I have been looking forward to reading/listening to an R.F. Kuang book for a while since she’s is very popular but polarizing within the literature community. I heard that she writes unlikeable mc’s and that her prose is very telly and preachy and that it’s almost like she’s trying so hard to tell you how well thought out everything is. After listening to this as an audiobook. I see where that complaint is coming from, but I didn’t find it as an issue it was interesting hearing all angles of June’s mind during her stream of consciousness ramblings.
I thought it was interesting to see that Athena basically was supposed to be her since she also went to Yale, was from a privileged Chinese background, and they ended up in the Georgetown area. One similarity I noticed was criticism of Athena dating white men which R.F. Kuang also faced backlash for in real life as well.
It reminded me of one of the messages of Stoner which is to reframe things ad glass half full since she still was a Yale grad and had a publishing deal which that early in her life is still something not everyone gets to do so if she was just grateful for what she had instead of just being miserable and comparing herself I feel like she would have been more successful.
Shes very funny and I like her comedic timing.
“she kept asking why the sisters were so insufferable, which baffled me, because the sisters were supposed to be us”
“—I spent most of that class reading about Japanese art history, meaning tentacle porn, but it’s been a convenient cover story for questions like this.”
“Athena Liu was a finalist for a national writing competition when she was only sixteen (also true, but come on; every high schooler who can string sentences together places in those competitions at one point or another; it’s not hard to beat out other kids whose definition of art consists of plagiarized Billie Eilish lyrics”
When she was talking to Athena’s mom about mother witch
“It really is original work,” I say. “I did—I did take the first paragraph—I don’t know how, I think we were just trading excerpts, and it wound up in my notebook somehow, and it’s been so long that I forgot . . . but anyways, the rest of the story . . .”
“I know,” says Mrs. Liu, and now there’s a hard edge in her voice. “I know, June. Athena never would have written something like that.”
Before I can ask her what she means, she hangs up.”
One of the most glaring things about it was the over saturation and almost fetishization of unspoken marginalized voices. I think of someone like Ocean Vuong who had an insanely popular debut novel but from the reviews of his second novel it seems like it was not received as well. I have only read his poetry but he’s the queer, immigrant, family trauma writer that almost becomes a trope in itself that publishers are looking for now.
Very similar to Lolita(was actually mentioned in the story) ,crime and punishment and notes from the underground. Unreliable narrator that tries hard to get you to sympathize with them. This behaviour shows how you can justify any poor behaviour in your head. Logic will get you from point a to b, imagination will get you anywhere - Albert Einstein.
It was interesting in general to see the publishing business side of things and how the industry works from the non artistic side.
I learned about cultural sensitivity readers.
I recently read beware of pity by stefan zweig and it was a bit disappointing to not see any evidence that he knew any disabled people in his life so what gives him the right to speak on behalf of disabled people and does that make this story insensitive? I loved the story still but it was just an interesting thought to have that was reinforced after reading Yellowface.
Another example on the authenticity part she was talking about I can think of the criticism I’ve seen of a little life by Hanya Yanagihara. As a heterosexual woman is it right for her to profit off of the trauma of a gay man’s trauma?
Playing devils advocate, Shakespeare himself did not live all of the things he wrote about and it is common for writers to write from perspectives they don’t have, but I think it does make me stop and think about the part in the book when she talked about Athena taking everyone’s trauma and channeling it into a story, but the trauma still being there. I think of Picasso’s blue paintings where he painted homeless and poor people and profited off them for his fame, but people are still poor not receiving royalties.
She thinks of everything in her life as a plot for a story and how she can profit off of it and she’s obviously a parody and over the top example of this, but it is true that artists do look for inspirations by making quirky nuanced observations about everyday life just not to the extent that she does it.