain Banks to teach alongside me.
After that I was invited to Mexicon—where the idea for Ammonite fell into my head in the middle of a panel moderated by Sherry Coldsmith—thank you, Sherry!—-about women as aliens—and realising M&B’s ‘aliens’ were, in fact, women.
Then I moved to the US and the immigration struggle began—while I left the country every six months and came back two weeks later on another tourist visa. I started freelancing under the table (because tourist visa) for southern voice. I reviewed. Lot of books. I interviewed Dorothy Allison about Bastard Out of Carolina over the phone (and nothing recorded, so i had to recreate the whole thing from memory) then met her face to face at Charis books—and discovered she not only wrote the best queer fiction, poetry, and essays, she also loved SF. She became my friend and champion ever after. I miss her still.
It was at Charis Books (thank you, Linda Bryant!) that I met Ursula and told her about the Ammonite sale and asked for a blurb (yes I did). And she gave me one—and put me in touch with Vonda McIntyre, who also gave me a blurb.
More than that, Vonda introduced me to her agent, Fran Collin—who got me offer from Gordon Van Gelder at St Martins for a hard/soft deal for Ammonite with Avon. Against all advice, I turned them down (another loooong story, told elsewhere—but it put my name out there) and instead sold Ammonite to Ellen Key Harris at Del Rey.
In 1992 at the Nebulas in Atlanta—that’s when things really kicked into gear because that where Ellen Datlow said, Oh *you’re* Nicola Griffith! Let me introduce you to everyone. And she did—and it’s also where I met Ed Hall—great friend who helped later.
It was right around this time that I also met Dave Slusher, who interviewed me several times for his college radio station.
Meanwhile, at Del Rey, Ellen Harris, a brand new associate editor and me, a brand new writer, threw away the rule book and invented a guerrilla marketing campaign which led to awards right out of the gate, plus what might have been the first review of a mass market paperback original in the NYT—and it was a great review.
One of the awards was the Tiptree, and I went to Readercon for it—where I met a zillion people—and at Wiscon—ditto. Ellen and Delia, Jeanne Gomoll, Ellen Klages, so many more.
My second agent, Shawna McCarthy, sold Slow River to Del Rey (another loooong story) and again to Malcolm.
When I sold Slow River to Del Rey I met the associate publisher, Ku Yu Liang, who, in an extraordinary move, sent me and Kelley (all expenses paid) to ICFA—where I met so many peopleI’d already met (including Brian Aldiss)—and many others such as Gary Wolfe and Joe and Gay Haldeman—for the first time.
All this time the immigration fight was going on, and for that I want to thank Allen Ginsberg, Stan Robinson, and Zell Miller,the then-governor of Georgia (!!) and of ourse the goddess of immigration attorney, Carolyn Soloway. I got my Green Card—but not before having to make new law.
Then we moved to Seattle. And here I met and was helped by so very many people—and time is running short—that I’ll have to just start listing names. Obviously top of the list, the mover and shaker behind everything, is Vonda McIntyre. She made so much possible. Also Eileen Gunn and John Berry, Nisi Shawl, Octavia Butler, Ursula again and more, Robin McKinley, Nancy Kress, Timmi Duchamp, Greg and Astrid Bear, all the folks past and present at Clarion West, Ted Chiang and Marcia, Matt Ruff and Lisa, Neal Stephenson and Ellen, Kathy Cain and Charles Mc Aleese, and so many booksellers: Rick, Tom, Rob, Duane, Fran…
Then there’s Janis Ian, Stacey and Mary, Kate and Liz, Laura and Amy, Jen and Therese, and so many, many more…
But always, the SF community—all those parties at our house, Vonda’s house, Kate and Glen’s house. You know who you are. Thank you.
Somewhere in there I met Colleen Lindsay, and in 2000 she introduced me to Sean McDonald, the an editor at Nan A. Talese. He is my editor still—though now at FSG—so obviously I owe him a great deal.
In 2007 I met Maria Dahvana Headley—and she introduced to my current agent Stephanie Cabot. Stephanie and Sean between them changed my career.
Oh, and now time is really ticking by. So to my family and friends and neighbours and colleagues I haven’t yet named—Anne and Julie, Jennifer Durham (photographer extraordinaire), Liz Butcher, friend beyond price, Angelique and Liliana, Stacey and Mary, Ginny and Lynn, Bob ad Tina, Vicki, all the teams at Gernert and SLA and FSG/MCD, and now—yay!—at Canongate, thank you.
