Roof top shouting, and arguing with the other side

A very nice piece on the latest/on-going/this-is-the-way-of-the-world-now/SFFWA Hugo/politicsthingy by Brad Torgeson, whom I don’t think I had ever heard of before: http://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/shunning-and-radioactivity/

 I am in general agreement with most everything he has said, and am very impressed with the...maturity and evenhandedness of the saying.

 ***

Rule for Ranters: Recognize the Rant for what it is – an expression of one’s (someone’s, your, my) emotional reaction to something. It’s good for communicating irritation, anger, disgust, fury, etc, etc.

It’s important to express that kind of emotion in a way that fellow humans can understand – if one is really that upset, leaving fellow travelers ignorant of your reaction is not helpful. And everything all bottled up and fermenting without a proper functioning relief valve only leads to foam spraying all over the beer closet and that’s no good at all. (Alcohol abuse, doncha know…)

Rants can be good for emotional bonding amongst those who agree with one, as well – a mutual relief valve. I do emphasize here that the emotional expression has to be in a way that other people understand – chimp teeth barring grins, for example? Not happy things. Ranting needs to be done so that it is understood.

What Ranting is not, however, is an exercise in rational reasoning and logical persuasion.

Ranting is not a method for getting The Other Side’s assholes to agree with the Ranter. (They might agree with each other – that the Ranter is crazy – but not with the Ranter.)

 Ranting is not a way to understand The Other Side. (At all.) It’s a very lousy way to get The Other Side to understand one’s own view.

 Ranting can be used as a method of shutting down communication – or shutting up The Other Side. But silence is not assent, and forcing people to shut up is not the same as fostering agreement - or changing minds.

 Rants are also excellent at evoking emotional responses – with those who agree (as above) and with The Other Side – who rarely looks upon the Ranter with more respect, empathy, or positive energy after the Rant is over than they did before.

 Rants are very good tools for what they are designed to do. But a good tool user knows when to use a screwdriver and when to use a hammer. Posting a rant which any rational and adult wordsmith knows full well will have the effect of making the choir snicker in agreement and alienating The Other Side is the writing (or speaking) equivalent of opening a can of paint with the blunt end of a claw hammer.

 Yeah, the can’s gonna be open when you’re done, but you’re going to look like an idiot, feel worse, and there’s not anything you’re going to be able to do with the paint after that.

 ***
 A note on what appears to be a conflict between those who value work(s) done because it pays well and people like it and I enjoy doing it but mostly because money, dear boy, money and those who value work(s) done because it is a (holy) calling and an expression of ones immortal soul and may yet change the world - yes, there is a difference between the two. Between the works, between the people who value one over the other, and between the people who make them. Even when the same writer/artist/shootist/orator does some of both.

I get that some people see a difference between the two, I acknowledge the difference (even if I can’t always clearly define it) and I got no problem with there being a difference. What I don’t get, me, is acknowledging the difference, yet insisting that both be treated the same. Popular workmanship works get more money thrown at the author than does High Lit. *shrugs* High Lit gets people thinking and talking and generally sticks around longer. But it’s not as comfortable and isn’t as well loved. *shrugs* Want lots of accolades? Pick High Lit. Want lots of fans and dough? Pick popular works that are, well, popular.

It’s called Achilles’ Choice because it wasn’t Achilles’ Get-To-Have-It-Both-Ways-Deal. Granted - some people can manage to produce work with a high overlap between popular and quality. But even more of us can’t manage either one by itself. Better to pick one, do your best, evaluate, revise, lather, rinse, repeat until you get the popularity or quality you were aiming for. Floor sweeping, coffee grinding, book writing, fence fixing – it all works like that.

 Or so I get told.

*blows off dust*

Let's give this thing another go, shall we?

Thanksgiving

Two links to share, both from Ta-Nehisi Coates' Thanksgiving thread. (I respect TNC's writing more than I like him, and I like him more than I like his comment section. But what he writes is frequently worth reading.)

First: Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Table. Idealistic, and still not present, but the world is getting better every day. I think what I like best is the Momma giving the little one what-for.

Secondly, for all of us who have ever spent a holiday meal with adult members of our families: Loudon Wainwright's Thanksgiving Song.

Update And a third - John Scalzi's Science Fiction Thanksgiving Grace.

***

Read as a lector, yesterday, for the first time in just over a year, and for the first time ever in this parish. As the only scheduled reader -

CSFFBT: 'The Skin Map' by Stephen Lawhead (II)

Traveling today, and the book not completely read yet, so today is even more brief.

***

The Skin Map continues to be quite engaging - partly due to the subject matter, but in no small part to the chapter structure. Especially in the beginning, the chapters are short, compact without being choppy, and leave the reader if not hanging from the cliff, at least jerking short at the top of a short hill, barely able to keep momentum from hauling one on down the other slope in a tumbling run.

