One of my best friends, Timmy (who’s currently in Australia), responded to my latest blog concerning Sequential Tart’s review. Timmy put a lot of thought into his response, so I figured I’d share it with you guys:
“‘Offending’ is the euphemism of the moment for ‘burdening with accountability’ . While before a person could hide behind blissful ignorance, now they have no excuse and attacking the person who happened to inform them is easier than making any changes in their thought patterns or, scarier yet, lifestyle. Religious people use it when their beliefs don’t stand up to simple reality, politicians use it when their ideology doesn’t stand up to investigation, and everyone else uses it whenever rectifying a nugget of guilt in their brain would be an inconvenience.
The reviewer simply doesn’t have the wherewithal nor bothered to obtain it to be discussing such things and hides the fact behind the convenient curtain of delicate sensibilities. She must also be the last person on earth to find questioning the ethics of wearing fur “extremist” – even the industry has largely given up that line of attack.
Worse, as far as the reviewers position as a critic of fiction, she shows the embarrassingly naive inability to distinguish between author, narrator, and characters. Instead, every word every character says is taken as a literal, didactic diatribe to the reader saying, “This is how I feel, think, and act, and so should you.” No wonder she would then miss the point entirely, reading the pages as if the character were saying “That coat is literally made of the very dog the woman is walking.” It’s this kind of devolved barfthink that leads people to try and censor Huck Finn for having characters use the word “nigger” or “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” for its straightforward descriptions of rape and violence. It’s as if they didn’t even read past the text at all, and indeed the reviewer admits she would have stopped reading had she not started from the back. What thoroughness! What rigor! What professionalism!
Such a basic mistake in reading comprehension is especially embarrassing when the subject is something like Tails, a story of a boy growing, learning, struggling with his identity, exposing his vulnerabilities or trying not to, etc. I can’t fathom how one can read Tails and come away thinking of it as the heavy-handed, exposition-centered, Ayn-Randish lecture her review spends the bulk of its thickest paragraph portraying it as.
A partly positive review from such a source is more of a liability than a benefit, honestly. I wouldn’t spread it around.”
To be fair, I don’t think the reviewer at Sequential Tart was in support of fur, she just detested my ‘vulgar sense of humor’. That’s perfectly fair. Not everyone can appreciate the term, ‘Bear’s Vagina’.
On another note, Jared Gniewek wrote a very wonderful review of ‘Tails’ over at NYC Graphic Novelists. The review was thorough, critical and insightful. Go give it a read.
