tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524497770619950288.post5687529287791082244..comments2023-12-18T18:23:05.715-05:00Comments on Marooned Off Vesta: By way of a review of Kenneth Schneyer's "Hear the Enemy, My Daughter"Ethan Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11207042480666924085noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524497770619950288.post-74294773310614623502013-05-16T08:51:03.403-04:002013-05-16T08:51:03.403-04:00Very interesting! I haven't had a chance yet t...Very interesting! I haven't had a chance yet to re-read with these thoughts in mind, but I'm very much looking forward to it--I think I'll admire it even more than I already do.<br /><br />I agree that the medal-cutting scene is one of the finest in the story--in my first draft I had a much longer discussion of its intricacies, before I realized that if I indulged myself in every single thing I wanted to say my review would end up longer than the story, haha. One thing I wish I had left in, though, is a mention of something Christine Schutt said in an interview, something along the lines that as a writer you have to start from what you don't want people to know. Obviously we're not here to psychoanalyze Kenneth Schneyer, for like a billion reasons, but the description in the story of not just anger but sometimes <i>hatred</i> entering into the loving parent/child relationship, hatred alternately replacing and mingling with the love, felt very much like the kind of thing Schutt was talking about, hence my singling out that passage as an element of the story that struck me as a deeply felt need.<br /><br />(While I'm talking about things I wish I'd done differently, I find myself wishing that when I mentioned the story's "revealing areas of experience that might otherwise have remained obscured" I had said explicitly that this is essentially the highest praise I can think to lavish on a work of art.)<br /><br />On your analysis of the escape scene, I'm very intrigued, though again I think I need a re-read with it in mind. I think my immediate distaste for the war-storiness of the story led me to assume simplicity in those aspects when the complexity of the rest of the story should have told me otherwise. I'm especially interested that you focus on a "pause" in the scene, as such pauses, spaces, moments of stasis, are usually to me the most important and interesting parts of stories (which was one of my reasons for singling out the other paragraph I quoted, the "how they escaped" information gap); and just as interested (as I said in the update to the post) in your exploration of Halima's admission of failure. One of the most important things I've learned from critics like Gabriel Josipovici and Steve Mitchelmore is the necessity of letting failure into the work, of accepting failure as a condition of the work (cf Beckett's famous but widely misunderstood "fail better" quote--to "fail better" is emphatically <i>not</i> to succeed). I suspect both of them would think I was being much too literal in applying this notion to this story and what you're saying about it, but the admission that when it really matters one cannot trust one's efforts, one's painstakingly established lines of communication, or even one's love... well, I'm fresh out of ways to finish that sentence, but it's a remarkable thing in this story.<br /><br />As far as pushing the problem back, I'm agreed, though I think it pushes it a bit further back even than you suggest--because now I really can't fault Schneyer or his story for its violence, which if I allow myself to be convinced by your analysis (which I'm thinking I will) it is both necessary and responsibly handled. And so we're back to the kind of problem where it is not any given story that can necessarily be faulted (though some can, and I cling to my criticisms of the mostly-good Kelly and Dudak stories), but rather the trend of the mass of stories. And in a situation like that, I'm glad that at least some of the violence-stories are as good as Schneyer's.Ethan Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11207042480666924085noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524497770619950288.post-84105174634813634452013-05-15T13:33:36.862-04:002013-05-15T13:33:36.862-04:00First of all, this really is an excellent post, th...First of all, this really is an excellent post, thank you for it.<br /><br />Second, let me try to unpack my comment a bit more (for my own benefit as much as anything). I think for me it comes down to whether you think the escape-scene is a no-win scenario. I mean, if Halima is just doing the unavoidable, what has to be done, it's a sad ending, but as you suggest, not a deep one.<br /><br />I see a bit more in it than that. Halima talks Ishish and Ashashi down, the soldier kills Ishish, Ashashi kills the soldier -- and then there's a pause, while the other soldiers are approaching. Halima says she is "wanting to tell this child, this baby, that it was all right, that she could still survive"; but she doesn't actually say any of that, she doesn't make a second attempt to reason. After Ashashi says "Kri'ikshi", Halima makes a choice to shoot. That is a choice to make sure that human lives are saved; but it is also an admission that she believes the line of communication she's been working on all story isn't strong enough, that it will fail; so it's a choice to give up on that work.<br /><br />It's surely significant that in the last sentence of the scene Ashashi is no longer Ashashi, but "the baby"; a function, not a person. And to bring in the parenting thread of the story, I think the last scene ties in with the medal-cutting scene you quote (which I think may be the best scene in the story). Communication and empathy are <em>hard</em>, and it's much easier to give up and react to functions instead of people. Halima has a much closer connection to her daughter than she does to the aliens, and she <em>still</em> feels that spike of anger. I think it's very interesting that we're not told her feelings at the moment she decides to shoot Ashashi, we're not given access to the emotional reaction she has to "Kri'ikshi"; but I think we're encouraged to fill it in by extrapolating from scenes like the medal-cutting.<br /><br />All of which said, I think you can also make an argument that this only really pushes the structural problem you identify back a bit. If it's a choice Halima makes, it's still a rigged choice, Schneyer has set up just about the most high-contrast situation you can imagine, between a worldview where nuanced empathy is essential and one where it could easily be a liability. And that use of violence to create an urgent dynamic still does speak to the imaginative limitation of the field that you're worrying at in your post.Niallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12210369779384548537noreply@blogger.com