book review, of sorts, again.

[dsudis]

Sometime in the last five years, in reference to some discussion of the way fanfic and slash are devalued and ghettoized and marginalized and dismissed by everyone but us--and sometimes even by us--someone somewhere mentioned Joanna Russ's book, How to Suppress Women's WritingThis weekend, I finally got around to reading it. I had already had the

Comments

Re: read her fiction too

[dsudis]

Yeah, she's among the writers I clearly need to go look up after this. :)

Re: read her fiction too

[dsudis]

Well, books out of print are why the universe gave us libraries and internet fairies. :)

And I'm sorry to hear she's gone--I feel that way about Kate Ross, who wrote four beautiful Regency-era mystery novels before she died of cancer. I still shake my fist at the universe every time I read them.

[merriehaskell]

I... think you just won the internets.

[dsudis]

Naturally, I will now redistribute it amongst enlightened women and it will become a Utopia!

Ahahahahahahahahahahaha um. Anyway, thanks. :)

[spinfrog]

Yes! This entry couldn't have come in a better time. After I watched Spn S5E1, I started thinking how to approach the subject of badly written fanfiction sampled there. I mean. I grew up on the classics of Russian, European and American literature. I spent all of my free time in my late teens and early twenties in used bookstores, looking for really good sci fi.. But over the last 8 years, I have stopped buying books almost entirely or even going to the library (unless I am researching or following recs). Because there are some absolutely AMAZING fanfiction writers out there. Better than 99% of the published stuff. Dammit.

[dsudis]

Yeah, when I was in school - so, when my time and attention were scarcer - reading fic vs. published fiction was a zero-sum game, and books lost pretty much completely. There was so much excellent stuff on the internet for free AND it was exactly what I wanted to read! It was what I liked, not what Jim Baen or the Hugo voters or someone else thought I should like! It was what I liked purely for fun and enjoyment and delight and, hell yes, prurient interest, and not what I thought I probably ought to like, or ought to learn about, or ought to try at some point--not that I didn't like a hell of a lot of those books, too, but oh my God, fic! ♥

(Happily now I have free time, and I can read BOTH. It's kind of amazing.)

[pharis]

And this is a real thing we are doing, and our work is real work, and our writing is real writing, and we are really here together doing this, and I am glad.

This post makes me so happy.

I'll have to re-read How to Suppress Women's Writing in this light -- I haven't read it since I was an undergrad, years before I'd even heard of fan fiction. I like the connections you're drawing here.

[dsudis]

Yay! And man, add that to the list of things I wish I'd actually studied as an undergrad. *g*

[harborshore]

Oh, that's it, exactly. She wrote it but she was really a conduit for a higher inspiration. She wrote it but it's really all autobiographical (she really wanted a man, you see) so it's not REAL writing. She wrote it but she didn't edit it (scribblings of an overactive imagination--she wasn't really thinking about what she was doing).

And of course, she wrote it but not for profit, she wrote it based on someone else's source, she wrote it but it's just internet porn, right, that. And this is a real thing we are doing, and our work is real work, and our writing is real writing, and we are really here together doing this, and I am glad. That, precisely that. It's a real thing we're doing. Thank you.

[dsudis]

Yeah--I got to think about the arguments this post might get me into, and I realized that this is something wholly separate from the question of legality. It's even separate from the question of whether we are ethically bound to consider the original authors' wishes in the matter of transformative work. This is about the fact that we exist and the body of work we have produced exists, and it is, in fact, a body of work, even if a renegade and ephemeral one.

So that seemed to be worth saying, and you are entirely welcome.