I’m gonna rant.
There was a post the other day that I’m not going to link to because I don’t want to give the site the clicks. Fortunately someone archived it.
TL;DR version:
The author, one Matt Mikalatos, laments that rereading a childhood favorite (The Once and Future King by T. H. White) didn’t live up to his expectations, specifically there were some things said that he found to be racially insensitive. I’ve never read the book, so I can’t say for sure. He’s specific enough that I’m willing to give him the benefit of doubt.
This is not an unusual occurrence. Beloved books and stories from childhood and the teen years often don’t measure up when reread later in life. In middle age we aren’t the people we were in our youth. At least I hope not. There are lots of things that can go over one’s head in the books we read as kids or teenagers. Especially if those works were written in an earlier age and have attained the status of classic or near classic.
Then the author goes on to say that he can’t read or recommend certain writers because they held views that are not acceptable today. That’s a personal thing, a decision of conscience that one makes. If he had stopped there, I don’t know that I would have had much issue with him.
H. P. Lovecraft
But he didn’t. The rest of the essay can easily have been divided into attacks on authors he doesn’t like, and an attempt to convince the reader that the fantasy he has written is superior to Tolkien.
Now, to be fair to Mr. Mikalatos, he does go through the motions of making distinctions between the authors he attacks instead of lumping them together. He says he can’t read Lovecraft at all, and tries to convince us that he can still read Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, even though they don’t hold the proper views on race. This leads into the commercial where he states that he wrote a fantasy corrects the “failures” of previous works.
Now there is a long tradition in literature in which authors write books in response to earlier works. Nothing wrong with this in and of itself.
Here’s the thing that bugs me, though. It’s the attitude of self-righteousness that seems to cling to some folks today like the stench from an overflowing septic tank on an August afternoon. Mr. Mikalatos, to his credit, acknowledges that cultural norms change and that views that were once acceptable no longer are. But what many of these people don’t seem to realize is that they will continue to do so. We have not reached the end-all and be-all of enlightenment. Many of our most cherished ideas today will prove to be offensive to the next generation or the one that follows.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Mr. Mikalatos doesn’t seem to recognize this either, at least in the body of his essay. I didn’t read very far into the comments, so I don’t know where the conversation went from there.
Here’s the deal: Every work of fiction will contain things that someone will find offensive. That includes the best seller published last week as well as the classic that has been in print for over a century.
There’s a movement, at times subtle, at times not, to relegate classic works or anything published before [insert arbitrary date here] to the dustbin of history. The authors of these works didn’t hold the proper views. They will corrupt young minds with badthink, I suppose. They must be banished, and their books replaced with other books by authors who hold the approved views, have the correct politics, and/or come from the currently favored demographic groups and the quality of their stories be damned because identity is what counts.
I find it interesting that so many classic works are “problematic” because they contain ideas that aren’t considered correct today. Weren’t we told just last week that science fiction has always been progressive?
How can both of these things be true? Oh, wait, I get it. It’s a Schrodinger’s Cat kind of thing, isn’t it? Where instead of the cat being simultaneously dead and alive until you open the box, a work of fiction or an author is both guilty of bad think and a paragon of progressive-ism until taken out of the metaphorical box by the person trying to make a point.
I’ve got news for you. Reading something from another era, whether it was last century or last week, isn’t going to make you racist, sexist, or anything else. If you’re too sensitive to read some of those things, fine. I can understand how that can be the case; for example, if a work contains racial slurs, I can see how someone of that race wouldn’t be comfortable reading that work. I’m NOT saying they should.
Each person should be free to read whatever the heck they want. Without being scolded for it.
I’m a big boy. I can handle reading things that contain material I consider offensive. If I get too offended, I’ll put the book down. Very simple. At this point in my life, I’m pretty well grounded in what I believe and what I consider acceptable. I will not automatically become whatever -ist or -ic or -ism the author is guilty of. And I’m certainly not going to say or imply that writers who wrote some of the seminal works of the field shouldn’t be read because some of their views aren’t acceptable today. Nor am I going to display the hubris to “correct” them with my own works.
There is a reason Tolkien, Lovecraft, White, Lewis, and Roald Dahl (who was also attacked in the OP) are still read today. Some of these writers should keep in mind that readers fifty to one hundred years from now may find their works to be just as “problematic” as they themselves do Tolkien, Lovecraft, etc. If these writers are still being read at all in fifty years.
As for me, I’m going to increase my reading of Haggard, Lovecraft, Howard, Lewis, Kipling, Tolkien, Burroughs, Kuttner, Moore, Brackett, Bradbury, Smith, Vance, Lamb, Sabatini, Merritt, Hamilton, and Mundy. They may have ideas that aren’t in the mainstream anymore, but they’re not likely to beat me over the head with their ideology under the guise of telling me a good story. And I can think of at least one fantasy author whose”corrective” work I won’t waste my time with.
You’ll get no disagreement from me. I only made it 2/3s thru the piece so I never got to the advertisement bit. What cojones. His attack, and it is an attack, on TH White was silly. Ah, whatever. Everything stinks, other people annoy me, and I’m only going to read more old stories.
I’m seeing the advertisement trick used more often lately, usually in a twitter chain.
I read part of that article and then scanned the rest. I later interacted with the writer on Twitter. It was amicable enough, no arguments, just a brief exchange but he tried to pretend that it is natural to outgrow certain books when one gets older and matured. Problem is, that is not what his article is about. It’s painful to watch how this new progressive wave of authors treat the giants of the past. This is pure condescending snobbery and massively shortsighted and continuing on this road will just end in literary bankruptcy.
