Neither Mallory nor I have read what she calls “the faulty stars book,” but a whole bunch of people feel really strongly about it, including my nieces, who are perfect and always right, so I found this piece very helpful:
Green is probably the first author also to post to Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube from the entire shoot, and since the backstory of The Fault in Our Stars is as canonical as the story itself, this is understandable, if unconventional. “All of my author friends are like — well, I remember the first time I tweeted a picture from the set, I got, like, 30 emails from all of my author friends: ‘You need to delete that immediately.’ I’m like, ‘No, they said I could do it,’” he says. “It’s allowed me to make the stuff I want to make for the Nerdfighters. It’s nice for them to feel like they’re part of it, because they do have special access to the movie, because they’re the reason we’re here. The readers of the book are the first people I want to make a good movie for.”
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The heraldic issues of gay marriage have been sorted:
(2) A woman who contracts a same-sex marriage may bear arms on a shield or banner, impaling the arms of her wife with her own or (in cases where the other party is an heraldic heiress) placing the arms of her wife in pretence. The coat of arms of each party to the marriage will be distinguishable by the arms of the individual concerned being placed on the dexter side of the shield or banner (or displayed as the principal arms in cases where the other party is an heraldic heiress whose arms are borne in pretence). When one of the parties to the marriage dies, the survivor may bear the combined arms on a lozenge or banner.
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Please enjoy a gross and informative piece on Chicago’s last tannery:
The processes for making Horween’s signature leathers like shell cordovan and Chromexcel, a rich and versatile cowhide, can’t be rushed. Shell cordovan comes from the inner membrane of the horse posterior. The horse butts are draped over rods and submerged in “pits,” or low pools filled with Horween’s proprietary vegetable tanning solution made from tree barks, for 30 days. After tanning, the hides are carefully shaved, a process that exposes the outline of the inner membrane, and steeped in a second pit of stronger solution for another 30 days. When they come out, they’re hand-oiled. Then, after a three-month rest, they have to be re-wet and shaved again on a machine whose blade is controlled with a foot pedal.
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Matt Weiner did an interview with the Paris Review.
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Kathryn Joyce is doing some of the best investigative journalism in the US right now, and this piece on GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) is no exception:
To survivors, that logic is clear. “GRACE is not hired by the weak, the self-protective, the blasphemous institutions who invoke the name of Jesus in their cover-ups,” says Kari Mikitson, founder of Fanda Eagles. “There are very few Christian organizations out there who want the truth at all costs. If you as an organization are not brave enough to retain GRACE when your survivors request them, then you are a disgrace. And you aren’t fooling anyone—you are hiding skeletons.”
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What’s this? Oh, just the MOST BIZARRE puppet-related stuff ever, over at 50 Watts.
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AHP on the celebrity profile:
The profile and its public-relations power were by no means limited to the Hollywood star, or even to the twentieth century. Historian Charles Ponce De Leon dates the emergence of personality journalism to the development of the “public sphere” in the late eighteenth century, when “virtually any man could be famous—could become a public figure known to a large number of people.” A man needn’t be a member of the aristocracy or even from a well-to-do family; he just needed to be public. He could be a writer or a politician, a captain of industry or an actor. But with public visibility came the need to manage that publicity—to author the public self, as it were. Thus: autobiographies, commissioned biographies, interviews. Think The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which, with its healthy dose of quips and bon mots, helped solidify Franklin’s reputation as both a politician and a Renaissance man.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I thought the heraldry thing was a joke at first, like Mallory’s (excellent) gender-fluid chivalry post, but it’s apparently a real thing?! Amazing! You keep doing you, Brits…
Also, now I REALLY want either a novel or rom-com about two heirs or heiresses getting married and all the wacky hijinx that ensue…
Oh my god that would make the most delightful rom-com. Stuffy herald vs. herald who believes in love! Much debating and historical context! Our gay couple dealing with their (surely very moneyed and noble) families! I would watch this movie with every piece of my body.
OMG YES PLEASE that would be AMAZING.
RIGHT?!?!
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch-Cliffe and Martin Freeman
I actually damaged my keyboard hitting the like button as hard as I did.
