Re: Rape Education Story #60

Bob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> Ann wrote:
> > On 29 Nov 2003 15:03:22 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Magic Nose
> > Goblin) wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>Ann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> >>
> >>>On 28 Nov 2003 21:44:06 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Magic Nose
> >>>Goblin) wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Kate Orman) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> >>>>
> >>>>>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Sky King) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>"All men are rapists and that's all they are" -- Marilyn French,
> >>>>>>Author, "The Women's Room"
> >>>>>
> >>> 
> >>>
> >>>>>>"My feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have little
> >>>>>>sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dachau, I watch the
> >>>>>>handsome young Nazi soldier fall writhing to the ground with a bullet
> >>>>>>in his stomach and I look briefly and walk on. I don't even need to
> >>>>>>shrug. I simply don't care. What he was, as a person, I mean, what his
> >>>>>>shames and yearnings were, simply don't matter." -- Marilyn French, in
> >>>>>>"The Women's Room"
> >>>>>
> >>>>>"The Women's Room" is a fictional novel. These comments are made by 
> >>>>>fictional characters
> >>>>
> >>>>i.e. they are an expression of MARILYN FRENCH's thoughts.
> >>>
> >>>It's a scary thought that you believe that an author can only give the
> >>>characters in the novel her own thoughts and views.
> >>
> >>So you're saying that those thoughts are NOT Marilyns, but, in fact,
> >>those of SOMEONE ELSE???
> > 
> > 
> > You don't understand what fiction is then?  If someone writes a story
> > about killing the pope does it mean that they have a desire to do so?
> > If the character in the book says, "I really hate that man because
> > he's a devout catholic", do we have to assume that the writer hates
> > catholics?  Maybe it's true and a case could be put for it using other
> > evidence but to quote the writer as having said "I hate the pope" is
> > daft.
> 
> 
> You don't understand what literature is then?  Authors write stories to 
> tell their philosophical beliefs and use characters to express their 
> opinions.  You ought to hear feminist literary theorists go after D. H. 
> Lawrence some time.

When Stephen King writes about a car that has its own personality and
likes to run over people she doesn't like, can we assume that King's
philosophy is that cars should come to life and run over people who
mistreat them?

> Fiction is sometimes "just a story" but most of the time it's the 
> authors view of the word being expressed by drama.
> 
No question that Marilyn French inserts her own brand of radfem hatred
into her fiction- after all, she's left a long trail of "nonfiction"
books expressing the most primitive and vile sorts of antimale hatred.
But those characters could have been used by any author- Michael
Chrichton, Stephen King, Robin Cook et al, if for no other reason than
to have Christine or Cujo bump them off. Why not just use real-world
quotes from French's nonfiction (Beyond Power, War Against Women) so
that no one need wonder about whether those quotes represent her
actual POV?

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