Check out Monday News: National Book Award Finalists, Jim Hines on Kathleen Hale, Margo Howard v. Vine, and Laurie Penny on the “ramification of misogyny” just posted at Dear Author. Get To Know The Finalists For The 2014 National Book Award – From Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See (another WWII-set novel) to Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven to Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, NPR features all of the 2014 National Book Award finalists. There are some interesting books nominated this year – has anyone read any of them? –NPR Victim or Perpetrator? – A succinct essay from Jim Hines explaining 1) how bad reviews are not tantamount to bullying (and what a terrible injustice we’ve done to kids who truly are bullied by trifling with and diminishing such a powerful word), and 2) how Kathleen Hale is NOT the victim, despite what her prose would like us to believe. Bad reviews are also a thing. Hating someone’s book is not bullying. Sharing your opinion, suggesting others stay away from a book or an author, is not bullying. It might cost you some sales, and that sucks, but it’s not bullying, nor is it an organized campaign to destroy someone’s career. Hale’s account does not convince me that she was a victim of online bullying. But even if she was, there comes a point where she crossed a line from victim to perpetrator. She admits to stalking Blythe online. She then began stalking her in real life. She showed up at Blythe’s home, called her on the phone. –Jim Hines Amazon’s Elite Reviewing Club Sabotaged My Book – Before Kathleen Hale blew up the Internet, Margo Howard had eyes rolling all over social media for her ridiculous piece on how Amazon Vine’s review program perpetrated such a great “injustice” against her and her newly releasing memoir, that she had to contact one member of Amazon’s Board of Directors, who, I can only imagine, practically threw her into the arms of the woman who runs the Vine program. Apparently those who disliked her books are merely envious of her amazing lifestyle. Oh, yessiree. Howard’s Twitter stream extends her diatribe, and notes, among other things, that her editor regrets submitting her book to Vine. I’ll bet. Well, they were “Vine Voices” I found out. Amazon explains: “Amazon Vine invites the most trusted reviewers on Amazon to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make informed purchase decisions.” Well, swell. A fellow customer would have read those pre-publication “reviews” and thought the book was dreck—although some people, I have to hope, would have spotted these attacks for what they were: ad hominem attacks. God and Bezos only know how many “trusted reviewers” there are. In any case, these people are given freebies … cold cream, sneakers, pots and pans, and … books! I submit to you that free stuff does not a book reviewer make. One could fairly think of Vine membership as offering an all-you-can-eat buffet of things. –New Republic WHY WE’RE WINNING: SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS AND THE NEW CULTURE WAR – An interesting article by Laurie Penny that attempts to reclaim the social justice warrior description and proclaim those males who suffer from “the rage of bewilderment” as the losers of a cultural war that is sacrificing many individual women but is still effectively diminishing the power of this horrific misogyny. There are a number of elements of Penny’s argument I find compelling (her analysis of the “ramification of misogyny,” for example), but I’m sadly not feeling her confidence that women are winning anything at the moment. Games and pickup artistry gave a formal structure to that mindset for this generation, but it’s older than that. The gamification of misogyny predates the internet, but right now, in this world full of angry, broken, lost young men convinced that women have robbed them of some fundamental win in life, it’s rampant. The trouble is that treating other human beings like faceless opponents doesn’t work in the real world. Gender isn’t a game you can play and win by brutalising and harassing and shaming and hurting the other ‘side.’ Ultimately, there is no other side. Gender oppression is structural. Everybody loses, in the long term, because everybody has to live in a culture where it’s normal to hound women out of their homes for daring to demand fairer treatment, normal to shame girls and queer people into silence for suggesting that there might be other interesting stories to tell. There is no way to win this game, except by not playing at all. –Laurie Penny
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 09:11:12 +0000
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