Michelle Dockery and Tilda Swinton (or ME)
Oh yes, I can definitely see Michelle Dockery being half of the aristocratic couple getting married (“But papa*, you KNOW my arms must appear on the dexter side of the banner!”) and then Cumberbatch and Freeman can be two dudes from the College of Arms who never see eye to eye on ANYTHING but TOTALLY end up falling in love too!
*Actually, let’s just bring in the whole Downton cast to play their families/servants/hangers-on
This has made me so unaccountably happy, that this is a real thing.
It took me a while to realise that it wasn’t a follow-up to that piece by Mallory.
I have such conflicted feelings on the insane popularity of The Fault In Our Stars. On the one hand, John Green is a great role model and the Nerdfighter community is an incredibly kind and welcoming one, at least in my experience. I loved the book itself, though I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with it or anything like that. So I think it’s excellent that he is getting this kind of recognition as an author, and that he’s been so open about sharing the experience of making the movie with his fans.
On the other hand, I read another one of his books (Looking for Alaska) when I was a teenager and it played a big part in helping me through a very difficult time. My relationship to that book feels very private. And even though that isn’t the book in question here, all the hoopla just feels like some of the vulnerability and love I have surrounding that book have become too public. This is unfair and weird! I know this! Rationally, I am only excited. Irrationally, FEELINGS ABOUT BOOKS, UGH.
I get those feelings. TFiOS came out just after my 27-year-old SIL died of cancer, and reading the book was really cathartic for me. I talked it over with my cousin (who lost her mom to cancer), and we decided that reading it felt like a relief, like joking with someone who’s been through it too.
So, it’s weird for me too. I keep hearing people talking about it like it’s a Nicholas Sparks novel-to-movie, and I feel weirdly defensive and protective.
Exactly! Inevitably there’s a backlash to popularity. I wish it could just be, with differing opinions from different people, instead of the popularity making it so polarizing – either it’s oh my god this book was perfect or it’s this is inane teenage drivel. Such immense popularity often doesn’t leave much room for nuance in between.
I’m in this weird middle ground with John Green. I like him a lot. He is thoughtful and progressive and he posts so openly from all his various platforms. He is of course human and has flaws, and because he’s been propelled to this peak of popularity he’s being scrutinized extra-heavily. That said, I do think he’s getting a bit too much of the blame for benefitting from the industry’s sexism–he’s got to do what his contracts say, and he needs to think of his own career, so he’s going to go speak at events and stuff like that, but of course when people point out “hey there are no women on this YA panel!?” it’s a thing that Should Be Discussed, but I think there are a lot of people discussing that as if it’s Green’s fault, when he’s more like the symptom than the cause.
That said, I also have conflicting feelings with TFIOS. I read it and loved it when it came out, and I was happy for him to finally have written another book that I liked with the fire that I liked Looking for Alaska. But then the longer I thought about it the more I thought… there’s not a lot that differentiates TFIOS plot or writing-wise from all the Lurlene McDaniel and Jodi Picoult cancer-romance books out there, and I wonder what his prevalence on media and the growth of Nerdfighteria has to do with all that versus just him being a man with an existing fanbase.
I weirdly somehow did not finish my initial thought there–I have this feeling that John Green is actually kind of scared to fully, head-on address the issues of sexism in the industry that are being discussed around him being a YA Man Author held aloft above all the countless YA Women Authors that have equally strong titles. I’m in this weird middle ground with him because I do think he’s getting a little unfairly blamed, but I also wish he’d speak out more, considering how thoughtful and vocal he’s been about other issues, particularly on VlogBrothers. He has the audience and the platform to make real change about this stuff, but I feel like he’s not utilizing it.
It may also be that he needs to adapt his platforms to the increased fame. He’s spoken out a lot on Tumblr against sexism, homophobic, and transphobia, and has given major signal boosts to female authors there. But Tumblr may not be enough since he’s gotten so huge.
Tumblr certainly isn’t enough, sadly. I think the platform has its pros and its cons, but one of its big cons is that it’s seen in many places as a… well, a hive of scum and villainy. It’s not taken seriously except by the people that use it, in a lot of cases.
