Hard News: The new riot reporter
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I’ve asked my friend Stella Duffy, lesbian writer of lesbian thrillers, for some comment,
Having just read this, late as usual, can I ask RB, what is the significance for her title? Wasn't her name or profession good enough? It felt like a dish of fluff to describe her as such. Does it matter one iota if she is lesbian?
Jus' sayin'.
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Sacha, in reply to
Does it matter one iota if she is lesbian?
Given the context, I suspect he was trying to reassure us she wasn't some middle aged bloke faking it.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Does it matter one iota if she is lesbian?
Not really, but Duffy is out and her genre work prominently features lesbian-bi protagonists - it wasn't that long ago when authors of genre fiction with a Sapphic flavour published under pseudonyms and heavens forfend mainstream publishers would sully their hands with invert pornography. (Patricia Highsmith wouldn't even publicly acknowledge the lesbian romance novel she published under the nom de plume 'Claire Morgan' in 1952 for over thirty years. Murderous sociopaths, no probs. Dykes who didn't commit suicide or rediscover a taste for cock in the last chapter, not so much.)
So, yeah, I think we can let Russell off with a warning. :)
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Having just read this, late as usual, can I ask RB, what is the significance for her title? Wasn’t her name or profession good enough? It felt like a dish of fluff to describe her as such. Does it matter one iota if she is lesbian?
I usually say she's a writer who grew up in NZ, or just my friend Stella -- who cringes a bit when she sees ""lesbian writer Stella Duffy" being used as a "job description" -- but it's relevant in this context because she writes as who she is -- and, more to the point, because she had some bloody choice words earlier this year for the men who were outed pretending to be lesbian bloggers.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
So, yeah, I think we can let Russell off with a warning. :)
I get the jist and I’m not telling RB off. Was interested why his headspace was there. I don’t see pulling someone up every time they express themselves other than what I would do is actually beneficial but his description just wasn't what I would expect of him. I understand his referring to Paul Lewis ’with a hoodie was for disguise but to place a person into the “lesbian” category seemed a bit discriminatory, and I know that’s not RB
See, you guys, his reply was sufficient, :)
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Mensch isn't a mensch.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
and, more to the point, because she had some bloody choice words earlier this year for the men who were outed pretending to be lesbian bloggers.
Which, without putting words in Duffy's mouth (and looking forward to seeing the show) I hope she'd not put Greg McGee on the same level as that. I'm actually trying to make the transition from seething incoherence to seething coherence at this:
Before publication, Cut & Run was assessed by five readers. I insisted that three of them not be told who the author was. The two (one male, one female) who knew that I’d written it, had major problems with Anna’s credibility. The three readers (two female, one male) who had no idea who the author was, thought Anna was a wonderfully written, sympathetic and engaging character.
That was the moment when I decided my name would not be on the book. I wanted the book and Anna to be treated on their merits, not be assessed on what people thought they knew about its author.
What. The. Fuck. First, I could rattle off a bloody long list of female mystery writers who write perfectly acceptable novels with male protagonists, and any reader who had "credibility issues" with them really needs to kept far away from sane publishers with a mystery list. For that matter, it's not impossible for straight writers to produce GLBT characters who aren't stereotypically swishy queens or uber butch man-hating dykes.
Grrr...
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Which, without putting words in Duffy’s mouth (and looking forward to seeing the show) I hope she’d not put Greg McGee on the same level as that. I’m actually trying to make the transition from seething incoherence to seething coherence at this:
Aw, not even. She said she could understand the urge to get out from under a legacy like his, and noted that she knows both male writers doing the gender shuffle and women opting for the neutrality of initial capitals.
