Bibliography
The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense - Suzette Haden Elgin
Point the first - this book is available on Google Books. If you think it may be useful, please go and check it out forthwith.
Elgin works from two very basic principles. First, there are five modes of communicating with people - you can be a Placater, a Blamer, a Computer, a Distractor or a Leveller. Second, most verbal abuse can be identified by simple phrases which you can defuse or retarget, thus defending yourself from that dreadful sense of feeling actually quite hurt when you can't quite work out what someone who has been quite nice has said to upset you so much. She lists eight types of such phrases in a Verbal Violence Octagon; they include classics like "if you really...", "don't you even care..." and "why don't you ever..."
Now, reading through this book, I realised two things. One, I am jolly lucky I don't actually get a lot of this kind of nonsense targeted at me personally. Don't ask me why - maybe I just don't see enough people, or maybe at this stage in my life I'm not having to deal with people who use these kinds of tactics. Two, these phrases are all ones that I have heard used at people before now, and while the book was written in 1980 and things have moved on a bit, the general negative patterns of speech haven't changed much. Neither have the tropes they reinforce - and neither has the attempt to get you to rise to one bait and thus accept that you're a horrible person. (E.g. - "if you really loved me, you'd take out the rubbish" - if you respond "but I took out the rubbish last week!", then you're implicitly admitting the first clause has a point and then the other person has 'won' the verbal encounter.)
Some good points about this book - it is very, very sensible and practical. It is straightforward. It does, occasionally, have a slightly amoral stance - this comes through particularly in the section directed at college students trying to excuse away unacceptable behaviour like not turning up to class and not submitting assignments and trying to get themselves out of the shite, which... well, yes, but at the same time not getting in that situation and admitting one has screwed up quite majorly also strike me as important. But it is straightforward and, more importantly, focuses on the gentle art of self-defence. Elgin doesn't want to provide tools to wound other people with, just to dislodge them into a more productive mode of communication. That strikes me as a far more sensible way to address the issue than fighting fire with fire.
The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova - Vol 3 - The Eternal Quest
Yes, we're back here again, if only because I want to finish the Memoirs before I leave the US and lose access to this edition! So, what happens here... Casanova is in Paris; spends a lot of time in Holland where he falls for a rather nice girl called Esther but doesn't marry her, although he does pass on how to do his Oracle thingummie; gets a bit more drawn into the whole Fake Oracle and Thaumaturgy and alchemy business, which he's obviously having far too much fun with; enters into a fabric printing business which works really well until the contents of his warehouse is stolen; falls for a stocking seller's wife; plays a waiter to win the affections of a terribly chaste young lady from Soleure but is foiled in his attempt to consummate his passion and has to then work his way out of it, and I will mention only that it is helpful that his manservant at the time happens to be suffering from a bad bout of venereal disease; falls in love with his respectable housekeeper but marries her off to someone who has a chance of giving her a respectable life, although not with much joy at the time; and helps a pregnant nun in distress, as you would be if you were a pregnant nun. There is, I need not add, a lot of gambling, quite a lot more sex and intrigue, and general Mucking About. I continue to enjoy reading about it, and note that Casanova appears to be entering a period of his life when he sincerely intends to marry most of the women he's involved with but never gets around to it. Ho hum.
New Women, New Novels - Ann Ardis
Only a brief mention here, as I picked this up for the HM project to get a bit of context on the literary production scene when Lud was written. Alas, the timing on this was out, and it's far more interested in book from about the 1880s to the 1900s (very broadly speaking) which deal with the New Woman question, and then which shy away from the topic as suddenly as they dealt with it. By the time Mirrlees is writing, most of these concerns have been dealt with or squirreled away - Mirrlees is only born in 1887, so she's still very much a child while this is all being played out in literature, and without knowing what she's read, it's quite hard to know what influence this debate had on her, if any. Similarly, Lud was published in 1926, so a whole realm of renegotiation and discussion of the Women Question has taken place, and the New Woman of the turn of the Victorian era is long buried. But if that's a topic that interests you, then you might peruse this volume - it's fairly obviously a made-over thesis, but it does a good snapshot of some of the novels it discusses and the kinds of strategies authors take to constructing, confronting and apologising for the New Woman.
