Collection

Dunking doughnuts outside the 54th floor, Louis and Mrs. Armstrong at the Sphinx, a woman neck-deep in grapes, Malyshka the Russian Space Dog of Sputnik II ... oh and so indescribably MUCH more. Photos from The Atlantic's amazing archive.

In fuzzy-history-we-think-we-know: did you realize that the Equal Rights Amendment passed forty-six years ago, almost to the month? But it has never been ratified. Yes, ladies - and women too - there is still a deficit of two states' ayes to enforce what even CONGRESS was able to say yes to, way on back in 1972. More than a quarter of states in the theoretically United States still don't care to accept the amendment, two generations on. I am not proud to note my home state remains a holdout.

Tom Williams has a good post, reviewing New Grub Street by George Gissing. As interesting as the work looks, one of Tom's points is meta - that the work contains the flaws it rails against. He also points out that the complaints of the fictional author in New Grub Street are still with us today. To take this one more layer of meta, this morning before I saw his post, I happened to get up and turn on The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe as my background to waking up and getting ready. I was fascinated by its repeated commentary on a writer's raw deal in publishing, out of the Poe character's mouth, and got curious about the world of publishing circa, say 1941 or 1942 (the movie came out in 1942). Little is to be found about Brian Foy, who wrote the screenplay, in a cursory search, but he seems to have started life as a child entertainer before becoming a writer - easy to imagine he was exploited in more than one way in his given professions. I leave the link to Tom's post with only the observation that there is either hope or despair in knowing that it's never been easy in publishing.

Tom has another post of interest - short, beautiful, and poignant - about the Palace of Peace, the elite, and rumors of war. Sigh.

Publishing Ghetto?

Tom Williams has a very good post indeed about writing a novel about a main character who happens to be gay, and the effect that has had on its publication.  It's a somewhat sad, eye-opening piece - particularly when you think about the literal legalities imposed upon human feeling.

I am either reading a “gay book” for gay people, which has to emphasise gay sexual behaviour or I am reading a “straight book” (or “book”) where everyone seems much happier if nobody is gay at all. (Often there’s a minor character who’s gay, so everyone else can demonstrate how liberal they are.)

I've had some conflict about the fact that The Ax and the Vase suffers precisely the opposite problem - while one of my major supporting characters is gay (or bisexual), he's presented as a pretty awful guy.  Further, there's no ethnic diversity at all in Ax, and I'm highly aware of the problematic nature of historical fiction and pretending no people of color were to be found anywhere in Europe before the 20th century.  I'm also aware of the disservice it does to history (and audiences) to trot out the old "but it wouldn't be natural to insert diversity in this story" excuse.  And, at the risk of getting cyclical, I'm also wary of the tendency to do exactly that and ending up with a Magical Black Person/Noble Savage stereotype.  And so on until the dragon eats its own tail.

I find Tom's observations far more useful than my white liberal internal conflict, so recommend the first link here by FAR over the second.  But we all experience the presence of our (potential) audiences, and that's always worth giving some thought.

Even As It Edges Toward Obsolescence ...

... it still never, ever gets old - nor even ends up quite *wrong* ...

Letters to a Young Lady

Here's a great post from The History Girls, including some quotes from a surprisingly long-lived perennial seller of the late 18th/early 19th century, and a bit of commentary I can't disagree with either.  If I actually worked in this period, it'd make pretty amazing research and character building material.