I couldn’t have done any of this without you. Thank you. And there are still so very many more but right now I have to go get dressed in my nice blue suit and go make a speech…
Thank you!
I have no idea which publisher (we’re talking nearly 40 years ago). I want to say the editor was Nic or Anthony Cheetham—but those are names I might have learnt later and just sort of attached to the incident. Memory is unreliable. ︎
My father never helped me in my writing. He actively hindered it and sneered at my efforts. He only ever read on thing I wrote, a very early story, “We Have Me the Alien,” and his only comment was, There’s no ‘e’ in lightning. He told me I should give up, that I would never be published, I was pathetic for trying. I walked right u to him—came very closer to hitting him—and said through gritted teeth, I fucking well will. Watch me and stormed out, slamming the door so hard a picture fell off the wall. A few years before he died he did become very proud of me—proud of my work. Proud of my PhD. Better late than never. ︎
This is a metaphor I’ve so used so many times that I’m no longer certain where I got it from. But I think it was Stan—or at least I think he said something very like it. ︎
The need for bravery matters. I’ve talked about it before, several times, and one day I’ll write about it at length. But not here. ︎
Feminist Medievalists and/or Medievalist Feminists: it depends, as always, on your definitions.
The title of our session says that we are feminists interested in Medieval Studies; the term with which I'm more comfortable says that we are medievalists motivated by feminist politics. I don't want to argue today that one label is better than the other. I simply want to note the difference, to proceed to use the term with which I'm most familiar ("feminist medievalist") and to wonder (hopefully) if the emergence of "medievalist feminist" reflects a generational shift towards more assertive feminist Medieval Studies; if so, it is a shift that I welcome, despite my fuddy-duddy discomfort with the term! Indeed, it is this very shift that I'd like to encourage in my remarks today, for I want to argue that there is a critical need for feminist scholars to begin to take a more central place within Medieval Studies.
The above quote is from Judith M. Bennett’s1 opening remarks from a Roundtable on Medievalist Feminists in the Academy that took place in 1992 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. All the medievalists I know refer to it amongst themselves at Kalamazoo or even K’zoo when casually speaking or emailing about; ICMS in used in writing although, since there is another International Medieval Congress (at Leeds University in the UK), that risks causing some confusion!
I am not a medievalist (my deep immersion in Tolkien’s Middle-earth from age ten resulted in me becoming an animist, writing a LOT of nature poetry, ongoing rhapsodizing about trees, and waters (especially the ocean). I tried a Chaucer class as an undergraduate and bombed (well, I was auditing and left after a couple of weeks, because the language was impenetrable).
I did, however, hang out and become friends with a number of medievalists in graduate school because they were the others in the literature programs I was in most likely to be fans of (or at least not dismissive of) fantasy and science fiction. The modernists could be real snobs about it, even more so after they decided “magical realism” was this amazing capital-L LITERATURE.2
After getting hired at a university, I eventually collaborated with a medieval historian of religion on various Tolkien projects (co-teaching classes, collaborating on writing articles and grants, giving talks at conferences, including K’zoo). We sort of billed ourselves as the medievalist and the postmodernist illustrating different approaches to Tolkien’s legendarium and its adaptations.
As a result, even in retirement, I having a fantastic time on Substack finding and reading feminist medievalist / medieval feminist Substacks in addition to feminist essays by medievalists in part to keep up with contemporary scholarship on the Middle Ages because “ Tolkien” and his legendarium was identified with the medieval from early on. The identification is related to his own academic specializations and sources and to the fact that the earliest academics to take his work seriously as a focus for scholarship were, not surprisingly, medievalists and folklorists who had a much better sense of what he was doing than some of the modernist critics who were, shall we say, not the best readers of his work (in this case, “best” meaning that they were neither familiar with the medieval sources that Tolkien was drawing from nor the medieval aesthetic that Elizabeth D. Kirk discusses in her 1971 essay on languages and style, and the reason why modernist literary critics (such as Edmund Wilson and Burton Raffel along with others) share as aesthetic that was not Tolkien’s (highly recommend reading Kirk’s essay if you are at all interested in questions of Tolkien’s style which has been criticized as “bad” by a number of critics and academics (Harold Bloom!) (her work is far too seldom cited/quoted by people doing stylistic analysis).3
I think that those of us us doing feminist scholarship on Tolkien (some of whom are, like myself, not-medievalists) can learn a great deal by paying attention to the current state of knowledge about (among other things) women and the Middle Ages which overlaps with gender, sexuality, and queer4 studies in medieval studies as well as with other academic sub-fields!
