While we’re on the topic (and people are still rocking the comments from the last entry, and I am actually getting more editing/biblio work done today), it occurred to me last night as I laid in bed reading a Starhawk novel and feeling a bit ashamed about it that…
Utopian novels are pornography for activists.
Don’t get me wrong: I actually think Starhawk is an incredible woman who is really inspiring and has a great take on…well, everything. And she’s not a bad novelist, not at all: I like her style a lot, and I liked her books a lot. Still do, in spite of myself.
But, in explaining to Mark that while I felt the need for a novel — having over-read work-related stuff and nonfiction lately — I wasn’t in the mood for say, Vonnegut, I summed up why The Fifth Sacred Thing and Walking to Mercury had express appeal as being because “queer crunchy granola ladies try and save the world, have many challenges, but ultimately, succeed due to butt-busting, queer crunchy granola awesomeness.” I can’t fathom that part of the motivation to write utopian novels, and to read them, is not to validate our idealist fantasies.
In other words, my butt-busting, queer, crunchy granola-lady self just needed some activist porn.
November 29th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
I LOVE Fifth Sacred Thing. Walking to Mercury too, but not as much.
You know, sometimes (many times) I need to read books that just feel good. I spend so much time reading things that are hard and upsetting and take intense processing that having folks like Starhawk and Jeanette Winterson and Tamora Pierce and Francesca Lia Block and Callenbach’s “Ecotopia Emerging” laying around is a really good good thing. Not that they don’t address really important things, but they do it from a paradigm I’m intensely comfortable with. Yeah, it’s a bit of intellectual masturbation, but I like masturbation and my brain needs it. They’re the books that no matter where I’m reading them, I get the same feeling as curling up in front of a fire with rain on my roof, a cat on my lap, and a pot of tea. Mmmmm.
November 30th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Heather-
You continue to be more and more one of my favorite people on the planet. The pornography discussion that voices the depth and complexity that the subject matter deserves is a gianormous relief to me. I feel like it is a conversation I keep having with myself - so it is great to see it on the outside. And I LOVE your queer crunchy granola awsomeness- and that in print gave me a much needed laugh. Thanks for being you.
xo
Shawn
November 30th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Aw. The love goes both ways, Shawn.
(By the by, as it turns out, you work at the same place as my good and wonderful friend Mya. When you talked a little about your wokrplace, I almost asked if it was the same as hers. Turns out it is. Y’all should connect: two totally awesome people who would likely be very fast friends.)
November 30th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Cool. Feel free to point her my way.
I don’t recall ever hearing of a Mya. There are a lot of people who work here that I never end up meeting.
May 25th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Heather Mills
I Googled for something completely different, but found your page…and have to say thanks. nice read.