Pointer 1: Jan Morris

[liv]

I have what is by now looking like rather an ambitious goal to post 10 pointer posts to other content by 15^th May. Anyway, here's the first: did you know that Jan Morris has a Tumblr, janmorris? (Discovered via a Making Light comment thread, I think.)

Morris is an amazing writer of both real and fictional travelogues. She's also a pioneering trans and equal marriage activist. Because of her history, some of the biographical material on the web uses rather old-fashioned language about her, such as deadnaming or using expressions such as "she was born male", just so you're aware before following any links from that Tumblr.

Anyway, the Tumblr itself is, as far as I can gather, excerpts from a recent book? Or the book itself published in Tumblr form, or just publicity for the book, I'm not quite clear. But anyway, it runs from March 2011 to April 2012, with just lovely little digital postcards, a beautiful photo and an evocative paragraph of description, more or less daily for just over a year. And then it just trails off, so I don't know if Morris got to the end of her book, or if she just got bored of Tumblr, or what.

But anyway, there's something about octogenarian professional writers exploring the possibilities of a new medium. Like Frederick Pohl's rather amazing blog.

Not much to report for Reading Wednesday. I haven't finished any books, and hopefully the more bitesizedreading style stuff is going to furnish me with more links so I can keep up with the 3W4DW challenge.

I'm still in the middle of Suite française by Irène Némirovsky, which is very good but very bleak. For example, there's a long and horrifying description of the awfulness of a horde of refugees desperately trying to get out of Paris southwards and westwards ahead of the German invasion, on foot in a boiling hot June, carrying their most treasured possessions. And suddenly you get: Ils n'avaient pas été mitraillés encore. [They hadn't yet been machine-gunned.] So it's not what I reach for when I have a few minutes spare and want to relax, really.

And I still haven't got to a library or charity shop to pick out a book just by its cover, which is next on my list for the challenge. I did grab from the giveaway shelf at work Balancing Act, a recent-ish Joanna Trollope that is set in Stoke, and I have a feeling that I'm going to end up reading that as brain candy when I can't face too much 1940s France.

Comments

[metaphortunate]

That is pretty great about the previous generation (or two, actually) exploring Tumblr, yes!

[legionseagle]

Given she explored Everest (she was the Times correspondent who brought the news of the first successful ascent of Everest down the mountain) it'd say something if Tumblr were too daunting (something not unexpected, either).

[liv]

Heh, I most certainly wouldn't have expected her to be daunted by Tumblr, but she could well not have heard of it, or perhaps not grasp the possibilities of the form.

Where does your icon come from, by the way? It looks slightly like a picture I've seen of an ancestor of mine who was the youngest of ten, mostly female, cricketing siblings in an era with fashion something like that, not that I'm very good at dating things by looking at clothes.

[legionseagle]

It's the Countess of Derby's XI from 1779 and the context is here

[liv]

Thank you! I am indeed terrible at judging eras by clothes, that's a hundred years earlier than the picture I'm thinking of. Though I had heard the thing about women inventing overarm bowling in order to be able to play in hooped skirts.

Re: Jan Morris - Military Service

[(Anonymous)]

PS. I forgot to sign.

Southernwood

Reposted anon comment

[liv]

You could also mention that [...] she experienced active army service in Italy at the end of World War II with the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers.

Re: Reposted anon comment

[liv]

It's not good manners to call someone by a name associated with their incorrectly assigned gender, so I've screened your comment and reposted it with just the interesting biographical fact about Morris.

Re: Reposted anon comment

[legionseagle]

Liv, I am extremely unimpressed by the above snide comment which I found in my inbox this evening.

Yes. I could have mentioned Jan Morris's Army service in Italy and elsewhere, but serving in various theatres of war was common to her generation (and was, for example, something my uncle did.) Being a member of the first successful Everest climbing expedition was something I thought was genuinely exceptional above and beyond the challenges her generation were required to experience.

Given I can't make a neutral/supportive comment about the professional career of a trans woman without mockery in this space, I'm bowing out now.

I enjoyed talking to you at Loncon but this social justice arseholier than thou crap I cannot take.

[liv]

I am most sincerely sorry for coming across as snide or an arsehole. I can see why you'd want to unsubscribe if I'm communicating so badly I gave you that impression.

I don't expect this to change your mind or anything, but just so you know: a relative of mine had seen your comments and was interested, and wanted to contribute more facts about Jan Morris. I don't think he was intending to be snide or mock you for not having mentioned that particular aspect of her career.

It also happened that he deadnamed her, not being very familiar with current etiquette; I therefore deleted the comment and reposted it, because I have quite a few friends who are going to be upset if not actively triggered by seeing a trans woman deadnamed here. Making that call possibly does make me a social justice arsehole, but it was in no way targeted at you, it was a comment on my relative's phrasing.

I am very very sorry for being snide, mocking or critical, however unintentionally.

[legionseagle]

I apologise myself; I was on edge because of the election and not thinking straight. I came to the thread after the initial comment had been deleted by you and had no way of knowing what it said or why you had deleted it.

However, the opening "you could mention" turned it from "here are interesting facts about Jan Morris" to "here are interesting facts about Jan Morris which you failed (or Failed) to mention". I mean I could mention that she got shortlisted for the Booker prize (and should have won) or I could mention that her son's a bilingual poet or I could mention that she's had a lifelong obsession with Admiral Jackie Fisher and all would be equally true. Being questioned as to why I hadn't mentioned her Army service in particular upset me. I'm sorry I overreacted and ascribed motives which probably weren't there. I am sick of the constant game of Gotcha! which seems to go on online with respect to social justice topics (see most recently, the baseless allegations being made about Kari Sperring and the Sad Puppies panel at Eastercon) but I appreciate that wasn't what happened here.