#74
September 4, 2004
from: Rebecca, swartzrj@hotmail.com

Hello Kelley,

I wanted to let you know that I have read your novel Solitaire and loved it. I also wanted to let you know that I never would have, if Nicola had not been so effusive in her praise of it...I absolutely had to purchase it and am thoroughly pleased that I did so...it was an EXCELLENT read! It was vivid, alive, intriguing, captivating. I loved the concept, the depiction of the characters, I loved the flow of dialogue, the description of all that was tangible and not...absolutely lovely.

I have a question though, and I hope you don't think it narrow-minded; it is not meant that way at all, I am truly curious. And perhaps someone has already asked this question, forgive me if that is the case...but: In light of the fact that Hong Kong is, shall we say, a major background, in the story, are Jackal, Snow (who sounds stunning) and the other characters Asian? I ask this because I don't wish to fall into the trap of assuming all characters, in any book, are Caucasian.

Thanks so much for this.  :)

Ciao.

~Rebecca~

Well, neither do I (smile), which is why I tried not to make whiteness the default value in the book (there's a bit more discussion on this in another Virtual Pint, if you're interested). I visualize Ko as a true multinational corporation, a mix of people of many backgrounds bound together by the corporate metaculture. I think if you look again, you'll find that Jackal is half Italian and half Spanish; Turtle and Jane are Hispanic; Bear, Crichton and Khofi Andabe are Black (I think of Bear as Afro-Caribbean and Andabe as African, but there are no specific clues to that). Tiger and Chao are Chinese. Estar is her deliberately indefinable self. Snow is as purely Norwegian as someone growing up in Asia can be. Scully is pretty generic Anglo-mutt. Neill is Australian, although you'd never know it from the book.

It doesn't seem narrow-minded to me to question whether a white writer has considered that not everyone (and especially not everyone of importance) in her story is white. Quite the opposite. I think it's good to read beyond majority-culture assumptions (all characters are white, straight, middle-class, Christian, physically unlimited, etc. unless otherwise labeled to identify their "difference from the norm"). And it's good to write beyond these assumptions. But it's not enough for a writer to go through her manuscript and hang a race tag on everyone. How stupid it would be to write a paragraph in the opening of Solitaire about Jackal looking for her web, "a racially diverse group of peers with a variety of cultural perspectives," or some such crap. Especially if hanging the race tag is all the writer does. Creating characters who are essentially mainstream white folks in terms of worldview, experience, cultural assumptions and behavior, and then painting their skin a different color, does nothing to recognize diversity. It's just bad writing. It takes more work to make people actually different from one another, particular in ways that reflect something about where they came from as well as who they are individually.

I'm not completely happy with the job I did in Solitaire in this regard, but the errors are those of execution, not imagination. And one reason I chose Hong Kong as the background for Ko, and Al Iskandariyah ( Alexandria) as the seat of world government, is that the world is edging toward a rebalance of power, in my opinion. If the people of the world will get off our asses and do something to help Africa, and if China builds a few more cultural and long-term economic bridges with other nations, then I think in thirty years it's not going to be only white western superpowers driving the global cultural and political agenda. I think that will be a very scary time for many white westerners.

I'm glad you enjoyed the book and were willing to take a chance on it. But honestly, what would you expect Nicola to say (grin)—"My sweetie wrote a book and it sucks, don't buy it"?

Cheers.

#73
August 14, 2004
from: anonymous

I’ve read your posting #71 and your @U2 “don’t download” article.  I think you’re selling yourself a bit short.  Yes, the essay was passionate, but it also made good sense.  As you say, anyone who’s been stolen from knows that it hurts.   The core of any counter to your argument is that it’s OK to steal from someone you admire (the folks doing the stealing must admire U2, because the music is what U2 is).  That’s the claim that‘s truly illogical, no matter what smokescreen it hides behind.  As for a side-stepping argument that downloading the music isn’t really stealing, that’s difficult to refute in the same way that, if confronted with someone who was adamantly claiming that two plus two was five, I would be struck dumb for awhile, wondering what I could say that would make any impression, that would bridge the gap between us.  Your approach was, I think, the best one - not getting into an elaborate argument about what constitutes stealing, but rather pointing out the result: that U2’s members were hurt and upset.  No matter how someone defines the action of removing the band’s music from their possession, anyone who downloads it is participating in hurting people they claim to admire and empathize with.  So again, don’t apologize (maybe you weren’t exactly apologizing, but your posting #71 is a little bit defensive) for being too passionate.  Your article is emotional, and that’s great.  It gets people to pay attention.  But if you read it again, in a cooler mood, I think you’ll see that it makes good sense too.

Well, thank you, you're very kind, and in fact I do think the article makes sense. I didn't feel defensive when writing my post, or the article itself; I felt vulnerable. Perhaps my post miscommunicated in some way, but it doesn't matter: I'd hate to end up crawling down my own navel trying not be defensive about not being defensive (big smile).

The argument about why stealing is fine that most gives me pause goes something like this: "I really like their stuff and they should be thankful for such big fans like me because we keep them going, and besides they have enough money already." I find this particular sideways entitlement creepy on multiple levels. There's the unspoken attitude of "They have more than I do, so fuck them, who cares how they feel?" The less obvious counterpart is, "They have more than I do, but as long as they don't act like they're better than me then it's okay"—which is peachy until you start defining "acting better than me" as someone saying "Excuse me, but you're interrupting my private conversation and I don't want to sign something for you right now."

I know I'm wandering, but this is a question I sometimes ask people: what do you or should you do when you spot a favorite celebrity in public? Is it okay to approach someone at dinner to ask for an autograph or express appreciation of their work? Is it okay if they aren't eating yet? (Seriously, I've heard this argument). Is it okay if they're standing at the urinal? (I've always understood that guys aren't supposed to watch each other pee, but is it okay if one of them is famous? It's a particular aspect of celebrity that seems a little harder on men...) I've had people tell me it's their absolute right to demand a celebrity's attention at any point because "they knew what they were getting into when they became famous, and it's part of their job to respond to people like me." And when people aren't invariably gracious about being approached, they get labeled as stuck up, arrogant, forgot how they got there, think they're too good for their fans, etc. Which is one of the responses that U2 has received as a result of this CD incident. The circularity of this reasoning befuddles me (I can't help but perceive it as "they think they're better than me because I'm rude," to which my response is, "well, yeah...").

I suppose it boils down to the truth that there's no rational argument to be made with someone who is essentially saying, I want it because I want it, and I'll take it because I can. That's why it scares the bejesus out of me, whether it comes from a kid who steals someone else's lunch money, or from the President of the United States (and I wasn't thinking of Clinton).

And I do stand by my belief that emotional arguments, however true, are suspect in this culture. I think this is partly because this culture uses unsound emotional arguments all the time (ad hominem attacks, or stating personal values as if they were world truths, etc.), and this makes us suspicious that emotion can ever be properly allied to logic. After all, it's almost always used as a weapon against logic. I think that's really what I meant by my post. As you've said, it's hard to know how to respond to that sort of thing.

When did we start thinking that feelings didn't matter? And, conversely, when did we start thinking that they were an adequate basis for law or justice?