Archive for March, 2012

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Mastership versus Sado-Masochism

Posted March 23, 2012 By John C Wright

In reference to our ongoing conservation about the nature and conventions of femininity, Nate Winchester writes:

On chicks digging jerks… look at what women are voting for with their dollars.

http://www.the-spearhead.com/2012/03/14/mommy-porn-novel-explores-submission-titillates-women/

If you haven’t heard about “50 Shades of Grey” yet, you likely will soon. The independently published erotic novel is plunging into the mainstream this week after being acquired by Vintage Books for a seven-figure sum. Written by a little-known London author named E.L. James, it relies heavily on “BDSM” — bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/03/14/erotic-novel-50-shades-grey-unites-women-unnerves-some-men/#ixzz1px7NJC00

My comment:

What p0rn is, is a perversion of a natural and normal thing.

St Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands. Men are supposed to be the head of the household and women are designed by nature to admire and be attracted to strong and dominant and masterful men. Look at the cover of any romance novel: the woman is always swooning or yielding or kneeling, or being carried away.

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An Exemplar of the Feminine

Posted March 23, 2012 By John C Wright

A very dear and lifelong friend of mine writes in with her own comment about the femininity of the prior generation. The words below are hers:

My parents met at college in the late 40s/early 50s. My father, not born rich, was in a fraternity, recommended by his childhood friend whose father was a very well-paid official at the mine where my grandfather worked as a carpenter and overseer. Daddy is wicked smart, and having served in World War II, was ready for a more relaxed pace.

My mother joined a sorority where they picked her up largely, she said, because she would greatly improve the group’s GPA. She was tiny and gorgeous. … when my father and she were dating (he borrowed money from his uncle at interest to give her a red rose every day), one of his fraternity brothers happened to see her walking down the sidewalk. The fraternity brother whistled and declared that was the girl he was going to marry. My father pointed out that she was already seeing him. His friend said he wanted to ask her out anyway. Was it okay by him? Daddy said you can ask her, but she won’t. She wouldn’t. No flirt was my mother. Anyhow, the boys in the fraternity wanted to make her their sweetheart. It is an honorable position. But my father wasn’t keen on it. Probably protective. I looked up what that meant and its definition really addresses what I think true femininity is about.

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Here is What You Should be Doing This Weekend

Posted March 23, 2012 By John C Wright

That is, if you are serious about liberty.

http://standupforreligiousfreedom.com/

Once freedom of conscience – for anyone, of any denomination or none at all- goes, all freedoms go.

If the state can command you to do an act your church or your philosophy teaches is deeply immoral act on the grounds that the common good demands, by the same logic, on what grounds can you object should the state command you to speak or print or think as the common good demands?

 

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Nor the Summers as Golden by Gene Wolfe

Posted March 22, 2012 By John C Wright

An excerpt from Gene Wolfe’s mediation on how to write a multi-volume novel. The original is here: http://www.gwern.net/docs/2007-wolfe

Since just last night I encountered a grave difficulty with my own multivolume work THE UNWITHERING WORLD with the setting, I thought it was providential that I should come across this. The words below are Wolfe’s (or Homer’s or Kipling’s) but not mine, and he is the finest novelist alive today, in or out of genre.

Nor the Summers as Golden: Writing Multivolume Works

by Gene Wolfe

How do you write stories too big for one book?

That is the question I am supposed to answer here, and I ought to confess at once that I may know no more about it than you do. Indeed, I may well know less. My only credential is that I have completed two such works – The Book of the New Sun (four volumes and a coda), and The Book of the Long Sun (four volumes). I, myself, would not read an article on novel-writing by someone who had written two.

Fundamentally, you create these large works by writing something that is more like life itself than the other forms are. Or so it seems to me. In short stories we typically separate a few hours – a single day at most – from the years of the characters. (In 1972, Gardner Dozois edited an anthology called A Day in the Life; that is it, exactly.) A carriage will flee, through ever-deepening snow, a French town occupied by the Prussians; in it ride a great nobleman and his lady, some rich merchants and their wives, a red-bearded beer-swilling radical – and the plump and patriotic little whore the townspeople call Boule de Suif. The driver cracks his whip; a full half dozen horses lunge against their harness; our carriage flounders and skids, and we’re off!

The story, as the reader realises at once, begins with the cracking of the whip and will end when the passengers reach Le Havre.

