garlic and sapphires in the mud

I figure that even if I'm too flaky to post proper updates most of the time, I can put up some photos. So this - I took it when I went for a walk the other morning. Looking down from the hill I live on to the fishing boats of the Old Town, at low tide, with a channel running out through the mudflats to join the rest of the Thames estuary.

I'm so lucky to live where I do, for the views alone. It always looks different. Not usually as Blakean as this!

Remember Weird Tales? I do - not the original original original magazine, I'm too young, but the bloody excellent incarnation helmed by Ann VanderMeer, which published some really wonderful, often progressive strange fiction while remaining engaged with its old-weird roots. It showcased a lot of voices and opinions; it was by turns nostalgic and critical and innovative and totally off-kilter. It was good.

Well, those were the days. The sad tale of the magazine's new direction has now taken a turn for the gut-churningly awful. Heard of Victoria Foyt's Save the Pearls? Here's all you need to know. Anyway, Marvin Kaye, WT's new editor, posted this defence of it today: A Thoroughly Non-Racist Book.

I mean come on, the title of that post alone doth protest too much. Kaye goes on to announce that WT is printing the novel's first chapter in their next issue, and to express a wish that those who have criticised it "acquire sufficient wit, wisdom and depth of literary analysis to understand what they read".

This is disingenuous bullshit, and it disturbs me that I'm seeing the same kind of disingenuous bullshit crop up all over the place - directed at those who critique racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in fiction. It goes beyond the claim of "it's just art" (which is a stifling enough claim, intellectually and creatively, in itself) and into the completely baffling realm of "those who critique on such grounds are incapable of appreciating art!" As if it were as simple as:

If you criticise the racism in this book, it's because you are stupid! Don't you realise it's satire?
If you criticise the exoticism in this book, it's because you are imaginatively stunted! Don't you realise it's beautiful?
If you had your way, Heart of Darkness would be banned! O the slippery slope, O woe is literature!

People, Chinua Achebe wrote an acclaimed essay about the racism in Heart of Darkness four decades ago. That book is still in libraries, is still a staple of university reading lists. It doesn't need protecting! Achebe never called for it to be banned; just for it to be read more critically. Literature students can critique it, argue about it, damn it - and why shouldn't they; what tutor would prefer a seminar without argument? Are those students lacking "depth of literary analysis"? Are they fuck!

These arguments are especially disturbing because I am seeing them come from people who say they oppose bigotry, but who also want to dismiss voices more radical than their own by claiming that those speaking lack imagination, lack an understanding of nuance, lack the ability to see beauty.

As if art floated above everything else, disconnected from the snarling mess of this world. No. It is part of the tangle. And when art hurts people, when it feeds off and into narratives of oppression, why should those who it harms consider artistic merit before their own pain, or anger? Why does expression of that pain, that anger, signify a lack of imagination? How devoid of respect and compassion do you have to be, to believe that?

I like Achebe's response to criticisms of his criticism:

I never said at any point that you should stop attaching artistic merit to Heart of Darkness; if you want to you can. There are all kinds of sophisticated readings of Heart of Darkness, and there are some people who will not be persuaded there is anything wrong with it. But all that I'm really demanding, I'm not simply putting it, I'm demanding that my reading stand beside these other readings... Although he's writing good sentences, he's also writing about a people, and their life. And he says about these people that they are rudimentary souls... The Africans are the rudimentaries, and then on top are the good whites. Now I don't accept that, as a basis for... As a basis for anything.

Thing is, I do understand where some of these cries of "but ART!" are coming from. A resistance to the idea of limiting one's artistic voice, one's range of expression, one's subject matter - I see how that's daunting. I just don't think it's a very well thought through reaction. I think it masks a kind of laziness.

See, another thing I'm seeing crop up a lot, this time in books or blogs about the writing process, is an emphasis on the artistic usefulness of constraints. It's something I wholeheartedly agree with - that experimenting with technical limits (say, taking away features you overly rely on) can push you to produce much better art, because it makes you work harder, think harder. But for some reason, a lot of writers seem to think that only applies to technique, not content. Sure, I'll try varying my sentence structure, and alright, perhaps I rely too much on flashbacks, but attempt to write without exoticism - nevar!

