This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
What's up with fiction?
I haven't read any since high school English class, but my fiancée does. She often buys the trendy stuff that has won some awards and is (I assume) prominently displayed at Indigo. Hanya Yanagihara and and Sally Rooney are two recent examples.
After asking her about her current book over the last couple years, I have come to realize that all of them are mostly based around the following things:
Sexual abuse, especially molestation
Homosexuality or transsexuality
Main character is black or similar, everyone is racist towards them except the good guy(s)
Main character is disabled somehow
While these plot points are basically mandatory to win a book award now, a lot of "classic literature" is just old books that happened to contain these themes. For example, Truman Capote would not be a big deal had he not been a homo who wrote about homo stuff.
None of this is that interesting, but it is weird how well the title of "literature" and book awards launder what is essentially gratuitous descriptions of homosexual molestation into something tasteful and classy. Is this widely known? I get the sense that this is something most right-wing men just have no idea about.
Well, there's your problem. You literally don't know what you're talking about.
I read a lot. I read fiction and non-fiction, but mostly fiction. I read genre fiction, I read litfic, I read classics, I read small press and indie-published stuff and I read stuff from the big publishers. In other words, I think I am qualified to say that while you may have accurately described most of the books your fiancée reads, you have not accurately described most of what's published.
Publishing is pretty woke so the wokest titles get prominently featured at your local bookstore, so sure, you'll find plenty of misery-porn with characters like you describe. (I have not read anything by Hanya Yanagihara or Sally Rooney - I am not into misery-porn.)
However, if you bother to browse past the highlighted displays and actually look at the shelves (or, you know, browse Amazon), there remain hundreds of books published every year to suit every taste. Even conservative tastes, even the tastes of conservative men, in whatever genre you like.
As for awards, the big literary awards (the Man Booker, the Pulitzer, the National Book Award) rarely resemble your bullet list. Can you tell me which award-winning books you think fit that description? (As far as I can tell, Yanagihara has been nominated but not won any of them, and Rooney has won some smaller awards for Irish writers and the Goodreads Choice Awards which is... probably not as prestigious as you think given that it's literally just a Goodreads popularity contest.)
I've definitely discovered books nominated for the goodreads choice awards where they had more votes than they had actual goodreads readers (just the kinds of signaling books you would expect). So they are being pushed externally somehow, whether that is by publishers or authors or social media, I don't know.
I also find those awards problematic because Amazon pushes them the same year they are published, but many popular fiction titles that aren't by a major author take 2-3 years to peak, by which time they no longer show up on that list.
Total ratings is a good gauge of actual popularity of books though.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think the OP was claiming that every book is like this, just that "trendy stuff that has won some awards" is like this, so you're basically agreeing while saying you aren't.
You're right! He did not literally claim that 100% of all published books are like that! You sure got me there!
Except my response was not based on a misunderstanding (such as the one you are pretending to suffer from in your usual manner, that someone said something they did not) that the OP had made such a claim.
My response was based on the following statements:
"Them" here referring to "the trendy stuff my fiancée reads" but since he began with "What's up with fiction?" he is clearly attempting a general inference from the specific books his fiancée reads, which was - goodness, if you cast your eyes upwards, you can see it right there - the point I made. He thinks "trendy stuff that wins awards" all matches his description.
See also:
Those are much broader claims (and wholly inaccurate) than:
If you walk that back a bit and add a qualifier like "some" you could possibly reconstruct a statement that is somewhere in the neighborhood of being accurate, but that's not the statement I was disputing.
No, I am disagreeing with almost everything he said. The statement you are pretending to believe he made was something like "Gosh, there is a lot of wokeness with all these misery-themed protagonists in fiction nowadays," which is... maybe kind of accurate if we just go with what appears on the display tables at Barnes & Noble for the two weeks after they're published before they go to the remainder piles. (Well, and also ignore the majority of bestsellers and award-winners which don't resemble that at all.) But what he actually said was that basically anything trendy and award-winning resembles the books his fiancée reads and has all these bullet-pointed woke CW attributes, and while his fiancée may indeed be a fan of Hanya Yanagihara and misery porn, a cursory glance at actual bestseller lists and award winners would demonstrate the inaccuracy of this generalization.
This comment received reports of being antagonistic. Amadan is a moderator and so they asked another moderator to review this comment.
The Review: There is clearly some frustration leaking through from Amadan, and sarcasm is almost always used in an antagonistic way. However Amadan is also defending themself from a slightly antagonistic comment "so you're basically agreeing while saying you aren't" (I consider it a bit antagonistic to put words in someone else's mouth. We all speak and write for ourselves on this website.)
If this was two regular users I'd approve the comment and ignore the reports. Since a moderator is involved I will be a little harsher and give these warnings:
To @amadan: please avoid using sarcasm as much as possible because it tends to hurt honest discussions.
To @Jiro: please be more careful when paraphrasing others. A bad paraphrasing can easily be an insult.
The Meta: I do not like situations where you see something like "The Police have investigated themselves, and found themselves innocent of all wrongdoing". But I'm also not gonna suggest some punishment for a minor incident I would have ignored just to prove that we are willing to handout punishments to fellow moderators.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Also, for what it's worth - bookstores (even pretty liberal ones) will still sometimes recommend books that aren't woke. I was floored to find out that at my local (very liberal) bookstore, the book Woke Racism was displayed as one of the staff recommendations. Now, the fact that I was surprised indicates that it's uncommon, true enough - but it's not unheard of either.
"Woke Racism" is the most respectable, mainstream anti-woke book around. It's by John McWhorter, who's a long-time bobo favorite with his linguistics podcasts, and just about the whitest black dude around. He's a very good writer, knowledgeable, and even a good podcaster (he has a bi-weekly-ish series with Glen Loury, the economist) but he's definitely coming at the anti-wokism from an idiosyncratic, very NYT-reader-compatible lens.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link