I think the problem may be that if he tries to speak out more on this, the media will make him the White Knight of YA Feminism. I think he’s actually wise to NOT directly address it, because if he does then the media convo about it will loop around and become about HIM (“Yay! John Green saves lady writers!” and “Boo! John Green trying to Speak for Women when they can speak for themselves!”) when it should be about Rainbow Rowell, Maureen Johnson, Nnedi Okorafor, and all the other amazing YA women writers out there.
Good point. He’d probably just become the Joss Whedon of YA Literature, and nobody needs that of him, either.
Nnedi Okorafor!!! Love her.
Your thoughts mirror my own! Thanks for putting everything so eloquently.
Oh, God. From the GRACE article: “Megachurches with thousands of volunteers unnerve him, and after working on too many cases where girls were molested by someone in their best friend’s family, Tchividjian and his wife no longer let their daughters spend the night at friends’ houses, let alone church camps or “lock-in” church-basement sleepovers. “But for my wife,” he says, “I don’t trust anyone 100 percent—I’ve seen too much, too many scenarios. What I have to wrestle with is how do I deal with that? How do I balance that tension, between not trusting anyone and knowing that we have to function in life? You have to figure that out for yourself. But know this: Offenders exploit trust.””
I hate everyone and everything.
BUT! That guy is a flipping hero, I love how militant they are, that article made me feel great.
I know. I appreciate so much the people who go against establishments with a righteous fury. This is what needs to be done, this is the hard work that should be done. And I love that they’re like, yea, but, no- Jesus wants transparency. Don’t cover things up in his name.
And I also feel, especially from that excerpt I used, somewhat vindicated in my paranoia about my kids. Like, it’s not all in my head. If something seems off, don’t be afraid to do what you think is right. A family in my home town, a girl whose house I slept over at, her father molested her. I was oblivious to all of this, thank God for me, but so very sad for her. Another friend’s mom picked up on something weird going on and forbade her from sleeping over. Meanwhile my mom- oh, whatever.
I just feel responsible for my kids and I know it can get extreme – you can’t protect them from everything- but vigilance is a good thing overall. My vigilance is justified. I think that’s my new motto. (Also I don’t really hate everyone and everything, just most everyone and some things.)
“My vigilance is justified.” YES.
Gaven DeBecker’s “Protecting the Gift” is a really good book for talking about how our instincts of something seeming “off” are often spot on, and how to use those instincts to protect children. It’s fairly non-alarmist, which I really like. Just very pro not being afraid to be the one who says “something feels wrong, the answer is no” even when you get pushback from other people.
I attended a one-day training seminar through my church denomination’s system that was about spotting potential abusers and how to protect children. It was really well done, IMO. It blew me away how much pushback there was afterwards though. So many people saying things like, “Well, it’s not fair to accuse someone of something just because something looks a little off. You could devastate their entire life!”
And the seminar leader kept saying, no, this isn’t about saying “You seem to try to be alone with the kids a lot, ABUSER!” it’s about knowing the warning signs and also having plans in place so that even if you do accidentally allow an abuser to work with kids, he or she would never have a chance to perpetuate that abuse. But people get really focused on how this is somehow paranoid and unfair to people who might be innocent even though literally no one was saying to call the cops on the people who seem problematic.
ETA: And by that last line I mean, some people reacted as if they were saying that we should call the police if a dude just meets a few warning signs but there is no indication abuse has actually happened. And no one ever said that. They 100% advocate for calling the police if allegations of abuse have been made.
I need to read that book! Yea, I mean, calling the police when a victim comes forward or if you see something definitive is way different than everyday, we’re not doing that kind of a response. We’re not doing that needs to be said more often without regard to people’s feelings. I mean without regard to the grown-ups’ feelings. I keep thinking back to the reason Mallory and Nicole don’t publish essays people write about their own kids. We’re their custodians. We’re responsible for their care. A simple statement but so powerful, right?
Oh, man, it’s so hard too, the trust issue. I don’t want my kids to become isolated, but I am nervous every time I let them sleep over at a friend’s house. My oldest is in middle school now and being the parent who wants to meet the other parents in person first and have a conversation makes me the oddball outlier.
When I was a kid, my mom always said that if I was uncomfortable, I should just grab the phone off the wall without even asking, call her no matter what the time, and she’d come get me. I used that twice. Once for bullying, once for witnessing abuse (the dad on the mom, we heard it, my mom called CPS too).
