I suppose this is John Sutherland trying to be funny...

[tree_and_leaf]

... but I'm not sure where the joke's supposed to be.

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

This is the sort of article which I sense is calculated to inspire some sort of male fellow-feeling in me; I'm glad to say that I don't share it.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm relieved to hear it, although I'd have been very surprised if you did!

[ellid.livejournal.com]

This is utterly sickening, especially since there were female pilots serving for the Americans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Airforce_Service_Pilots), plus the fabled Night Witches (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches), or female combat pilots in the Russian military. The WASPS and the Night Witches have been well known for decades, and both groups had members die for their country.

Who is this Sutherland person, and why is he so ignorant? If he's written any books, I'd like to know so I can avoid them.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I had never heard of the Night Witches, so thank you for directing me to them.

[tree_and_leaf]

I didn't know about the Night Witches, so thank you for the very interesting link.

Sutherland's an English critic, and has written some quite amusing popular books on 'problems' in classic English literature ('Was Heathcliffe a murderer? etc). But he obviously doesn't know anything about the history of military aviation.

I suspect this is one of those 'tongue in cheek' pieces that actually reveal an awful lot more about the author than they would be willing to admit.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Britain also had female pilots during WWII - they weren't allowed to fly combat missions, but they flew goods deliveries, delivered planes from one airfield to another for the combat pilots and that kind of thing.

[tree_and_leaf]

And given how short the RAF was of combat pilots at some points in the war, J.S. should be damned grateful they did!

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. Goodness.

I am not sure whether he is supposed to be poking gentle fun at his own attitudes, but I am at a loss for words after reading this. I imagine it will provoke some debate...

Personally I've always been more concerned about being flown by a First Officer than by a female pilot. Can't help the thought "Oh my, they are letting Riker drive", but that is a whole new level of disturbia.

[tree_and_leaf]

Personally I've always been more concerned about being flown by a First Officer than by a female pilot. Can't help the thought "Oh my, they are letting Riker drive", but that is a whole new level of disturbia.

Sporfle. There are some advantages to having first been introduced to Star Trek via the original series, perhaps?

I think he thinks he's poking fun at himself, but I'm at a loss as to why he thought that they were... well, funny. It's a shame - I used to like him!

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Ha, ha, ha! Not.

[tree_and_leaf]

Quite so. As Eric Morcambe use to say, this boy's a fool.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

On the plus side, I don't follow literary prizes, and as I've never read any Kennedy would not otherwise have heard of the book which I have just ordered from Amazon. I don't think that was Sutherland's "real" intention, though.

[tree_and_leaf]

Good for you.

I haven't read much Kennedy, but what I have is very good, although it tends to the gloomy. She also used to have a very good column in the Grauniad.

[carlanime.livejournal.com]

So does Kennedy pull it off?

*eyeroll*

[tree_and_leaf]

Obviously this is really about Sutherland's sense of inferiority, as a critic, to the author, Kennedy, which manifests itself in misogynistic castration anxieties.

... well, he statred dragging phallic imagery into it!

[penguinity.livejournal.com]

Has he procreated already? Because if he hadn't, maybe we can talk about women and pilots enough that his whatdoyecallems are sterilized?

[tree_and_leaf]

No idea, but it's got to be worth a try!

[rivrea.livejournal.com]

I've only skimmed the first two sentences so far, but I hope that the ghost of Amelia Earheart (who wasn't a combat pilot, granted, but still...) haunts him until his testicles have indeed shrunken to the size of what his brain must be.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, indeed!

Although I don't particularly want to think about John Sutherland's balls (though his obsession with them was appropriate, given that the article was a load of 'round objects', to quote Jim Hacker).

[rustica.livejournal.com]

Well, the *book* sounds good. Perhaps this is a new reviewing technique, where the object of the review is guaranteed to sound fantastic compared with the quality of the review itself?

[tree_and_leaf]

I bet it's done Al Kennedy's sales figures good! Which is the only thing that can be said for it....

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Me and clanwilliam must have intimidated him more than we meant to.

[tree_and_leaf]

What on earth have you been up to? Although he probably deserved it....

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

No, he's quite nice in person, if rather doddery. He gave a speech at the Annual Lunch of the Licensing Executives Society at the Savoy in 2006, talking about transformative works. And he'd clearly got the wrong end of the stick about fanfic; he assumed it was all RPS. And as the two members of the 80-strong audience who weren't in a heap of gibbering horror at the mere thought of fanfic, clanwilliam and I grabbed some of the leftover wine and pinned him in a corner to enlighten him. At which he grasped the idea of fanfic with enthusiasm and when one of us referred to Jane Eyre fanfic as filling in the blanks, eg the wedding night, perpetrated the following to show he'd got the message: "Edward! No, over here!" "Can you give me a hand with my trousers?"

I suspect this latest post is intended as meta commentary on the US media reaction to Hilary Clinton's not-quite-crying-in-public, and some crucial linkage got left on the cutting room floor.

[tree_and_leaf]

That's a nice anecdote - and up till now I've always liked his stuff. He ought to like fanfic, as what he does in 'Is Heathcliff a murderer?' is quite close to certain kinds of fanfiction.

I think something has got missed out somewhere, but I'm not sure what...

[owl]

WHAT.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, that seems to be the most obvious reaction!

Your icon is oddly appropriate, given Tennant's ability to provide endless variations on the word 'What'!

[owl]

Did you see rose_and_lizard's drabble?


"What?" said the Doctor, in the sixty-fifth of the ninety-seven inflections of the word what he knew. They had been taught to him at the Time Academy. There were said to have been Time Lords who had mastered the full hundred and nineteen, though of course they were all dead now.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, genius!

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

I was trying briefly to think of subgenres of SF which really are completely male, and I couldn't; even space opera has Lois McMaster Bujold (although it's very *odd* space-opera!), and alternate history has Susanna Clarke.

It might be difficult to write convincingly for the other gender, but enough people do it (both ways round) that it doesn't seem to be a problem. The most generous reading I can put on his argument is that male/female writers writing in a female/male-dominated genre might write "unusual" works for that genre, but it's not even clear that that's a bad thing!

[tree_and_leaf]

Generally it's thought not to be, particularly by literary critics, so I'm not entirely sure what JS's problem is...

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

I guess if you really like the "core aspects" of a genre, then having people come in and write Out Of Genre stuff in them might be annoying ... but you could just not read/watch it :) (and classic space opera was just about dead and needed a change anyway).

I was about to say that I can't think of any comic fantasy long fiction written by women off the top of my head (unless Piers Anthony has something he wants to tell us about ...) but alas! Connie Wills and Diana Wynne Jones make a liar of me ...

[owl]

I would call Elizabeth Moon "space opera" as well. Cherryh is sometimes a little space-opera-ish.