A Blog to Take Over the World (Part II)

(Part I)

Take, for example, one of the more polemical posts I have written, my discussion of Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky and the speech he gave in honor of my grandfather, which some might see as contradicting my previously stated ethos. Admittedly I received a lot of criticism for that post from people who saw it as a personal attack on Rabbi Kamenetsky. That was not my intention. For one thing, this was hardly a full-on vitriolic, foaming at the mouth assault. I did not accuse him of being a child molester or of helping child molesters. I did not question his patriotism to this country or his love of the Jewish people and Israel. I even praised him as a good speaker. My only qualm with him was that I thought it was the wrong speech for the audience and it was delivered in a manner that was ill-suited to the circumstances. In the end, I questioned his ability to be a leader of the entire Jewish people. As far as I am concerned the last part was not even a criticism of him at all. He is the head of the Philadelphia Yeshiva, a position he is well qualified for, and he is not trying to be anything else. For that matter I myself am not cut out to be a leader of the entire Jewish people and, while we are at it, I am also not qualified to be an Olympic athlete, an astronaut or the president of the United States. This is not an act of self-criticism; it is simply a statement of fact. In the end, the real target of this post was not Rabbi Kamenetsky, but those who would seek to put him on some sort of pedestal and declare him to be the leader of the Jewish people.

In essence, this post, like many others, was anti-Haredi. Haredim serve as a Demosthenes for me; they represent an ideology that I can counter. Also, there is a personal element. Since I grew up connected to the Haredi world and to a certain extent I still am today, they are a major dialectical opposition. One of the major issues running through my blog is my attempt to answer the question, why am I not Haredi. (I also confront questions such as why am I not a secular materialist or why am I not a modern liberal.) As such it can only be expected that I would be less than supportive of a Haredi rabbi. That being said there is a very big difference between my "attacks" and the kind of attacks on Haredim you will find in DovBear and Failed Messiah. To put what I said in a different context, I treated Rabbi Kamenetsky more gently than I treated J. K. Rowling, Libba Bray, and Stephenie Meyer when I felt the need to criticize them. Now all three of these authors are people whose work I actually admire. I see myself as advocating for them. I am an intellectually honest person, though, so I am also willing to call out those who I see as one of “my” people when they mess up. I do not see myself as being on Rabbi Kamenetsky’s side so it makes perfect sense that I would call him on it when he fails at something. At the end of the day, though, I kept my criticism of him at a civil and respectable level. Just because someone is not on your side does not mean that you do not respect him. In fact, it is a healthy thing to respect one's opponents. It keeps you intellectually honest.

Here is to the Locke school of blogging. I have been blogging for nearly two years now. I may not have gained much popular traction, but I like to think that I have put out a quality product, albeit one that I am still working to improve on. I have done my best to keep the polemics and ad hominem attacks to a minimum. If nothing else I hope this blog can be something that people of all stripes, even those who may vehemently disagree with me, can read and respect. If anyone wants me to run for world leader, I am busy at the moment, maybe in two or three decades.

We are Going to Do Feminism Like It Is 1895: A Review of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy (Part III)

(This is the conclusion of a series of earlier posts. See here and here.) 

While Libba Bray manages to treat the Victorian world fairly, there is an issue, that Bray jumps around, that I wish she had dealt with directly. While the Victorian world, which Gemma and her friends struggle against, might be highly patriarchal and demand absolute conformity, this same world is also offering them a life of luxury, the likes of which few in that time period could even dream about; this is a life that Gemma and her friends have not earned by any merit of theirs nor would they likely be able to gain it through their own efforts. As such they lack the moral ground with which to challenge the Victorian world. They have little in the way of marketable skills; if they had to earn their own way they would likely find themselves with the factory girls they so pity. While most of the men in these books, with a few exceptions, speak of women in ways that would make moderns blush, the men have a point. Most of the women are in fact little better than grown-up children, to be kept as pets, but not to be taken too seriously. Any attempt to argue for women’s equality in such a world would find itself up against a catch-22. Women, in this time period, are inferior. With some few exceptions, there are no female doctors and lawyers nor are there many women with more than a very elementary education. As such women are not in a position to position to demand access to power or even access to the means to gain power, such as higher education and professional careers. With nothing to bargain with, women have no choice but to submit to patriarchal power and must make do with whatever scraps men choose to throw at them. I would have loved it if Bray would have given a character like Mrs. Nightwing a speech like this to unload on Gemma with, challenging her to earn her ability to challenge the world around her. This would set the stage for what Gemma does at the end of the trilogy, providing her motivation. (Do not worry. I will not spoil the ending.) The books do have one weakness; they tend to wander quite a bit, without anything actually happening. Bray, in ways that are reminiscent of J.K Rowling, likes to have her characters wandering about Spence Academy and the Realms, trying to figure out what the larger story is. This becomes a particular problem with The Sweet Far Thing. It is 819 pages long, nearly double Great and Terrible Beauty’s 416 pages and still significantly longer than Rebel Angels’ 592 pages. The reader spends The Sweet Far Thing waiting for the final climactic battle with the forces of the Winterlands. While the climax has its share of interesting moments, along with a few tragic ones, the whole affair seems to go off as a whimper. Circe, the chief villain of series, proves to be an intriguing and nuanced character; it is a pity, though, that Bray does not do more with her. The Sweet Far Thing’s ability to go hundreds of pages without any important plot developments reminds me of the Order of the Phoenix. The difference, though, is that Rowling possessed a singular ability to keep a reader enthralled in her work; the world of Harry Potter was interesting in of itself. No matter what else may have been happening, I loved reading about Harry, Ron and Hermione. Bray, for all of her talent, lacks Rowling’s ability to be able to get away with having nothing happen. Even Rowling had difficulty keeping Order of the Phoenix afloat, Bray fails. I could happily read Rowling simply for the sake of reading Rowling, I do not love Bray to that extent. Ultimately the Sweet Far Thing should not have been more than six hundred pages; the story could have easily been told in four hundred pages. Despite the Sweet Far Thing's failings, the Gemma Doyle trilogy is a very worthwhile read. I believe that the Orthodox audience would particularly enjoy these books; they are in a unique situation to appreciate the struggles of living within a highly structured environment and the various nuances that come out of such a world.

