Good News Friday

[handful_ofdust]

First off, in this amazing Book Smugglers entry, I get on somebody's Christmas recommendations list. Since there's only two other entries, that's particularly chuffing...oh, and I guess and the review's pretty good as well, what with comparing my writing to opium and aphrodisiacs, and all.;) Find it here (http://thebooksmugglers.com/2010/12/smugglivus-2010-guest-blogger-harry-of-temple-library-reviews.html).

In other news, I've also been nominated for a DarkScribe Black Quill award in the Small Press Chill category, here (http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/4th-annual-bqa-nominees/2010/12/2/and-the-nominees-are.html). Note fellow CZPer and generally great-ass writer P.G. Tremblay being similarly represented, in the collection category! We publish good book, people.

Otherwise, I'm still blazing my way through Avatar: The Last Airbender (I'm now on Disc One of Fire), and feeling...okay, if not spectacular. Sort of sweaty and odd, but blessedly awake, even after getting up at 5:00 A.M. because my back was hurting. I've done a bunch of chores and am still making lists. Picked up The Velvet Vampire yesterday. Oh, and I'm feeling a bit bad about having apparently "made" various people see Centurion, especially after their reviews proved so negative, but eh (shrugs): To each their own. It's always possible I see things in stuff that other people don't see, and vice versa--for example, I really do not think the undercurrent of the film is "oh noes, the poor Romans, getting fucked over by those lousy Picts [just because they fucked them over first]! Those blue-painted meanies!" Still--can't prove it one way or the other, unless we call up Neil Marshall...and as I recall, in this SJ-jargon-inflected world, authorial intent does't matter anyhow, so maybe even that wouldn't necessarily help.;))

Now it's off to Flickr, to upload some new Cal photos. And man, now that Rope's in bed, I absolutely do need to start updating Music at Midnight again; May's on its way, after all. Like everything.

Comments

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Taking the author to task over something is indeed tricky and maybe shouldn't even happen - did someone actually tell you that directly, or did they write that in a review?

Of course the author also has the right to correct people who are wrong about their intent - it would be ridiculous if the author didn't have the right to say something about their own work. And obviously the author is a better judge of what their own intent was than Anonymous Reader.

I would have a problem with what you're describing in re: "Sent Down," too - but I've also been on the other end, as a reader that, say, read something that I saw as offensive/racist/sexist. And although I wouldn't send the author an email about it or necessarily accuse the author of being a bad person, I would say to myself that it was whatever I thought it was. Just because the author doesn't mean it that way doesn't mean it didn't come out that way (execution matters, after all). It also doesn't make me automatically right (I could just be lazy, or I could have baggage). It just makes that the impression that the work gave me.

There are many stupid readers out there who misinterpret things on a regular basis, and I understand that misinterpretation sucks. I guess what I mean by saying authorial intent doesn't matter is that I don't think it's going to make any difference for these readers if a writer says "but that's not what I was doing at all." And that's kind of the whole gamble of exposing creations to people, is that they might respond to these creations in ways you do not want them to.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Absolutely true. And yet it can so very easily degenerate into a back-and-forth of: "Well, I didn't read it that way, because you're a bad writer"; "No, you didn't read it that way because you're a bad reader", with thev alues of "bad" being A) technically incompetent vs. B) infected with baggage that causes you to see things that aren't inherent in the material. Which is why I mainly try to stay out of it now...though obviously, I don't don't always succeed.;)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and those conversations are pretty impossible to resolve, especially when ultra-emotional things like race and rape, etc. are involved.

I think we generally agree on this, I'm just not as ballsy as you, and I don't want to confront people about it. I also haven't had that kind of thing happen to me yet, so who knows how I will respond at that juncture.