Reading literature and the so what's so bad fairy

[dark empathy]

Okay this one is for the chaps who particularly like reading.

For me, books are next to oxygen, (I can substitute audiodramas for books though not tv), and these days books, along with music and occasionally games are pretty much the best experiences I have in life.

One thing I have noticed is that I'm one of the few people who can still find while rereading that I mostly get the same pleasure as previously, indeed sometimes a different pleasure.

For most people however the Suck fairy see here for details often goes in and pollutes a formally loved book, either by just making a person think it was a dire read the second time around, (ie in American parlence it sucks), or by having the reader notice different things such as tropes and cliches, racist, sexist or homophobic passages, or authorially intended messages.

For me, most of this doesn't often apply. I notice! things like racism and sexism (especially sexism), and homophobia, but often I can just separate out my moral outrage from my enjoyment, much as I would do when having a debate with someone with whom I disagreed but for whom I had an incredible respect, indeed often I find that I am opposed for those who constantly look for some sort of authorial message or intention in books and forget the actual, ---- well enjoyment of the story! (I've said before how i dislike the opinion people have that Lewis was specifically just trying to teach christianity to children in the narnia books rather than as he said himself simply happened to include christian elements because they were part of who he was).

Tropes and cliches I do find a little harder when I notice them, though mostly because it makes the books and characters feel predictable and less real to me.

The one fairy I have the most trouble with is one that Jo Walton doesn't mention at all in her list and one which I suspect is unique to abuse survivers, the "what's so bad! fairy"

To illustrate, I recently started listening again to some doctor who audio dramas I'd first heard in 2007. One was entitled Shadow of the Scourge, and involves the Doctor (and a hotel full of guests), confronting a race from another dimention called the Scourge who literally embody human misery and fear.

First time through, it was awsome! the Scourge were dam scary, and I loved the moment when Ace, the Doctor's assistant got together a resistance who forced the scourge to retreat by having the hotel guests first relate how their life's problems weren't really problems, and then chant "Get out of our heads! get out of our world!"

The problem? Second time through, the "what's so bad! fairy" had done her thing, and I looked at the problems these hotel guests had, the problems that let them be taken over by these creatures who supposedly embody human anguish and what do I find?

A woman who is afraid to tell her boyfriend that she's pregnant. A man who has embezzled money from a craft conference he was organizing. Another man who is having an affair because his mariage to his wife has lost all meaning, and a woman who has been playing a fake spiritualist medium in hopes to do some good but has no psychic powers at all!

Even Ace herself, what is her great source of misery? That the Doctor doesn't trust her.

I looked at these petty little problems that supposedly were being used by the scourge to torment these people and thought, for gods sake! I'd love! any of those problems in deference to what I have.

Of course, with good authors, and my most favourite books the What's so bad! fairy has no power at all, sinse hay it's not hard to see that Harry Potter or Frodo are quite justified in reacting as they do to what they go through, and I still find it a source of strength that they do survive, but I am finding this a problem in several books, indeed some that are not rereads but first reads.

yes I know, all suffering is relative, don't play misery poker, everyone has their own problems (accept people who don't), but I do wish this wasn't spoiling my reading!

 

[GoodKiwi]

Ive known about the tooth fairy for some time but the suck fairy thats news. Im probably more prone to the anti-suck fairy (see comments in the link).

Over the weekend a friend was complaining about her sister who, 20 years after her parents divorce, hadnt forgiven her father. The sister is depressed, unemployed, overweight and suffering panic attacks. I guess the whats so bad fairy waived its wand because I started to think oh come on its not like you were abused or anything' but then the compassion kicked in and I realised Id be the same in her shoes.

Thanks for the read.

 

[dark empathy]

Your experience with this lady sounds remarkably similar to an experience I had with a friend of mine's husband (also a friend though I don't know him as well as his wife who is sort of like a brother to me). He felt a huge amount of depression due to his lack of "a career" part of me wanted to say "for god's sake! your married to a wonderful lady, you were never abused, you've got fucking working eyeballs and don't have to cope with the rest of the world ignoring your existance" but of course I didn't, as with your experience my empathy took over and several times I provided what help I could usually just by listening.

