I still don't get it

[redbird]

I picked up a copy of M. John Harrison's novel Light because it was a Tiptree winner (the year before I was on the jury). I not only didn't like the book, I couldn't see why it won the Tiptree.

Prompted by rysmiel's review of the book, I finally got around to seeing what that year's jury said about it. I still don't get it. Partly I don't see what they saw in the book, and partly I don't agree that what they saw explores or expands gender.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I couldn't understand that with one of this year's nominees, a book I liked a great deal but which didn't, to my way of thinking, have anything to do with gender at all except for having female central characters.

[redbird]

Would you be willing to tell me which? (If not, I understand entirely.)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I'll tell you when I see you.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

About Light: I think it's one of the great Tiptree winners, and I also understand that Harrison isn't to everyone's tastes. As you know, I have the privilege of reading the jury deliberations as they unfold, so I saw how some people took to Light instantly while others were much slower to make the leap. In the end, it was a completely unanimous choice.

What struck me as gendered, more than any other single thing, was the way Harrison controls and manages attention to various plot elements, if you will, the way he chooses to shed light. I'm not a horror aficionado, but I've read my share of "serial killer of women" books, some of which (i.e., Thomas Harris's first two in particular) I have a very high opinion of. Perhaps this helped me to see the way Harrison backgrounds and trivializes that aspect of his novel, while everyone else who has ever written about it foregrounds and eroticizes it, even the great writers in that genre.

That's just a piece, but it's the piece that sold me, and the one I can remember at this remove.

[eagle]

You're not alone in this -- I really didn't understand that either. And similarly, I didn't find the jury comments particularly enlightening.

I didn't really dislike it (full review is
here), but the characters didn't do much for me and in the end the only thing that let me like it was the quality of the writing.

But exploration of gender? I just don't see it. I see the alienation from body and the serial killer thing, but neither of those struck me as, well, deep enough.

I haven't re-read it, though, and various people whose reviews I follow whose taste runs towards the literary and experimental raved about it, so maybe I'm just missing something.

[thette.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm not alone.

[nwhyte]

Agreed!

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

mnemex and I are on the Mythopoeic committee -- we're both on the one for adult fiction, and he's also on the one for children's. And sometimes, one or both of us don't get it.

Neither of us got why Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye won the year it did. We both put No Award higher. We talked with Alexei Kondratiev, and I understand better what people think they saw -- but, though I have a great deal of respect for Alexei, I have to disagree with him on this one.

This past year, I think Robin McKinley's Sunshine should not have won. I think it was a good read, but not something that should have been up for Mythopoeic. It happens.