Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:12:33 -0700 From: Susan Kornfeld Subject: [*FSFFU*] Children of Arable To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU I've been stuck out of town with a broken down car (still broken down and now abandoned) in Forks, Washington. So I haven't had a chance yet to comment on Arable. To begin with, I found it very readable, thought provoking, and well written. I most appreciated the thought-provoking aspect. On the first page we learn that Martin plays Eve's role in disrupting a "paradise of sorts. Without knowledge of male and female" (nice contrast to without knowledge of good and evil...). And sure enough, the old Jomo's musings seem confirmed by what ultimately seems to be regression to the violence and patriarchal values of our own world. I found it interesting that Belden builds his "paradise of sorts" upon the premises of the 70s utopias: that "baby labs" would eliminate pregnancy and childbirth as a source of gender division and suppression. He also has Martin make the point that fixation on your own child can lead to problems. Yet Martin espouses the idea that by giving people "a taste of what real life can be" -- love and babies -- the most severe problems of the galaxy could be solved; i.e., people would live on friendly planets and not waste resources on unfriendly ones. I think this is a matter of the devil we don't know being better than the devil we do. Gender suppression, even though it was anticipated by the women advocating pregancy and motherhood, was not seen as a terrible threat, but as an understandable but unfortunate side effect. Martin, at least, also considered it a preferable alternative to central control by MAN (benign though it seemed to be) and the CODE, as well as the threat of increasing centralized power over dependent planets. Having done, as some of you know, a lot of work on motherhood issues in women's SF, I was particularly intrigued by Dave's contention (via Martin) that the mother-child bonds would break the ubiquitous Code that everyone had to follow. I think it's true (re-stimulating all those Freudian, even post-Freudian attachments, etc.), but it is so depressingly circular (which is part of Dave's point, I think...): we build a Code to avoid the mother-child attachments that some suggest can lead to reactions against the maternal and hence towards patriarchy, violence, centralization, etc. But then we react against the Code and its excesses, and so the antidote becomes mother-child attachments. The only part I had trouble with was the emotional compunction with which Martin realized she *must* have a baby. To accomplish this she played up to a powerful and ambitious man's hidden desire to found a dynasty. I'm not convinced that Martin would have played this card, knowing the long-term problems it would start -- and Martin was a long-term thinker. I'm also not convinced that there would be this biologic compunction to have a baby outside of any context. The other new mothers seemed to be experimenters and avant-garde. It seemed to me that Martin determined to have a baby more out of this emotional compunction than out of policy, and this suggest the stereotype of the biologically-driven woman (must breed! must breed!). Anyway, I hope to read the other books in the series to see where this gendering ultimately leads. Do we return back to the baby labs?? It seems that males like Jomo became disenfranchised by women's prominence in child birth, and that men like Xidas and Mesfun become bent and oppressive. And it doesn't seem (at least from the example of Mesfun's children) that the children have benefitted. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 15:57:15 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Children of Arable To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU I have some great and thought provoking comments to respond to on Arable, and hope to do so this weekend - but am beset by a mountain of work, some health problems, plus a root canal tomorrow morning, and the builders are taking the roof off our house so all our belongings are heaped under plastic and we are sleeping at the neighbors'... so it may take me longer... Dave ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 10:26:13 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Children of Arable To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU The four main contributions so far are intriguing to me, as they span from cool about the novel to enthusiastic, and also because they show pretty different responses to the ideas in the book. I could talk a lot about all this and will try to restrain myself. 1) Readability: As the author I can say it was very nice to hear Sandra's enthusiastic and thoughtful response, and Susan's response particularly to the ideas in the book and that she "found it very readable, thought provoking, and well written." But it's also really interesting that Sue wrote "I had a hard time following Martin's escapades and her motivations and movements and her desires and what exactly she was trying to do." It sounds like it wasn't just confusing in terms of ideas for Sue, but wasn't that good a read either. There was some discussion earlier about doing a BDG discussion of a book by a listserve member: people might feel cautious about saying what they thought. That may well be holding true for some, I can't say. But if you think about it, if there are highly enthusiastic responses to a novel, the author is more likely to hear them - it's the silences that the writer wonders about: why did this friend never have a word to say? So here's a good chance for me to hear what doesn't work and why it doesn't. So my thanks to all who speak their minds about what didn't work for them in the book. 2) Identification: The issue of not