It's Always More Complicated

What I read

Finished latest Literary Review, read latest Slightly Foxed.

Having lately seen DVD of the movie had some urge to re-read the novel, and it was one of Kobo's deals, so Alisdair Gray's Poor Things (1992) - I recollect quite enjoying this back in the early 90s - since then I am a lot more critical of his historical accuracy (though he does get Victorian divorce law right!) and some of it felt he was really pushing the Early C19th Scottish Gothic Layered Narrative Pastiche - found manuscripts and inserted texts and so on - in ways that were perhaps a leetle more fun for him than the reader....

Lili Anolik, Hollywood's Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A. (2019), which I thought did occasional segue from 'dedicated researcher pursuing all leads as far as they will go' to 'creepily obsessed fangirl' (and also does that annoying thing where to big up one's fave, one disses on some other artist in whatever the medium is, in this instance, Joan Didion) but was still very very readable and had a lot of general social history of the time and place going for it.

Simon Brett, The Clutter Corpse (Decluttering Mysteries #1) (2020). I actually started this some while ago and put it aside, returned to it and kept reading, but really, Simon Brett, you are rather phoning it in a bit here, aren't you?

On the go

Recently in Kobo deals was the omnibus of the first 3 volumes of Upton Sinclair's 'Lanny Budd' novels, in which I had been mildly interested, but not at that price for the ebooks. Am stuck in to volume 1 World's End (1940) (which begins in Switzerland in 1913 with Dalcroze, which is rather adorable, even with the HUGE FORESHADOW), which I can see is pretty long in itself, and only the beginning of MASSIVE ROMAN FLEUVE. Not entirely what I would have expected from author of muckraking expose novels. Quite readable though, and more subtle than one might have expected.

Up next

That is going to keep me going for quite some time, and I don't think I will be going straight on to volume 2. Maybe a fluffy novella or two, for balance.

What I read

Finished Paladin's Grace - well, that ended up in a place I hadn't anticipated. Where next???

Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (1978), which somebody was recommending during a discussion on bsky a few weeks ago. V much about US fiction, and also, I think this would all have hit with more force back when I was reading the other pioneering works of feminist litcrit. But I do give her points for citations to Joanna Russ, and to Mary Ellmann's Thinking About Women, which I consider one of the great neglected foremother texts.

It was more or less as a result of reading that that I re-read, for the first time in practically half-a-century, The Great Gatsby (1925). I think the fact that I had not returned to it (or indeed any Fitzgerald) since then is probably diagnostic, and I was fairly meh. However, I did have thoughts about that novelistic convention which I have noticed and snarked about before, where somebody who is not centrally involved in A Situation nevertheless has fairly privileged access to the individuals who are involved and who keep them informed, to an extent that becomes, on reflection, deeply improbable. Unless we posit narrator as having a really rather creepy voyeuristic interest in either Other People generally or These People particularly.

Ian McCormick, Class and Cloister: The St Andrews Correspondence (2023): self-published epistolary novel set in the eponymous Scottish university in the mid-1980s - turns out to be part one of (presumably) an intended sequence. Interesting enough that I will probably pick up part 2, but originally took a punt on it as a) I have a very slight online connection to the author and b) this is the second novel I have come across this year set in St Andrews (the other was Robert Irwin's 2021 The Runes Have Been Cast).

Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens (2023) set in a village in Gujerat. Geeta's husband disappeared five years ago: the general supposition is she murdered him and she is pretty much ostracised as a result. However, one of her neighbours hopes that as she has form, she might be able to help her dispose of her abusive husband.... The plot only thickens from then on. Blackly humorous.

On the go

I'm sort of dipping into Rob Hansen (ed), Beyond Fandom: Fans, Culture & Politics in the 20th Century (2023), free ebook: 'Stirred to action by a particularly stupid and dismissive media generalization about science fiction fans, Rob Hansen has prepared this collection of brief biographies and essays that tell – both in his words and in their own – the stories of fans who have made some impact on the mundane world. Not so much traditional SF-inspired careers in writing, editing, publishing or Big Science, as the less predictable options indicated in the contents list below:'. It's still rather insider-baseball.

Up next

Apart from the latest (winter double issue) Literary Review, not sure. Having chucked the oppressive chapter I'd been somewhat pressured into writing (or rather, I'd offered one thing and been asked to something rather different), do I now have time freed up to do some academic reading I've been putting on hold???

And honestly, I find this discussion over at AITA so point thahr, misst.

Okay, yes, I think the whole thing of the family doing their best to erase his first wife, the child's mother, very, very creepy and inappropriate -

But mostly it seems to be people going OMG HE MARRIED HIS DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER????!!!!! HORRORZZZ

Going on like a load of Victorian woezerers...

Really, this used to be if, not very common, not uncommon, even if for a long time the relationship either had to be without benefit of clergy or undertaken abroad.