The odd thing in reading terms however is that I always find myself I'm one of these people who usually can! read something they formally loved and still enjoy it, though usually now I cn crytically say why.

that is why on fantasybookreview.co.uk if you see My reviewer profile you'll notice I've done reviews for lots of books I read as a child and reread later like Charley and the Chocolate factory, The Twits, and HAlfmen of O, ---- then again Dahl always was a fantastic writer for how well and starkly he can actually depict really extreme levels of suffering to contrast with all the wonder and wimsy (the description of James chopping wood in James and the giant peach is really! nasty stuff).

 

[txb]

I don't think I've ever read the same book twice. Maybe that makes me weird? I have been rereading some books that were read to me as a child, so maybe that counts - mostly Roald Dahl too, and also A Series of Unfortunate Events (that was still as good as I remembered it). But it seems like my dad must have been doing some heavy editing while he was reading because I discovered that Danny from Danny the Champion of the World gets either belted or caned by his teacher. That was kind of shocking. I still loved the book though. I'm also reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time.

I tend to read books quite critically, because I like to write, so I'm usually noting in my head what the author did that worked well or what sucked. I can't really imagine reading a book and loving it and then rereading it later and finding it was terrible.

I usually find I have the opposite problem from things not being so bad, where there's a character with some major trauma and they just get over it in 5 minutes. That annoys me.

 

[dark empathy]

Well txb, that won't be a problem in Lotr, indeed Lotr is one of these things I reread everysooften just because I love it's music and style.

Oh, and it might not have been your dad's fault. There were some editions where the chapter where Danny is caned, which is based very much on what Dahl himself experienced as a child (you can read about it in his own Autobiography Boy), was missed out sinse it was thought too traumatic.

 

[tbkkfile]

I tend to keep the books that I read that are concerned with real life events or real people, most of the sci-fi and fantasy books go to the local charity shop other than a few such as Lotr and the Hobbit, the complete Thomas covenant books and a few others which I reread, I also have a very old copy of the call of the wild which I've always loved.

The what's so bad fairy normally decides which ones get sent to the charity shops and which ones get kept, she's (I assume that it's a she) been with me all of my life and like me has changed over that time so something that I kept when I was 18 was removed when I reached my 50's

 

[dark empathy]

Interesting there David. I will admit that sinse when I was growing up my only access to books was whatever the Rnib talking book library happened to have and send me, I actually like the fact that now I have a harddrive full of audiobooks that I own, and can look through all my different author and series folders and see what I have, indeed just being able to choose what I read rather than just having books sent to me is a real freedom.

I probably would feel differently if I had actual physical copies of books to deal with.

The "what's so bad" fairy I assume to be female just because generally speaking fairies happen to be. Usually when books have male fairies like Terry Pratchett, or Lyn Read-Banks Fairy Rebel, the males have a different name, elves, pucks, gnomes etc, heck I think I've seen tritons or male mermaids more frequently than male fairies, ---- Oberon must be rather lonely.


I think the best take on fairies was the start of Labyrinth where Sarah sees a sweet looking flying fairy that proceeds to bight her. Hoggle the dwarf's comment is "So what do you expect fairies to do?" and when Sarah says she thought they did nice things like granting wishes Hoggle replies "shows what you know!"
T
here was also a brilliant doctor who audio trilogy called Legend of the cybermen where the cybermen invade the land of fiction and start converting the various fictional creatures, ---- and cyber converted fairies covered in metal with their wings replaced with propella blades is just horrible! Indeed the hole audio series was amazing for how it showed fiction and imagination under siege by cold mechanisation, particularly sinse the goal of the cybermen was to iliminate human imagination and thus make humanity just like themm. again, why I love Doctor who sinse it can be bang on the nose artistically sometimes.

Hmmm, I'll have to think up a story featuring male fairies now.

 

[GoodKiwi]

Dark empathy, your review of Halfmen of O takes me way, way back. That was amazing. Maurice Gee would have to be one of my favourite authors. Under the Mountain is another classic. Ive lost track of how many times I read it. The movie they made recently wasn't so great though.

We were just joking over the weekend how Roald Dhal always knocks off the parents in his books.

 

[dark empathy]

Glad you like the Halfmen review. Weerdly enough, I read the first book as I said when I was around ten or eleven, but then thanks to the usual efficiency of the Rnib Talking book library, an audio version of the second didn't appear until 2013 and reading it in February of this year was my first time. God knows when or if they'll do the last in the series. Then again that sort of thing is uiteusual, hey did the first of Douglas Hill's children's sf adventure Colsec trilogy in 1984 (I phoned them in 1989 athe age 7 to request they did the others), they then did the second in, ---- 2007, and the third, just last year!