being able to identify fully with the main character, because she is written about from a distance, was mentioned by Claudia: "I was more distant to the characters than I would have been if the story would have been told by Martin herself." She found this issue "interesting" (sounds to me like what one says about a not very edible dish a friend has made). For some people it is a problem, for others it seems to be a positive. Sandra devoted a paragraph to why the point of view worked - because it gave a more balanced portrait. Virginia Kidd, the agent who took on this novel and sold it to NAL (now Viking) in 1987 was one of the two top science fiction agents, representing Ursula le Guin, Ann McCaffrey and others. When she took me on, I hoped it meant that I had written an exciting novel with narrative pull as well as interesting ideas, but Virginia explained to me later that she liked to take on the occasional 'literary' writer (what one calls writers who aren't going to make much money), and to my disappointment it seems I belonged in that category. I'm mentioning this to show how naive I was (and probably still am) about what makes a good story. It was likely a mistake to use such a distanced approach to the main character in a first novel, but it felt right to me to speak through Jomo - in many ways it is his story, the story he wants to tell the grandchildren about the events of his youth, in which he was a bystander and observer. I guess writing these books revealed to me that I am an observer more than an entertainer or activist... 3). Ideas: Sue wrote, "I couldn't really say what is paradise in this novel. Or what was good and right. Every setting seemed drastically disfunctional. I think it really upset my ideas of what is balance and imbalance. I couldn't decide which way I wanted this society to go to. I don't know which characters I liked and which I didn't." Claudia wrote, "In my opinion, the Collectivity's way of life was very close to an utopia in the way gender did not matter and I did not think that Martin had the right to do away with it so completely and radically." It's very true that I was asking questions more than giving answers in this novel. But I am sad that it all appeared as a downer to Sue - I guess I felt that the book was grounded in what Sandra called the "earthiness and wholesomeness" of the farming planet - this was why I reconciled to calling the book Children of Arable. Susan questioned why Martin would have an "emotional compunction" to have a child - isn't this just the old "biologically driven woman"? But Jomo has just as strong an emotional desire to conceive. Maybe there is something here about biologically driven humans - catching the infection from a farming planet where life and fertility are strong. If there would be any biological drive in any species, even one with consciousness, one would expect it to be to have offspring. That's not to say people have to be driven by their drives. I felt it was pretty clear that the Collectivity was a barren place in many senses of the word: that there was no deep friendship and no romantic love nor the kind of attachments that can grow out of lust: all that had been sacrificed for safety. I grew up in a religious community in which intense friendships were discouraged in order to promote cheery teamwork, and in which chastity was the rule, even for married couples when they were not trying (with the community's permission) to conceive. It amused me to write of an equally life-denying community in which similar effects could be gained by ubiquitous sex as in my experience had been by chastity. Utopias are dangerous in my opinion, the more they elevate theory over compassion, and over the often contrary desires of people. Religious and political ideologies can subordinate the person to the theory. Perhaps it may be necessary - perhaps it had been necessary for the humans escaping into space, but I saw Martin as the bearer of warmth, life, love. Of course, no bearer of such things is without faults, even tragic faults, and improving things is never as easy as revolutionaries may imagine. Kali is the destroyer as well as the lifegiver. Often the best intentions lead to unexpected and even horrible results. So yes, patriarchy was being recreated as Martin's wild energy stirred things up. Many of my questions in writing these novels were about why patriarchy was created in the first place. The 'paradise' of the Biblical Eden was one without knowledge of good and evil - I don't find that very paradisical, more an infantilized state; and the 'paradise' of the Collectivity before Martin was not just without knowledge of male and female, but without experience of love and passion (sexual or not, gay or straight); while Martin's ironically named 'Pair o' Dice' experiment was likely to run into its own major problems. So yes, maybe there is no utopia in this novel, and everywhere is dysfunctional to some degree. I think there are no permanent solutions, only ways in which we must struggle in our time to right wrongs and open up freedoms; and the next generation or the next town may need to focus on different issues: what remains is struggle, and one motivated by experience of love, laughter, passion, connection, community, story - without those, the struggle is meaningless. I still feel that love and life are at the heart of these novels; they each start on fertile ground and move out into the untethered spirals of space (not that I planned it that way, but I saw the pattern after I had done it, to start deep in nature before getting alienated from nature). 