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42) "Tom O'Bedlam" by Robert Silverberg
It escaped my notice, when I said in my last post that there was a very 70s feel to this book, that in fact it came out in the mid 80s. I don't know if he did the 70s feel on purpose or if he was just old enough that it came out that way. Probably the latter, because there seemed to be a certain... cultural / racial insensitivity? I think it won't be too spoilery to say that a lot of people die, but that it felt to me as though most of them were not considered important because they're non-white people. The main female character does hook up with a light-skinned black guy near the end of the book, and there were a few very specifically ethnic background characters, but this felt like a clunky effort. "Here, let me go out of my way to give you some non-whites." And the 'saintly' guy mentions having lived in an area with a lot of 'immigrants' and having moved on because he didn't like their company. It felt so... non-saintly, to my sensibilities.
And I can't get started on the whole business of 'bitch' being equated with 'slut'. For one thing because it just gets too long and complicated and I have to tell half the story to make it make sense. The story would have been better off without that character.
. . .
This whole writing thing is really not working, today. Every time I've tried to write I've gotten so sleepy it's ridic. I should really get to bed, I want to be up fairly early to go help with the Historical Society Pie Bake tomorrow. (It's the yearly fund raiser.)
It escaped my notice, when I said in my last post that there was a very 70s feel to this book, that in fact it came out in the mid 80s. I don't know if he did the 70s feel on purpose or if he was just old enough that it came out that way. Probably the latter, because there seemed to be a certain... cultural / racial insensitivity? I think it won't be too spoilery to say that a lot of people die, but that it felt to me as though most of them were not considered important because they're non-white people. The main female character does hook up with a light-skinned black guy near the end of the book, and there were a few very specifically ethnic background characters, but this felt like a clunky effort. "Here, let me go out of my way to give you some non-whites." And the 'saintly' guy mentions having lived in an area with a lot of 'immigrants' and having moved on because he didn't like their company. It felt so... non-saintly, to my sensibilities.
And I can't get started on the whole business of 'bitch' being equated with 'slut'. For one thing because it just gets too long and complicated and I have to tell half the story to make it make sense. The story would have been better off without that character.
. . .
This whole writing thing is really not working, today. Every time I've tried to write I've gotten so sleepy it's ridic. I should really get to bed, I want to be up fairly early to go help with the Historical Society Pie Bake tomorrow. (It's the yearly fund raiser.)