Not enough gay?
Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 2:23 pmRoss E. Lockhart, who was kind enough to read The Etched City and say some nice things about it (here), mentions something that no one else so far has, to my knowledge, namely that “for a novel that name-drops Aubrey Beardsley and J.K. Huysmans in its jacket copy, (it) depicts a surprisingly heteronormative world”. Well, I didn’t write the jacket copy. But yeah, no one in the book is gay, and that always sort of worried me. However, it was a deliberate decision that I arrived at by stages. Herewith an explanation: Firstly, pretty much everyone in the book is some kind of moral degenerate, tortured soul, freak or loser. I worried that if I made the main characters gay or bi, I’d have been somehow implying that fucked-up people are likely to be queer, or that queer people are likely to be fucked up. Then I worried that if I made one of the more morally stable characters - say, Raule - queer, I’d have been implying that queer=virtuous, straight=bad. Maybe these were foolish thoughts, but I didn’t have anyone to advise me better at the time.
There was also the simple fact that as I daydreamed the book, the relationships that happened to evolve in my mind were heterosexual. If I’d changed them, it would have been for the sake of deliberately adding gayness to the novel. Perhaps I should have, but I’m always reluctant to tinker with what my characters want to do.
I did, however, notice what I thought was a subtle undercurrent of gay, or experimented-with-gay-when-young, between Gwynn and Marriott, and tried to give it a bit of emphasis. I’ve always been fascinated by the homosexual subtexts of homosocial posses like criminal gangs, armies, etc., and I thought such a subtext did figure in Gwynn’s and Marriott’s relationship, but maybe I underplayed it. Sigh. Yes, it would have been possible to make Gwynn bisexual, and I suppose it would have gone with his Liberace clothing, but the fact is, while he wouldn’t object to the occasional boy, he prefers women. He just isn’t attracted to other mature adult males. They have hairy arses, he says; they don’t have those lovely labia; sucking cock is hard (no pun intended) work, and if you think he is ever going to be uke to another man, well… etc., etc. It would have had to have been a boy, a catamite - and I did think about giving him one, purely for the sake of avoiding heteronormativity - but he was so wrapped up in Beth that any other relationship would have seemed like an awkward aside. Likewise, Beth could have had a lesbian lover, but she’d also have ended up sidelined for the sake of the central heterosexual relationship, which would have made me feel squirmy. There could have been brief encounters, but that would have painted the queer in a superficial light. Maybe that would have been better than nothing. I don’t know.
Minor characters? Again, I could have made Colonel Bright or some of the gangsters openly gay, and perhaps I should have. Yet I was afraid of making the Colonel, who is already a caricature, a caricature of an old queen as well; and the gangster society seemed so retro-macho that I couldn’t see open homosexuality being tolerated. (Funnily enough, though, racism doesn’t seem to exist to any great extent in Ashamoil, or at least in Elm’s gang - the characters appeared in different colours, from different cultures. I didn’t have to think about it - that’s just how the society presented itself.)
I have to say, I never thought Gwynn, Raule or Beth were especially heteronormative folk. Gwynn’s physically androgynous - I made the point of describing his clothing as “ladylike” and his hair as “as long as a woman’s” to emphasise the point - and rather passive (I think) in his relationship with Beth. Beth and Raule are both unmarried, childless women, an artist and a doctor, both of them having at the forefront of their minds concerns other than love and romance. It’s Gwynn, Marriott and the Rev, the males, who seem to be from Venus (ok, Gwynn is from Mars and Venus). In Beth’s case, I wanted to take the cliche of the femme fatale, the dark muse and source of anxiety for so many male artists, and let her be the artist, the one with the power to imagine and create. Even Tareda, the nightclub singer, writes her own songs - she isn’t just some male lyricist’s mouthpiece. It may only be a minor thing, but Gwynn and Beth’s magickal sex scene was a 69 - an equal exchange, and an act of pure pleasure that can’t result in procreation. Well, it mattered to me… I guess, as a basically heterosexual person, I find a lot to explore within my own territory. I’m interested in imagining unusual lives for women who aren’t lesbians, and in imagining a different kind of straight male - note that Gwynn, whatever his defects, is capable of relating to a woman (Raule) as a friend and an equal, and of understanding Tareda, seeing her as a person with her own needs and priorities, rather than the luminous object that she is for Marriott. I think platonic friendship between men and women gets awfully short shrift in this world, not to mention the friendship that’s necessary to sustain a long term relationship - so that was on my mind while I was writing, and I remember feeling that adding gay couplings would muddy the waters. I suppose I could have gone much further with the sex magic and feminist angles in the book, rather than just adding them as seasoning, but I didn’t want to write a polemic or a pseudo-Tantric manual.