Point the first - this book is available on Google Books. If you think it may be useful, please go and check it out forthwith.
Elgin works from two very basic principles. First, there are five modes of communicating with people - you can be a Placater, a Blamer, a Computer, a Distractor or a Leveller. Second, most verbal abuse can be identified by simple phrases which you can defuse or retarget, thus defending yourself from that dreadful sense of feeling actually quite hurt when you can't quite work out what someone who has been quite nice has said to upset you so much. She lists eight types of such phrases in a Verbal Violence Octagon; they include classics like "if you really...", "don't you even care..." and "why don't you ever..."
Now, reading through this book, I realised two things. One, I am jolly lucky I don't actually get a lot of this kind of nonsense targeted at me personally. Don't ask me why - maybe I just don't see enough people, or maybe at this stage in my life I'm not having to deal with people who use these kinds of tactics. Two, these phrases are all ones that I have heard used at people before now, and while the book was written in 1980 and things have moved on a bit, the general negative patterns of speech haven't changed much. Neither have the tropes they reinforce - and neither has the attempt to get you to rise to one bait and thus accept that you're a horrible person. (E.g. - "if you really loved me, you'd take out the rubbish" - if you respond "but I took out the rubbish last week!", then you're implicitly admitting the first clause has a point and then the other person has 'won' the verbal encounter.)
Some good points about this book - it is very, very sensible and practical. It is straightforward. It does, occasionally, have a slightly amoral stance - this comes through particularly in the section directed at college students trying to excuse away unacceptable behaviour like not turning up to class and not submitting assignments and trying to get themselves out of the shite, which... well, yes, but at the same time not getting in that situation and admitting one has screwed up quite majorly also strike me as important. But it is straightforward and, more importantly, focuses on the gentle art of self-defence. Elgin doesn't want to provide tools to wound other people with, just to dislodge them into a more productive mode of communication. That strikes me as a far more sensible way to address the issue than fighting fire with fire.
The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova - Vol 3 - The Eternal Quest
Yes, we're back here again, if only because I want to finish the Memoirs before I leave the US and lose access to this edition! So, what happens here... Casanova is in Paris; spends a lot of time in Holland where he falls for a rather nice girl called Esther but doesn't marry her, although he does pass on how to do his Oracle thingummie; gets a bit more drawn into the whole Fake Oracle and Thaumaturgy and alchemy business, which he's obviously having far too much fun with; enters into a fabric printing business which works really well until the contents of his warehouse is stolen; falls for a stocking seller's wife; plays a waiter to win the affections of a terribly chaste young lady from Soleure but is foiled in his attempt to consummate his passion and has to then work his way out of it, and I will mention only that it is helpful that his manservant at the time happens to be suffering from a bad bout of venereal disease; falls in love with his respectable housekeeper but marries her off to someone who has a chance of giving her a respectable life, although not with much joy at the time; and helps a pregnant nun in distress, as you would be if you were a pregnant nun. There is, I need not add, a lot of gambling, quite a lot more sex and intrigue, and general Mucking About. I continue to enjoy reading about it, and note that Casanova appears to be entering a period of his life when he sincerely intends to marry most of the women he's involved with but never gets around to it. Ho hum.
New Women, New Novels - Ann Ardis
Only a brief mention here, as I picked this up for the HM project to get a bit of context on the literary production scene when Lud was written. Alas, the timing on this was out, and it's far more interested in book from about the 1880s to the 1900s (very broadly speaking) which deal with the New Woman question, and then which shy away from the topic as suddenly as they dealt with it. By the time Mirrlees is writing, most of these concerns have been dealt with or squirreled away - Mirrlees is only born in 1887, so she's still very much a child while this is all being played out in literature, and without knowing what she's read, it's quite hard to know what influence this debate had on her, if any. Similarly, Lud was published in 1926, so a whole realm of renegotiation and discussion of the Women Question has taken place, and the New Woman of the turn of the Victorian era is long buried. But if that's a topic that interests you, then you might peruse this volume - it's fairly obviously a made-over thesis, but it does a good snapshot of some of the novels it discusses and the kinds of strategies authors take to constructing, confronting and apologising for the New Woman.