Mind you, I notice that commentators there often get very wound up about cousins marrying, yea, even unto the third and fourth degree. (Ahem ahem the Darwin/Wedgwood Dynasty.) I think assumptions being made about ease of exogamy in earlier phases of society...

***

In entirely other news, I virtually attended a seminar earlier this week and ventured a question, and lo, the speaker turned out to be a fellow-fan of early C20th gay pacifist male suffragist sex reformer and subsequently entered into correspondence.

Very niche fandom!

It is not, shall we say, cheering to be An Old in the present circumstance.

And, okay, I quite take the validity of arguments that, actually, we are not spent forces and we are still useful creatures in one way and another, and indeed it is encouraging to see signs, for example, that I am Still A Respected Historian, and so on -

- though this is after all disturbing in itself about who matters .

But anyway, the other day I came across some pontificator who was, oh, well, the Olds, what pleasure can their sad old lives be to them anyway?

(Pontificator themself being, what, late middle-aged?)

And I went and did a bit of a google, and, you know what?

Two of the original members of The Who, who are, in fact, of My G-G-Generation, are still alive and did not die before they got old, and one of the others survived into late middle age, the only one who did go out in a blaze was Keith Moon.

So I was thinking about this, and about why shouldn't people enjoy themselves in their Twilight Years anyway, they do not actually have to dash about volunteering or babysitting or whatever to justify their existence.

And this led me on to a thought that at 15 or even 20 and possibly even later, it may be hard to imagine how one can possibly enjoy life once one has come to the sere and withered, what pleasures are left?

But, you know, there are other and different things one might enjoy and these change over the life course.

(See my perorations about why people keep wanting to reignite the joys of the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue, when there is so much to be said for the delights of the deep deep peace of the double bed.)

Though there is also the policing by the Youngs of what it is appropriate for their seniors to enjoy, only this a.m. I came across a Twitter thread deploring the tendency of young persons to express horror and disgust that crumblies (I think over 20 or so) are being fans and writing fanfic, o, have they no shame? (Am reminded of episode in Jo's Boys, when fangirl of Jo's writings is deeply disillusioned to meet frumpy old Mother Bhaer: 'I thought she'd be about sixteen and have her hair braided in two tails down her back'.)

(Is this not allied to the supposition that if you have not made it by 30 you have Failed?)

My life in sex: the married man who goes cottaging.

Okay, I am not getting moralistic over the anonymous sex in public toilets aspect, diffr'nt strokes for diffr'nt folks, etc,

BUT

[W]e married when I was 27 and she was 25. We had a vanilla sex life for the first 10 years, after which I decided we should stop. For 29 years we have had no sexual contact. This lack of a physical relationship goes undiscussed and does not cause any tension. We both take it for granted and are rarely in the same room.

I can only assume my wife has remained celibate. Meanwhile, I get physical satisfaction from cottaging, something I started doing shortly after we married.
....
I enjoy the social status attached to being married and I still feel affection for my wife – just no physical desire. I went off sex with her because she was too emotional and clingy afterwards; I just wanted to go to sleep.

Sex with other married men is quick and involves little emotional commitment.

***

To take some of the taste of that away, have a review of A welcome sympathetic portrait of [female] fan culture.

I was also rather taken by this, in a review of two books about the 'supergroup', Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young:

From their descriptions of the protagonists’ relations with battalions of compliant young women, the hero is undoubtedly [Joni] Mitchell, who emerged from relationships with Crosby and Nash as an independent figure, using what she had learnt as material for her own songs, which have generally worn rather better than theirs.

I hope that, when I see people very wrought up about something that does not have the same resonance for me, I do not go around saying poo-poo and declaring that they should not be feeling what they are feeling.

In fact, this may be a good time to call attention once more to my posting of the amazing Dr Petra Boyton's piece about the intention of One Direction to take a break and responses by fans, which is really, of much more general application.

This also resonates a bit with something that was touched on in conversation yesterday concerning the way appropriate behaviour and attitude gets policed in classic girls' school stories, implicitly or explicitly and usually with tacit authorial approval.

And then, today, I picked up a copy of Josephine Elder's Exile for Annis (1938) in a charity shop, in which Our Protag is described near the beginning as

She disliked on sight all people who were not just like the majority of other people. Her ambitions were to look, dress, and talk like every other healthy, athletic, intelligent girl of her age... to attain the First Tennis Six, the First hockey and cricket teams, and the Senior swimming team; to be a Senior Prefect, perhaps even Head Prefect.

I have been noting latterly that there are mournful threnodies over DW/LJ (also various over the decline/death of fandom/s) hither and yon.

I'm here.

This may be my long-time tendency to find something that suits me - it may not be perfect, but I could do a lot worse - and carry on sticking with it, which is why I have been living in the same flat with the same person for 30+ years, working in the same place for 35+ years, going to the same gym since the mid-80s, having the same weekday breakfast since the late 70s, etc etc.