A monthly newsletter that aims to reimagine the women that were intentionally erased, minimized, and/or villainized throughout the Middle Ages. History has been male-centric for far too long, and this space seeks to change that while remaining conscious that men are also harmed within patriarchal social structures. It is not women vs. men, it is all of us vs. the patriarchy. (About.)
frustrated by an overwhelming focus on kings and battles?
bored by matter-of-fact presentations of the past?
missing the human connection element to studying our ancestors?
If so, then this is the place for you!
I’m currently studying for a PhD in Archaeology at Oxford, researching the role of women in the social and political developments of 6th- and 7th-century England and France. With a worldwide readership of over 4,400 PLUS featuring regularly in Substack’s top 100 fastest-growing history publications, I share medieval history as you rarely hear it. I combine written and archaeological evidence to share the experiences of overshadowed individuals, ask challenging questions of dominant interpretations, and recommend books and writers doing a wonderful job of unearthing the past.
And combining expertise, a great interview [click on the link not only to read the interview as a whole but also to see the footnotes]:
Many writers recently have been bold in declaring that feminism didn’t exist in the medieval world. What do you think about this? Does it matter, for the feminist writer, whether it existed then or not?
I think they’re right! The language and intellectual frameworks of feminism did not exist in the medieval world; to imply otherwise would absolutely be anachronistic. But to imply that folks weren’t questioning the dominant culture; that women weren’t seeking realities beyond domination; that the lowest classes didn’t challenge imposed exploitation—which are all feminist actions—is not simply anachronistic, but historically inaccurate. Two truths can exist at any one moment, the human experience is quite expansive. Feminism as a polemic paradigm did not exist, but a proto-feminism which challenged the dominant culture of imperialist patriarchy at individual levels did exist, and has so since the inception of imposed hierarchies and enforced male supremacy.2 As second wave feminist Marilyn French noted, “subjugation generates resentment,” and there has been much subjugation under patriarchy.3
When Christine de Pizan sat to compose The Book of the City of the Ladies (1405), she was seeking to reinstate women into their rightful place within the historical annals while flexing a deep knowledge of literary devices. She was also critiquing the harm imposed by the ideologies of the dominant culture (patriarchy). Just prior to penning her proto-feminist masterpiece, Christine had very publicly engaged in a debate (1401) on the disgusting literary treatment of women within the popular Roman de la Rose, imploring the very highest seat of patriarchal governance, queen regent Isabeau of Bavaria, to take action—which she did!4
Women advocating on behalf of women within a patriarchal society is a long held practice—long before words such as ‘feminism’ or ‘intersectionality’ existed. Hauled in front of French judges in the Autumn of 1322, Jacqueline Felice de Almania fought for women’s personhood and agency in an argument she likely knew was long lost. [italicized text a block quote within the interview]
“In her own defense, Felicie argued fervently for the right of wise and experienced-even if unlicensed-women to care for the sick. With even more spirit she asserted that it was improper for men to palpate the breasts and abdomens of women; indeed, out of modesty, women might prefer death from an illness to revealing intimate secrets to a man.”5
We can now classify these individual acts as proto-feminist because we possess the language and intellectual frameworks to do so, but doing so doesn’t imply some anachronistic inception of feminist polity and I think folks often conflate the two.
In my opinion, the role of the feminist writer, especially the feminist historian, is to challenge the harmful narratives of the dominant culture. And though the women of the medieval world would have never thought of themselves as feminists, their works can be perceived through such paradigms as they inform our own patriarchal reality.
I’m loving my Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translation a lot, but one unfortunate side effect is that putting all my translation energy into Middle English means I’m not translating any Old English. I love both very deeply and my PhD is going to involve a healthy amount of both. Middle English might own my heart very slightly more, but I loved Old English first. Choosing who I love more makes me feel trapped in the centre of a weepy teen love triangle. I love haunting elegies and I love King Arthur. You can’t make me choose when I just have so much love in my heart.
One of the things I’m most desperately excited about for my PhD is how many languages there are all together in there. For years people told me they didn’t understand how I’d manage to mash Old English, Middle English and Welsh (and now also Cornish) into one cohesive project. The fact that I’ve managed it is one of the things I’m proudest of.
