Wolfe: Misogynist? and accessibility

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 19 Oct 2006, 18:58 · from 2006-October.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 11:58:41 -0700
Subject: (urth) Wolfe: Misogynist? and accessibility
In-Reply-To: <678808681.20061019193557 at poczta.fm>
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	<453706F6.6060104 at io.com> <678808681.20061019193557 at poczta.fm>
Message-ID: <1f7617370610191158y4e38f91bse369b80311fc714 at mail.gmail.com>

On 10/19/06, Stanislaus quoted Jeff and wrote...
> > If an author complusively wrote novels about Jews being
> > tortured and killed, I'd at least suspect him of anti-semitism.

> There is a technical term for this kind of criticism = "the poetic of
> a police informer."
>
> I don't think the aim of reading books is to find some crime to
> accuse author of.

Nor do I. I think Jeff's comment, tho apt, oversimplifies -- a
persons who "compulsively" (which I take to mean that this
is a theme that crops up in all her work, regardless of its
ostensive plot, theme, etc.) writes about the torture and
murder of Jews may be an anti-Semite, or may be an
propagandist fighting anti-Semitism, or may just have a
weird mental kink that she herself doesn't understand. A
lot of how I would respond to such a writer would depend
on the attitude with which she described the torture and
murder: is it written as a sort of "torture porn," or is it written
to horrify, or is it written clinically and coldly, or ...?

Wolfe does not (in my opinion) step across the line into
"torture porn." Though there _is_, in my opinion, an
amount of "violence against women" in his work that must
be considered, it's clear to me that _at a minimum_ we
can say that he is not consciously indulging a desire to
actually rape, torture, and kill women, nor pandering to
one, the way (say) "John Norman" does. Beyond that I
am not prepared to go.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open
sewer and die.
  - Mel Brooks

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