FEED book discussion link, and why I'm not attending the party.: seanan

FEED book discussion link, and why I'm not attending the party.

First up,

calico_reaction has selected Feed as her October book club selection, and is currently moderating a vigorous discussion of the book. She does good, critical review, and you should check her out.

Second up, I'm linking to this in part because other people keep pointing it out to me, often with a "hey hey you should go participate in the discussion" rider. So I wanted to take a moment to explain why I'll read reviews*, but won't read or participate in book discussions.

Having an author join a discussion of their own book often has the unintentional effect of both censoring and stilling the dialog. Which is not to say that people won't happily say "you suck" when they know I'll see it...but people who think that's fun aren't usually the sort of people who really want to do critical analysis, and people who really want to do critical analysis sometimes get uncomfortable critically analyzing someone who's standing right there. This goes double for readers who are also friends of mine. It's way harder to be harsh on a book, or critical of a plot point, when you're worried about hurting the feelings of a friend.

Plus, anything I say about what I meant—not how the text was interpreted—sort of sounds like holy writ. "No, no, you have that wrong..." is not something you want to hear from an author during a book discussion. Ever. It can be really easy for an author to come off as a condescending brat when they chime in on this sort of thing.

Lastly...the "book as child" comparison doesn't stand up for me, most of the time. My books don't need to be fed, don't get the stomach flu, and don't wake me up at two in the morning to look for monsters in their closets. But there are times when the comparison holds. Imagine putting a small child in a room with two-way mirrors all the way around it, like a zoo enclosure. The child doesn't know you're out there, which is good, because you and your friends have gathered to rip that child apart.

She's funny looking. His clothes don't fit. She has too many freckles. His toes are weird. She's not smart enough. He's not cute enough. She's too tall. He's too short. She doesn't play with her dolls the way you think she should. He keeps sticking Lego pieces in his mouth. And so on, and so on, until every possible flaw, real or perceived, has been picked apart in detail. Someone will opine that the child should never have been born. Someone else will opine that the world would be better if the child had been taken behind a barn and shot.

Now imagine that the child's mother is standing right there, listening to every word you say, but unable to defend her child from you in any useful way—in fact, attempting to defend the child will just result in her being attacked as a bad mother on top of everything else.

And this is what it's like to be an author at a book discussion, even a good, civilized, totally bitchin' one like

calico_reaction's tend to be. Which is why I don't read or participate in them.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle! The other half involves airborne rabies hybrids and a hand-held mister.

(*That aren't posted on Goodreads or Amazon.)

julia_reynolds

November 2 2010, 15:07:19 UTC 6 years ago

New comment

It is definitely a mark of wisdom to know when to stay silent :-)

I thought about Feed this weekend because I was at the Dallas Cowboys football game and there was a zombie themed half-time show. Inevitably, the zombies ended up doing the thriller dance.

seanan_mcguire

November 2 2010, 21:22:25 UTC 6 years ago

Okay, that? That totally rules.

jennielf

November 2 2010, 18:18:24 UTC 6 years ago

You are totes awesome.

Just sayin'.

:D

November 2 2010, 21:22:33 UTC 6 years ago

Aww. Thank you!

silvertwi

November 2 2010, 19:15:28 UTC 6 years ago

This* is why Death of the Author is an interesting and useful model. Whatever the authorial intention was, what each reader takes away from the literature is ultimately their interpretation. The interpretation is never going to be the same as what the author meant. There was a poet (I can't remember who off the top of my head) who wrote a line in his poem and later said that what he meant was between him and God, and only God remembered it (i.e. he didn't know either).

...This is what happens when I take the gateway lit class for the English major. :P

*I say this having read only Seanan's response, not the debate.

November 2 2010, 21:23:22 UTC 6 years ago

Death of the Author is a fascinating model. I've always said it's the one that matters, ninety percent of the time. (The ten percent comes into play with historicals, since I'm pretty sure Shakespeare wasn't commenting on WWII, to bring out a GENUINE EXAMPLE from an English class.)

dormouse_in_tea

November 3 2010, 00:15:11 UTC 6 years ago

*facepalms*

muddlewait

November 3 2010, 01:33:06 UTC 6 years ago

Hmmm. Does a writer actually have to know anything about WWII to write something that clearly applies to it? I've gathered you're not a Tolkien reader, but I've always liked his idea of art as having applicability, rather than intention.

I'm usually of the opinion that the music happens when the sound touches its listeners, as every listener resonates in his or her own way.

November 3 2010, 04:28:25 UTC 6 years ago

No, not at all, and anything can have applicability. I just saw one VERY EARNEST baby English major explaining how Shakespeare was TOTALLY WRITING about WWII. He...didn't realize Shakespeare was long dead by then.

There's a reason this guy wasn't a history major.

mneme

November 2 2010, 20:04:40 UTC 6 years ago

Quite sensible. Also, gives me a better idea of what I need to do if I want to rip the guts out of one of your books or stories without proudly displaying them in front of you. (which seems rather gauche, as, well, see the mother and child analogy above).

November 2 2010, 21:24:27 UTC 6 years ago

Yeah, also? Do not invoke filk communality, since it's totally not okay for me to rip the guts out of one of your songs, and if you frame your book discussion as "my friend Seanan who is a FILKER and we FILK TOGETHER and we share the FILK COMMUNITY," I will expect filk rules to apply, and be very hurt if anyone ever relays your comments to me.

November 2 2010, 21:40:15 UTC 6 years ago

That's entirely fair, although context is everything. Which is to say that it's fairly difficult for me to make comments -without- the "fellow filker" label to be there somewhere even if I explicitly avoid any mention of it. The best I could do there, frankly, is to either keep the tone professional and distant (which at least attempts to make it clear that I'm talking about "Ms. Mcguire" the professional author, not "Seanan" who is a friendly acquaintance and good friend of many of my good friends) or even use a pseudonym (though there are big, big problems/pitfalls with that and I tend to avoid pseudonyms in general).

November 3 2010, 04:19:08 UTC 6 years ago

There's a line between "Seanan, whom I have met through filk, wrote a book. I am assessing this book as a reader, not a filker," and "OMG MY FRIEND SEANAN FROM FILK WROTE A BOOK AND PS IT SUCKS!!!!1"