I received some questions in the anonymous Q&A:
Have you ever tried to read Kingsnorth’s The Wake?
I really detest historical fiction, so no. And I’m not likely to try. I’d read sci-fi before I read historical fiction, and I have zero interest in sci-fi.
Have you read Lineages of Modernity?
No, and I never heard of it before. Thank you for recommending, I will check it out. I’m currently on a reading spree about the Franco dictatorship, so this will have to wait until I get over that.
What is a suitable therapy for someone who is suicidal?
I assume you aren’t looking for yourself? If it’s somebody else, all I can recommend is removing yourself from that person’s company. If you can’t remove yourself, minimize engagement.
Clarissa's Blog 
“I really detest historical fiction, so no. And I’m not likely to try. I’d read sci-fi before I read historical fiction, and I have zero interest in sci-fi.”
I’m crushed, I thought we had similar reading tastes. HA You need to read some of Harry Turtledove’s Alternative History and his sci-fi when you need a break from the real world. Historical fiction is also one of my favorites.
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I just don’t see the point, you know? Nobody can see the world through the eyes of a person from another era. People’s brains worked differently. Their subjectivity was completely different. So it all becomes a way of saying something about today.
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“Nobody can see the world through the eyes of a person from another era”
Isn’t that true also of very old literature? Can a modern reader really understand Jane Eyre (not to mention Shakespeare or Lope de Vega) the way readers at the time did?
Don’t modern ereaders just end up making it about something today (with dumb or catastrophic results)?
And yeah almost all works set in the past or future, or fantasy/alien settings are actually about the society of the author at the time of writing, I don’t think that negates their value.
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Absolutely. We do not read like the original readers of Cervantes did. There’s a whole branch of literary criticism that tries to figure out the original experience of the contemporary reader. I used to be into that many years ago.
Of course, there’s a caveat for every genre. If it’s real literature, I don’t care if it’s historical, romance, or fantasy. I’ll read it. But I can’t think of anybody attempting anything worthwhile recently that would go farther into history than the Spanish Civil War.
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“Nobody can see the world through the eyes of a person from another era.”
Really? From another nation, from another gender, from another race, from another age, c’mon Kid. Mind you, I am biased, have enjoyed the complete writing of several historic novel authors — human knowlege changes, human drives remain ;-D
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I said exactly what I said. At no point did I mention gender, race or nation. I’m speaking very strictly about a different historical subjectivity.
That’s precisely why we shouldn’t judge history. We don’t know how our ancestors thought. We can’t replicate their thought process even approximately. Judging them for not being like us – which is pretty much the entirety of the teaching of history today – is a waste of time.
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LOL, I fear that we are going to have to agree. I was suggesting that understanding people from other eras is no more difficult than understanding another gender for example, and to be blunt, I suspect that latter can be more difficult ;-D
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Whoops, have to agree to disagree ;-D
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