The plot and characters have brought me around to wondering, again, what makes Christian fiction Christian?

I'm about a zillion percent certain that this has been debated before on CSFFBT (hint: links would be good). And I'm just as sure that I don't want to set up some sort of holier-than-thou litmus test for books of any sort.

(I'm reminded of a very acid internet exchange, some years back, when a magazine/website (can't even remember which one) published a list of books with 'Biblical world views' - and included Diary of Anne Frank. Jewish reader/bloggers were not amused. "Books about Jews can't be 'Christian Biblical'!" While I disagree, I can see where they were coming from, and don't begrudge them their indignation, esp in the case of Anne Frank and the way the Nazi party co-opted the German Church.)

Any road. Litmus tests are not what I'm going for, here.

I think that just as every person will respond to Christ differently, and that everyone would use different words to describe God to their friends and neighbors, that everyone's definition of what made a book 'Christian' will vary.

I think a definition along the lines of the old joke about 'if they made Christianity illegal, is there enough evidence to get you convicted' might be appropriate - ie, if 'THEY' were to start banning (or burning) Christian books, would this one escape the bonfire? (note 1)

Thus far in The Skin Map I haven't seen anything that would need bribery to get past a secularist censor. (There's been some reference to the grace of providence, and the main characters - in 1600 England - go to church, but that's it.) Not that I'm ready to write the book off. But I'd rather something more concrete than a general sense of joyful hope before I labeled a book as 'Christian'. There is enough mention of drinking and carousing, not to mention some ethically shady time-intervention actions, but next-to-zero sex.

I'm not asking for more sex in the book, but I'm going to be very disappointed if that turns out to be what defines the book as 'Christian'.

Note 1: Not advocating burning or banning books of any sort.

On Voting Day (politics and other stuff)

Firstly - if you have not done so, please go vote, no matter who you are voting for. (Yes, I think it matters who you vote for. Yes, I want you to vote anyway. Improving the process is more important than getting a specific 'good' result.)

Secondly, if you have voted - start talking it up earlier next year/next election. Twice today I've come across people who have trouble voting because they didn't bother to update their registration when they moved - MONTHS AGO. If you show up at a precient where you are not registered, and they don't let you vote because you don't have proper ID showing that you're *supposed* to vote there - this is a feature, not a bug. Please help encourage people to get this stuff straighten out EARLY.

Thirdly - I'm not non-partisan. I have opinions and they are right, true, and correct and if you disagree then you are wrong. But. As I've said before - differing opinions doesn't mean we have to fight about it. And it doesn't mean we have to believe the worst about each other.

I'm not going to go all happy-happy-joy-joy, isn't-the-world-full-of-sunshine-and-flowers. There are demons, there are people who commit acts of horrific violence, there are people who thrive on injustice and smug superiority and looking out for number one, there are people who not demand mercy for themselves, but also validation, and who want not only justice but divine retribution for everyone else, and if God isn't up to the task, well, they'll help the old guy out.

But that's not most of us, and we need to assume that's not the people we live and work and pray and vote with. For our own sanity, if nothing else.

So...a few things to highlight, today.

Let Freedom (and Happiness) Reign - a book review in The New Yorker, about an illustrated wander through the country.

Special Arab/Muslim issue of Apex Magazine. (It's good that we have such stuff. It'll be better when such doesn't merit 'special issues'. Inbetween will be hard.)

How the Rest of the World Reports on the Tea Party in Foreign Policy - *shakes head* On the one hand, it's helpful, in a 'how do we talk about this' way, to know what other people think. On the other hand, it's frustrating to see that it's not just Americans who absolutely don't understand other people's cultures and backgrounds.

Continuing with the educational-but-not-helpful theme - I don't this this is the best answer to the idea of a writer using comics to popularize Muslim virtues. I think there's tons of room to discuss the on-going integration and interaction between 'the West' and 'Islam' - from between nations to between congregations to within those people currently living on the borderlands, including those people who ARE the borderlands - but I think comics (and art, and lit, including SF) are a way to discuss that, and *should* be used.

Heck, if it's good enough for Pope John Paul II, it's good enough for anyone.

(Part of the discussion should, I think, be focused on 'separation of church and state' as a Western/Christian ideal, and possibly not a universal human truth. But that's a sidebar, I think.)

A few days ago there was a horrific attack on a Christian church - during services - in Iraq. I think it worthy to offer prayers for those injuried, those dead, their families, and for the soldiers and police who responded. And for those who carried out the attack.

If you have not yet watched, I recommend this clip of Jon Stewart's finale speech at the Mall on Saturday. I don't agree with a lot of what Stewart says on most days. But I agree with a lot of what he says here.

And following on that: Brian Spears quit blogging about politics.