Now? Nearly all the families of my kids’ friends don’t have a landline. Even when they do, finding one on the kitchen wall isn’t a thing anymore. So I send them with a family cell phone to playdates and sleepovers and I hope the house gets reception because it’s spotty around here.
Oh, hi, I’m just going to vomit my fears here. I think about this a lot. It’s tough.
Yeah I have craaaazy mixed feelings about that whole situation. This GRACE guy is excellent at rooting out sexual abuse and I applaud him for that, but his reason for it being so common within religious communities is…unrealistic. Like, he’s ignoring a lot of other factors. His point that church communities provide a welcoming place for abusers is a good one, but this guy doesn’t seem to want to confront the other reasons: religion’s emphasis on female purity, its ideas of God’s/Jesus’s infallibility, its eagerness to give authority to people based on nothing more than their “professed faith.” I thought the leader of GRACE was a really interesting person, so I would have loved to hear him speak to the causes of abuse more than just how to find it and (maybe) stop it.
I’m interested in your thoughts on how emphasis on female purity welcomes abuse. I have some ideas of what you might have in mind, but I’d love to read more about what you think.
Sure! I don’t want to write a novel here, so what it boils down to is this – all the responsibility for being “pure” rests on the women/girls in the church, so if they are abused/assaulted/raped, they are told that they are to blame because they brought it on themselves somehow. I think it’s mentioned in the article a bit – the girl reports her abuse and the BJU admin basically says, “Your own sins have caused this. What did you do?” So when the impetus is on women to keep themselves “pure,” they don’t report rape or fight for their own rights because they’re told they did something to deserve it and if word ever got out that they are “impure,” they will be shunned by the church and rejected by the people in their lives.
I think you’re right–and even if church administrators wouldn’t say that explicitly, girls internalize that message and begin to doubt themselves. Also, in my experience anyway, churches are just bad at talking about sex and bodies and boundaries.
Well, and things like this don’t help: “All too often, he says, a pastor would come to court in a supportive role, almost always sitting on the perpetrator’s side of the aisle, not the victim’s.”
BURN IT ALL DOWN. NOW.
That makes total sense. Even though I read the article, and it had a lot to do about abuse of post-pubescent girls and young women, I was still thinking younger children when I read your post. The general U.S. culture victim-blames already, and then church groups throw in the Bible on top of that and make it even worse. It is awful.
I echo your desire to read more about GRACE’s opinion on why abuse happens in the church and how better to prevent it.
My mother had a similar career trajectory as a prosecutor — she came into an office that either pled out sex abuse cases or just didn’t file charges on them, because “everyone knows” a jury wouldn’t convict them. And she started taking the cases to court, and started winning, and now the office has an entire unit devoted to prosecuting sex crimes.
And she recently told me something similar about why she transferred out of that unit (after fifteen years of doing those cases): because her worldview had skewed so much that she could no longer look at a father taking his daughter out on a solo shopping trip without idly wondering if he molested her.
Her holiday present to me this year was a canister of pepper spray.
Whoa, good for your mom for actually changing things though – that’s pretty amazing!
That part REALLY bugged me. Because this view of the world that it is full of evil predators and your kids are prey and so you have to keep them locked up? That is messed up. Yes, there are people in the world who will do horrible things, but the way to combat that is to teach kids that they own their own bodies and their own space and to build trusting relationships with them so that if anything comes up, they talk about it. Not to lock them in your house and never let them take any risks, because, hello? Then they will go to college with absolutely no skills for self-preservation, and like that is any safer?
Man needs to read Gavin de Becker, is what I’m saying.
I spent like five minutes trying to decipher the first line of that College of Arms excerpt. I legitimately thought it was using “contracts a same-sex marriage” in the context that one might say “I contracted influenza.”
Oh, I say, you seem to have contracted a same-sex marriage, old chum!
Should I read the faulty stars book? That “it’s a metaphor” clip from the movie is painful to watch, that dude is being so pretentious. Is it painful in a good way, like “I can relate to this horrible awkwardness because I too, used to be a horrible teen” or in an annoying way, like “I can’t relate to these characters”? I love the former when done right (see Freaks and Geeks) but I have very littler patience for the latter, so I’ve been wavering.
