Book Club Time!

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Today's Discussion Question:

Show of hands, people. Did anyone else here besides me just not like Ender's Game? I'm not talking about the prevalent opinion of "Love the book. Shame about the author's raging douchenozzlery," which is a totally fair opinion to have. I'm talking about just being ragingly, compulsively unimpressed by the book itself.

I read it back in junior high, see. I think it was before I knew that Orson Scott Motherfucking Card was an unmitigated jackass, but I can't be entirely sure, since he's also a big source of pride for Utah and for a while he wrote a column for the Deseret News, the conservative Mormon paper around here.* I do recall getting a sense that he was a jerk from the book, but a poll of my classmates (we read it for class--Utah pride, remember) told me that nobody else got that sense,** and I've met a lot of cool folks since then who also didn't get that vibe.

But anyway, the upshot is that Ender's Game has always left me cold. I did not like or care about the characters. I did not really care about their fear of aliens, or their Battle Room strategies, or the kids' petty squabbles, or Val and Peter's Blogging For Change campaign. I spotted the twists before they happened and just thought the fact that Ender didn't made him seem kind of dim. The only thing I really liked was the revelation of the buggers' Oh Shit Moment when they realized they'd made a grievous assumption--and that was mostly an aside.

I know a lot of folks love it--pretty much everyone I talk to. So I'm just wondering--did anybody else have this response? Or was it just me?


*I'm not sure if he still does; frankly, I don't feel like looking it up.

**This doesn't prove anything, though, since some years later in high school only a select few of my classmates picked up on the fact that the chapter in Dickens' Our Mutual Friend in which the terrifyingly intense creepy stalker dude confesses to the hapless object of his desires that he is pretty literally crazy for her and he wants--and DESERVES!--to live inside her skin and breathe her breaths or somesuch was not supposed to be SWOONINGLY ROMANTIC. In retrospect, that discussion was a pretty good predictor of the success of Twilight.

Comments

[beccastareyes]

Sadly, I had not read it before I found out about the author, and so could not be counted on to form an honest opinion. I also suspect that it's one of those books best read when one is young and smart and feels misunderstood by their peers.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I also suspect that it's one of those books best read when one is young and smart and feels misunderstood by their peers.

Possibly--but I fit that description when I read it, and it did nothing for me except frustrate me.

I think it's still possible to pick up on a vague hostility from the author toward everyone who isn't a white straight Mormon male just from the book--but like I said, I'm not sure if I'm making that up or not.

[beccastareyes]

True: best doesn't necessarily mean everyone in that demographic will like it, but that a lot of what I've heard* goes with people who read it as kids are a lot more... sentimental? about it. A bit like how I suspect that while I'm reading Tamora Pierce now and liking her stuff, reading her when I was 10-12 would have made the books have a lot more of an emotional reaction. (Especially the Protector of the Small books, since I was picked on a lot in late elementary and middle school.)

Books can be funny like that: even if they aren't that good, you can latch onto them if you read them in the right mood. Or the opposite. And picking up on Card's hostility to demographics you like (and are) might have killed any fellow-feeling with the protagonist.

ETA: other thought. It could also be the reaction of the character: a lot of books aimed at kids and teens are about kids/teens who don't fit, but then what happens changes. Kelandry and Harry Potter have different plots, but both enter as not fitting. Harry moves on to a wizarding school where he is able to make friends, and instead of being 'the weird cousin the school bully picks on' he is 'unintentionally famous'; Kel befriends another outcast (or Neal befriends her) and slowly other people warm up to her as they get past their 'girl cooties' to realize she's a strong and interesting person (who tries to help improve the world around her).

* And apparently what Card had heard.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

Been probably almost 15 years since I read it, but I remember enjoying it. No idea if I'd have a different opinion if I reread it now, but seeing as I have almost the whole series sitting on my bookshelf that's something I could investigate easily enough.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

The first OSC book I read was his book on writing. In it, he talks at one point about how all of these teenagers who were Clever Children read Ender's Game and told him how perfectly it captured their own experiences in a way no other book ever had. So when I read EG, it was with that in mind: that it was supposed to be amazingly insightful to my experience as a Clever Child.

And, well. I rather enjoyed most of it, though I hated how he handled the female characters. But it wasn't insightful at all. It was nothing like my experience. None of the children acted like any children I had ever known. (I had a sheltered upbringing.) So I sat around thinking, am I just not as clever as I thought? What am I missing that all these other people got out of the book? Of course, it was possible that the author just wasn't very good at assessing his own books, since he'd talked about not liking English teachers finding Symbolism in things, so he'd written EG without any, and by god, any student forced to find symbolism in there would know it really didn't exist! Which was ludicrous, because there is BLATANTLY OBVIOUS symbolism all over the place in that book.

Then I read the sequel and didn't really like it, and sort of shrugged off the series.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was a clever adolescent wondering why these darn kids didn't just quit acting like shitheads. But I will admit that it's not just his own assessment of his books; the kids in my class overwhelmingly thought it was terrific.

I think symbolism can be accidental, but that doesn't mean it isn't there, dangit!

[broken-moons.livejournal.com]

Hooking in on the symbolism thing, I must say it always annoyed me when teachers urged us to find all the symbolism the author put into their novel. Like with T.S. Eliot, we had this annotated version of The Wasteland, where the only words not accompanied by footnotes were 'the' and 'and', and everyone made it out like Eliot had put all of those references and symbolisms in consciously.