CSFFBT: 'The Skin Map' by Stephen Lawhead

This is going to be a slightly different take on this month's Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour. I haven't quite finished the book yet, and so will reserve more in-depth comments until tomorrow, when I will have finished it.

First, some notes first:

The Skin Map and
Author’s web site - http://www.stephenlawhead.com/

In short, about the book itself:

Lawhead is turning into one of those authors whose books I pick up with a sigh of relief, because a) I know it's going to be good and b) I know it's not going to make me crazy by proposing brain-breaking concepts.

(By 'brain-breaking' I don't mean twists on physics or large amounts of math - I mean things like "religion is for weak and stupid people" or "monarchies are great because of the order and stability they produce" or "carnivores are inheritantly evil".)

In The Skin Map Lawhead revisits one of the oldest of SF concepts - the alternate reality, visited by people from Our Earth. This has been used in a zillion ways, from Andre Norton's Here There Be Dragons (as well as the whole of the Witch World novels) through Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covanant to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere as well as countless less notable others.

(This is not to knock other examples of the subgenre as being despicable - I have as a special love the Crossroads series by Nick O'Donohoe, which Amazon tells me collectible sets of the original paperbacks are going for ungodly sums, and which was not, imo, all that terrific a fiction series, despite my deep love for the subject matter. Ahem. Moving on.)

I mention Neverwhere in particular because it, like Skin Map, uses the backdrop of London as its launching point to Someplace Else. As an rural American by birth and inclination, I am afraid I not ever going to Get the fascination with the layers of history wrapt in London. Lawhead, though, makes a better-than-usual job of creating a believably complex modern metropolis as well as an alternative (1600's) reality that doesn't have me shrugging off suspension of disbelief as 'too much like work'.

And that's actually not being fair - I was well and truly drawn into this book and its plot, and look forward to finishing it tomorrow. Reading it was only complicated by the fact that I've finished three (and a half) other books in the last week. Between them - Kage Baker's House of the Stag, a partial re-read of CJ Cherryh's Gate of Ivrel, Lois McMaster Bujold's Cryoburn and Connie Willis's All Clear, I am full, to the shallowest hair root, of alternate realities and timestream convolutions.

So when a Skin Map character - just in passing, or so it seems - takes steps to advert a major historical disaster (and so save thousands of lives) my warning bells go on. (Danger Will Robinson, Danger!) Because no good turn goes unpunished, and no modifications of the plan go unnoted, and nothing is so good as it looks.

I haven't read far enough to know if the danger-adverting is just windowdressing, or is actually treated with more depth later on. I'm looking forward to finding out.

Two - no, three other notes:

- The character of Wilhemina is turning out to be, oh, eight or nine times more awesome than I had thought she was going to be. (I was, frankly, expecting another Neverwhere-esque non-entity.)

- The *concept* of a skin map is great. It even evokes that old classic The Illustrated Man. But in the context of WWII and the final solution, I'm a bit twitchy about things made from people skins.

- The cover - eye, strange symbols, pyramids and London, all in red-orange - is awesome.

As I said, hopefully more, later. Meanwhile, other CSFSBT participants are:


Red Bissell
Thomas Clayton Booher
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
Jeff Chapman
Christian Fiction Book Reviews
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
George Duncan
April Erwin
Tori Greene
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Timothy Hicks
Christopher Hopper
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Shannon McDermott
Allen McGraw
Matt Mikalatos
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Gavin Patchett
Sarah Sawyer
Chawna Schroeder
Kathleen Smith
Rachel Starr Thomson
Donna Swanson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Phyllis Wheeler
Nicole White
Dave Wilson

Those other people out there that God also loves

Still tip-toeing back into journaling. Which has been complicated by new&different things at work, and the threat of new&exciting things at work.

It's good to have work. It's good to have purpose.

Two days ago I wrote 501 not-very-good-and-not-very-connected words. This is a win.

Yesterday I started re-sorting books throughout the house. Still in progress, but with the eventual goal of 'make the books you haven't read yet accessible. Oh, and sort the non-fiction by subject. And the fiction by author, so you can get rid of duplicates.'

Today I actually opened up Google Reader to read the blogs I'm supposed to be following on this blog.

Of note: Neil Gaiman suggests giving away books for Halloween. Brilliant.

Anchoress on 'purging' Bad Catholics. Related (at least in my head): Becky Miller talks about godly writers writing about ungodly things. (Maybe it's related in my head because of the Elizabeth Moon stuff.)

...I don't have a good answer. There is the commandment to love each other. There is the responsibility to not let badly-acting companions tempt one into doing what one should not. There is human weakness and avoiding the near occasion of sin. There is keeping ones mouth shut if one can't say anything, and there is refusing to sit by and fold ones hands.

My guess is that Christ would have a separate solution for each situation. Which sounds like work.

Speaking of which - On Steve Colbert's Catholicism.

Oh, and NaNoMo is coming.