I realize it’s silly to judge a book by one clip from a movie, but I trust The Toast to steer me right, book-wise.
I picked it up and couldn’t finish it, which made me sad, because I very much enjoy John and Hank Green’s YouTube channels and their personalities in general. I wanted to like it. But it is so very teen-angsty that I couldn’t stick with it. I think it depends a lot on whether you were into this kind of YA lit when you were a teen – if so, it could be a trip down nostalgia lane, but if not, I think you’ll have a hard time getting into it.
Probably. The dude is super pretentious but in the way I would have been super into when I was a wee cookie. It wasn’t a perfect book but I enjoyed it a lot. Plus it’s a quick read so even if you don’t love it you’ve only spent a few hours of your life and you’ll know what all the fuss is about.
So, I feel like it’s more of the first, “I can relate to this horrible awkwardness.” Part of the point of that clip IS actually to show that the dude is pretentious and full of himself and too young and haughty to get how faux-intellectual he’s being – something that is reversed later in the book in a big, major way. And you should see that in the movie, too, if it’s done well.
That said, I read it when I was 19 or 20, so maybe it’s just that I was close enough in age to feel a connection.
That kid is totally pretentious but that’s kind of the point of his character. He becomes more genuine with time.
And I really liked the book. I didn;t think it was the best book ever, or anything, but it hit that same spot as The Book Thief for me – shamelessly manipulative, well-written, made me sob like a baby at the end.
Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.
I feel like a MONSTER because I found it really contrived & spotted each plot twist a mile away & was the only one of my friends & the pinners bookclub to NOT be moved by it. (CB was speaking for me too when she said “shamelessly manipulative”.)
BUT, as I said, everyone else I know, people whose recommendations I almost always enjoy/agree/appreciate, liked the book & it made them cry etc etc etc.
I haven’t read it yet, either, but I read an article about the movie recently (can’t remember where) where John Green talked about wanting to tell a story about a terminally ill person, not about a healthy person who Learns A Lesson from a terminally ill person. That resonated with me and gave me hope that the book/movie may not be trite and awful, which is something I always fear with books about illness and death.
I haven’t read it either (yet ?) but this is the book where the teenagers make out in the Anne Frank house and everybody claps. There is one way to make that acceptable to me, which is through a John Waters-esque orgy of greater and greater and more obscene bad taste unapologetically piled on itself, and I don’t get the impression that is the route John Green chose to take, he seems to be more the Lurlene McDaniel-for-the-modern-world sort. So while I’m not saying you (or I) shouldn’t read it, it’s something I’m glad I found out before I tried to, myself.
What.
Please tell me more.
That’s all I know! No, okay, here is what I heard: they make out in the Anne Frank house because one of them (I think the dude) says that Anne Frank had sexy times in this house too, it’s in her diary after all, so really, wouldn’t it be objectively anti-life and pro-Nazi NOT to make out right here? so they do, and all the other tourists applaud.
to my knowledge, this is not presented as a remarkable example of the teenage boy’s ability to make anything and everything about his boner.
again I have not read this myself. and I defend a whole lot of garbage just because teenage girls like it, on principle, so I am a hypocrite to object to this. but come now.
🙁
Good news! That isn’t what happens. SPOILER but he is on a rant about how they should become a vigilante team and hunt down awful people in the world if there are no real Nazis left for them to hunt, and she is touched by it and becomes overwhelmed with the urge to kiss him. So she does. And then she thinks everyone else is furious with them, but they applaud (I still have no idea why that is the case. I think it would’ve been better if she was indeed correct that they are all furious).
So you can certainly judge based on that, but there’s no guy goading girl or discussion of Anne Frank’s make out diary or any of that in there, which is certainly a good thing in my mind! I actually just grabbed the book off my shelf to check, because I was like “whoa that is NOT how I remember it because I would have been much more mad?”
Yeah if I recall, Hazel’s inner monologue during that scene is like “we probably shouldn’t make out in the Anne Frank house, that would be bad” and then she starts thinking about how Anne Frank made out in the Anne Frank house and probably wouldn’t mind and then they make out and everyone applauds for some reason.
So, there’s certainly space for criticism there, but it’s not a weird coercive boner-aggrandizing thing at all.
oh I didn’t mean to suggest it was coercive, only gross. I stand corrected on which one of them it was doing the aggrandizing, though.
