avevale_intelligencer (
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2014-04-26 10:47 pm
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On reading the unreadable
Okay, here's the thing: I read Dornford Yates.
(For those of you going "whoford the what now?" Google is your friend, but to sum up: racist, sexist, anti-Semite, colonialist, snob, Little Englander and possibly abusive husband, fairly successful writer in his day of comic novels and thrillers.)
He seems to have been a fairly horrible human being, and quite a lot of it comes through in his stories. Sometimes it's hard to bleep it all out.
But...the man had a genuine gift. His comedy is funny, his thrillers exciting, and his descriptive passages verge on the lyrical. I have learned from him as a writer (though not from his opinions) and I actually think reading his books with awareness has made me more sensitive to prejudice of this kind in myself, and less tolerant of it. I still enjoy them, when I'm in the mood.
Why am I confessing this now? Because of the Hugos, of course, and the fuss that has come and gone about a couple of people of the same general stripe engineering themselves on to the ballot. Some people are saying they'll vote No Award in protest, some (like John Scalzi) are saying no, judge them fairly on their merits, don't give them the satisfaction, and still others are disagreeing strongly with Scalzi, and it's a whole big thing. (Again, if you don't know and want to know more, it's all out there.)
And then, just today, I saw an article on Huffington Post about two young Hawaiian women playing the theme from Hawaii Five-O on electric ukuleles (rather well) and the first line of the article was about how the theme is one of the cheesiest in the world, and I thought "no it isn't. It's actually a very good tune, with interesting chords, but you think it's cheesy because it's attached to a cheesy show. Whatever 'cheesy' is actually supposed to mean. Nutritious, tasty and rich in calcium?"
Association. That's what it's about. Dan Brown writes a crap novel which is made into a reasonable film for which Hans Zimmer composes a score fit for the gods themselves, which too many people will never hear because the film was based on a crap novel so they won't see it. A good tune is used for the theme of a show which falls into ridicule and nobody can ever hear the tune without their "this is ridiculous" ears on. A lunatic dictator espouses the music of a great composer and that composer becomes anathema for years despite having died long before the dictator was born. A Hollywood screenwriter admits to going to a party at which he might have met someone who once went to Russia and has to flee to England and write for children's television under a pseudonym. A couple of bigoted idiots game the Hugo nomination system, and however scrupulously fair we try to be, we cannot consider how to cast our vote without being aware that that has happened.
I've looked at one of the contentious works in question and from the first five or six pages it looks dull and uninspired and by-the-numbers...but how can I ever know that that judgment is not influenced by what I know of the writer? Am I refusing to engage with the story in case his evil rubs off on me? I don't know. I hope not.
But one thing I know is that art and politics, no matter how closely they may dance together, are separate beings when the music stops, and talent and tolerance are not always the same thing. It would be so simple if all the bad people were bad artists as well, but they are not. It isn't supposed to be that easy. All you can do--all you should do--is make up your own mind as best you can, whether you decide to boycott the Hugos altogether, or protest vote right down the line, or just read everything and vote for what you think is best.
But I will always be glad that nobody put me off reading Dornford Yates.
(For those of you going "whoford the what now?" Google is your friend, but to sum up: racist, sexist, anti-Semite, colonialist, snob, Little Englander and possibly abusive husband, fairly successful writer in his day of comic novels and thrillers.)
He seems to have been a fairly horrible human being, and quite a lot of it comes through in his stories. Sometimes it's hard to bleep it all out.
But...the man had a genuine gift. His comedy is funny, his thrillers exciting, and his descriptive passages verge on the lyrical. I have learned from him as a writer (though not from his opinions) and I actually think reading his books with awareness has made me more sensitive to prejudice of this kind in myself, and less tolerant of it. I still enjoy them, when I'm in the mood.
Why am I confessing this now? Because of the Hugos, of course, and the fuss that has come and gone about a couple of people of the same general stripe engineering themselves on to the ballot. Some people are saying they'll vote No Award in protest, some (like John Scalzi) are saying no, judge them fairly on their merits, don't give them the satisfaction, and still others are disagreeing strongly with Scalzi, and it's a whole big thing. (Again, if you don't know and want to know more, it's all out there.)
And then, just today, I saw an article on Huffington Post about two young Hawaiian women playing the theme from Hawaii Five-O on electric ukuleles (rather well) and the first line of the article was about how the theme is one of the cheesiest in the world, and I thought "no it isn't. It's actually a very good tune, with interesting chords, but you think it's cheesy because it's attached to a cheesy show. Whatever 'cheesy' is actually supposed to mean. Nutritious, tasty and rich in calcium?"
Association. That's what it's about. Dan Brown writes a crap novel which is made into a reasonable film for which Hans Zimmer composes a score fit for the gods themselves, which too many people will never hear because the film was based on a crap novel so they won't see it. A good tune is used for the theme of a show which falls into ridicule and nobody can ever hear the tune without their "this is ridiculous" ears on. A lunatic dictator espouses the music of a great composer and that composer becomes anathema for years despite having died long before the dictator was born. A Hollywood screenwriter admits to going to a party at which he might have met someone who once went to Russia and has to flee to England and write for children's television under a pseudonym. A couple of bigoted idiots game the Hugo nomination system, and however scrupulously fair we try to be, we cannot consider how to cast our vote without being aware that that has happened.
I've looked at one of the contentious works in question and from the first five or six pages it looks dull and uninspired and by-the-numbers...but how can I ever know that that judgment is not influenced by what I know of the writer? Am I refusing to engage with the story in case his evil rubs off on me? I don't know. I hope not.
But one thing I know is that art and politics, no matter how closely they may dance together, are separate beings when the music stops, and talent and tolerance are not always the same thing. It would be so simple if all the bad people were bad artists as well, but they are not. It isn't supposed to be that easy. All you can do--all you should do--is make up your own mind as best you can, whether you decide to boycott the Hugos altogether, or protest vote right down the line, or just read everything and vote for what you think is best.
But I will always be glad that nobody put me off reading Dornford Yates.
no subject
no subject
Thanks for the recommendation on Domford Yates. I'm going to look him up.
I'm looking at Berry and Co., and so far it's merely ok. The bit about not kneeling to anyone is good, but how would you rank the book among Yates' work?
no subject
And yes, Wagner was anti-Semitic himself, but so were Chopin and many of the Russian composers of the nineteenth century, and that isn't as widely publicised.
no subject
Nevertheless, I've never thought that the views (or sex) of a creator should be taken into account when accessing their work, particularly when those views may not be evident in the work. As you say, make up your mind on the basis of what's in front of you, not the baggage it comes with.