bookblogging
Aug. 15th, 2009 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceruseeNovels/prose books:
Mystery:
Stout, Rex:
The Golden Spiders
Gambit
The Father Hunt
Some Buried Caesar
(Lily Rowan's introductory novel. I was surprised, but not displeased to see how consistent her characterization here was with the other books. There are some things I'd always assumed about her that are delicately but unequivocally established at her introduction, such as the fact that Lily, who is extremely wealthy, has little interest in marriage--she doesn't need a husband for either financial stability or for respectability, and she doesn't need to be married to find male companionship--that she is unapologetically sexually active, and that she doesn't play mind games, or use sex as bait.
Some of the people she's with when Archie meets her strongly dislike Lily--they describe her in somewhat misogynistic epithets--but my eyebrows went back down at Archie and Lily's first real conversation, when Lily talks about herself to Archie, and gets to describe herself in her own strong voice. Lily is presented as an independent, self-assured person, who is not at all ashamed of herself. And she's not a femme fatale, either. I get the feeling that if Stout was taking sides, he was on Lily's side. This book was published in 1938, for the record. It's never really been a secret that people have had pre-marital sex and sex outside of marriage for as long as there's been marriage, but we frequently pretend that they don't, and this book predates the sexual revolution in the U.S.
Lily decides pretty much as soon as she first lays eyes on Archie that they suit, and that they're going to be very good friends. Of course she's right--Lily is referred to or makes brief appearances regularly in the forty-one Nero Wolfe novels and short story collections published subsequent to this one, published until the 1970s--but it takes Archie a little while to admit how well they click, because Lily needles Archie almost as much as Archie needles Wolfe, and when they first met, Archie was vaulting a fence to get away from an angry bull, and Lily was laughing at him for it.
Lily on marriage and sex (Escamillo is Lily's nickname for Archie, because of the bull-fighting):
I've seen a fair bit of speculation in essays that perhaps Wolfe's misogyny reflects some real discomfort Stout had regarding women. I have a hard time believing it. Stout is definitely not a feminist, and he's often somewhat sexist, but I think if Stout were fundamentally as uncomfortable with women as Wolfe is, it would be beyond even Stout's immense talent as a writer to write forty-six books from the point of a view of a man who enjoys the company of women as much as Archie does, to write female characters who appear to possess just as much psychological and emotional depth and rationality as their male characters, and to create and sympathize with a female character like Lily Rowan. I don't think it's insignificant that there are no permanent intrusions into Wolfe's house by women, or that the most important female character in all of the novels, Lily, is described mostly in her absence, and with many of her remarks and observations filtered through Archie; the gender dynamics in Stout are kind of interesting. But it definitely does not boil down to misogyny.)
Manga:
Urasawa Naoki: Pluto vol. 4.
Tanaka Masashi: Gon vol. 2.
Mystery:
Stout, Rex:
The Golden Spiders
Gambit
The Father Hunt
Some Buried Caesar
(Lily Rowan's introductory novel. I was surprised, but not displeased to see how consistent her characterization here was with the other books. There are some things I'd always assumed about her that are delicately but unequivocally established at her introduction, such as the fact that Lily, who is extremely wealthy, has little interest in marriage--she doesn't need a husband for either financial stability or for respectability, and she doesn't need to be married to find male companionship--that she is unapologetically sexually active, and that she doesn't play mind games, or use sex as bait.
Some of the people she's with when Archie meets her strongly dislike Lily--they describe her in somewhat misogynistic epithets--but my eyebrows went back down at Archie and Lily's first real conversation, when Lily talks about herself to Archie, and gets to describe herself in her own strong voice. Lily is presented as an independent, self-assured person, who is not at all ashamed of herself. And she's not a femme fatale, either. I get the feeling that if Stout was taking sides, he was on Lily's side. This book was published in 1938, for the record. It's never really been a secret that people have had pre-marital sex and sex outside of marriage for as long as there's been marriage, but we frequently pretend that they don't, and this book predates the sexual revolution in the U.S.
Lily decides pretty much as soon as she first lays eyes on Archie that they suit, and that they're going to be very good friends. Of course she's right--Lily is referred to or makes brief appearances regularly in the forty-one Nero Wolfe novels and short story collections published subsequent to this one, published until the 1970s--but it takes Archie a little while to admit how well they click, because Lily needles Archie almost as much as Archie needles Wolfe, and when they first met, Archie was vaulting a fence to get away from an angry bull, and Lily was laughing at him for it.
Lily on marriage and sex (Escamillo is Lily's nickname for Archie, because of the bull-fighting):
"No, Escamillo. I don't suppose I'll marry. Because marriage is really an economic arrangement, and I'm lucky I don't have to let the economic part enter into it. The man would be lucky too--I mean if a man attracted me and I attracted him."
"...I'm frank and simple...I never offer anything I don't give, and I never give anything and then expect to get paid for it."
I've seen a fair bit of speculation in essays that perhaps Wolfe's misogyny reflects some real discomfort Stout had regarding women. I have a hard time believing it. Stout is definitely not a feminist, and he's often somewhat sexist, but I think if Stout were fundamentally as uncomfortable with women as Wolfe is, it would be beyond even Stout's immense talent as a writer to write forty-six books from the point of a view of a man who enjoys the company of women as much as Archie does, to write female characters who appear to possess just as much psychological and emotional depth and rationality as their male characters, and to create and sympathize with a female character like Lily Rowan. I don't think it's insignificant that there are no permanent intrusions into Wolfe's house by women, or that the most important female character in all of the novels, Lily, is described mostly in her absence, and with many of her remarks and observations filtered through Archie; the gender dynamics in Stout are kind of interesting. But it definitely does not boil down to misogyny.)
Manga:
Urasawa Naoki: Pluto vol. 4.
Tanaka Masashi: Gon vol. 2.