I agree that it would have been better if they hadn’t applauded, but rather than everyone being furious I would have liked it if some people had stared, and some people pointedly ignored them, and maybe some people snickered and whispered and Hazel remembered it afterward with a confusing mixture of happiness and embarrassment.
I like that, too!
I read the book and every time I think about that scene, I cringe.
I thought it was a lovely little book, although suffering from some of the issues the others mention. I enjoyed reading it, and thought it was one of the better interpretations of a “smart” teenager I’d read in a long time. I sort of cringe when it is placed in Jodi Picoult/Nick Sparks territory, because it is a much better book than that, but again, still far from the pinnacle of literature (if it weren’t about kids with cancer, I’d call it a “fun” read). I’ll probably see the movie, if only via Netflix. It is SUCH a fast read – I’d say if you’re curious at all, just read it! You’re not losing very much time in the long run.
Oh, and I thought the Anne Frank thing was done in a somewhat ok way – I’m an old so I kind of regarded it as “Oh teenagers and their emotions and not-quite-fully-formed frontal lobes and tasteless decisions that they don’t recognize as tasteless.” I wouldn’t use that scene as reason to tell somebody not to read the book, because in context, it plays out at least a little better than it sounds.
And I had no idea about this whole community built around it (I have not read any of Green’s other books or done any substantial googling of him) – so that was a really interesting long read! Hooray for Link Roundup!
I really liked it. The “it’s a metaphor” stuff IS horribly pretentious, by design — I recognized a lot of truth in how pretentious and trying-to-be-an-intellectual part. To me it really reminded me of how teenagers try so hard to be adult and smart and better than everything, but they can’t quite manage it because their egos are too big.
I wouldn’t call it Great American Literature, but I enjoyed the read and I think if you’re curious about it, give it a try — it’s not very long.
As someone who had major up-front experience with death-from-cancer via my closest relative, I really liked it. Yes, it has some flaws, but it was *such* a relief to read a book where the main character had the cancer and faced it and died from it and the focus was on that, not on cheesy life lessons for those who survive. I loved that it was about facing and thinking about all these facts that as a culture we make taboo (e.g. death happens to all people, suffering is occasionally meaningless, sicknesses are not “battles” and that is a shitty way to think about them, maybe we could all try thinking about death as a part of our lives for a change). Also, having a sense of humor about cancer and death, and doing that well, and humanely in a way that recognizes these things can be a lot of people’s “normal”. That was also hugely great.
That is super helpful! I hate the cheesy life lessons and illness as battle tropes. Thank you.
I say no, but I am completely tired of John Green. I enjoyed his books, but this whole “white dude savior of YA” (which DIDN’T NEED SAVING) has retroactively ruined them for me.
I hate the “John Green is saving YA” thing SO MUCH. It does a huge disservice to both YA lit (which was already awesome) AND John Green (who is a super cool dude but can’t fairly be expected to carry a whole genre on his own and come out looking great).
This is pretty much exactly how I feel. TFIOS is the only one of his books I’ve read, though.
Thanks everyone! I think I am going to read it but not expect much from it. It sounds like it’s worth giving it a shot when I’m in mood for some contemporary YA. I have exhausted all of Rainbow Rowell’s books, so I need something to turn to.
Pretty early in the morning to be reading about horse butts being draped over things. I’m not sufficiently caffeinated and am getting some horrifying mental images.
I don’t think I’ll ever be caffeinated enough to willingly read about horse-butt drapery, tbh
Don’t forget: subsequent to the draping comes the shaving and the hand-oiling. HORSE BUTT HAND-OILER is a job that a person can have.
I just read The Fault in Our Stars for the first time last night (I finally got curious) – I downloaded it at 11:00pm and finished it at 3:00am, trying desperately not to wake up my bedmate with my crying.
I’m not saying it was a FANTASTIC book, some parts definitely made me roll my eyes (although I fully admit that 16-year old me would have fallen hard for Augustus, too), but there were also parts that were just devastating. Some of the observations are going to stay with me for a long time, I think.
