World Enough and Time

The buffer of time gives me tolerance.

The buffer of time and lack of experience...I'm not older than you but after my family and my country suffered extreme from nazis I'm very alergic about nazi authors even if other said their art were beautiful.

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Yes: I didn't have Nazis tramping all over my country, thank goodness. Though my father and every man I know of his generation fought in World War II in Europe, they went there, the war itself didn't come here, and we were never even bombed. My personal 'experience' of Nazis is almost entirely from books.

So yes, place has a strong effect there, as well as the passage of time. By chance and luck, homophobia is something that has affected me more personally than Nazism. (Not that they are unrelated concepts: the Nazis were homophobic, too.)

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I grew up in my mother's home town, Hull, which was one of the most heavily bombed cities in the UK, and still showed it (as previously remarked, any old buildings which had escaped the Victorians were flattened, as was much of its Victorian architecture). One great-uncle was killed there, when he left a shelter to get a glass of water for his pregnant wife; and other family members on Dad's side of the family were killed in the Clydebank blitz. My paternal grandfather was permanently disabled in service, but that was because of gun-runners in Palestine. (Yes - Outremer took its toll on my family...)

But I see no reason for this to make, say, a Pound lyric written in 1912 inspired by Arnaut Daniel, out of bounds because of the poet's later politics. It's not a proselytising piece. I know I'm pretty much everything the poet would have hated, and vice versa, but hell, I'm not going to have tea with him. If a writer is proselytising in a way I dislike, yes, I'll either not read it, or read it in order to construct a counter-argument. But if they're writing something non-ideological, no problem. It's not contaminating.

We can choose to be restricted by the past or by place - or not. Putting on a self-imposed set of blinkers ("I will not allow myself to like x because of y"), deliberate self-limitation, seems to me absurd. It gives the bad guys a kind of victory: they may not have achieved full domination, but they have made you restrict your life.

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It's always your choice what you read and what you don't. Please let have me mine.
I've written that I'm alergic; I'm really glad for you that you're not; you're right I'm restricting myself; it's like I've heard that Wagner is forbidden in Israel and if it's true I really understand why.

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it's like I've heard that Wagner is forbidden in Israel and if it's true I really understand why.

It was a taboo for a long time, but I think, thankfully, it's been broken. However understandable, it was wrong, and like all such taboos, it attributes a disproportionate amount of power to the taboo object.

On a lighter, but not unrelated note, there's the campaign by assorted religious nutters against Harry Potter, in the belief that exposure to J K Rowling fiction will turn their children to the occult and Satanism. They don't let their children read fantasy in case it contaminates them in some way.

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I really can't approve of any kind of censorship, particularly government censorship; but I wouldn't want to allow hate literature, either.

As for J.K. Rowling and her fanatical opposition - they are the sorts of people that freedom of speech was invented to guard against! So absurd. So stupid.

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Yup. And this kind of thing is always so patronising - assuming that the reader/listener/viewer has no ideas or mind of their own and is just a sponge for whatever the artist produces.

And with Wagner - yes, he was an odious jerk and some appalling people took up his work long after his death, but the music itself is beautiful. It is also impossible to understand why some later composers (such as Mahler) wrote as they did without knowing about their debt to him. Taking the argument to its logical conclusion (and I'm sure someone somewhere is thinking on these lines), studying the Æneid is wrong because it supports the Roman Empire, which was an imperialist, slave-owning society; the same with other Classical literature. What, too, of the great 20C Russian composers and film-makers? And many of the great Renaissance artists worked for various nasty despotic princes and belligerent Popes. They didn't have the technology that made more modern tyrants so dangerous and far-reaching, but were still brutal. It does not negate the value of the art.

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Studying is never wrong; wrong could be only what you lern from that.

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I've heard that Wagner is forbidden in Israel and if it's true I really understand why.

Interesting, if true. I don't like Wagner at all, which is disappointing, because I expected to like him for his medieval backgrounds. Sadly, I just don't like his music. Nothing to do with his politics, or the propagandistic uses of his work.

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It was a cultural, rather than a legal, taboo.