I always thought that was bullshit. Yes, there would be a lot he'd put in on purpose. But the longer we as a species develop our cultures, the smaller the world becomes in terms of culture references becoming available to other cultures, the more our history develops - the more symbolism we are going to find in art, regardless of how much the author put into it consciously.

Accidental symbolism is much more amazing, imo, than insisting authors know every cultural reference ever, and always put everything they know into everything they write.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I tend to regard discussion of authorial intent as something akin to Lies Told To Children, when it comes to literary analysis. In that beyond a certain point it's not really relevant (except maybe as an entertaining footnote), but it's often used as an entry point to teaching literary criticism, as something that young readers can hook onto and understand better than lit crit as a whole.

Which means that it's probably still appropriate in high school, but I would seriously side-eye a college professor who taught any sort of literature class with an emphasis on what the author "meant" or the symbolism they "put in". (I sometimes think that they still teach The Scarlet Letter in high school purely because the author stands up and goes LOOK AT MY SYMBOLISM BOY HOWDY right in the first chapter, which makes it an easy version of the Lies to point to and teach.)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

There are a few books that do it blatantly--Laurie Halse Anderson, for one, seems to pick a glossary of symbolism for each of her books. It's kind of fun, but also a little anvil-ish.

There are also different degrees of author intent--sometimes they're clearly making a point with their story/character, anyway. But when one teacher insisted that EVERY WORD was carefully crafted to fit in with the author's point, I was ... skeptical.

So I guess you do have to start with a rather broad hammer of authorial intent, and then refine it. But I also look sidelong at any AUTHOR who claims to have deliberately put in a lot of Deep Hidden Meaning. Often the author is as surprised as anyone else when the symbolism is pointed out.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Oh, teacher, no!

*coughs* Because, really, to an extent a poet should be crafting Every Word With Intent And Meaning, but what culture and context and reader and unconscious connections bring to the poem mean that even if the poet has tried to do so, there's going to be unplanned stuff in there, just as much as there'll be planned stuff that doesn't quite click. (Especially if it's not done with sledgehammer symbolism, and really, I got tired of that after getting all the way through Pilgrim's Progress.)

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I was sort of meh.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I got the vague sense when I read it that anyone who wrote that smugly about a cast of such incredible jerks couldn't really be someone that I'd enjoy hanging out with. The setting interested me more than the characters and the plot, actually. That happens sometimes.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

God, yes. I did not LIKE the characters. Sometimes that's okay, but in this case I had to at least somewhat like them so the story could progress, and I DIDN'T.

And you are right--what with his failure to grasp feminism and his galloping homophobia (to which he once wrote a rebuttal pedantically noting that he isn't homoPHOBIC; he's not AFRAID of them, you see ...), it's easy to overlook that he's just an all-around annoyingly smug bastard, too.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Most of the time, if I don't like the characters, I just can't like the book. I think I may have offended my dad accidentally by putting down a series he enjoys because I found the protagonist absolutely unlikable.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I think it works better in movies, where it's possible to have a camera's-eye-view. But it still has to be done right. I enjoyed the first Paranormal Activity, where liking the characters is not really a requirement to enjoy the concept of SPOOOOKY THINGS HAPPENING. But if you're going to tell a character-driven story, dammit I'd better LIKE the characters. (I had the same problem with Song of Ice And Fire.)

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Likewise on Song of Ice and Fire, as well as finding it too grittily uncomfortable and excruciating. It falls into the category with the Wheel of Time series, where I was told, "The fourth book is a real slog, but just force your way through it, it gets better after that!" Nope. Done.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Wheel Of Time? No, it doesn't get better after the fourth book, trust me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

Never read it in my youth, and what I've learned about the author since hasn't compelled me to. L2S for OSC.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it, and thanks to having the ending spoiled many years ago have never been inclined to. What I know of the characters' personalities has always seemed appropriate for the circumstances of their upbringing. I never thought that any of them was meant to be a role model.

[sunshine-shaman.livejournal.com]

I was sort of meh toward it. I like it for two things: helping me find some other sci fi books that are actually awesome, and I do think the battle room gravity flip was a pretty cool moment.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Nah, I couldn't deal with 'Ender's Game' either, long long before I learned Card's real deal. I still don't get all the appeal of the series.

[broken-moons.livejournal.com]

I have never read it, actually. I picked it up in libraries a few times, but always put it back again because after reading the blurb I just did not expect I'd be that interested in the characters or the plot if I were to read it. I think I'll happily go the rest of my life without reading it, frankly.

[alicetheowl.livejournal.com]

I wasn't impressed, either. I have two friends who are dying of joy that it's being made into a movie, because they LOVE the book. I can't even tell them I don't like it, because then I have to hear about everything I should love about it. And, I don't love those things. I found it clumsily written, I didn't agree with the themes, and it seemed pointless.

[ishyface.livejournal.com]

I found it pretty unremarkable as well. How Ender didn't see that shit coming was always a mystery to me. Also, Peter's villainy was way too over the top.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

How Ender didn't see that shit coming was always a mystery to me.

I know, right? Fucking DUH, you little supergenius.

[the-jackalope.livejournal.com]

I read a few of Card's other novels before I ever read Ender's Game. At the time I was a 'read everything I can get my hands on' type of kid, so if there was an unread book in our house I read it. My dad had a few of Card's novels, and so of course I read them. Every single one of them left a bad taste in my mouth, and while I think I skimmed most of Ender's Game, it wasn't really different as far as that goes.