So I've not read or heard of under the mountain, but I'll go and look it up, sinse hay good books aren't age dependent (I had lots of fun reading How to train your Dragon, Brandon sanderson's awsome Alcatraz vs the evil librarians series, and the Percy Jackson series, albeit Percy was rather subject to the "You just stole this from harry potter fairy", as opposed to Alkatraz which was blessed by the "Your making me laugh by wonderfully poking fun at Harry Potter goblin" (methinks this anthropomorphisation is going a wee bit far).

As to roald Dahl, I'm afraid I'm a little unsure what you mean by him "Killing off the parents" sinse the only of his childrens books I can think of where that happens are James and the Giant Peach and The Witches. I suppose you could count The Bfg, sinse Sophy is an Orphan, however sinse she never really had parents I'm not sure, likewise Danny the Champion of the world still features Danny's father even though his mother died prior to the book, though like Sophy's parents he never really knew her so it didn't particularly have an affect.

That is compared to George's marvelous medicine, both Charley books, The Magic finger, The Minpins and to an extent Danny where the child protagonists have parents who are either background characters in their family or serve as major characters themselves, (the same could be said for the boy's grandma in The Witches), plus of course Matilda who's parents you might wish! to kill, but sadly aren't .

Then there is Fantastic Mr. Fox where of course the father is the protagonist of the story, as is the case for mugglewump the Monkey in The Twits, although Mugglwump as I argued in my Twits review is likely Dahl's least well rounded hero.

Oh, and btw, yes I have read the Roald Dahl books waaaaay! too much. i'd like to claime this was a child hood obsession, but I really can't.

I even use "Little red riding hood" from Revolting Rhymes (which I happen to have memorized), as a voice acting test to show off my equipment and my voice to anyone who needs acting doing for a computer game, you can Find it here on sendspace if you fancy a listen.

 

[Nothing Man]

As a person who grew up in Europe in the seventies I read Enid Blighton's "Secret Seven" when I was very young and "Famous Five" series when I was a bit older. I thought they were great. They had all the right things, things I lacked: family, cousins who and siblings who were the best of friends, some adventure, a little scariness (but not enough to traumatize anyone) and, best of all, the good guys always won at the end, and everyone was happy. There was also never a mention of CSA. Reading, and re-reading those books took me away from my troubles and woes. To this day I still have a very, very deep fondness for England and love to visit when I can. And I was pleasantly surprised when my daughters came across my old books and started reading them too. Of course, I had to translate some of the content into Merican for them!

Like so many of you, I also read the LOTR several times and even now am contemplating reading it again, once I finish with the series I am currently reading.

 

[dark empathy]

Secret seven, valley of adventure, and five go off to camp were some of my favourites, I also liked the faraway tree books.

funnily enough Blighten is probably one person who is really! subject to the "So what's so bad fairy" sinse one of my biggest problems with Blighten as opposed to Dahl is how absolutely safe things feel, indeed one of the major strengths of Dahl's writing that I can now articulate is how well he could show actual character suffering and progress through it, where as Blighten has something of a sense of safety that seems almost artificially imposed.

People do ride the various prejudice hobby horses with Blighten, and while at least the sexism one I can see some grounds for, given that she not only represents the fact that girls should be doing housework and in need of protection while putting boys in danger is absolutely fine, as was the attitude in the earlier part of the 20cth century, she actually also does! recommend such attitudes on a moral level.

This contrasts with say Edith Nesbit (author of the Railway children and several other famous English children's series like treasure seakers and the five children and it books), who accepted the attitude but didn't moralize about it, indeed there's a hilarious section in five children and it when the boys want to go out adventuring but the girls are required to help with the spring cleaning, and the boys both decide to help as well just to get the thing done faster so they can get on with meeting the sand fairy.

Oooh, just realized, there! is a male fairy .

I actually ought to reread the faraway tree books myself and see just how well I can recapture the good bits and articulate the bad bits, sinse while Blighten had her faults she certainly still produced some amazing stuff and it's a shame for the former to always cover the latter.

Oh, and btw nothing man, I heartily approve of any Americans who teach dchildren that people in Britain do not! speak American, despite hollywood and the publishing industry's having to translate everything that enters the country and create the contrary opinion.

