2010 Reading CXV-CXVIII
CXV: Marta Randall, Islands (1976)
Fragmented novel in a future where medical treatments mean that almost everyone lives forever. Our heroine, however, will live only for a couple of centuries and is likely to age horribly. There's a lot of symbolism about drowned cultural artifacts, and the chronology is deeply complex.
CXVI: Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970)
Analysis of the problem of sex inequality, and a solution. I've been failing to read this for a year or so, and when I dipped into it, lots of useful quotes jumped out. Which I didn't write down. But the pressure on women is a result of the organisation of the world to make capital - tying women into families over individual freedom. Freud turns out to be a parallel analysis to feminism, but offers a different solution (which requires women to be repressed rather than the overthrow of society as it stands). It's solution I suspect informed Motherlines. I felt a bit uncomfortable in its treatment of race - and it has been criticised by Angela Davis on those grounds.
CXVII: Kate Wilhelm, Margaret and I (1971)
This really got under my skin - I sort of assumed it wouldn't be that relevant, but whilst having its roots in something like The Yellow Wallpaper, it turned out radical and not at all what I expected. Margaret escapes her husband's campaigning on behalf of a right wing politician by staying at her aunt's house, only to find that she is being mistaken for her aunt by a researchers into the work of a recently dead experimental physicist. But Margaret may not be the protagonist, and may not even be the narrator. This is the evil that men do in a single novel.
CXVIII: Suzy McKee Charnas, The Vampire Tapestry (1980)
Vampires played straight, with a certain amount of winking, if that isn't a contradiction. A few years in the unlife of a vampire, sometimes a monster, sometimes a victim. Some men have teeth on the inside... My favourite Charnas to date, but probably only destined for a sentence or two in the book.
Fragmented novel in a future where medical treatments mean that almost everyone lives forever. Our heroine, however, will live only for a couple of centuries and is likely to age horribly. There's a lot of symbolism about drowned cultural artifacts, and the chronology is deeply complex.
CXVI: Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970)
Analysis of the problem of sex inequality, and a solution. I've been failing to read this for a year or so, and when I dipped into it, lots of useful quotes jumped out. Which I didn't write down. But the pressure on women is a result of the organisation of the world to make capital - tying women into families over individual freedom. Freud turns out to be a parallel analysis to feminism, but offers a different solution (which requires women to be repressed rather than the overthrow of society as it stands). It's solution I suspect informed Motherlines. I felt a bit uncomfortable in its treatment of race - and it has been criticised by Angela Davis on those grounds.
CXVII: Kate Wilhelm, Margaret and I (1971)
This really got under my skin - I sort of assumed it wouldn't be that relevant, but whilst having its roots in something like The Yellow Wallpaper, it turned out radical and not at all what I expected. Margaret escapes her husband's campaigning on behalf of a right wing politician by staying at her aunt's house, only to find that she is being mistaken for her aunt by a researchers into the work of a recently dead experimental physicist. But Margaret may not be the protagonist, and may not even be the narrator. This is the evil that men do in a single novel.
CXVIII: Suzy McKee Charnas, The Vampire Tapestry (1980)
Vampires played straight, with a certain amount of winking, if that isn't a contradiction. A few years in the unlife of a vampire, sometimes a monster, sometimes a victim. Some men have teeth on the inside... My favourite Charnas to date, but probably only destined for a sentence or two in the book.