books not finished

[calimac]

Becoming Drusilla by Richard Beard
This was recommended to me as a road to understanding transsexuality. I found it harder to engage with its prose style than it seemed to be worth continuing. It's nonfiction, but Beard is primarily a novelist, and he kept trying to tell the story novelistically.
Beard feels that memoirs by transsexuals themselves are not best aimed at bystanders, and I expect he's correct. More promising might be this, a book by a cis friend of a transsexual: Beard's camping buddy, who after years of friendship came out as a woman. Alas, in at least the first half, Beard's energy is focused mostly on convincing skeptical readers that yes, transsexuality is a thing. That I already knew. So far, on critical questions like when she realized she was a woman, why and how she kept up pretenses as she did, Dru is elusive or mum, and I wearied of wondering whether she'd ever become more forthcoming.

The Invisible Bridge by Rick Perlstein
I picked up this massive, wide-ranging book on the growth of the conservative movement in the 1970s US, turned to a random page, and read a random paragraph, discussing Truman nostalgia, of all things. In it, I found two minor but annoying factual errors, both based on the author failing to check up on exactly when people actually died. Both incorrect factoids could easily have been omitted without affecting the paragraph's point. Probably the entire paragraph could have been omitted without affecting any larger point. But if you're going to include details, get them right. I knew this stuff; why didn't the author of a massive detail-filled book?
I put this book back on the shelf and don't intend to read any more.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Save us from trans memoirs!

Trouble is, people feel obliged to stick to a stereotyping script which is nothing like the day to day lived reality.

If there's one thing worse, its an outsider trying to write 'our' experience.

There is no one life experience any more than there is for cis folks as we are all individuals.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Since I was the one who recommended the book in response to kalimac's request for suggestions (I think?), I feel I should leap in and say that I did so precisely because it avoids the usual trans memoir schtick. It's more an account of a friendship than anything else, and even more specifically of a camping trip in the Welsh marches, with digressions on its flora and fauna. Although Beard is an "outsider" in the sense that he's not himself trans, he's also a close friend of Dru's, and writes from that position, with her cooperation and collaboration. (They both write well: Dru is quite an accomplished poet.) There's no attempt to make this one person's experience stand for all, although of course those who've been in Dru's position will find that some of it resonates. I think both Beard and Dru were very aware of the dangers you're alluding to.

However... on reflection I can see that in avoiding those dangers Beard may well have made it a less useful book for kalimac, who was wanting a more general understanding of a phenomenon, not a close acquaintance with an individual - especially one who is (as I can confirm from my more recent real-life friendship from her) a rather shy and private person.

It's a difficult line to tread!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Rather shy and private is a good description of me believe it or not. :o)

It is a difficult line and it's why for all the requests to write an autobiography, I have no intention of doing so.

I stopped reading trans related stuff quite a long time ago as it only leaves me feeling argumentative.

[(Anonymous)]

A review I had just read of The Invisible Bridge suggests its problems go deeper than factual errors:

http://www.democracyjournal.org/34/a-bridge-too-far.php?page=all

-MTD/neb

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

My point is, you don't need to go deeper. In a book built out of the accumulation of details, getting the details wrong is itself a dire symptom of deeper incoherence.