I like Wagner (sword-and-sorcery musicals!); but then I also like Mahler, who was strongly influenced by him.

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I also don't like Wagner, he is boring like hell.

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I agree with all you say, but at the same time, every decision of what to read and what not to read is a decision with many factors. With so many books and so little time, I am as happy not to read, say, Dan Brown (because he's a bad stylist), or Orson Scott Card (because he's homophobic) in favour of other authors who don't present me with mixed or negative feelings. It's not as if I had a duty to read every author. It would probably be different if Card wrote subject matter I was particularly eager to read - say, something set in the 12th century! - but he's only one of many fantasy/sf writers I could be spending time with.

Pound loses brownie points on the politics, yes, but he gains on the medieval fascination, so the one thing overrides the other, and the fact that I like his style, his use of language - of languages. And he wrote sestinas. I have a thing for sestinas.

(Hmm, note to self: write a Torchwood sestina.)

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I tend to read for a purpose more than for pleasure alone: usually because I'm writing something. So I've often read books that I find inimical in style or content - for the purpose of taking them apart. I recently heard dreadful things of a Judith Tarr 'historical fantasy', so I've ordered it, because I must see how she's abusing someone I care for.

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I recently heard dreadful things of a Judith Tarr 'historical fantasy', so I've ordered it, because I must see how she's abusing someone I care for.

And do you like her?

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This will be my first encounter with her. The book hasn't arrived yet.

I have grave reservations about grafting fantasy on to real history. Very few writers can do it successfully, and there are some major ethical issues around it (which Guy Gavriel Kay has dealt with well, I think, here: Home and Away (http://www.brightweavings.com/ggkswords/globe.htm).)

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I have grave reservations about grafting fantasy on to real history.

As do I. I have less of a problem with grafting real history onto fantasy - using words and images evocative or real historical eras to enhance the fiction - which is what Tolkien did. I can't think of anyone else who has done it successfully - George R.R. Martin, maybe. Most fantasists don't have a clue and don't try.

which Guy Gavriel Kay has dealt with well, I think, here

I greatly admire Guy Kay's writing and consider him a friend. That being said, I wish he would write straight history, and leave out the fantasy - even though I think his fantasy is superb. But here's another case of 'honest' writing: even though he's writing fantasy, he doesn't use that as an excuse to go lightly on the historical eras he is basing his works on. His research is careful and deep.

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I like Kay's reasons for not writing straight historical fiction, though. I am wary of it, because of the element of speculation. Unlike in non-fiction, you can't highlight in a novel what is purely speculation: it has to be presented naturalistically. All too often historical end-notes turn out to be weasel-words (as per Ronald Welch and Graham Shelby) that obscure the degree of invention used. In many respects, I would rather no-one wrote straight fiction about real people: it can be so damaging.

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I like Kay's reasons for not writing straight historical fiction, though.

I respect his reasons. It doesn't stop me from wishing he'd do historical fiction, though, because he's one of the few people I know of who would (in my opinion) do it right. And I am starved for good historical fiction.

can't highlight in a novel what is purely speculation

You can put notes at the end.

All too often historical end-notes turn out to be weasel-words

Yes, but it doesn't have to be that way, if they're honest with the material and with the reader. I don't want more bad historical novels, I want more good historical novels.

I would rather no-one wrote straight fiction about real people: it can be so damaging.

Uh-oh. That is exactly what I am planning to do.

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the Nazis were homophobic, too.)

Yes, they were but as I've read their beginning has sort of gay nuances...there was the SA - they were openly gay - ok. they were murdered by the SS because of it, but those adoration for the Führer ...

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Nazi history certainly a strange and convoluted and contradictory. Fascinating for that reason. Twisted ideology. Maybe supporting the notion that all homophobia is a reaction to supressed internal homosexuality? I've never believed that, but a case could be made.

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I searched for books about Templars and I accidentally found a book about "men cirkles" (Männerbunde) in Germany. It seemed that the tradition of these was very deep there (with a declared love to the leader etc.).The author tried to proof that the SS was only the continuation of that and the rejection of the homosexual element had a political reason. but I didn't read the book exactly, so I can't say more about it.

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