The Art of Fielding
Jun. 18th, 2013 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pen_gruntA friend is trying to recommend "The Art of Fielding" to me, and in doing so has sent me two passages that he loves.
Passage 1:
"I don't know, Skrim." Schwartz shook his big head sadly. "Remember when it was easy to be a man? Now we're all supposed to look like Captain Abercrombie here. Six-pack abs, three percent body fat. All that crap. Me, I hearken back to a simpler time." Schwartz patted his thick, sturdy midriff. "A time when a hairy back meant something."
Passage 1:
"I don't know, Skrim." Schwartz shook his big head sadly. "Remember when it was easy to be a man? Now we're all supposed to look like Captain Abercrombie here. Six-pack abs, three percent body fat. All that crap. Me, I hearken back to a simpler time." Schwartz patted his thick, sturdy midriff. "A time when a hairy back meant something."
"Profound loneliness?" Starblind offered.
"Warmth. Survival. Evolutionary advantage. Back then, a man's wife and children would burrow into his back hair and wait out the winter. Nyphs would braid it and praise it in song. God's wrath waxed hot against the hairless tribes. Now all that's forgotten. But I'll tell you one thing: when the next ice age comes, the Schwartzes will be sitting pretty. Real pretty."
Passage 2:
Schwartz held out his fist and Henry bumped it with his own, and Pella could tell from their somber, ceremonious expression that their feud, or whatever you'd call it, had ended. Men were such odd creatures. They didn't duel anymore, even fistfights had come to seem barbaric, the old casual violence all channeled through institutions now, but still they loved to uphold their ancient codes. And what they loved even more was to forgive each other. Pella felt like she knew a lot about men, but she couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of them, to be in a room of them with no woman present, to participate in their silent rites of contrition and redemption.
Objectively speaking you can see the kind of wit and humor that might be in the book...but these passages do not make me want to read the book.
These make me want to shout: I've had enough of the Robert Bly mythopoetic-male navel-gazing in college thankyouverymuch and I'm an adult now so I DON'T HAVE TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.
To be fair, I have the same reaction to the inner-goddess brand of literary femininity. We are the mother and she could only do x in the way that women can do x. That kind of reductionism isn't useful to me.
You don't do things to personify your gender. Men aren't happy (sad, angry, whatever) in only the way that men can be. Women aren't happy (sad, angry, whatever) in only the way that women can be. Some people want to embrace defining characteristics that way--their ultimate male-ness or female-ness and in some ways that can be fun, I guess (the maleness of feeling a penis between your legs, perhaps? The female-ness of feeling round-and-bloated during menstruation?) but it seems grossly limiting when you're talking about emotion and interaction.
I come around to wanting to read the book in part to see how much I would hate it, or how the passages chosen are not necessarily reflective of the reading experience as a whole. But then I remember that life is short and there are too many good books to read.
Passage 2:
Schwartz held out his fist and Henry bumped it with his own, and Pella could tell from their somber, ceremonious expression that their feud, or whatever you'd call it, had ended. Men were such odd creatures. They didn't duel anymore, even fistfights had come to seem barbaric, the old casual violence all channeled through institutions now, but still they loved to uphold their ancient codes. And what they loved even more was to forgive each other. Pella felt like she knew a lot about men, but she couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of them, to be in a room of them with no woman present, to participate in their silent rites of contrition and redemption.
Objectively speaking you can see the kind of wit and humor that might be in the book...but these passages do not make me want to read the book.
These make me want to shout: I've had enough of the Robert Bly mythopoetic-male navel-gazing in college thankyouverymuch and I'm an adult now so I DON'T HAVE TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.
To be fair, I have the same reaction to the inner-goddess brand of literary femininity. We are the mother and she could only do x in the way that women can do x. That kind of reductionism isn't useful to me.
You don't do things to personify your gender. Men aren't happy (sad, angry, whatever) in only the way that men can be. Women aren't happy (sad, angry, whatever) in only the way that women can be. Some people want to embrace defining characteristics that way--their ultimate male-ness or female-ness and in some ways that can be fun, I guess (the maleness of feeling a penis between your legs, perhaps? The female-ness of feeling round-and-bloated during menstruation?) but it seems grossly limiting when you're talking about emotion and interaction.
I come around to wanting to read the book in part to see how much I would hate it, or how the passages chosen are not necessarily reflective of the reading experience as a whole. But then I remember that life is short and there are too many good books to read.