So, yeah… I could have put in some queerness, but I’d have had to force it in - without much in the way of lube, really.
Tangentially, from the same review, concerning Ashamoil:
“Unlike Lake, Miéville, and VanderMeer, however, whose City Imperishable, New Crobuzon, and Ambergris actively become characters within their novels’ narratives (in the mode of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium), Bishop’s lush and teeming Ashamoil, while evocative and picturesque, never quite rises to the occasion, remaining a setting that is well-imagined, yet never quite real. […]with a touch of tacked-on exotic orientalism included to make the city seem decadent.” The unreality of Ashamoil is a criticism I’ve received many times, and I’ve never answered it, because I’m usually rather meek about criticism. But I’m premenstrual and feisty today (hormones bring out my inner Mongol Horde), so, as Frank N. Furter said, “Wait! I can explain!” Ashamoil was never meant to be more than a stage set, lol. It’s scenery, a backdrop. It isn’t meant to be a character. And actually, it is meant to seem not quite real; it ought to have something of the cardboard replica about it. Ashamoil is somewhat derived from my home city of Melbourne, Australia, which, if you know the place, isn’t a “character” in the way that, say, London is. It contains places of character, but it consists mostly of different shades of suburbia, bare of history’s traces (no one paid attention, it wasn’t recorded), shallow; you’d never think so much brick could feel so flimsy.
All Australian cities I’ve been to have this quality of illusion and unreality, especially when you’re aware of what lies inland - thousands of kilometres of death. A low range of red hills that were once mountains as high as the Himalayas. Dry riverbeds. Exposed bedrock. I’ve been across it east to west, and from Melbourne to the centre. After those road trips, it was hard to see the continent’s cities as anything more than temporary stage sets, attractive dormitories for people to dream the dream of life. And, you know, Ashamoil isn’t even meant to be especially decadent. Certainly, there are influences from Decadent literature, but I also wanted the place to feel somewhat ordinary and suburban.
It’s funny - people have wildly varying opinions of Ashamoil, from finding it almost hallucinatorily real (which always surprises me) to finding it cardboardy and being disappointed. I can’t remember if anyone has said it was cardboardy and they liked it that way.
Well, I think I’ve rattled on quite enough. I feel a mite bad for using a positive review as a springboard for all this non-meekness, and I heartily thank Ross Lockhart for recommending the book. Feel free to comment and tell me I’m overreacting, ungrateful, or should at least wait, next time, till the Mongol Horde passes on by for another month.
February 9th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I didn’t feel like it was ‘missing’ anything at all for lack of queer (and you know I do so love the gay.) It didn’t even enter into my mind as I was reading, but I recall after finishing it the first time, I thought, “You know, somehow I felt undercurrents of gay here and yet there wasn’t any actual gay.” I - I think that might say more about me than about the book, but…
Oddly, thoughts of the possibility of Beth having been in lesbian relationships before had occurred to me and for some reason struck me as likely.
The city, oddly struck me as both cardboard and hyper-real - in the fashion of a caricature, it’s prominent features are elongated and accentuated until it becomes something unrealistic and yet realer-than-real, if that makes any sense.
“and if you think he is ever going to be uke to another man, well…”
Gee, that sounds kinda like someone else I know… (cough)
February 9th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
I didn’t feel that the book suffered for its lack of gay, and trying to slide the gay into a book that was so interestly heteronormative would probably have felt wrong. It’s almost fashionable these days to ‘put some gay in’, kind of like the token black guy; whereas your story, like you said, presents many different shades of hetero, and that’s far more fascinating than a gay who’s only put there for diversity.
And, no, I can’t imagine Gwynn being uke to another man either.
Actually everything you said there about Gwynn’s sexual tastes felt right — the fact that he might take a boy but not a man, which I hadn’t know til now, and his possible experimentation with Marriott, which I can’t remember if I picked up on, and of course his physical androgyny which I definitely noticed — and it goes to show the strength of letting the characters dictate who they are, rather than trying to force such things onto them.
Makes me wonder what would happen if a gay character set up home in a very strict Catholic’s head. I’m not sure who’d suffer most, the wo/man or the character.
