The Bluestocking, vol 72: "Everyone has an Antarctic"
Happy Friday!
This week, I got cross about Brexit (here), did the News Quiz (tonight, Radio 4, 6pm), reviewed Carey Mulligan's one-woman show at the Royal Court, Girls and Boys (out in next week's NS) and worked on a feature for an outlet I've never written for before (always scary).
I'm getting into non-office-life, carrying my laptop everywhere - I have made no better decision in life than buying a teeeeny Macbook Air that fits in a handbag - and restlessly searching London's cafes for the perfect combination of quiet corners, steady wifi and strong tea.
Helen
Why do white people like what I write?
In the sentimental education of Coates, and of many liberal intellectuals mugged by American realities, Obama is the culmination of the civil rights movement, the figure who fulfils the legacies of Malcolm X as well as Martin Luther King. In Jay Z’s words, ‘Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run; Obama is running so we all can fly!’ John McCain, hapless Republican candidate in 2008, charged that his rival was a lightweight international ‘celebrity’, like Britney Spears.
To many white liberals, however, Obama seemed to guarantee instant redemption from the crimes of a democracy built on slavery and genocide. There is no doubt that compared to the ‘first black president’, who played the dog whistle better than the saxophone, a hip-hop enthusiast and the son of a Kenyan Muslim represented a genuine diversification of America’s ruling class. Obama offered his own ascent as proof that America is an inclusive society, ceaselessly moving towards a ‘more perfect union’. But such apparent vindications of the American dream obscured the limited achievement of the civil rights movement, and the fragility of the social and political consensus behind it. The widespread belief that Obama had inaugurated a ‘postracial’ age helped conceal the ways in which the barefaced cruelties of segregation’s distant past had been softening since the 1960s into subtle exclusions and injustices.
Pankaj Mishra clearly gets paid by the word, but this is nonetheless an interesting critique of the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates and, by extension, the Obama presidency. There are a couple of interesting strands: Mishra's anti-imperialism v Coates's American perspective; the reflection that Obama's election concealed the huge structural racism of the US; and (although Mishra doesn't use the quote, which is unsurprising, because he hardly ever seems to quote any women) an investigation of Audre Lorde's belief that the master's tools will not bring down the master's house. How radical can a black president be if he has to win the approval of white people (and their money) to get elected?
The White Darkness
“Every spare hour was devoted to the project and ‘bloody Shackleton’ became a phrase frequently used by the children,” Worsley wrote. By October of 2008, he and his colleagues were ready to embark on what had been officially named the Matrix Shackleton Centenary Expedition.
Before leaving, Worsley and his family gathered for an early Christmas celebration. Even though Henry had been telling Joanna for years about the glories of Antarctica, it still seemed to her like the most dreadful place in the world. Yet she believed that, to borrow Thomas Pynchon’s words, “Everyone has an Antarctic”—someplace people seek to find answers about themselves. In the case of her husband, it was the Antarctic itself. And so she gave her blessing to the adventure, even though it threatened to take from her the man she loved."
Talking of long-ass pieces, here's David Grann on an Antarctic explorer. All 20,000 majestic words of it. I'll read anything by Grann; his control of suspense and tone is unparalleled. There's a whole digression into Ernest Shackleton in the first third and you don't even mind.
How to be prolific
"I read The Killer Angels. It’s a very detailed, extraordinarily compelling account of the Battle of Gettysburg from the point of view of various people in it and it’s historical. It’s historically completely accurate, and the moment I put it down I created Firefly, because I was like, ‘I need to tell this story. I need to feel this immediacy. I so connect with that era, the Western and how tactile everything is and how every decision is life or death, and how hard it is and how just rich it is, and how all the characters are just so fascinating.’ But so I should be on the Millennium Falcon. Now, if I only watched sci-fi I would have just had the Millennium Falcon part, which has already been done, but finding that historical texture, it literally, I put the book down and started writing Firefly."
My friend Julian Simpson is KING of productivity and his excellent newsletter/website Infodump has introduced me to several productivity methods. The one I'm finding most useful is "morning pages" - every morning, get up and write three pages of stream-of-consciousness ramblings about whatever is in your head. It might be worries that you're no good; it might be an intractable problem with a script or feature; it might be vocalising some feeling that you haven't let bob to the surface before. Not only is it a surprisingly great way of getting past mental blocks, it also stops that fear when you're working on a big project: but as soon as I start, it'll be really huge and demanding. With Morning Pages, you've already started.
The thread under Julian's post also yielded this interview with Joss Whedon about how he gets so much done. There are two things I took away: the first is "refilling your tanks". So much of modern journalism (and academia, and other professions) is about being in constant BROADCAST mode. It's really hard to make the case - not least to yourself - that leisure time, reading novels, taking walks and watching random stuff is all useful. You can't just constantly create, or transmit. The second takeaway is about writing the bits of something you like first, so that by the time you get to the dull "connective tissue" you already believe in what you're writing. This is the reverse of my current "eat your greens, save the pudding for later" approach to writing, so I'm interested to see how it works.
I'm so ready for spring rn
Why a tech journalist might think it's OK to be friends with a Nazi
"When civil liberties are defended without adjacent calls for social and economic justice, the values that undergird calls for, say, free speech or protection from government search and seizure can collapse. This is why neo-Nazis feel emboldened to hold “free speech” rallies across the country. It is why racist online communities are able to rail against the monopolistic power of companies like Facebook and Google when they get booted off their platforms. Countless activists, engineers, and others have agitated for decades for an open web—but in the process they’ve too often neglected to fight for social and economic justice at the same time. They’ve defended free speech above all else, which encouraged platforms to allow racists and bigots and sexists and anti-Semites to gather there without much issue.
Defending free speech is critically important. But free speech doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in relation to social and economic realities that shape our lives with equal force."
I went to sleep this week on the news that Quinn Norton had been given a column at the New York Times; by the time I'd woken up she had "parted ways" with them, over her use of homophobic and racial slurs in tweets, and her defence of being friends with a white supremacist hacker.
The guy in question was a cause celeb in geekworld a few years ago, because he was given an overly harsh sentence (a prison term) for a hack which exposed a huge security flaw. Unfortunately, a lot of people in that tech "scene" moved across from defending the principle of proportionate punishment to excusing him as an individual from "trolling" that turns out not to have been at all ironic in retrospect. (One of his hacker groups was called the Gay N***** Association of America.)
If the last five years have taught us anything, it's that ironic racism has EXACTLY the same effects as intended racism, in the same way an ironic punch to the face still hurts. I do feel sorry for Norton, because she wasn't the only writer to excuse 4Channish hackers their "provocations".
Quick links
- Sali Hughes has started an initiative to distribute toiletries and sanitary products at food banks. Please send any spares (or buy from their Amazon wishlist).
- Lena Dunham on her decision to have a hysterectomy at 31 is the best of Lena Dunham's writing.
Thank you, and also ARGH, to @ross_chmiel, who gender-swapped all the UK prime ministers. Call me, Haroldina Wilson:
See you next time! Why not tweet a link to the sign-up page: tinyletter.com/helenlewis