I say no. I’ll continue to read the old writers and I’ll even look for more. There are always more.
I agree that we often outgrow authors and books we read earlier in life, and for a variety of reasons. I’m just getting tired of the attacks on the pioneers of the field. That’s what the article boiled down to in the end. I haven’t seen the tweets, but apparently Robert Silverberg is getting attacked on Twitter because he took issue with comments made in a recent award acceptance speech. I guess freedom of thought means only freedom to think only approved thoughts.
And yes, there are always more. I’m going to try to highlight more of them here and on my other blogs.
Wow, I just read some of the Silverberg hate on Twitter and its rank. I read Jemsin’s speech and found it a bit eh, not vulgar.
Sure, Silverberg should give her a read ( something I’ve planned but increasingly think I won’t) but the foolish , ignorant responses to him ( “who is he?” “I’ve never read him” ” why can’t white men shut up?) are just as foolish and small.
I haven’t looked up the Silverberg stuff on Twitter yet. Classes started this week, and I’ve got my hands full. I might over the weekend. I’m definitely going to read some more Silverberg this weekend, though.
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As far as rants go, that was a pleasant read.
I also read the article and it annoyed me. It takes a personal reaction to certain works and tries to elevate them to universal truth of how we should act in response and how best we can go about fixing sff literature. It’s grandiose and dumb.
It’s also very confused, trying to do too many things and succeeding at none of them (sharing personal reactions to works by key contributors to the field, how-to guide on the best way to ignore the past and live in ignorance, peddling their own “corrective” book, and then trying to engage readers to share their own authors that share their views in their work which would only serve to perpetuate their echo chamber reading lists).
The most outrageous thing is that it’s extremist in it’s approach. I’d rather engage with someone that has views I disagree with that is moderate and respectful to me and others with different values than engage with someone that has similar views to me but pushes them to the extremes and follows through with a call to arms that is at best misguided.
The sad thing here is that I think this kind of attitude demonstrate you’re the kind of person that is unwilling to learn or grow as a person. It’s very knee-jerk reactionary to dismiss someone oeuvre wholesale for a few icky bits you disagree with. Why not engage with the whole text, the parts you agree with and those you don’t?
I think all books can be the basis for dialogue, be it with the author themselves and the reader, a generational conversation, a sharing of ideas, etc.
Calling something out for being inappropriate, outdated, racist, anything else you disagree with passionately and then dismissing it wholesale is childish and shortsighted. You’re selectively creating an echo chamber for yourself wherein the only ideas you’re ever confronted with are those you believe in and share.
One of the reasons I love reading is the variety of works that are available to me. Some are comfort reads, some are challenging reads, some things I read based on recommendation and those are usually books outside of my preferred realm of what I’d consider likely to be a good read. Most of all, I want a good story.
“Calling something out for being inappropriate, outdated, racist, anything else you disagree with passionately and then dismissing it wholesale is childish and shortsighted.”
You hit the nail squarely on the head, Mario. There are a number of writers with whom I disagree on a variety of things, but I read them anyway. Harlan Ellison being a prime example. Some of his work I love. Some I hate. But he challenges me and makes me think.
You’re 110% correct that all books can be the basis for dialogue. But two or more people have to be willing to start the dialogue. They don’t have to agree or convince each other that one person is right and one person is wrong. They just need a willingness to listen to the other person and try to understand how and why the other person reached the opinions and views they hole. Sadly, that willingness seems to be in short supply.
Normally I don’t pay attention to what’s written on that particular site. Unfortunately I read that particular article. I have to agree with your assessment. I actually think you cut him too much slack…
It was late, I was tired, and I didn’t want to cross the line from attacking his ideas to attacking him, so I erred on the side of caution.http://adventuresfantastic.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php#comments-form
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
As a former U.S. Marine it may come of no surprise that I am an ardent patriot. I find the modern tribalism that is suffocating so much of the world troublesome. The very issue you discuss regarding Mr. Mikalatos is the very same issue we are seeing in many areas of life. We have Neo-Liberals (Socialists) who want to tell us what to read, what to say, what to think, how to feel, what statues can stand, what biology is correct, and so on and so forth. It is sad that even in the realm of books that someone would push so hard to dissuade and even censor (I’m not saying he’s censoring but you get my point) a particular book because the contents do not meet HIS PERCEIVED VIEW OF ACCEPTABILITY. This is perhaps the greatest form of narcissism, to assume that ones point of view is not only completely correct and morally untouchable but that it reflects the same view of the rest of society. It is laughable to think that we would refrain from a novel simply because it may differ from ones ideology. How does one become enlightened? How does one gain wisdom? It is not through the socially selected destruction of knowledge, Hitler and the National SOCIALIST German Workers’ Party (NAZI) attempted this very course through book burnings. No, enlightenment and knowledge is through the study of all things.
All great books must have points of contention, of conflict, disagreement and dare I say purely evil acts. It is only through adversity that the heros in our novels can shine through or that the anti-hero, despite his many flaws or what point in time he comes from can perhaps lend us some light so that we ourselves can slay the dragons of our dreams and face the challenges in our life.
END RANT…
Well said, sir. Feel free to rant here anytime.
Great post!
“As for me, I’m going to increase my reading of Haggard, Lovecraft, Howard, Lewis, Kipling, Tolkien, Burroughs, Kuttner, Moore, Brackett, Bradbury, Smith, Vance, Lamb, Sabatini, Merritt, Hamilton, and Mundy. ”
That’s the spirit!
Excellent post. Hear, hear.
Thank you.