Most medievalists I know identify very strongly as an Anglo-Saxonist or a Middle English-ist (is there a word for that?), and I just never have. I don’t know what that says about me. Perhaps I’m just very amateurish and still, age twenty nine, don’t have enough language skills to declare myself a specialist in either langauge. But if we’re feeling a bit more charitable towards me, I think I just love the way both look at each other backwards and forwards across time. Like an Old and New Testament, I love how they answer and fulfill each other, creating little callbacks and prophecies that get fulfilled. I love how the Middle English period reinterprets and reimagines Old English. I love, I really deeply love, the fact that even in the high Middle Ages there was still a medieval past lurking beneath English culture. I love alliterative revival poetry and medieval recreations of the earlier Middle Ages.
Shield of Skuld by Irina Manea who is an historian who specializes in Viking history looking at material culture, but also recently posted this great piece on Girl Power, Vengeance, and the Mill of Doom: How to lost your kingdom to slave women which I totally saved to use in my Webs by Women project because its about a Norse poem which features two female stone giants (and is a kickass story as well). Plus, STONE GIANTS!!!!!!!!!
Once upon a myth, the Danish king Frodi (not a hobbit) made a questionable decision: he acquired two enslaved women, Fenia and Menia, from Sweden. Little did he know they were no ordinary captives, but towering descendants of mountain giants. He brought them back not just to toil, but to operate Grotti, a magical millstone with the power to grind out anything the heart desired: gold, peace, happiness, you name it. Sounds idyllic, right? Except Frodi, blinded by his lust for effortless riches like most capitalist profiteers nowadays, demanded nonstop production. No breaks. No mercy. Just endless grinding.
This compelling story is the topic of the Norse poem Grottasöngr.The girls are taken straight to the mill to start working: the king does not even mention rest before hearing the slave-women’s tune. They accordingly set to work: the sound of industry rings out, as they adjust the machine, and the king again orders them to work. The milling, accompanied by the girls’ singing, continues until Frodi’s household is asleep, and the flour begins to emerge. Needless to say, things did not go well from here.
And imagine my astonishment when, while mousing around in the subscription databases some years ago, I found an an essay published in the Medieval Feminist Forum in 1996 by Michael D. C. Drout on “The Influence of J. R. R. Tolkien's Masculinist Medievalism” [click on link to download this short essay] where he points out the problem of students’ ignorance about medieval women:
Because many students inherit their perceptions of medieval literature through Tolkien's interpretations, they are often surprised to find women in the literature they read in their classes. When student perceptions of the Middle Ages clash with what they are taught by contemporary teachers, many students are likely to resent the "intrusion" of gender (among other topics) into their comfortable fantasy world. It seems to me that the challenge for educators concerned with gender is to complicate productively the world view inherited from Tolkien without completely destroying students' familiarity with and love for their idealized (and ideologized) view of the Middle Ages. One way to achieve this complication is to show that men have gender in Beowulf and other texts beloved by Tolkien, that this gender requires them to perform certain roles, and that these requirements often lead, to misuse one of Tolkien's more famous quotes about Beowulf, to "sufficient tragedy" (24)
Drout also argues that “a criticism that excludes women, gender, reproduction, and sex is doomed to extinction. Some critics have chosen such extinction with their eyes open (in unpublished notes dating from around 1937 Tolkien suggests that he may be at the end of the tradition of Old English studies)” (26-27).
I’m sure there are more medieval feminist and feminist medievalist Substacks out there — if you know of any, feel free to link in a comment!
Bennett is one of the founding scholars of feminist history, someone even an English prof who is not a medievalist knew about! This link to Wikipedia covers some of her accomplishments, and publications for those unaware of her work. The second participant in the K’zoo roundtable is Elizabeth Robertson who is an medievalist in an English department. They invited responses, to be published in the Spring 1993 issue, which published one response, by Clare Lees.
I tended to take a lot of British literature, mostly Shakespeare and poetry, in my first MA program; I still remember my office-mate (we were teaching assistants in the department) coming into the office, shoving my pile of sff off my desk onto the floor, and dumping some novels by Gabriel José García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges in front of me while declaiming that I should stop reading that “garbage” and read MAGICAL REALISM. I advise against that strategy, by the way, since it resulted in me refusing to read anything in that genre. By the time I got to my doctoral program years later, I leapfrogged past Modernism into feminist and gender/queer theorists (so sorta a small-p postmodernist meaning working with theories and texts published after WWII). I tried a few magical realist works by women writers in those years, but they never really grabbed me.