February 10th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Laurie - you know I love the gay too. Long live longhaired semes. Truly, I swear, there are undercurrents of gay. It isn’t just you. Or if it’s you, it’s me too. Re Ashamoil - it makes sense to me, and I was trying for something like that effect, but there are no guarantees. Maybe mastery lies in conveying the effect you intend to the maximum number of readers - but maybe that’s just being anal and stubbornly ignoring the fact that everyone’s going to bring something different to a book and have a different reading experience.
Alankria - with Gwynn and Marriott, I just put them in physically intimate situations - in the dog sled, the bathhouse, Marriott’s opium bed - where the erotic could be a subtext. I think there’s always a broad kind of eroticism even in platonic intimacy and friendship; eros is everywhere, in varying concentrations.
That’s interesting, re the gay character. I don’t know - all kinds of psychos set up home in my head, and while I wouldn’t want to meet them in RL, I’m cool with them dossing down in my imagination, so maybe the Catholic wouldn’t mind? The character might enjoy tormenting the host with impure thoughts.
February 10th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Both Gywnn and Beth (also the tone and setting of your book seemed it more likely people would swing both ways) seemed to me that they could like both sexes, especiall Beth, and my little mind just had a lot of extra fun while reading the book because of my thoughts. ;D
February 10th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Jenna - I’m glad your imagination supplied what the writer failed to include!
Thanks to the responses to this post I’ve started drawing omake of the missing gay scenes from the book. Which is so much more fun than trying to write novel#2.
February 11th, 2007 at 1:33 am
You… You share!
February 11th, 2007 at 4:01 am
The idea of an omake in a written, English language book amuses me. Perhaps a better use of space than the extended Blog entries that Piers Anthony put into the end of his mode series. Hmm. something to consider if I ever try to darken some publisher’s doorstep.
^^
February 11th, 2007 at 4:14 am
I think you nailed down the key point up there - that heterosexual does not necessarily equal heteronormative. I’m a proponent of the gender/sexuality spectrum, over the categorical range, so I don’t think lacking any explicitly gay characters necessarily implies an opposition to them. Certainly not in The Etched City, which seems to be open to all manner of sexual pursuits.
And maybe it’s just my current residence, but I envisioned Ashamoil as having that artificial surface to it, but with something else hidden underneath. There was the city where gangs fought over territory and underneath it all was the river and some old magic which had been around a long time before and would be around a long time after.
Hope I’m not just restating what’s already been said.
February 11th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Laurie - I will
But I gotta redraw the pictures and make them a bit less crappy. Btw, it’s in chibi style and I’m afraid Beth is a furry - I don’t normally like furry, but she just had to have pussycat ears.
Dave - all books should have omake. And we’ve got all of the world’s written literature waiting to have omake added. Fuck, I think I’ve just discovered my life’s purpose.
Dustin - I tried to give a sense of old magic under Ashamoil’s surface - glad it came through for you. I don’t know how people feel in other parts of the world, but as an Aussie I’m aware that my world was built fairly recently on top of another, which was perceived as having magical qualities by its people. There’s a part of me that can’t help wondering if the magic was real, and if it’s still there.
February 12th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Beth having pussycat ears is nothing short of perfectly appropriate.
February 12th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I have to share what I was saying to Laurie after seeing this-
It was something along the lines of ‘I imagined Beth inviting over random ‘girlfriends’ and having sex with them, then drawing art of them for her house.’
LOL
February 13th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Laurie - ^^ Or purrrfectly appropriate (ducks)
Jenna - =D! That has inspired me with a plot for a 6 or 7 page crack comic (would it be an autodoujinshi when an author writes her own?) Ah, do you mind if I use the idea? I’d credit you (er, that is, if you want your name associated with this depraved project)
February 14th, 2007 at 2:16 am
I’d be a-lion if I said it wasn’t appealing. (Sacred Swiss Ryu, Pun-Punch!)
Actually, a lot of authors do doujinshi for their own work. CLAMP, Yuuka Nitta, Sakura Kinoshita and Kazuko Higashiyama, for instance. (You don’t wanna know how much I paid for that Tactics yaoi.) If it’s too risqué for the publishers (or just doesn’t fit in the main storyline), just publish it yourself, seems to be the going theme…
Knowing Jenna, I’m betting she won’t mind a bit… ;D
February 14th, 2007 at 4:07 am
Laurie’s right. I would…be honored! :O
You’re like, one of my heroes….
O_O
February 14th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Laurie - You pwned me again! And I’m sure there should be a way to make a pun on pwned and punned, but I can’t figure out what the hybrid word would look like… I lose.
