noble gassing

[freckles_and_doubt]

I don't usually have much interest in the Nobel Prize, but this year's are a bit of an exception. Al Gore receiving the Peace prize makes me very happy, if only because it's an indicator of the status of environmental issues in the public consciousness. Not the right public consciousness (the Scandinavians seem to be pretty much in the forefront of ecological stuff and don't really need their consciousnesses raised) but their stamp of approval has to mean something.

I'm rather saddened, though, by the way the award seems to have brought anti-eco feeling out of the woodwork - a lot of sites mentioning the award seem to have a comment trail to the effect that he doesn't deserve it, it's not a legitimate issue, his activism hasn't achieved anything, and climate change has nothing to do with peace, this last causing me to grind my teeth somewhat. (Even some of the usually liberal and intelligent folk at the Whatever are kvetching no end). I honestly cannot see how anyone can deny either the climate change situation in the face of the current evidence, or the effectiveness of Gore's long-term efforts to wave the the issue around like a flag. I'd be a lot happier if humanity were orang-utans rather than ostriches.

The other pleasing award was Doris Lessing's literature prize. I am afraid to say that I have never yet finished a Lessing novel, being somewhat put off by (a) her creds as a Serious African Issue-Driven Novelist, which sparks my auto-bloody-mindedness response, (b) her writing style, with which I for some reason do not resonate, and (c) a very vivid memory of my late maternal grandmother, who knew Lessing in her early days in then-Rhodesia. At any mention of Lessing, Gran would tighten her lips ominously, say tartly, "Tigger Wisdom? She was a naughty girl," and refuse to be drawn further. In retrospect, it is somewhat ironic that I should have allowed myself to be influenced by this, as it refers to Lessing's unhappy first marriage from which she departed at speed, leaving a husband and two children - I think my gran was horrified by the children-leaving bit. I, on the other hand, am fully behind the rights of the individual to escape an unhappy relationship, and given the social mores of the time, could easily see how Lessing might have been pressured into both marriage and children.

It thus clearly behooves me to dig out the Canopus in Argus series I madly bought about a year ago and have never read, and to darned well read them in the interests of both feminist and sf solidarity. I am happy about Lessing's win because she is a highly-regarded "serious" mainstream novelist who both writes deliberately within sf genre traditions, and, unlike rotten weasel-worders like Margaret Atwood, routinely acknowledges her debt to the genre. The world needs more writers capable of exploding the myth that "if it's good it can't be science fiction." A Nobel rather does that. Heh.

Slightly spacey today, after a hectic and highly enjoyable weekend helping the dreaded jo run her Opera InCognito LARP. Good bunch of players, lovely costumes, perfect setting, much hilarity had by all. Stv took some stunning photos, will link to them when he's released them to Teh Internets. Also saw Stardust. It made me happy. Review tomorrow, when I've killed 20 essays and annotated an Honours dissertation. Sigh.

Comments

[nimnod.livejournal.com]

A lot of early Rhodies were "naughty" - this was, after all, a nation who proudly self-identified as rebels and rogues, cowboys who didn't cry and worked hard, but knew how to party. I know my ancestors were thus, and even my parents generation (my dad, who got really drunk for the first and probably only time at his bachelor party, was a comparative nerd, but then he was an academic who then became a judge, so...).

Also, you've made me want to read Doris Lessing now.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

It's true that Rhodesian culture had a certain hardy settler, bloody-minded-individualist ethos - they did, after all, calmly declare themselves independent of Britain when they felt it to be necessary. On the other hand, it was also - and still is - an insular culture with a high degree of conservatism, despite the mad antics of its subversive lunatic fringe. I think people like my grandmother were far more the norm than Doris Lessing: if not, she wouldn't have been the scandal she was.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Nooo, I will not read your Stardust review until we have seen it! I thought the benighted backwaters were supposed to get the good movies later!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

A brief, smug "heh" suffices, I believe :>. Occasionally the usual cultural lag of benighted SA has to randomly reverse. Content yourself with the fact that we never got Firefly, a movie I pine to see large-screen, at all. Sigh.

[(Anonymous)]

Looking forward to your review - I just gushed ;)
everymoment

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

Another species of anti-Gore comments that I've seen, question whether 'comfortable activism' of the kind exemplified by Gore (read: making documentaries, public frowning) really correlate with the heroic suffering and life-long work one imagines to be a pre-req for the Peace Prize. It's possible some of the suspicions you identify as anti-ecological are generated by this: to the extent that Gore is a shady racehorse, he transfers some of that shadiness to the (entirely un-shady) cause he purports to represent.

In my view, this whole debacle merely underscores the depth of humanity's current Superman fixation, and our childish insistance that heroes will come clean up our mess.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

You're making some interesting assumptions there: I don't follow why someone cannot earn the Peace Prize without "heroic suffering". Surely the prize is a recognition of effective work in the cause of peace? Someone who's spent their life dodging tornadoes or enduring drought might have a kind of moral high ground, but it wouldn't necessarily make them any more effective, and very likely less so.

I'm also interested in your characterisation of Gore as "shady" - do you intend the "debacle" term to refer to his receipt of the prize? I really don't think he projects himself as a "hero". More of a signpost, and one which has become urgently necessary given humanity's amazing refusal to believe in the the destructiveness of their own mess.

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

Hey, when did these become my views? I'm just the messenger here.

Personally, I think the NPP has always been hijacked by fads and the tenor of the current vox populi, so it's no surprise for me to see Gore up there. I mean, jeez, Henry Kissinger won it once.

Doris Lessing?

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

I read "The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five" when I had read all the books in the children's section and was borrowing my mom's adult card... The mists of time prevent me from clearly remembering the story, but I remember it as slow and dull? At any rate, I committed the author's name to memory so as to avoid it in future...