I will never stop loving how The Toast is this perfect meeting place of everything that I care about, and for me right now, this especially includes your treatment and inclusion of religion in a way that isn’t dismissive or condescending. This issue of abuse in the church is one of many things that I’m really struggling through/wrestling with (partly because Bob Jones is *literally* close to home for me – like walking-distance close) and I really appreciate thoughtful pieces like this one popping up here.
(PS – any other Toasties here in town? Because I want to meet you and buy you coffee and rejoice that I may not really be alone here.)
What is your town?
Greenville, SC. A hop and a skip from BJU. (Which really, is the most hilarious name for that university. Like a balm for the soul.)
Ditto! It’s nice to talk about religion in an honest, conversational way.
I love this about The Toast, too. I’m a believer, but I’ve never felt like I’m not welcome here. (It probably helps that I’m never on an evangelical mission here, either.) I’m so sorry you’re dealing with the Bob Jones thing so close to home – that must be really hard.
Oddly excited to read about a tannery.
I live a few blocks from Horween and pass it at least once a week, and I love it. It’s like something that lurched out of New Crobuzon and squatted onto this lot on Chicago’s West Side to make the city more darkly fantastical. It emanates strange, morbid smells. The name that sounds like Horror and Halloween rolled into one. And the building itself is this sagging, sickly yellow brick warehouse that looks ancient as days.
High five to another China Mieville fan!
Bas-Lag is a terrifying world to live in.
I sometimes wonder which would be worse: living in Westeros or Bas-Lag?
Most definitely Bas-Lag. Westeros is awful in a mediaeval with some fantasy way, while Bas-Lag is fucked up, non-euclidian magic, monstrous creatures from the deeps, horrifying nightmare soul-sucking moths and slaces with metal sewn into thaumaturgically twisted bodies and backwards-facing heads.
Agreed! Also, “fucked up, non-euclidian magic” is such a wonderful descriptor of Mielville’s world. Tip o’ the hat.
Ahh, slaves*, not slaces.
And “He opened his own lips and pushed his tongue into the statue’s craw. He felt the cold thorns of its teeth, and he probed further. The figurines mouth was cavernous, and the man’s tongue seemed to reach into the center of the little piece. It was very cold to his mouth. He had to steel himself not to gag on its taste, musty and salt and piscine.
And as the man wriggled his tongue in the stone throat, something kissed him back.
He had expected it-hoped for it, relied on it. But still it came with a jolt of nausea and shock. A little flickering something tonguing his own tongue. Cold and wet and unpleasantly organic, as if a fat maggot lurked at the statues core.
… He inveigled his way through crevices in possible spaces and passed, without effort and sometimes with, along channels he could now see. “
If you have an option to live in a world where no one is Remade, PICK THAT WORLD.
I think about the woman with the baby arms on her face probably weekly and have a gut punch shudder feeling.
Or poor Angevine, who has to throw coals into the boiler embedded in her or she’ll lose mobility.
I was just thinking about dreamshit while cleaning my snail’s tank last night. Time to reread!
I really like his non Bas-Lag books, too, even though I think he has not yet figured out how to end a book in a satisfying way (this doesn’t really bother me, as I’m here for the amazing world-building).
The Scar, Perdido Street Station, The City and The City and Embassytown were great and cohesive. I think he lost something with The Iron Council and King Rat. I still have to read The Tain and Railsea.
I love rereading his stuff! Especially the early Bas-Lag – it’s so inventively insane.
The ending of Kraken, I was just like, “Oh man, you did such a good job and then you did… that.”
it is the most incredibly petty thing in the world but I soured on John Green when I found out he was a friend and defender of Cassie Claire
OLD FANDOM GRUDGES NEVER DIE
god. I have to force myself not to know that about people. like Sarah Rees Brennan, who I like a lot, I really do. I just take the part of my brain that knows that about her and smother it with a quilt.
If I had to hate every YA author who likes and defends Cassie Claire, I would have a lot fewer books to read. *sigh*
Who is Cassie Claire and why is she The Devil? I honestly don’t know and Google was unhelpful other than telling me she wrote City of Instruments: The Mortal Boners.
This has a pretty good synopsis of all the drama, everything cited and all.
I would also like to know the answer to this question, having read most of the Mortal Boners series and spending most of the time thinking “good grief, Clary, just dump him already.”