But I don't notice anything particularly moribund about the space I'm in. There have been changes, people have gone and come, the ecology is different, but that is life, is it not?

(Plus, there is actually critical mass leading to online readthroughs and discussions anent two of my long-term, rather niche, literary fandoms. This may have something to do with changing age-profiles? or not.)

I can see that different things suit different people at different stages of the life-cycle (though when I see people going Y NO DW MOBILE APP? I am rather huh? because I find the LJ mobile app loathsome and would rather faff around with tiny browser).

While different things fulfill different needs in our lives, on and offline. I do different things on FaceBook or Twitter than I would do in this particular venue. I don't get Tumblr at all, and I don't do Pinterest, but as I am an old-skool (in so many senses, no?) text-based person who back-buttons at the speed of light when she is sent to a video link, this may have something to do with my apathy towards investigating further.

I am also (coincidence: I think not!!!) seeing obituary orations over The Book. No, my dearios, srsly? WTF???? (Okay, am also yay cynical about whoever that person is who has just discovered BOOKZ and proposes to get through one a fortnight for the next year, at which I sneer and go 'amateur'.) (But you know me and my attitude to challenges and the assimilation of reading to Something Good For You in the same sort of category as a detox or exercise regime, do you not, dr rdrz?) (Lo, they b heerin the rant from the moon.)

Some things may be swept away by the tides of history, and you will not find me mourning the fax machine.

But other things find their niche (I did wonder, in that woezy piece about the dwindling of craft skills, how many of those or cognate skills may not be positioning themselves in the marketplace, but are nonetheless being practised as hobbies.) (Okay, I am now having horrible vision of chimney-climbing from the inside as a new extreme sport.)

I have made friends here. Many of them I still interact with here, with others the venue has moved. But I'm still here.

This comment was in a post linked via my lj flist: 'In terms of fandom, this is not a young group: The average member is about 35 years of age.'

That is, people who were born after I'd graduated and been in the work-force for over a decade, the dessicated crones.

I've been thinking lately - having recently entered my 7th decade, become eligible for a state pension and free NHS prescriptions, etc - about age and representing oneself online.

And wondering whether some of it isn't about people who are within my sort of demographic being somewhat reluctant to give age-disclosing details (and therefore being under-represented in statistical analyses) because of fears about age-stereotyping (if 35-year olds are decrepit hags, what am I?).

Also wondering how much of that is internalised ageism and thinking that one is not like those other people in one's generational category.... Okay, there are lots of people I know who are essentially My Generation and don't evoke any 'eeeeuw, past-it' feelings.

But how much of it is not feeling as one expected to feel about being this age when one thought about it in earlier years?

Am I grown-up yet?

In some respects yes, in others, no, not really.

There are layers: sometimes I'm 5 and sometimes I'm 13 and, really, there are embedded strata of all ages. Though I will concede that sometimes I read something and think 'I would have loved this when I was 11 [or whenever] but it doesn't really do it for me now'. And sometimes I read things that I couldn't get on with in early years and they now thoroughly ring my bell.

I don't look back with any yearning to my teens and twenties (my 20s being characterised by frequent debilitating migraines, being bored into illness in the wrong job until I dropped into the right one, being in the slow-motion trainwreck relationship, etc). If I had to pick a preferred time of my life I'd probably (like the protag in that A S Byatt short story 'The Djinn in the Nightgale's Eye') pick the late 30s or early 40s. Though there is also something to be said for being post-menopausal.

I do not feel particularly old, I do not feel wise, though I sometime have the sense of enough accumulated experience to make certain judgement calls.

And one never sees from outside: perhaps I look like a crotchety old bat.

And sometimes I feel like one, but that's usually circumstantial: it's not what I feel like all the time.

Iz puzzlement.

ETA: Trouser bottoms: unrolled.
Hair: not parted behind.
Peaches: never very keen on them anyway.
White flannel trousers: DO.NOT.WANT.
Walking on beaches: yes, if the tide's out.
Mermaids singing: NO CAN HAZ, ALAS

That was great! Lots of swirly ideas intersecting like dodgem cars.

Fangirl squee moment: standing in the queue for the ladies' loo with Lois McMaster Bujold and Emma Bull.

Other lovely moments, for which squee is entirely inadequate:

Lunch with pameladean. This was wonderful (of course, like Julia in the Hilary Tamar mysteries, I am a sucker for people who laugh at my jokes - specific ref The Sirens Sang of Murder, I think, not having my Caudwells to hand).

Getting books signed by Emma Bull and Ellen Klages.

People saying they liked my contributions and asking whether I'd written anything they could read! (Mi website wiv bibliografi, let me show u it.)

Also, still loving my necklace.