There’s something so delicious about outgrowing things.
I think we’re meant, or at least well-trained, to lament those moments when the treasured things we valued lose their gold-plating and are revealed to be something lesser than we thought they were. The eternal becomes the merely good for its time, and we have to think about why, exactly, something seemed so amazing to our younger eyes…but this feels less bad for me as I get older in the same way that opening a can of almost textureless factory-made “ravioli” in a sugary orange sauce loses its comfort and becomes more of a moment for a satisfyingly rueful chuckle at how low my standards once were.
I’ve been indulging myself with some comfort reads, as well, revisiting old and beloved books for a little of that satisfying feeling one gets from retreading old paths where great stuff lies, and I’ve largely been finding new details tucked into the old like little notes pencilled into the margins of a book that inspires such annotations. It’s a task intentionally not taxing, and a pursuit to wage a proxy war of the thought-out against a stretch of external idiocy, but I find, more and more, that I reveal more than just another strata of narrative in the familiar.
Ringworld, the 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, is a terrible book.
To be fair, it’s still packed with the kind of gee-whizzery and oh-my-look-at-that wonders in its landscapes and devices that pushed it to near the top of my youthful roster of favorites, but man, that guy really didn’t think much of women. The unfortunate Teela Brown, a character seemingly dumped into the narrative to be hapless and in need of rescue, whilst being clueless (to the point of being continuously lamented as such by the three other protagonists) and a resource for sex and titillation, just literally waiting for her prince to come, which happens because [insert sci-fi magic nonsense about aliens breeding humans for luck].
Ew.
At least it gets better, though…oh wait, no, Louis Wu, the main protagonist brings another woman into the team by zapping her with a cosmic orgasm gun so she can help them escape, only for her to be killed off in a casual mention in the next book because writing the ladies is just hard.
And yet, finding the ugly in Niven has largely been an exercise in recognizing the need to for me, in my reading and my own writing, to do better. Fourteen-year-old me didn’t see the distasteful neocon politics, pessimism, and egotistical disdain for “the State” (as a Gary Stu-style signifier of Niven’s great and wise erudition), but push aside the admittedly great technical details of these books and, if there’s a woman in the narrative, you’ll find a feathery little lady, wafting along on clumsy luck or the largesse of the flawed-but-somehow-masterful men there.
To be fair, even books I’ve kept close suffer from this, like my beloved The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury (a near-perfect volume of righteous worship of the apt adjective if ever one existed), who, in “The Silent Towns,” created the supposedly loathsome character of Genevieve Selsor, who commits the crimes of being fat, desperately unserious, and obsessed with beauty and self-indulgence as a sledgehammer punishment to the not-very-protagonist’s loneliness and desire for companionship (spoiler: he learns the lesson that it’s better to be alone than be in a relationship), but I’d argue that it’s an oft-pinched pus-filled blemish on a body of stories that otherwise excels. The value system of The Martian Chronicles redeems its failures, while Ringworld just applies its setting like too much old-fashioned powdered-lead stage makeup over a lumpen series of ordinary dilemmas.
I likely won’t spend too much more time revisiting Ringworld down the line, particularly as, in middle age, I’m less generous with the time I’ll invest pursuing hopeless causes, but letting it go, and letting the weird propensity of men in science fiction to write women like they hate women, and write worlds like they hate the world. It’s a perfect reminder that letting things go is a key part of the development and cultivation of a mature and informed place in the realm of ideas. Besides, there’s a ton of Ursula K. Le Guin I haven’t read yet, and plenty of young, up and coming writers who didn’t cut their teeth in the old boys club of the “golden age” of science fiction.
The old-school anti-cancellation cotillion would all sneer down at me, as Bradbury did over his ooh-look-an-icky-fat-lady stuffing her face with cream chocolates, Niven did over poor Teela Brown and her inability to regain control of her magical flying car, or all the dreary fantasy authors who, when faced with a need to advance a male protagonist, have a women get raped in their story so the man can be angsty over it, but I absolutely revel in ridding myself of crap I don’t want or need.
I outgrow things, but it doesn’t render my past obsolete, or my time necessarily wasted, as it all leads from there to here, and here is a pretty good place in which to find myself, exploring narratives I’d never have been able to grasp back when I needed a ring around the sun to keep my attention and I could just blithely ignore some pretty ugly sentiments from authors who should have been more humane and forward-thinking given that that was their actual job.
It’s an opportunity for reflection and for finding new things.
What could be better?
© 2024 Joe Belknap Wall