4) The wraiths. The wraiths are in some ways the ultimate ungrounded, unfertile (is it the first novel in which it is noticed that they lack nipples, or a later one?), head-trip beings. This becomes clearer in the second novel, which I see as an allegory or retelling of the historical shift from goddess to god religions; from a body-mind-spirit unity to a body-mind-spirit hierarchy. (That one starts on earth, in a women-ruled community, which attempts to send out missionaries, as it were, to humanize the Collectivity). But the wraiths are not all bad. They are amazing artists. Some of them play a helpful role in the third novel. I am interested that several readers want to know more about them. I don't say a huge amount about them. If I ever get to write the fourth and last novel, that's the one in which the origin and nature of the wraiths becomes clear: the ideas have been written, but whether the novel will be, probably depends on the third one getting published. It has been said that in sf the idea is hero. I very much wanted to write stories with real people in them. Clearly readers differ about whether I succeeded with the people or the ideas. The last thing I would say is that I partly started writing sf because I thought it had to be less demanding, or the standards were lower anyway, than writing a mainstream novel. I now very much doubt this is true. To do either well is very hard. But in sf, to create a world (or many worlds), to address major puzzling sociopolitical ideas, to create real people, and to devise a plot, and make them cohere in some fashion - wow, in my experience each of those four elements go off on their own tangents. I have never had so much fun in my life, not even close, as in writing these novels. The image of four horses all going off in their own directions comes to mind, and the difficulty of getting them to pull a wagon together. That's a long enough email for one night! I do hope more people get to read the novel and post their thoughts. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 10:47:21 -0400 From: Sue Lange Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Children of Arable To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU >'literary' writer (what one calls writers who aren't >going to make much money), and to my disappointment it seems I belonged in that category. Just a quick response to this one thought, Dave. One of the most talented and unknown musicians in NYC said it's death to be the type of musician that other musicians like to go and see. -- Sue Lange Digital Production Manager IEEE Communications Society 3 Park Ave. New York, NY 10016 s.lange@comsoc.org ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:12:10 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Children of Arable To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU > >'literary' writer (what one calls writers who aren't > >going to make much money), and to my disappointment it seems I > >belonged in that category. > > Just a quick response to this one thought, Dave. One of the most > talented and unknown musicians in NYC said it's death to be the type > of musician that other musicians like to go and see. Yes, I've wrestled a lot with this. The question is what kind of death? Death to making a living as a musician (or a novelist): yes. But what about death to dreams of the kind of music you want to make? Making a career in your field ('going commercial') may mean abandoning the dreams with which you entered it. It's not even clear to me that someone who makes the kind of music other musicians like to hear is actually capable of being successful in more mainstream music - I don't know much about the music biz so I'll rephrase that: can the 'literary' novelist successfully earn money by writing fiction that sells? That's doubtful: you pretty much have to like to read the kind of fiction you write to be good at it. Some can, but probably most can't. So that leaves the choice of finding some other way to earn your keep, and stick to writing as a sideline. When it became clear I couldn't expect to make a living even partially from my novels, and when my wife and I had a child and moved to rural New York and I had to work full time (pre-child, I had managed to take two to three months off a year to write), and had to fit writing into occasional evenings, I had a big crisis, depression, etc. I announced to my wife and best friend I was no longer a writer. As it became clear that the writing bug had its tentacles too deep into me to shake off, I sort of re-formulated the process as a spiritual quest cum hobby, the sort of thing you didn't do with hope of external success or income - that was the only way to feel good about doing it when neither was forthcoming. Eventually that enabled me to have fun doing it again, and the fun really is intense. So at least that didn't, in the end, die! And that has to be the best bit. What's life about, after all? I am madly envious of those who manage to have the intense fun and earn a living from doing so, but console myself that there aren't too many of them, and the angels of creativity didn't touch me in that way, so I need to quite griping and start enjoying the bits I can do. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 17:05:54 +0200 From: "Wilson, Sandra" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Children of Arable To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Hi all, This is my first ever post to the group, and I think it is appropriate in that the author is here to talk about his work. I think thats courageous Dave, and thanks for being the guinea pig. I talked for about a half an hour in person with Diane(also a member of the group) about the book (we were limited by time, not by content), just to let you know Dave, we found a lot to talk about, and I think that it is important to mention that discussion does go on outside of what actually gets posted here. I wasnt sure that I had necessarily opinions to add to the forum,Diane on the other hand, felt that I did. I certainly had a lot of questions and thoughts generated. I find that a really good sign, and a lot of things evoked for me are issues that are coming up for me currently in my own life.. From that point of view, your work certainly had a deeper meaning. While some people seem to not have enjoyed the third party writing through Jomo, I have to say that was the aspect of the book that I enjoyed the most about it. I found writing in the third party a really clever choice, as it took away the compulsion for the author to write about the motivations of the main character. This left me pondering her choices (and how often does this happen in the political scene, choices are made and we know little of the reasoning behind it) and the possible outcomes. I also felt less "pulled by the nose" as often happens in writing in the first person. Ideas were presented, which allowed my thoughts and questions to come to life so that I thought through implications. If I can pull one example where I carried a thought process through -- The most striking point for me is the dilemma of power struggle and sacrifice. That Martin consciously aborted her child in order to retain/increase power and position really resonated with me. Were her motivations selfish? Were they for the longer term greater good, a mixture of both? Where do people sacrifice for the greater good, give up extremely personal motivations, is it worth it? Do they ever truly surrender? Where are the boundaries of such things, where do we as people end, and as a society begin? where does personal need become manipulation and greed for power? What are the costs in the micro and macro world? These ideas are so intertwined, it was exciting and at the same time, I have come to no conclusion! The book approached a lot of these types of situations, and I was fascinated. I havent read any of the other books, there were such a mineful of ideas here, I had to just stop thinking about it! Well done Dave, you pulled me out of hiding to comment. Sandra (another one) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:19:32 -0400 From: Sue Lange Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Children of Arable To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU From what I understand it has only been recently that a person can make a living doing writing only. And as you said only a few do it. And most certainly even fewer that are writing fiction and doing it. You sound like you have a good attitude toward what you are doing. Sue -- Sue Lange Digital Production Manager IEEE Communications Society 3 Park Ave. New York, NY 10016 s.lange@comsoc.org ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 10:47:54 -0700 From: Susan Kornfeld Subject: [*FSFFU*] Children of Arable To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU In thinking more about Children of Arable and its device of the letters of Jomo, I think the device was one reason why the plot unfolded as well as it did. It whetted my curiousity from the beginning about who the writer and his intended recipients were, and served, as mentioned in a previous post, to provide a suitable distance from Martin. And Jomo is a particularly suitable narrator: credible, and coming from a disenfranchised group: non-powerful/ambitious males -- and representing the sense of male loss at a "new" female prerogative. The unfolding of the mystery surrounding letter writer and intended readers was handled at the proper pace and kept broadening the scope of the piece. One quibble I had was with the name "Gendering Series" (series or something, I'm not sure...). That sounds like something from a Women's Studies department at college and promises to be deadly (smiles...). I think "Stick Man" as a book title would have likewise been deadly, even though Dave could obviously build a case for it. I would never ever read a book called stick man -- it sounds very boring! Children of Arable, however, sounds inviting to read. Okay, call me a girl.... Dave discussed the idea of the failings of the Collectivity, but I didn't quite read the novel in a way to get the same effect. He wrote: "the Collectivity was a barren place in many senses of the word: that there was no deep friendship...." BUT he began the book on Arable with Martin and her group of mates who seem as if they will be deeply bonded for life. Further, the casual sex seemed to make it possible for Martin and others to become close (even if not very close) to people they otherwise would not associate with at all -- so it served to equalize somewhat young and old, etc. Consequently, if the point was to underscore the literal barrenness with an emotional one, Arable was the wrong planet to start with! But I'm not sure that making things too overtly barren would have made a better book. As Dave's post to the group points out, I believe, change, even for an ultimate improvement, brings loss. It's the pendulum thing. It's the overturning of one good (equality) to overturn one evil (lack of passion). And the fact that Dave (and others) finds Eden infantalizing, and likewise the Collectivity, is intriguing. It opens up the whole idea of what we want from society/life. Of course WE don't want to be infantilized, but what about the REST of the world, the self-infantalized? Do we want them to be subject to passions and power and imbalance? And having power over children?? Well, as I said in a previous post, the novell is extremely thought provoking. Great job, Dave!! Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:59:09 +0200 From: Torreif Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] member's novels To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Wednesday, March 10, 2004, 3:28:53 PM, davebelden wrote: > 'Children of Arable' and 'To Warm The Earth.' I've read Children of Arable and have it on my bookshelf. It's been a long time since I read it, though, so I would have to read it again before offering anything by way of feedback. It's cool to see an author of a book I've actually read on the list. -- Wildbird mailto:Torreif@magevale.net "Must be a guy thing...Maybe it's - me. Maybe there's something in the way I'm made that turns people away. All I know is it was easier before...when I just didn't give a damn about anything." Max in Dark Angel Owner/Moderator of: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MoonShield_WingSisters http://groups.yahoo.com/group/magevale ICQ: 82980723 Authorization required OutVale Wizard for MageVale MUSH, an adult kink-friendly role play MUSH Telnet:mush.MageVale.net:3333 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 09:32:52 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Children of Arable To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Susan wrote: > One quibble I had was with the name "Gendering Series" (series or > something, I'm not sure...). That sounds like something from a Women's > Studies department at college and promises to be deadly (smiles...). I > think "Stick Man" as a book title would have likewise been deadly, even > though Dave could obviously build a case for it. I would never ever read > a book called stick man -- it sounds very boring! Children of Arable, > however, sounds inviting to read. Okay, call me a girl.... The Gendering name was one of my bad decisions, made for the second edition, and exactly because I hoped to market it to women's studies programs. Duh! One of my best writer friends despises that and I have to agree with her now. It will die if the things ever have a future life. Glad that in your case I wasn't wrong about abandoning the Stick Man title for the second edition. Still, it was when I got the Stick Man title, after writing many hundreds of rejected pages, that I really knew how to write the book, so that's why I am attached to it. > Dave discussed the idea of the failings of the Collectivity, but I > didn't quite read the novel in a way to get the same effect. He wrote: > "the Collectivity was a barren place in many senses of the word: that > there was no deep friendship...." BUT he began the book on Arable with > Martin and her group of mates who seem as if they will be deeply bonded > for life. Further, the casual sex seemed to make it possible for Martin > and others to become close (even if not very close) to people they > otherwise would not associate with at all -- so it served to equalize > somewhat young and old, etc. Consequently, if the point was to > underscore the literal barrenness with an emotional one, Arable was the > wrong planet to start with! Well, you're right. There are good things about cheery camaraderie, and passionate relationships tend to disrupt it. This is why the army discourages sexual relationships among members of a platoon... though ancient Celtic and Greek warriors would have totally rejected that as a choice in favor of bland rationality and a denial of the fight-to-the-death bond of lovers. There were great things about the cheerful asexual community in which I was raised, also, but I revolted against the emptiness of it. So it's a question of the pendulum, exactly. > And the fact that > Dave (and others) finds Eden infantalizing, and likewise the > Collectivity, is intriguing. It opens up the whole idea of what we want > from society/life. Of course WE don't want to be infantilized, but what > about the REST of the world, the self-infantilized? Do we want them to > be subject to passions and power and imbalance? And having power over > children?? Eden was infantilizing because A&E lacked knowledge, and the Authority was keeping it from them. The Collectivity had all that knowledge, at least in their databases and their past, so people weren't exactly infantilized: they had been enormously scared, and went for safety first, and nothing disruptive, so they were adults who were experientially desiccated. Weber, the 19th century sociologist, talked about the 'iron cage of rationality' - that's what the Collectivity folks are imprisoned in, in my view, only they are made happy in their gaol in the same way as Huxley's folks in Brave New World (that was through drugs and babylabs, while the Collectivity does it through computerized therapy, babylabs, an atomizing culture and rules, and who knows what diet and drugs they are feeding the people since it isn't revealed). So what do we want? For ourselves and for the rest of the world? Do we want to be dangerous human beings under our own power, or do we want to be controlled by a paternalistic (or maternalistic if you prefer) hierarchy? You could say that enthusiastic religion, for example, or what we call fundamentalist religion, is not a very mature culture: dreaming of miraculous solutions (second comings, virgins in heaven). This century is going to be a very religious century, though, compared to the 20th, because of the rise of the poor countries which are in the grip of religion (and see how fast religion is growing in China if you think that's an exception). Still, Europe's supposedly non-religious ideologies of Nazism and Communism that caused such devastation in the 20th weren't any better, probably worse. Drunk with power. Is all this part of growing up? Are we actually learning anything from it all? Are the secularized intelligentsia of the rich countries more grown up? I think in many ways they are, though they still need to work out how to have faith and energy in the face of all their debilitating knowledge - Prozac isn't enough. What we need in my humble opinion is a combination of rationality and life energy, and that's where I hope things are trending in the Collectivity, eventually - depends on books 3 and 4, though, we'll have to see. Dave