After all, when American books and tv is shown over here we don't get a translation? You don't see an english version of the Simpsons with head master skinner, caretaker willy and mo's ppub, so why does everything going the other way need sensorship?

That being said, on the logic that the publishers of Harry Potter in the states changed the name of the first book to "Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's stone" in the belief that Americans wouldn't know what a philosopher was, (no, this was actually the reason you can find it on wikipedia), does that mean I can claime to be a qualified sorcerer because I have a degree, a masters, and have at least attempted to get a phd in philosophy? .

 

[Nothing Man]

Hi Dark Empathy,

I agree that Blighton could be subjected to your "what's so bad fairy." The books and stories really were rather bland but comforting, at least for me, to read.

Speaking of things that needed -- or did not need -- translation from BritSpeak to Murican was the film, "The Madness of King George III." In the US it was simply entitled "The Madness of King George" with out the "III" because the distributors were afraid that the undereducated and provincial American public would think that the III meant it was the third in a series of films. Oh my.

 

[GoodKiwi]

Speaking of things that needed -- or did not need -- translation from BritSpeak to Murican was the film, "The Madness of King George III." In the US it was simply entitled "The Madness of King George" with out the "III" because the distributors were afraid that the undereducated and provincial American public would think that the III meant it was the third in a series of films. Oh my.

Brilliant.
Im not well read but this thread is inspiring me to dig out the Hobbit and maybe Enid Blyton if my daughter allows. Nowadays I read two authors - Ruth Millikan (a philosopher if ever there was one) and Nicholas Sparks.

Dark Empathy, I'm not going to argue with the expert. I guess I meant more what you described about the parents, if not killed off, then dont always feature in the book.

Nothingman, we just left England. It took 8 years but I also developed a fondness for the place. In some ways I wish the CSA issues had surfaced there as the services are more specialised than in Luxembourg.

 

[Nothing Man]

Hi GoodKiwi, I always thought Luxembourg was beautiful too. I lived in Switzerland for many years and have so many fond memories there, even though some terrible things were done to me. As a matter of fact, my profile picture is of me in our back yard in Switzerland.

And I will always love England.

 

[dark empathy]

I didn't know that about the madness of king george, that is funny!

Removing the parents, or at least having child protagonists put in a position where they're away from their parents is sort of a standard move in any children's book, sinse the assumption is that parents make for a static environment, more usually a good and safe family environment, but occasionally an unpleasant one (think of wicked step parents in fairy tales). Either way, for adventure, exploration and change the static environment of the child has to change, hence why parents, or guardian like figures don't play much of a part in the book, but this was one reason why I cryticized Halfmen of O for introducing effectively surrigate parents rather than letting Susan and Knick explore planet O on their own.

It's actually blyton's moralizing and safety that worry me, but I'd be interested to see if I can look at the books in detail sinse while I do think Blyton has her issues I don't tend to think she deserves all the flack that so many crytics sling her way (particularly ones who are so wrapped up in promoting their pet cause, socialism, sexism, class struggle they don't actually read the book in front of them and wouldn't know wonder or enjoyment if it bit them on the nose!).

As to England, well services vary. I can't have therapy on the health service because my csa was not performed by a family member, though at least because I have a nice local Gp and family doctor I did get some anti depressants when I need them (considering he also treated me for massive exma at the time which I'd never experineced before or sinse he didn't find the belief in sa so surprising).

I will say England varies like anywhere else. Where my parents live, in the city of Nottingham is a regular pit of shit! people have horrible accents, it has an amazingly high crime rate, and while there are some nice parts outside the city, the city center is a concrete jungle.

There are however some very nice naturally beautiful areas, and places in Britain where people are much more friendly, one reason I now live in the Northeast up in Durham, which is a tiny place with an amazing cathedral and lots of Georgian buildings. heck, rather ironically I live next to Durham prison, one of the largest prisons in Britain, but my road is beautiful, with many trees and flowers I get to see come out and birds, including an owl. Indeed it's not what you'd expect from a council flat at all.

I also love several parts of the coast and the derbishire dales, indeed one of my very favourite book series, william Horwood's duncton chronicles (think watership down but with moles and a hell of a lot more well written), I enjoy so much because of the countryside, indeed some major events happen in parts of Derby that I know well.