No doubt one out of the half dozen members who read this will want to be told what a novel is as well, with Huckleberry Finn or For Whom the Bell Tolls as examples. I apologise and beg to be excused. The vast majority of our members, including the other five, read nothing else, and most write nothing else. They do not need to be told what a novel is; they need to be told what the other things are; and that, after all, is what I’m supposed to do here.

One of the other things, to pedants if to nobody else, is the series; but a series is nothing more than a succession of novels that are all too often progressively weaker. You write a novel, and because it sold, another about the same person or persons, until at last your editor warns you Not To Do That Any More. (I cannot present myself as a model of virtue in this regard, much as I’d like to; I’ve done it, and I’ll probably do it again if I get the chance.)

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Victory at Bookspotcentral! On to more Voting!

Posted March 22, 2012 By John C Wright

Well, well, against all hope and expectation, the lovely and talented Mrs Wright prevailed against Geo RR Martin’s novel in the first round of the March Madness at Bookspotcentral.

She writes:

Thanks so much for your support so far. I have made it to Round Three of the contest. Here is the link for voting. (I am up against The Clockwork Prince, which is a pretty big book.)

http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2012/03/22/6th-annual-book-tournament-round-3/#more-2109

Remember, every member of your family, including pets or hitchikers, may vote. You may need to erase your cookies between votes, or have each family member use a different computer from a different IP address. Carefully hold your dog’s paw to the keyboard, and make sure to hit the right key.

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Gallantry

Posted March 21, 2012 By John C Wright

Gallantry is dead, and it is thanks to those alleged defenders of womenkind and all things weak and poor, the Politically Correct. Except that the PC-niks does not have a good track record of kindness to women, do they?

Here is an exhibit:

Mr. President, When Should I Expect Your Call?

Dear President Obama,

You don’t know my telephone number, but I hope your staff is busy trying to find it. Ever since you called Sandra Fluke after Rush Limbaugh called her a slut, I figured I might be next.  You explained to reporters you called her because you were thinking of your two daughters, Malia and Sasha.  After all, you didn’t want them to think it was okay for men to treat them that way:

“One of the things I want them to do as they get older is engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on,” you said.  “I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens.”

And I totally agree your kids should be able to speak their minds and engage the culture.  I look forward to seeing what good things Malia and Sasha end up doing with their lives.

But here’s why I’m a little surprised my phone hasn’t rung.  Your $1,000,000 donor Bill Maher has said reprehensible things about my family.  He’s made fun of my brother because of his Down’s Syndrome. He’s said I was “f—-d so hard a baby fell out.”  (In a classy move, he did this while his producers put up the cover of my book, which tells about the forgiveness and redemption I’ve found in God after my past – very public — mistakes.)

If Maher talked about Malia and Sasha that way, you’d return his dirty money and the Secret Service would probably have to restrain you.  After all, I’ve always felt you understood my plight more than most because your mom was a teenager.  That’s why you stood up for me when you were campaigning against Sen. McCain and my mom — you said vicious attacks on me should be off limits.

Yet I wonder if the Presidency has changed you.  Now that you’re in office, it seems you’re only willing to defend certain women.  You’re only willing to take a moral stand when you know your liberal supporters will stand behind you.

This is a quote from Bristol, daughter of Sarah Palin, whom I do not recall being treated in a civil fashion by the Leftist media in recent years.

Do you understand what is happening? Because a mother did not kill her baby in the womb, that is, did not perform an act of abominable child-murder against her own baby, the PC-niks have scrupled at nothing to harass, revile and slander her and her family.

Why are these creatures running our nation? How have they come to dominate our culture?

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A Dying Planet

Posted March 20, 2012 By John C Wright

Over at the NRO Corner, one Michael Austin writes:

So, John Carter is shaping up to be the Ishtar of the 2010s, the Gates of Heaven of the Obama years. Disney is taking a $200 million bath on a movie that cost nearly a third of a billion dollars to make. Who would ever green-light such an absurd amount of money for a project whose original fans were driving Model T’s and listening to the organ while watching the latest moving picture from the Lumiere brothers?

Allow me to answer the question. Material from 1912 is (a) in the public domain and (b) if it has lasted a century, it is good stuff. The smothering mustard gas of modern realistic fiction had not found its way into the pulps, where the heirs of all the ancient epics and heroic ballads of old where to be found.