To which I can only say, if you care so much about imagination... well, use some?

To use myself as an example. I know I have a long way to go in cutting problematic crap out of my own work - it creeps in through the gutters of the mind, and it takes work to recognise it, and clear it out. But doing so improves - without fail - the quality of my work. I have to think harder, be better, get more creative, and that's not always easy but it is always good. Which is not the reason I do it. Decency and respect, and anger at systems of privilege and oppression that have poisoned my brain to the point where I repeat their tropes without a thought - these are the reasons I do it. But that is also a kind of artistic integrity, because it's an attempt to drag art a little way out of the tangling bullshit, to resist laziness and ugliness.

Honestly, I see no good reason not to value angry criticism, on moral or artistic grounds. Unless we're happy to hold ourselves to low standards.

I'm sure there are angles of this that I haven't properly puzzled out, so comments are very welcome. Stupidity or derailing will be ignored, because I have better things to do with my tired mind right now.

Assortment of sort-of related reading:

Aliette de Bodard: Worldbuilding, Patchwork, and Filing off the Serial Numbers
Requires Hate: fight! fight!
China Miéville on Tintin, racism, and straw thought police

Can we strike the word 'exotic' from the dictionary? Or, at very least, from the dictionaries of white Western SFF writers, critics and fans? Before crying Oh No, Censorship, bear with me. And have a caveat: I'm writing about a problem in which I'm complicit, so there's a good chance I'll not do it justice, or get at least some things wrong.

'Exotic' is a horrible, harmful word, and treating it as a neutral descriptor erases the experiences of those that it harms. It posits the value of a place as how excitingly different it is to outsiders, rather than how it's experienced by local people. It allows outsiders to coo over things we/they find sexy or strange, without giving a fuck about their context. It fetishises. It also carries a ton of racist baggage.

Thailand almost never gets portrayed in the West as anything other than Oriental Exoticland. From early travelogues to The King and I to The Windup Girl, travellers and expats sideline the actual characteristics of the place and the experiences of the people that live there in favour of self-fulfilling fantasies about how weird and different it is. This is so much the norm that many Western writers probably don't think they're doing it at all, and nor do their readers. But the assumption that an expat must be able to write Thailand well - by virtue of having lived a privileged life surrounded by imported home comforts and culture - is total nonsense. Living somewhere for a long time doesn't make you exempt, but it might make you think you are, which is a problem in itself. Just because I grew up in Thailand doesn't mean I don't need to constantly educate myself about Thai culture and the way my own culture promotes damaging representations of it.

In Imagining Siam*, Caron Eastgate Dann writes about the circular effect of the Western construction of the exotic East:

“because it is presented in this way by writers, readers expect to receive an exoticised description, and because it is expected by readers, writers feel encouraged, and perhaps even obliged, to fabricate tales of the weird, the exotic and the erotic.”

As both producers and consumers in Western culture, we reward this kind of behaviour, and throwing the word "exotic" around as a positive in reviews feeds the circle, as does pandering to the desire for exotica in writing. How do we break the circle? Not easily or immediately, for sure, but by listening to people whose cultures have been exoticised when they say it's shit, by looking long and hard at how and why we use the word, by refusing to use it uncritically, and not getting defensive when we do and are called on it - we might have a chance.

*which uses Said's concept of Orientalism to look at the way Thailand has been written by the West through the ages - I've just started reading it, and it's not a perfect book (some Anna Leonowens apologism, meh), but it seems pretty comprehensive, and very valuable as the first English-language study of its kind.

Good intentions aren't enough, because they can mask all manner of fail, conscious or un-. Case in point: this weekend, I received a Special Commendation for my James White Award shortlisted story, Train in Vain. This is a tremendous honour, and I'm thrilled and hugely thankful to the Award, its judges, and its supporters. I was happy just to be shortlisted, not least because it’s not the kind of story I usually write - an alternate history spy thriller - and I wrote it in part to grapple with some of the issues I had with the steampunk and spy fiction I was reading at the time. I don’t think I did a perfect job of it, but I hoped I'd written something that worked against the usual portrayal of the British in nineteenth-century Thailand as a "civilising" influence - and was glad that the judges thought such a thing was worth their time.