Kirk, Elizabeth D. "'I Would Rather Have Written in Elvish': Language, Fiction and The Lord of the Rings." Novel: A Forum on Fiction, vol.5, iss. 1, 1971, pp. 5-18.
Judgments of Tolkien's style like Burton Raffel's reflect a comparatively modern assumption that the function of language in any work of art is to force the reader out of the reactions, awarenesses, associations of ideas, and value judgments which he shares with others and to substitute for them sharper, more distinctive, individual, and "original" modes of awareness. Good style is style which drags the reader out of his habitual derivative consciousness and makes him participate in a new one. This is a function of post-Romantic views of the artist as a privileged sensibility whose experiences are not only more intense than those of ordinary men but "original," that is, in degree if not in kind they are really different and more valuable. But this is by no means the only possible view of the artist. Keats himself told his publisher that poetry "should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity-it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance." And it is perfectly possible for an artist's concern with language to be concern for language as a medium of communal consciousness and of certain modes of awareness and evaluation to which its existence vis a vis other languages testifies. The artist may dramatize language as the blood and sinews of a culture as distinct from other cultures. Many great novelists have combined this sort of interest in language with the kind Burton Raffel has in mind; one can read Joyce or Jane Austen for either reason. An artist can also be concerned with language almost purely in the second sense. This has been true of most "high styles" of the past, whether they represent the heightening of communal experience in the way that "primitive" formulaic styles do, or whether they involve the highly sophisticated artistry, which may or may not be formulaic, of literary epic.
What Tolkien has done is to attempt a story concerned with language in the communal sense, yet which is as different from epic as it is from the novel. The Lord of the Rings enacts the nature of language. Tolkien has created an entire world in its spatial and chronological dimensions, peopling it with languages which have, in a necessarily stylized and simplified version, all the basic features of language, from writing systems and sound changes through diction and syntax to style. By playing them against one another, he has created a "model" (in the scientific sense of the term) for the relationship of language to action, to values and to civilization.
Diane Watt, a feminist medievalist writing in 2019, criticized the tendency in queer medieval studies that resulted in:
the terminology of both the history of sexuality and queer theory has become gender exclusive: homosexuality has come to mean, in common academic usage, male homosexuality; gay history is gay male history; queer sexualities are all too often queer male sexualities. Women are not given equal weight to men, and the histories of male and female sexualities are still artificially separated. (452)
Watt, Diane. “Why men still aren't enough.” GLQ: a Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 16, iss. 3, 2010, pp. 451-464.
That pattern of exclusion is one I’ve identified in Queer Tolkien studies as well!
A shocking number of people will blithely tell us all about the book they read, in English, on an English-language subreddit, and never tell us that they didn't read it in English. I can only catch so many of them - if they don't say "English isn't my first language" or make any obvious foreign language errors then I'll never know. (Some of them say "I read this in my own language" and then don't tell us what that language was.)
Most of these people, if prompted, will tell you what language they read it in. Three times now, I've had to ask twice because they refused to answer the question in a useful way, and every time that person has been Greek.
I thought it was a little funny the second time, but three times is the start of a worrying pattern, especially as it's not at all the most popular not-English language posted there. Maybe there's something going badly wrong with their school system?
(And, sidenote, even if you're certain it was translated from English you still ought to tell us the language it was written in. At least in theory this can help us weed out false positives, although I may be expecting too much of fellow commenters to that subreddit.)
Actually, I can't find that the article by Molly-Jong Fast in today's Guardian Saturday is currently online, alas - clearly she had a sad and distressing childhood, even if I was tempted, and probably not the only one to be so tempted, to murmur, apologies to P Larkin, 'they zipless fuck you up...', the abrupt dismissal of her nanny, her only secure attachment figure, when Erica J suddenly remarried (again) was particularly harsh, I thought. No wonder she had problems.
And really, even if she does make a point of how relatively privileged she was, that doesn't actually ameliorate how badly she was treated.
Only the other day there was an obituary of the psychoanalyst Joy Schaverien, who wrote Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the “Privileged” Child.
