Dresden File #1 - in which lovable chauvinists aren't.
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mothwingI work long hours every day and when I leave school I just want to think of nothing, do nothing, and flop down on a seat in the bus with a really uncomplicated book. However, its getting harder and harder to find something suitable because I'm too impatient to enjoy fastfood books.
It wasn't always like that. I grew up in a family that loved all books equally. I think all of us at some point enjoyed their fair share of pulp novels or "magazine novels", as Bastei Lübbe, the publisher printing most of them, calls them. My grandfather in particular devoured the western series they put out, I went through a very long phase of reading pulp crime stories. They were easy to read, I didn't mind reading them if I had time to waste, and I didn't really think much about them and forgot them when I was done. The stories were always the same, the heroes likewise, but they weren't really there to garner our sympathy or interest, they were there to move the plot around.
So far, the Dresden Files book I'm reading and its hero remind me strongly of the heroes of these things - problematic, forgettable, and not really meant to be empathised with. I think that this in some part intentional, but maybe it's just me. I can't read about a PI and not think immediately about chauvinistic film noire detectives and Humphrey Bogart and Jerry Cotton. Still, this is not set in the early twentieth century, and it wasn't written back then, and even as a novel from that time I'd most likely have very little patience with it.
I've been recommended the series before by people who said that the female characters were incredibly good, and so far, I can't see any of that.Of course we're in PI territory and femme fatale's are rampant, but do they really need to be quite that rampant? Butcher's female characters are all beautiful and most of them are really flirtatious, fine. They are all described in terms of their physical shape (usually beautiful and sexy, but flirtatiously playing hard-to get) first and character second, if that is mentioned at all and does not merely boil down to an analysis of their sexual availability for the main character.
And female sexuality is a studied distraction, it's unhealthy, self-loathing-inducing, a weapon women use to addle the hero's mind. Sex workers in particular seem to be always on the job and always alluring. There are no female characters at all so far that are not sexualised by the main character anywhere, and while I've seen people argue that the main character's chauvinism is meant to be shown as wrong and meant to cost him, I don't see it costing anyone but the female characters that populate the book and usually end up with problems caused directly or indirectly by him or dead.
The main character says he cares, but as far as I can see he only ever says that, his actions so far don't convince me. So, why bother? I'm guessing that we're meant to believe that he is a lovable chauvinist, and there is no evidence of that. Again I saw reviews saying that "it does get better", but I don't understand how you must be built as a reader to slog through several instalments of this series before there is hope. It's well written enough to keep my attention, but I can't just read this on the bus after a long day at work, it just me off too much to focus on the story and just wears me down.
So, to reiterate the point of this gripe: I like my escapist fantasy literature frustration-free and easier to find.
It wasn't always like that. I grew up in a family that loved all books equally. I think all of us at some point enjoyed their fair share of pulp novels or "magazine novels", as Bastei Lübbe, the publisher printing most of them, calls them. My grandfather in particular devoured the western series they put out, I went through a very long phase of reading pulp crime stories. They were easy to read, I didn't mind reading them if I had time to waste, and I didn't really think much about them and forgot them when I was done. The stories were always the same, the heroes likewise, but they weren't really there to garner our sympathy or interest, they were there to move the plot around.
So far, the Dresden Files book I'm reading and its hero remind me strongly of the heroes of these things - problematic, forgettable, and not really meant to be empathised with. I think that this in some part intentional, but maybe it's just me. I can't read about a PI and not think immediately about chauvinistic film noire detectives and Humphrey Bogart and Jerry Cotton. Still, this is not set in the early twentieth century, and it wasn't written back then, and even as a novel from that time I'd most likely have very little patience with it.
I've been recommended the series before by people who said that the female characters were incredibly good, and so far, I can't see any of that.Of course we're in PI territory and femme fatale's are rampant, but do they really need to be quite that rampant? Butcher's female characters are all beautiful and most of them are really flirtatious, fine. They are all described in terms of their physical shape (usually beautiful and sexy, but flirtatiously playing hard-to get) first and character second, if that is mentioned at all and does not merely boil down to an analysis of their sexual availability for the main character.
And female sexuality is a studied distraction, it's unhealthy, self-loathing-inducing, a weapon women use to addle the hero's mind. Sex workers in particular seem to be always on the job and always alluring. There are no female characters at all so far that are not sexualised by the main character anywhere, and while I've seen people argue that the main character's chauvinism is meant to be shown as wrong and meant to cost him, I don't see it costing anyone but the female characters that populate the book and usually end up with problems caused directly or indirectly by him or dead.
The main character says he cares, but as far as I can see he only ever says that, his actions so far don't convince me. So, why bother? I'm guessing that we're meant to believe that he is a lovable chauvinist, and there is no evidence of that. Again I saw reviews saying that "it does get better", but I don't understand how you must be built as a reader to slog through several instalments of this series before there is hope. It's well written enough to keep my attention, but I can't just read this on the bus after a long day at work, it just me off too much to focus on the story and just wears me down.
So, to reiterate the point of this gripe: I like my escapist fantasy literature frustration-free and easier to find.
