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May. 3rd, 2007 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
map_of_the_worldso i just read this really good book called Wicked, which was a retelling of the wizard of oz from the point of view of the wicked witch of the west and her friends, I really, really likes it partly because I just really like well done
po-mo pointless humanities clever storytelling and partly because it was a thoughtful, interesting but not to heavy read. It is an exploration in what makes someone human rather than other, the difference if there is one between good and evil, the rights and wrongs of certain political systems, it kind of reminded me of the first his dark materials book (northern lights i think it is) but it isn't as deep or thick or rich, and as to the things it was exploring it didn't go as deep as i would like if I was actively studying the issues but for a bit of light reading it was all good.
at one point in her life the witch is a political activist for an organisation that is trying to overthrow the wizard who is a tyrannical dictator and she has this conversation with her lover Fiyero
what if some innocent bystander is killed as you aim for general pig butcher?"
"i don't know or care much about martyrs" she said " all that smacks of a higher plan, a cosmology-something i don't believe in. if we cant comprehend the plan at hand how could a higher plan make any more sense? But were i to believe in martyrdom i suppose I'd say you can only be a martyr if you know what you are dying for and choose it"
"ah so there are innocent victims in this trade. Those who don't choose to die but are in the line of fire"
"there are... there will be...accidents i guess"
"can there be grief, regret, in your exalted circle? is there any such thing as a mistake? is there a concept of tragedy?
"Fiyero you disaffected fool, the tragedy is all around us. Worrying about anything smaller is a distraction. Any casualty of the struggle is their fault not ours. We don't embrace violence but we don't deny its existence-how can we deny it when its effects are all around us? that kind of denial is a sin if anything is..."
And that passage made me think lots about my polotical position and where violence belongs (or not) in political activism and weather it is better for a small amount of people to die so lots of people can be free, i think i will make a post about it sometime to help unjumble it all in my head
Anyway I went to amazon to see what other people thought of it and I was really suprised at the reviews, I think I am always way too optomistic that the lowest common denominator factor is higher than it actualy is, anyway loads of people were slating it quite angrily because it was too heavy a read, because it was so different from the wizard of oz, because it contained philosiphy and some were complaining about the "explicit disturbing" sex scenes (there were sex scenes, but none of them were particularly explicit and only one of them was at all disturbing but so what?) Several people were complaining that it wasnt a suitiable book for adolecents because it is too dark and disturbing, and I'm like WTF, it isnt adolecent literature but not for that reason, Adlolecent literature does dark and distirbing really well, adlolecents thrive on dark and disturbing, In my studies for my dissertation i have read some much, much more disturbing stuff that is aimed at the teen market than this.
what do these people want. really? I never did see the point in reading fluff.
po-mo pointless humanities clever storytelling and partly because it was a thoughtful, interesting but not to heavy read. It is an exploration in what makes someone human rather than other, the difference if there is one between good and evil, the rights and wrongs of certain political systems, it kind of reminded me of the first his dark materials book (northern lights i think it is) but it isn't as deep or thick or rich, and as to the things it was exploring it didn't go as deep as i would like if I was actively studying the issues but for a bit of light reading it was all good.
at one point in her life the witch is a political activist for an organisation that is trying to overthrow the wizard who is a tyrannical dictator and she has this conversation with her lover Fiyero
what if some innocent bystander is killed as you aim for general pig butcher?"
"i don't know or care much about martyrs" she said " all that smacks of a higher plan, a cosmology-something i don't believe in. if we cant comprehend the plan at hand how could a higher plan make any more sense? But were i to believe in martyrdom i suppose I'd say you can only be a martyr if you know what you are dying for and choose it"
"ah so there are innocent victims in this trade. Those who don't choose to die but are in the line of fire"
"there are... there will be...accidents i guess"
"can there be grief, regret, in your exalted circle? is there any such thing as a mistake? is there a concept of tragedy?
"Fiyero you disaffected fool, the tragedy is all around us. Worrying about anything smaller is a distraction. Any casualty of the struggle is their fault not ours. We don't embrace violence but we don't deny its existence-how can we deny it when its effects are all around us? that kind of denial is a sin if anything is..."
And that passage made me think lots about my polotical position and where violence belongs (or not) in political activism and weather it is better for a small amount of people to die so lots of people can be free, i think i will make a post about it sometime to help unjumble it all in my head
Anyway I went to amazon to see what other people thought of it and I was really suprised at the reviews, I think I am always way too optomistic that the lowest common denominator factor is higher than it actualy is, anyway loads of people were slating it quite angrily because it was too heavy a read, because it was so different from the wizard of oz, because it contained philosiphy and some were complaining about the "explicit disturbing" sex scenes (there were sex scenes, but none of them were particularly explicit and only one of them was at all disturbing but so what?) Several people were complaining that it wasnt a suitiable book for adolecents because it is too dark and disturbing, and I'm like WTF, it isnt adolecent literature but not for that reason, Adlolecent literature does dark and distirbing really well, adlolecents thrive on dark and disturbing, In my studies for my dissertation i have read some much, much more disturbing stuff that is aimed at the teen market than this.
what do these people want. really? I never did see the point in reading fluff.