[V]ery gradually, more babies were delivered in hospital, where newborns were typically removed for periods to be cared for in nurseries. "The baby would be taken away between feeds so that the mother could rest, and the baby could be watched by either a nursery nurse or midwife," says Terri Coates, a retired lecturer in midwifery, and former clinical adviser on BBC series Call The Midwife. "It may sound paternalistic, but midwives believed they were looking after mums and babies incredibly well." It was common for new mothers to be kept in hospital for between five and seven days, far longer than today. To identify newborns in the nursery, a card would be tied to the end of the cot with the baby's name, mother's name, the date and time of birth, and the baby's weight. "Where cots rather than babies were labelled, accidents could easily happen"
Plus, this was the era of the baby boom, one imagines maternity wards may have been a bit swamped....
[T]his assortment of royal chairs would become embroiled in a national scandal that would rock the French antiques world, bringing the trade into disrepute. The reason? The chairs were in fact all fakes. The scandal saw one of France's leading antiques experts, Georges "Bill" Pallot, and award-winning cabinetmaker, Bruno Desnoues, put on trial on charges of fraud and money laundering following a nine-year investigation. .... Speaking in court in March, Mr Pallot said the scheme started as a "joke" with Mr Desnoues in 2007 to see if they could replicate an armchair they were already working on restoring, that once belonged to Madame du Barry. Masters of their crafts, they managed the feat, convincing other experts that it was a chair from the period.
While Geoff Dyer in The Books of [His] Life goes in hard with Beatrix Potter as early memory, Elizabeth Taylor as late-life discovery, and Rosamond Lehmann's The Weather in the Streets as
One of those perennially bubbling-under modern classics – too good for the Championship, unable to sustain a place in the Premier league – which turns out to be way better than some of the canonical stalwarts permanently installed in the top flight.
Okay, I mark him down a bit for the macho ' I don’t go to books for comfort', but still, not bad for a bloke, eh.
Somehow our house looks more chaotic and full of half-filled bags and boxes as we prepare for a week long vacation to the northwoods. ONE WEEK! You'd think we were packing to move out!
The thing about the place we're headed is that the closest town with a grocery store is twenty minutes down the Gunflint Trail. I mean, I will drive twenty minutes to a store around here. Maybe because we're surrounded by TREES, twenty minutes away feels so much further when we're up north. Half of what we're bringing is food. Almost none of which will be returning with us.
Despite all this, I'm really looking forwrard to the vacation. There is limited wireless, but I usually get up early and make the hike to the Lodge with my computer and spend an hour or so making sure I'm not missing out on any earth-shattering news. So, I'm still reachable, just... only once a day. I'm going to try to post pictures and such--you know, actually keep up with this blog for once!
Bad news: the endoscopy failed. (I was scheduled for an upper GI endoscopy via the nasal sinuses to take a look around my stomach and see what's bleeding. Bad news: turns out I have unusually narrow sinuses, and by the time they'd figured this out my nose was watering so badly that I couldn't breathe when they tried to go in via my throat. So we're rescheduling for a different loction with an anesthetist who can put me under if necessary. NB: I would have been fine with only local anaesthesia if the bloody endscope had fit through my sinuses. Gaah.)
The attack novel I was working on has now hit the 70% mark in first draft—not bad for two months. I am going to keep pushing onwards until it stops, or until the page proofs I'm expecting hit me in the face. They're due at the end of June, so I might finish Starter Pack first ... or not. Starter Pack is an unexpected but welcome spin-off of Ghost Engine (third draft currently on hold at 80% done), which I shall get back to in due course. It seems to have metastasized into a multi-book project.
Neither of the aforementioned novels is finished, nor do they have a US publisher. (Ghost Engine has a UK publisher, who has been Very Patient for the past few years—thanks, Jenni!)
Feel free to talk among yourselves, especially about the implications of Operation Spiders Web, which (from here) looks like the defining moment for a very 21st century revolution in military affairs; one marking the transition from fossil fuel powered force projection to electromotive/computational force projection.
I did a quick search over past posts and I see that bibliotherapy has been a thing that I have been posting the odd link about for A Long Time, though I see the School of Life's page thereon is now 404. In the way that things are constantly being suddenly NEW, I see I also had a link much more recently on the topic about which was cynical.
When reading is positioned as therapy, we argue, evaluative intentions intersect awkwardly with the cultural logics of literature, as practitioners and commissioners grapple with what it means to extract ‘wellbeing effects’ from a diffuse and everyday practice. As a result, what might look initially like another simple case of medicalisation turns out to have more uncertain effects. Indeed, as we will show, incorporating the ‘reading cure’ troubles biomedicine, foregrounding both the deficiencies of current public health responses to the perceived crisis of mental health, and the poverty of causal models of therapeutic effect in public health. There are, then, potentially de-medicalising as well as medicalising effects.