Mark Steyn chimes in:

Yeah, but what else you got? Sherlock Holmes? Narnia? Middle Earth? Hollywood’s business model is to take a story that cost two shillings and thruppence-ha’penny and spend a fifth of a billion making it lousier. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t, but either way the industry’s living off Model T fumes. Hollywood could use its own Edgar Rice Burroughs, but instead it’s a business full of guys who can’t even adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs for less than 300 mil — and then blow it.

 

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The Linnaean Taxomony of Femininity

Posted March 19, 2012 By John C Wright

ADDENDUM to the previous essay:

I had originally intended, but thought it unnecessary, to provide other examples of other types of femininity aside from anthropomorph schoolgirl-puppies and kawaii all-schoolgirl singing groups.

But more than one readers’ comment to that essay caution me that some readers will always interpret the statement “X is feminine” to mean “X equals feminine” not “X is a member of feminine, of which there are more members than X.”

The reason why I did not emphasize the obvious is that I thought it was too obvious to mention. The question being addressed was whether femininity existed at all; logically a single example suffices to disprove a universal negative. I only need to show you one Tasmanian tiger to prove Tasmanian tigers exist.

But, for the sake of those readers who are puzzled about the meaning of previous essay, please note it is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all feminine characteristics both physical and spiritual. I am confident that women other than anthropomorphic puppy-girls and saccharine-sweet cutie-pie schoolgirl singing groups exist. I believe Victoria, Queen of England, for example, was not a member of an all-schoolgirl singing group, or, at least, not during the later part of her reign. Perhaps she was a member of an all-girl Goth band or something.

It is unnecessary to remind me, or any thoughtful man, that the specific members participating in an archetype are distinct from that archetype and exhibit specifics not found in it. That is not only obvious, it is what the word “archetype” means. The Platonic ideal of a triangle is not the same as the triangular window made of glass in front left of the driver’s seat of the used Oldsmobuick I owned in 1988. We all understand the concept of Platonic ideals and specific examples, where the specific has characteristics other than those the pure ideal version implies.

However, this does not mean archetypes or stereotypes or ideals do not exist, nor does it imply that there is something untoward or illogical or insufficient in referring to them. If I say, “my car window is triangular” to a man who thinks triangles don’t exist, it is no argument to retort that other windows are rectangular, nor is the caution lest someone thing the word “triangular” means “car window” needed.

That said, allow me to propose to any readers unfamiliar with the existence of half the human race a simple Linnaean classification of some of the more prevalent or obvious or memorable archetypes into which women tend to fall.

I propose in brief that the pagan goddesses of old, if they did not reflect or represent a common idea or perception of certain stock feminine types, would not have been popular enough to be remembered from generation to generation.

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On Unisexuality

Posted March 18, 2012 By John C Wright

In recent comments in this space, we were discussing the difference between masculine and feminine with a reader who, having been raised on the politically correct dogma of unisexualism, had never before encountered the idea that men and women are different, except in trivial or arbitrary ways, and certainly had never encountered the idea that these differences are highly desirable, whether arbitrary or not.

The doctrine of unisexuality is a by-product of the doctrine that all human interactions, particularly between the sexes, is a war between oppressor and oppressed, exploiter and victim, a condition of mutual recrimination and hatred, with no possible conciliation. Those who promote this doctrine to its logical extreme are forced to conclude that all differences between the sexes are a conspiracy of men to exploit and oppress women, and that the only path to liberation is to abolish insofar as possible all differences and marks of difference. For the radical feminist, any sign of femininity is akin to the yellow star worn by ghetto Jews, a brand of surrender to oppression.

As with all doctrines issuing from the cultural Marxism called PC, this one goes by a deceptive name.

It is called Feminism, as if it aided rather than demeaned and denatured and harmed females.

It calls its opposition Sexism, as if to admire the complimentary differences of the sexes were race-hatred applied to the opposite sex rather than applied to a race.

The true name for the doctrine is unisexuality: the theory that men should be feminine and women should be masculine in order that both be equal and therefore at both sexes be at peace.

In other words, the theory is that any difference between the sexes creates conflict and exploitation.

The true name of its opposition is Romance: the theory that men should be masculine so that life is charged with wonder and heroism and drama for women, and that women should be feminine, so that life should be filled with beauty and love and drama for men, in order that both have lust and infatuation and romance and friendship and ecstasy and divinity, and both be happy, and therefore at both sexes be at peace.