We are Going to Do Feminism Like It Is 1895: A Review of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy (Part I)

This past summer a girl, that I was going out with, recommended that, since I, like her, was a Twilight fan, I should try Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty (GTB). The date proved to be lousy, but the book proved to be a wonderful suggestion. Captured by its sharp, tongue and cheek wit and its parade of references to classical literature and poetry, I quickly read A Great and Terrible Beauty along with its sequel, Rebel Angels, and waited until the end of December for the final book in the series, A Sweet Far Thing, to come out. The lesson from this, I think, is that a good book is worth a bad date. The Gemma Doyle Trilogy is a work of historical fiction/fantasy about a nineteenth century English girl who attends a girl’s finishing school near London called Spence Academy. Gemma grew up in India as the daughter of an English official but is sent to Spence soon after her mother, Virginia Doyle, dies under mysterious circumstances. While the official story, which is put out, is that she died of cholera, Gemma saw her, in a vision, stab herself in order not to be captured by a dark creature, sent by someone named Circe in order to capture her. (I do love a book that is not afraid to kill of characters.) Gemma has to balance her visions, her attempts to come to terms with them and their implications with life at Spence. At Spence girls are fashioned into young ladies fit to play their role in high society, which is to marry well, run a household and bear children who can carry on the glory of the British Empire. This is the world of upper class Victorian England; a place in which absolute conformity is demanded and even the slightest act of deviance can destroy one’s reputation. Not that everyone actually plays by the rules; what matters is the appearance of conformity. Gemma quickly befriends Ann Bradshaw, a poor scholarship student, who is an even bigger misfit in this school than Gemma. The two of them have to take on Felicity Worthington and her followers, Pippa Cross, Cecily Temple and Elizabeth Pool. One of the things that I really loved about this series though is that despite Felicity’s Draco Malfoy like character, Bray does not simply keep her as an antagonist. Felicity and Pippa actually end up, by the middle of GTB, becoming good friends with Gemma and Ann. Not that Felicity really reforms; she remains her arrogant, cruel manipulative self, but she is quite lovable in her own way. She may be a vicious snake, but she is our vicious snake. Pippa also is a great character. Not to give anything away, but Bray does some very interesting things with her. One of the weaknesses of the Harry Potter series was that, up until the Half-Blood Prince, Rowling never tried to make Draco Malfoy likable or particularly effective as an antagonist to Harry. There could have been something very attractive about Draco. He has Crabbe and Goyle to protect him from any of the students. He has Severus Snape to protect him from any of the teachers. And if he gets into some real trouble he always has his father, Lucius Malfoy, to protect him from the Ministry of Magic. This boy is untouchable and he can do whatever he wants; who would not want to be him. Gemma, Ann, Felicity and Pippa form a club centered on a diary, which Gemma discovered by following one of her visions. This diary was written by a former student at Spence named Mary Dowd. From the diary the girls learn about a magical world, the Realms, and a group of powerful women, the Order, which maintained order within the realms. Gemma soon discovers that, in addition to her visions, she also has the ability to enter the Realms and even bring people with her. Here Gemma and her friends experience a world unlike the Victorian England they know, a world in which they have power. Needless to say, with the discovery of the Realms Gemma and her friends have far more to worry about than tea and dances. Particularly once Circe and the forces of the Winterlands come after them. (To be continued …)

Great Books That Do Not Have Harry Potter as Part of Their Titles

This year will forever be remembered by fantasy readers as the year in which the final Harry Potter came out. I do not expect, in my lifetime, to see the Potter phenomenon repeated. I suspect that, for better or for worse Potter will remain the pink elephant in the room whenever people talk about fantasy. In this spirit, here are some other notable pieces of fantasy literature that came out this past year. Some of these books have been discussed before on this blog, others have not.

Lady Friday: This is the fifth book in Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series. This series is, without doubt, the greatest work of allegorical fiction in modern times. And when I say this I am including Narnia. Nix has completely reinvented the traditional morality play. You will never think of the Seven Deadly Sins the same way again.

Eclipse: This is the third book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. I have already devoted several long posts to these books. (See here and here) These books have, deservedly, become major bestsellers. More than any other series of books being printed right now, these have the ability to repeat Potter’s success. Meyer has not said how many books she intends to write. She is set to come out with a fourth book in the series, Breaking Dawn, this summer. Let us see what kind of publicity gets generated.

The Sweet Far Thing: This is the third and final book of Libba Bray’s Reader’s Circle series. It just came out last week. I am actually in middle of it right now. I read the first two books at the end of the summer. I had decided to wait until I have finished this one in order to write a post on the series as a whole. Stay tuned.

Fatal Revenant: This is the second book of the Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and the eighth book overall of the Covenant series. (See here and here for my review)

Name of the Wind: This is the first book of Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles. I saved this one for last. Fantasy, unlike science fiction, does not have a Hugo or a Nebula award for best book of the year. If it did, Name of the Wind would certainly have my vote. (See here for my review) I feel a need to say more about this work. I will probably simply wait until book two, Wiseman’s Fear, comes out.

Well I am looking forward to a wonderful year of fantasy. Considering that all but one of these books have sequels coming out, there definitely is much to be waiting in giddy anticipation for.