We get the sense that the project was constantly escaping from any endeavours to confine it within meshes of 'evidence-based medicine': 'Trying to fit the square peg of reading into the round hole of evidence is where things sometimes get awkward.'
Larfed liek drayne:
In five experiments on how reading fiction impacts on measures of wellbeing, Carney and Robertson found no measurable effects from simply being exposed to fiction: the mechanism, they note, is not akin to a pharmaceutical that can prescribed.
When a woman looked around her for her husband, who had been right behind her on the stairs but was now nowhere to be seen. I was very worried I was facing a repeat of the time not too long ago when I spent an hour looking for a missing patron.
The missing husband turned out not to have been behind his wife on the stairs after all, so mystery solved. The missing patron I spent that hour looking for was found once I thought about where she had to be to have not been found where we looked: row H or J, somewhere near seat 26.
lydamorehouse (lydamorehouse) wrote2025-06-0508:16 am
It's Pride again, and time for another queer-themed bundle! At a time when the community is once again under threat, we felt it was more important than ever to showcase the work and the writers that celebrate us. We looked for books that show queerness in all its complexity, with stories that range from pure adventure to profoundly serious, and from across the range of identities that make up our whole. We looked for stories that showcased the many and complex forms that queerness takes — the many ways that we have chosen to be. We looked for stories that engage with threats to the queer world, and for stories that imagine what we might be without threats, for stories that celebrate our joy and our resilience.
And we're pleased to say that we have found those stories, and more. If anything, the hardest part of curating this bundle was narrowing down the field: there are so many writers out there creating intelligent, nuanced, queer science fiction and fantasy that it's incredibly hard to choose among them. This is not to claim that this is a definitive LGBTQIA+ collection —given the ever-growing amount of stellar queer writing being published, we're not sure that's even possible. Instead, we thought of the bundle as a sampler, or perhaps a tasting menu. It includes novels, novellas, single author collections, and anthologies; the genres range from fantasy mysteries to cyberpunk to far future to post apocalyptic fantasy. There are newer works and writers, and some older work you may have missed when they first appeared. It's your chance to read work by some of the best writers working today.
StoryBundle has always allowed its patrons to donate part of their payment to a related charity, and this year we're once again supporting Rainbow Railroad, a NGO that helps LGBTQ+ people escape state-sponsored persecution and violence worldwide. Their work is needed now more than ever, and if you choose, you can pass on part of the bundle's price to them— a gift that can save a life. – Catherine Lundoff and Melissa Scott
* * *
For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you're feeling generous), you'll get the basic bundle of four books in .epub format—WORLDWIDE.
The Map and the Territory by A.M. Tuomala
We're Here - The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2023 edited by Darcie Little Badger and series editor Charles Payseur
Point of Dreams by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
If you pay at least the bonus price of just $25, you get all four of the regular books, plus TEN more books, for a total of 14!
Be the Sea by Clara Ward
Fallen by Melissa Scott
A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert
Luminescent Machinations by Rhiannan Rasmussen and dave ring
Fairs' Point by Melissa Scott
So You Want to be A Robot by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor
Price of a Thousand Blessings by Ginn Hale
Reforged by Seth Haddon
Welcome to Boy.Net by Lyda Morehouse
Power to Yield by Bogi Takács
This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com . It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get a DRM-free .epub for all books!
It's also super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.
Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.
Get quality reads: We've chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.
Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth. If you can only spare a little, that's fine! You'll still get access to a batch of exceptional titles.
Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their catalog. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there's nothing wrong with ditching DRM.
Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to Rainbow Railroad!
Receive extra books: If you beat the bonus price, you'll get the bonus books!
StoryBundle was created to give a platform for independent authors to showcase their work, and a source of quality titles for thirsty readers. StoryBundle works with authors to create bundles of ebooks that can be purchased by readers at their desired price. Before starting StoryBundle,
Founder Jason Chen covered technology and software as an editor for Gizmodo.com and Lifehacker.com.
========== I would love for this to be a huge success for all our authors (and for Rainbow Railroad) so even if it's not for you, please consider passing this information/link (https://storybundle.com/pride) on to someone who you think might enjoy it!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-06-08 09:18 am
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
nicola_griffith_feed) wrote2025-06-08 01:30 am
︎
