Also

[mrissa]

I have had a run of reading about protags who treat other people like objects lately, and I am tired of it. I understand that many people do this, and that protagonists do not have to be admirable people, and all that. I know. I just don't care to read all that much of it. And I particularly don't care to read all that much of it when the author does not seem aware that they are doing it, and that it's a bad thing.

Luckily, there are books in my bag that are guaranteed not to do that to me. Whew.

Comments

[evangoer.livejournal.com]

"...when the author does not seem aware that they are doing it, and that it's a bad thing."

Ah. This sounds a little like the book version of the Category IV Bad Movie (http://www.goer.org/Journal/2006/07/bad_movie_classification_system_part_four.html).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Some of them. Yes. Some of them explicitly don't care whether anybody is identified as "the good guy."

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I adore the stern Mris look in that icon.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It really comes in handy sometimes.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

And I particularly don't care to read all that much of it when the author does not seem aware that they are doing it, and that it's a bad thing.

For me, that's key. I have difficulty reading this kind of thing anyhow because, frankly, I am an unsophisticated reader in that I ten to strongly identify with the protagonist. Stories in which the only people I have to identify with are people who are doing things I find immoral or highly problematic are...difficult for me to read, and generally (though not always!) unsatisfying.

But if the author doesn't realize it's a problem, then I generally just stop reading. I'm acutely aware of the perspective which seems to be represented by the text when I read, as well as that represented by the characters, and if my protagonists are doing anything that makes me uncomfortable, it's extremely important to me that even if the characters can't see it, the text seems to understand.

I'm not exactly talking about authorial intent, because I neither know nor - always, at least - care what the author was thinking when s/he wrote it. I mean, I get very curious about that kind of thing indeed, actually, it's just not part of my primary reading experience. So having read an interview with the author in which the author claims to be fully aware of the issue and not to agree with it doesn't really address the point. The question is, does the book perceive and understand the issue.

I also run into this when (actively) bad things happen to a character. I want someone to know about it, care about it, and think that it shouldn't have happened. Sometimes, no other character ever finds out - but if the book gives me the sense that this was a bad thing and has caused pain and suffering for a character and that's bad, then I feel okay about it. If the book couldn't seem to care less, then I have problems.

Like I said, I do think this is probably evidence of a certain lack of sophistication on my part as a reader, but I've come to the conclusion that A: that's all right, and B: it's not likely to change now, in any case.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Textual support is extremely important, yes. I definitely agree that interviews with the author don't cut it. For me one of the obvious examples is anti-Semitism in historical fiction. For a character to take the position that Jewish people are in various stereotyped ways bad is one thing; for the author to support that in the text is quite another.

[arkuat]

I feel dumb for asking this, but which books are you talking about?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't see why you should feel dumb; I haven't indicated anywhere. And some of them are in-genre and I didn't finish them, and that combination means I'm not going to complain publicly about them, so as not to have to deal with their author stopping by to complain that if only I'd read Chapter 17 I would totally get what they were doing.

The ones I did finish, which were not in the genre in which I work, were Somerset Maugham's The Narrow Corner and Rebecca Goldstein's Properties of Light. Loathsome people using each other right and left.

[arkuat]

There are loathsome people using one another right and left in Wild Seed and Kindred too, but the protagonists are innocent in each case.

I guess one could complain a little bit of this in the book I'm currently reading (Melusine), but certainly one of the two protags in that books is much more used than using.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I am much happier when the author doesn't have every character who is even slightly developed as a character doing it.

[iraunink.livejournal.com]

Protag who treat other people like objects are not heroes.

The novel (Best Served Cold) I am presently writing was conceived out of frustration. I had reread two novels in which the protag (male) took revenge on another man by either raping his wife or getting his daughter pregnant.

What about the poor women? They're just thrown to the wayside.

The main character in BSC is the pregnant daughter who then gets kicked out of her father's house.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I had reread two novels in which the protag (male) took revenge on another man by either raping his wife or getting his daughter pregnant.

That's just plain appalling. I've read a great deal more in the post-Sword and Sorceress-anthology vein where it's the woman getting the revenge on her rapist; it didn't entirely occur to me that this was what they were reacting to.