This is what the Award website has to say about the story (bolding mine):

Tori Truslow’s ‘Train in Vain’ is a compelling tale of exotic intrigue and intricate automata, told in breathlessly vivid and evocative prose. There is no let up in narrative pace in this highly believable blend of fantasy and adventure. There’s wit too, and a hint of darkness amid the exotic imagery. We were desperate to know how the story would be resolved and we’re convinced others will be as well.

Now, this puts me in a rather awkward position. As I said, I'm tremendously grateful to be recognised, but I'm also deeply uncomfortable at the language used here, and I can't not say something. Whatever the merits/non-merits of this individual story are, it's another white-filtered representation of a country and culture that only ever gets represented in SFF by white authors, and this is a problem in itself, but especially so when that writing gets valued in terms of its exoticness.

Am I part of the problem here? Of course. I may not have meant to, but I probably did play into exoticism in this story. I contribute – however inadvertently – to the exotification of Thailand, and instead of being criticised, I’m praised for it. And round we go.

Exoticism is by no means the only problem in Western SFF (meet its mutually-enabling twin, "authenticity"), but it is far too commonplace, and if we genuinely want the specfic field to be a diverse one we need to stop letting it go unchecked. Or all we’ll have is false diversity where self-fulfilling Western fantasies forever drown out other cultures’ own representations of themselves.

Happy leap day! I think there’s something magic about the 29th of February. The day that doesn't usually exist. A secret day, stolen from time. Just, it should have a special weekday of its own. Lokisday, maybe. It’s warm-ish and sunny and I’ve harnessed the leap-magic to write and garden. Weeded the strawberries, and a patch of soil where I’ll plant some garlic later. I’ve also sown some of my space seeds, but they’re only wee sprout-things yet and won’t get planted out till it’s warmer.

I’ve fallen into my bad old hermity habits again and not kept up with LJ or DW for weeks. Woops. Again. Still think it was a good decision not to have an internet connection at home (except for on my phone and that’s only really good for twitter and quick emails), but I really should make more of an effort not to hermit when I’ve got a lovely coffee shop with free wi-fi nearby. So hi.

Feels like I’m getting better at managing life and my super-fun attention deficit, though. I’m easing myself into a routine and most days it works. I get up at 7-ish (I can press the snooze button like a boss but if I set the alarm for 6:45 I can usually get out of bed by 7:30). I discovered that I write easily and pretty well in the morning, which was sort of a tragic discovery as I hate mornings, but that’s no kind of excuse. If I don’t snooze too long I get to go for a walk. I write, and am managing 500-1000 words before lunch pretty much every day, which for me is TOTALLY AWESOME. And, somehow, I wrote 15K of novel in February! Some of it was even decent! Oh, oh, and I got a workshop booking, which more about soon!

Living by myself is mostly great. Then I do three weeks in a row without seeing anyone and then get surprised when my headspace goes haywire. I sometimes manage to convince myself that loneliness is a kind of perfect beautiful state in which I can exist forever in my flat and drink tea and write and make eyes at the sea and be pure, and I don’t know what the fuck that’s about. So I’m making more trips to London now, even though it’s expensive, because then I might not go crazy.

I also jumped on the tumblr wagon – I’m trillingwire, who else is on there? – initially so I could just geek about stuff without annoying my facebook/twitter friends, but it has also brought Unfuck Your Habitat into my life, which really could have been made for me. And I absolutely fucking adore this idea, but I would need people for that. Meantime I will just try to unfuck my internet habits by using the time I do get at the café to read the good stuff and be more involved, instead of just staring at twitter and reading webcomics.

But right now I have to go buy some garlic so I can plant it. Did you know you can just stick cloves of garlic into the ground and they turn into bulbs?! That’s some awesome Narnian shit right there.

Okay, finally getting round to syncing this with my LJ... from now on my journal will be crossposted here and there.

This is Tori Truslow/amagiclantern, btw, in case I've added you and you're wondering who I am.