I love that attitude those mangaka have. I didn’t realise CLAMP did their own DJs. Wow.
Jenna - Blushes and hides behind something large!
(Like Gwynn’s…hat =) )
February 16th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I didn’t catch the homoerotic tones in the book, which is fairly unusual, given that I usually have moderately large antennae when it comes to that sort of thing.
It’s interesting that Beardsley was brought up but it’s also worth remarking that until Wilde came along and started flouncing up and down the boardwalk, effeminates weren’t necessarily associated with homosexuality. Gwynne never struck me as one who swung, but Beth, I think, would wave in the breeze given half a chance. (After reading this thread I was reminded of the drug-blurred scene where Gwynne takes Beth to meet his fellow cronies; Beth and Taradeh Forever slipping off into a room of red velvet and yellow silk. Taradeh hums wordlessly as Beth paints the singer’s bare skin with wine…
…excuse me while I duck out for a second.)
To an extent it is indeed fashionable to stick queer characters into a book these days. I remember being rather shocked when I read Mieville’s ‘Iron Council’ because it was, and remains, one of the first fantasy books that I’ve ever read that has a gay lead and yet is not marketed specifically at the queer market. It was very matter-of-factly done, too: “Here he is. He’s gay and occasionally unlike able. He’s human, depressingly flawed and rather abrasive. Live with it or stop reading.”
Fashionable yes, but possibly more realistic than the seamless heterosexuality that has hitherto been the norm. If one believes the oft-repeated quote that ‘ten percent of the human population is gay’ then one must wonder why ten percent of all characters in all books are not gay also. Hopefully, the present fashion will peak and drop off, and queers in literature will become the norm and nothing extraordinary.
As for the heterosexuality, I thought you handled it remarkably well. Surrounded by rentless depictions of het in the media and advertising and in real life, the endless parade of normality can be wearing. By making the creatures in ‘The Etched City’ powerful and sensual and cunning you’ve rendered all relationships fascinating.
February 17th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Caitlyn - they were very pale tones indeed. Beth and Tareda, oh yeah - what you wrote there makes me wish I’d put it in the book. I always wanted more of Tareda in the story, just couldn’t figure out how.
It makes me sad that effeminacy became associated with gayness, because I think the association encourages men to neglect manners, hygiene, grace, elegance, decoration, etc. - all the so-called ‘feminine’ traits for fear of being thought poofy. Yay for metrosexuals, though I’m not sure about the narcissism that seems to go with the species.
April 1st, 2007 at 9:47 pm
There is very little I might add here without merely repeating the opinions of others. I did pick up on the homosexual insinuations; did imagine there to be more to Gwynn and Marriott’s history, and did fully expect that Beth had her share of female lovers. (in fact I seem to recall expecting that to come out in the book - near the end … mind you I read the book when it came out, so some of my memories are a bit clowded and faded)
As for the city, it seemed to fill the role it was intended for quite well. Personally, I get sick of every city being “a character in itself”. Not every city is like that, especially if you are just visiting. Ashamoil felt like a place with history and depth, without falling into the whimsy of becoming a additional character in the story. The story is under way when the characters arive in the city and in the end, they leave it behind - there was no purpose, no real sense or need in making it more than it was; a fine set to display your production, but one you could fold up and put away when it was over.
April 1st, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Another note, in response to your above comment, wherein you wonder about the magic once supposedly invested in the land and whether any yet remained - I would have to say, of course. The magic of a land does not vanish merely because a city is built upon it, instead it seeps into the stones, the mortor, the lives and blood that have arisen there and redefines itself for a new generation of people. Like faith, magic is a thing that cannot be killed, but evolves as does the world and all the life upon it.
April 2nd, 2007 at 7:27 am
W - I’m inclined to agree with you about the magic of the land. In Australia politics sort of get in the way of non-Aboriginal Australians connecting with it on our own terms(I think). We did in the old days - 50 to 100 years ago people wrote stories about fairies in the bush, or invented Aboriginal-style spirits, but now it isn’t politically correct to do either. When one group sets itself up as the guardians, even owners, of a land’s spiritual and magical dimensions, other groups are stuck on the outside looking in - that’s my feeling. That probably sounds racist; it isn’t meant to be. I just feel that immigrant Australians are not particularly connected to the magic of our own land; after 220-odd years I think we’re still treating the place a bit like a giant hotel rather than a home. Maybe I’m wrong and it’s all just in my own head. Anyhow, that feeling of “just passing through” seems to run through a lot of what I write.