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Me and Maureen McHugh
I adore Maureen McHugh's writing. I can tell that she and I disagree fundamentally about some political things, so all those folks who might stumble into my opinions and already know my politics and think that anything I like must be pinko at least can rest assured that that's not what's going on here.
Anyhow, I had this sudden revelation sometime last night and thought it through this morning in the bath. In _Mission Child_, the protagonist spends about five years being a security guard on a train, which takes what? a page? in the book. It's the thing that bugs me about the book. I have always thought that that portion of her life should have been a chapter at least.
What I realised last night is that, on some level, heretofore unconscious, this book I'm working on is in response to that. Most of the book corresponds, in terms of the character's development, to that five years of personality consolidation. It's not that nothing happens -- a lot happens -- and it's not that the character isn't developing during that time. But he's developing in subtle shifts, in movement from one state to another, and most importantly, in consolidation. In 1950s child development research and theory, they tended to talk about "equilibrium" and "disequilibrium" stages, and I think my guy is going through a lot of equilibrium stages as well as dis3equilibrium stages -- and that the point of all that is that equilibrium is not "nothing happening." Nor is it _really_ equilibrium.
Dog help me, I'm running into elementary dialectics _again_. Every synthesis has the seeds of the next antithesis in it. O dog.
Well, so it's not Maureen McHugh and me, it's Maureen McHugh and Frances Ilg and George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and me.
Anyhow, I had this sudden revelation sometime last night and thought it through this morning in the bath. In _Mission Child_, the protagonist spends about five years being a security guard on a train, which takes what? a page? in the book. It's the thing that bugs me about the book. I have always thought that that portion of her life should have been a chapter at least.
What I realised last night is that, on some level, heretofore unconscious, this book I'm working on is in response to that. Most of the book corresponds, in terms of the character's development, to that five years of personality consolidation. It's not that nothing happens -- a lot happens -- and it's not that the character isn't developing during that time. But he's developing in subtle shifts, in movement from one state to another, and most importantly, in consolidation. In 1950s child development research and theory, they tended to talk about "equilibrium" and "disequilibrium" stages, and I think my guy is going through a lot of equilibrium stages as well as dis3equilibrium stages -- and that the point of all that is that equilibrium is not "nothing happening." Nor is it _really_ equilibrium.
Dog help me, I'm running into elementary dialectics _again_. Every synthesis has the seeds of the next antithesis in it. O dog.
Well, so it's not Maureen McHugh and me, it's Maureen McHugh and Frances Ilg and George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and me.
no subject
I'm so glad you're writing into that.
Oh, and Trash Sex Magic reminded me a little bit of the Chuy book. Maybe when that's available, you should try it on Small Beer Press, because if they liked that, they might like it.
no subject
Thanks for the tip. Actually, the Chuy book is available again, and I've been doing my "no I'm not depressed about it I'm really just working on the current project" thing again.
I will go look at Small Beer Press.