Rant

[smokingboot]

What a fool I am.

I did it again. I went on to FB again, just to wish mates a happy solstice, write nice things to chums who are feeling low, just the usual.

Unfortunately, I simply never really get what the usual has become.

Without doubt, I just saw the most stupid meme in the history of my life on the internet. For my own self respect, I won't copy the effing thing here, only to paraphrase that if you don't want to read JK Rowling, if you want books that have fewer white people, no slave-elves, no banking goblins (that needs respelling I'm certain) read Ursula Le Guin.

I want to explode. Or make someone else explode. Ursula Le Guin is one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time, read because her stories are strong, her vision is extraordinary, her characters are real, her writing is superb. Her writing would have been all of these things even if we did not find her character admirable. She is not great because she is the antithesis of JK Rowling (itself a deeper question) she is great irrespective of any such comparison of morality. If it one day transpires that she had some pretty unsavoury faults, it does not change the fact that her work is superlative.

Oh, I am sick of people endlessly maydaying the good ship Virtue. The box-ticking is ridiculous, the desire to censor insane, all to be part of the tribe. Well, maybe the tribe is puritanical, censorious, and above all completely inauthentic. If you cannot respond honestly to Art without knowing whether it comes from an ideologically sound source, you are not responding to it from your own self, you are responding from the place of your social construct, the mask you make to fit in and be accepted. The only genuine thought or feeling behind this is fear of rejection.There's no real creation in that. In fact, there's nothing real in it at all.

Anyone out there, by all means read Ursula Le Guin, she's brilliant. Read her because of that. It's enough.

Note to self: FB for birthdays, then get off or go mad.