Based on about five minutes googling, it appears that she committed plagiarism in some of her fanfiction, and then was a jerk about it when she was caught.
Right there with you. Like, obviously, no one should be harassed or threatened or whatever, but let’s not pretend like she hasn’t pulled some shit.
THERE ARE SO MANY OTHERWISE GOOD YA AUTHORS WHO DEFEND AND SUPPORT CASSIE CLARE.
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
Neither do I. There are LITERALLY NO MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES here.
I dunno, the YA author community seems fairly tight-knit, and chances are many of them met her or first came across her work before they knew about her past. I don’t think I would have the heart to go out of my way to then ostracize a colleague. I imagine it is a combination of a) politics and conversations that we don’t have insight into and b) her having matured a bit/ being really fun at parties (???)
WHATEVER I DON’T KNOW, VERY SECRET DIARIES MADE ME A CASSIE CLARE APOLOGIST
You’re right, in the sense that the entire reason she is where she is instead of having been shunned from the community entirely is her network of connections and her status as a former BNF. I don’t know how exactly she got to that point, but surely being fun and/or friendly to the right people had something to do with it. I also realize that it’s hard to challenge someone in that position, especially if you consider them a friend, but the fact remains that the YA community is not only tolerating, but celebrating, a known unrepentant plagiarist.
Whether she has matured or not over the years is beside the point. When she committed the plagiarism, she was an adult working as a journalist. She knew what she was doing. And even if she somehow didn’t, or if she did it unintentionally, she’s had years to make it right, and she hasn’t.
Yup. I refuse to read her books (and from what I hear, I’m not missing out), and it definitely changes how I view her defenders. You don’t have to ostracize someone, but you certainly don’t have to lionize and defend them at every turn, either.
This is exactly my reasoning as well. If she’s your friend and colleague I understand being torn about it, but maybe don’t speak up at all when it is clear and evidenced thoroughly that she is, in fact, an unrepentant plagiarist. You don’t have to condone what she did but you certainly don’t have to defend her against the criticism she earned for it, either.
I mean, she’s definitely a plagiarist, but also, the Very Secret Diaries was important to me at the time and I still can’t totally hate her because of that. So if you’re a Cassie Clare apologist so am I, I guess.
Apropos of A Fault In Our Stars, one article and one novel, each about a woman who is grown but nevertheless dies too young:
The article: Lying to Ruth in New York Magazine (I NEVER cry at things on the internet but this made me tear up)
The book: AVA by Carole Maso (its form is very fragmented and stream-of-consciousness, but it also makes perfect sense, and it will CUT TO YOUR CORE with its devastating emotional beauty and perfection)
Yes, I also cried at my desk, dammit. That is a really well-written and heart-wrenching article.
Delighted and delightfully unsurprised to find a Maso fan here. She’ll upend your reality in the best way possible.
Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that there is an actual, real-life job being the “Rouge Dragon Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary” and that the last person to hold that job is “Clive Edwin Alexander Cheesman.”
Great Britain is an entirely fictional place, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve been there, but it’s still fictional, right?
Great title, lousy salary: £13.95… per year!
Goddam it, this is the second time I’ve fallen into a Heraldry Wikipedia hole.
Only peasants work for money.
Per Wikipedia, he got arms granted when he got the job, “along with a crest blazoned A Crow Sable gorged with an ancient British Torque Or alighting on a man’s Skull resting on its side Argent.”
That is a fucking crest.
OMG, one member of the College of Arms used to RUN A CIRCUS: http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/about-us/some-p…
This is exactly my reasoning as well. If she's your friend and colleague I understand being torn about it, but maybe don't speak up at all when it is clear and evidenced thoroughly that she is, in fact, an unrepentant plagiarist. You don't have to condone what she did but you certainly don't have to defend her against the criticism she earned for it, either.
Yeah, the intro to TFIOS review actually out and says, "I figured, what better way to judge something everyone seems to love than via a Let's Read on a blog that hates everything?" which basically tells me her goal in life as a 'reviewer' is to nitpick and tear apart everything she touches, not actually read them for what they are and even try to enjoy them. Further compounded by the fact that she reviews them by going chapter-by-chapter with a fine-toothed comb looking for things to talk about in that way that only high school English teachers tell you to do… I'm not inclined to take this very seriously at all.