In other words, the theory is that treating women like short and weak dickless men with boobs leads to contempt and conflict and exploitation.

The two theories rest on opposite ideas of the cause of any conflict between the sexes.
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Wolverton on the Limits of the Mainstream Genre

Posted March 18, 2012 By John C Wright

A simply fantastic (in each sense of the word) essay by Dave Wolverton. Here is the opening:
Rant Fantastic

“On Writing as a Fantasist”

by Dave Wolverton

I recently read in Tangent #17 James Gunn’s response to a question by Cynthia Ward, who asked about the dichotomy between mainstream literary standards and those of science fiction and fantasy, and asked someone to “Name names.”

I respect Gunn’s work a great deal, but I disagreed with his response, partly because I began my writing career in the literary mainstream, made my first money in that field, and eventually came to recognize that fundamentally I disagreed with much of what was being done. There are differences between my approach to writing as a modern fantasist (who makes no apologies for being a commercial writer) and the approach taken by literary mainstream writers. The issues aren’t trivial.

Cynthia asked what the earmarks are of a mainstream story, and Gunn responded by saying that its “distinguishing characteristic is that it has no distinguishing genre characteristic.”

This is of course what my professors taught me in English Lit 101. And it is somewhat true. The Western genre is defined by its setting. The Romance and Mystery genres are defined by the types of conflict the tales will deal with. Speculative fiction may be defined by the fact that we as authors and fans typically agree that nothing like the story that we tell has ever happened–though one could well argue that speculative fiction isn’t a “genre” in the classical sense anyway.

But I contend that over the past 120 years, and particularly in the last 20 years, the literary mainstream has evolved into a genre with its own earmarks. It is just as rigid in its strictures and just as narrow in its accepted treatment of characters, conflicts and themes as any other genre.

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Memorable SF Characters of the Essential Authors

Posted March 15, 2012 By John C Wright

Mr Wizard writes:

“So much of science fiction is soulless from a human view. And a lot of the presumptions of even major works of science fiction are laughable. There is a lot of wow in science fiction, but they rarely reach me, rarely are remotely capable achieving catharsis. Usually I can remember nothing of any of the characters.”

My comment: That SF is emotionally flat is a very common criticism of science fiction, and, unfortunately, an often merited one. Detective stories, particularly ones that concentrate on the intellectual process or police procedure of solving the crime, suffer a similar criticism.

But the sheer forgettability (not a word, but it should be) of most SF characters, particularly of early SF, is legendary. This is odd, because any competent editor will tell you that characters drive the story.

On the other hand, writers as different from each other as H.G. Wells and G.K. Chesterton point out the advantage of having a bland ‘everyman’ or ‘anyman’ as the hero of a wonder tale: the reader can place himself in the shoes of an everyman more easily than in some quirky or unique hero, and when the backdrop and props and plot are futuristic or fabulous and filled with spectacle and dazzle, a hero who pulls attention to himself is a distraction.

If the hero is as ordinary as Jack, the reader is aghast at how extraordinary is the giant, whether a titan from a fantasy tale, or a giant armored battle-station from a space opera.

I propose, however, a short survey of all science fiction from its origins to the present day, and an examination of how memorable the characters are, and how that has changed.

This being too great a task for one article, let me use a slight of hand instead, and only consider the characters depicted in the list I created for the 50 essential authors of science fiction. Now, this procedure is a little unfair, because it will not list memorable characters appearing in non-essential books, which perhaps include some of the most memorable characters ever.  So keep that limitation in mind as we proceed.

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John C. Wright’s Patented One Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fiction

Posted March 14, 2012 By John C Wright

Note: this is a reprint of an article I wrote in January of 2011. I reprint it here as a companion to my previous article on how to get published.

Here is the John C. Wright patented one-session lesson in the mechanics of how to write fiction.

A word of explanation:

I wrote the following to a friend of mine who is a nonfiction writer of some fame and accomplishment, who was toying with the idea of writing fiction. We batted around some ideas and I have been encouraging (read: pestering) him to take up the project seriously.

He wrote back and said that while putting the logical format to a work of nonfiction was clear enough, he was not big on this artistic and poetical stuff. I took it upon myself to show him the logic behind the stuff that dreams are made of.