Greg was good value tonight, in the context of an enjoyable show – he struck me as authentic. Although he did nearly ruin my best freakin’ ad-lib of the year by trying to bolt the moment the crowd started applauding …
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Greg was good value tonight
Meanwhile, just checked my library waitlist and Alix Bosco's oeuvre is IN TRANSIT. Thank you, Auckland Libraries. (Should be writing two reviews for The Listener that are due on Tuesday, but public libraries are evil literary tinny houses for us weak-willed bibliophiles...:) ]
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Rich Lock, in reply to
public libraries are evil literary tinny houses for us weak-willed bibliophiles...:)
Innit. They'll find me one day sprawled on my bed, surrounded by half-read books face-down to keep the page, a folio dropping from my limp fingers as my sightless eyes stare at the ceiling.
"the purity of the metaphor was too strong for him, ma'am. We're seeing a lot of this sort of thing with the new first editions out on the streets."
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*waves* thought my ears were burning ...
Just for the record, I tend not to say 'lesbian writer', what with no-one paying me for being gay, prefer not to use lesbian as a noun (far too reductive) but don't mind it as an adjective, and have written 12 novels only 5 of which feature a lesbian (adjective) protagonist (noun). All of them feature occasional LGBT characters though, just as all of them feature black, asian, and/or mixed race characters, what with not living in a white, middle class writers' ghetto, and not wanting to pretend I do either. But I hope that sexuality or race or class is never a defining characteristic for any of them, just as I hope it's not for me either, my sexuality (among other things) being an utterly intrinsic and also utterly irrelevant (for many things) part of me. All that said, in a world where many people are still killed or attacked for being LGBT, in a world where class still defines and often limits many of us (and yes, those of us who grew up in Tokoroa as much as any), and a world in which women still do the bulk of all childcare and earn less across the board than men, then until those things are fixed, yeah, I'm ok with being called 'lesbian writer' when and where it's relevant. Not least because I hope it might make it better for the next 14 year old getting bullied, or the 85 year old afraid to be out in an uncaring care home. Just not only 'lesbian writer' and certainly not only 'writer of things lesbian'. (Not a single lezz in the whole of The Room of Lost Things, which is mostly about Brixton and blokes. Or the Medea adaptation I have on now in Edinburgh, which is mostly about er, the infanticidal half-goddess revenge chick.)
Right then, I'm back to the beach.Oh and Ms Mensch - oddly, given our UTTERLY different politics, Louise is a friend, (book-writing in the UK gives the most unusual combination of mates) - and while I often shake my head at some of her beliefs, her Murdoch questioning, especially after the pie-throwing irritation (engendering far too much sympathy for the old man) was great. 'Are you going to resign? Why not?' Lovely stuff.
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Sacha, in reply to
'Are you going to resign? Why not?'
I'm so looking forward to her or someone else asking that again.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Just not only ‘lesbian writer’ and certainly not only ‘writer of things lesbian’.
Quite - and when I came Mary Renault at the age of thirteen (and firmly in the closet), I was convinced she was fronting for a gay man. How could a woman -- and one I presumed (incorrectly) was heterosexual - write so sympathetically and vividly about homos, not only in her historical novels but the quietly astounding The Charioteer? As I matured in all kinds of ways, I came to realize the answer was this: She did it one word at a time, like everyone else.
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Islander, in reply to
Mary Renault was, for me, another eye-opener. "The Charioteer" - yep. That empathetic insight into battle nature and participants. Followed by the 'Alexander'trilogy*.and his loves, especially "Fire From Heaven" and "The Persian Boy" - it all made a kind of sense about battle-worn people I knew (including a couple in my family...)
*Can I state here that I think Alexander -the-Psycopath did way more harm than he ever did good? And Mary Renault picked that up?
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Oh, and anyone who says "oh, menz can't write laydeze" needs to sod off and read Love and Rockets. Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez have been doing a pretty good job of writing complex magnificent women -- and ones who aren't straight white & middle-class at that! -- for nigh on thirty years .
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Russell Brown, in reply to
what with no-one paying me for being gay
It'd be a mint job though, wouldn't it?
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Stella Duffy, in reply to
it would, and with all these years of practice, reckon I'd be well rich.
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It’d be a mint job though, wouldn’t it?
Payment only comes in kitchen appliances though, so you're constantly on trade me fobbing them off.
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