So here is what I wrote to provoke him to write, and I share it with any and all comers who wish alike to be writers.

For my part, I am eager to share my trade secrets. I do not fear competition. Unlike every other field, my value as a writer goes up, not down, the more competition I have: because more science fiction writers means more science fiction readers, a larger field, and more money in the field.

So I think everyone should try their hand at writing. I cannot read my own work for pleasure, after all.

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Wright’s Ten Rules on Writing

Posted March 14, 2012 By John C Wright

Since becoming an author, from time to time interested fans (or else people willing to make me feel better by playing along with the idea that I am real writer by pretending to be fans) will ask me to pass on my writing tips. This is one question I find easy to answer, because my advice is the same for any new writer, no matter his age or level of skill.

 Here are John C. Wright’s patented and guaranteed Ten Commandments for How to be a Writer.

 1. In order to be a writer, you must write. Give yourself a page-per-week quota or an hour-per-week quota, or whatever is needed, so that you will write when you are not in the mood to write.

 2. In order to write, you must use proper spelling, punctuation, grammar; or, if you violate these rules, the violation must be deliberate, to create an artistic effect. Avoid politically correct jargon at all costs. Do not use ugly constructions like “he or she”; it will date your work, and the cool people will laugh at you.

 3. In order to be a writer, you must sell what you write. No manuscript should spend a single night on your desk; the same day you get a rejection, put the manuscript in the mail to the next editor. Let the manuscripts spend their nights on the editor’s desk.

 4. In order to sell what you write, read the editor’s guidelines for his magazine or publishing house and follow them. These guidelines are available in a reference book called Writer’s Market. Get the reference book for the current year. If the guidelines say double-spaced white paper single sided, and no samurai vampire stories, do not send him “Lightning Swords of the Nosferatu of Kyoto” printed on blood-red paper, single-spaced, double sided. Failure to follow the guidelines shows you are a dude, a greenhorn, a tenderfoot, a punk, a novice, not someone meant to be treated with professional courtesy. Your story is your child: no mother would send her child out to look for a job without fixing his tie and shining his shoes.

 5. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope with proper postage affixed, if you want the manuscript back.

 6. You will receive on average ONE HUNDRED rejection slips before you make your first sale. This is an average. This means that if someone, say, Lester del Rey, makes his first sale on his first attempt without getting a rejection, that someone else, say, Ray Bradbury, will get two hundred rejection slips.

 7. If your manuscript is good or bad, send out your manuscript again. Genius does not count. Only persistence counts. The world will not recognize your genius until after you are dead. But the world can recognize your persistence now.

 8. If the manuscript is good, send out your manuscript again. The editor who rejected it last month or last year may have different needs or a different budget this month or this year.

 9. If the manuscript is bad, send out your manuscript again. The worst thing you ever wrote will someday, somehow, be some schoolboy’s favorite story ever. Your readers are your employers. Respect and fear them. Do not approach this work with pride or selfishness or any of the other emotions to which men of fragile artistic spirits are inclined. It is a profession. Act professionally.

 10. Selling writing means your manuscripts go out, and money comes back in. Money always goes toward the writer. Money never goes away from the writer. This means you do not hire a manuscript doctor, you do not pay a reading fee, you do not enter a contest which charges an entry fee. Those are scams. Agents are paid on commission, paid when and only when they sell your wares, whereupon the money comes from the publisher and goes toward you; You do not pay the agent a retainer.

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Strange What You Can Find on the Internet

Posted March 13, 2012 By John C Wright

Someone has assigned my book as an AP lit course over spring break. It is a high school in Encinitas, California.

http://www.kleal.com/AP%20Lit%20Reading%20Schedule%20Spring%202012%20-%20Period%202.pdf

 

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Vote for Prospero and he will free Ariel!

Posted March 13, 2012 By John C Wright

The novel by my lovely and talented wife, PROSPERO REGAINED, is in a book tournament today. Various books are being put up against other books to compete for Best Book of 2011.

PROSPERO REGAINED is, sadly, up against A DANCE WITH DRAGONS by George R. R. Martin. Her only chance for success is if you, dear reader, immediately vote for her book before the great Mr Martin becomes aware of the contest, and with a wave of his hand dispatches his many hordes of fans his talents have won him to flood the ballot box.

Today is the last day! Vote right away!

http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2012/03/13/6th-annual-book-tournament-round-1-westeros-bracket/

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