Review: “Bel Nemeton,” Jon Black

I met Jon Black in Denton, Texas while I was going to school, and I count Black a friend, though we haven’t seen each other or had a long face-to-face conversation in ages. He lives in Austin; I live in DFW. Where I was working on a Ph.D. in Shakespeare studies, Black earned a double B.A. in Political Science and History, worked for the State for a time, worked as a music journalist, as a ghostwriter, and I’m sure more. Black has always had a passion for history, for a vital engagement with world cultures on their own terms, for imagination, and for community. He has had the occasion and joy to travel far afield, and I’m certainly jealous of him in that regard.

I heard Black had written a short story for the After Avalon collection of short stories, and I acquired a copy on Kindle, but I didn’t get to it immediately. It was only after I was unable to sleep during the early morning of November 9, 2016 that I opened up “Bel Nemeton” and read the short story that inspired this new novel, Black’s first full-length foray.

“Bel Nemeton” was a blessing that night.

Accordingly, I took up the opportunity to get my hands on an advanced review copy of this novel. Black had expressed his keen interest in my opinions after the initial short story and at some point during the drafting process for Bel Nemeton, and as is my wont, I offered several opinions—at length—over Facebook Messenger.

Some Mild Spoilers Follow

Black Central Europe

Per the website, “Black Central Europe (BCE) is a network of scholars who promote the study of Black people in Central Europe’s past and present,” including a map project of central Europe pinning where different events took place. For me, I found the Sources page more immediately accessible and arresting, with the sources broken down along period lines–from 1000 CE and later.

Edit: and h/t to MedievalPOC

The Medieval’s Allure for Racism & Hatred

From S. J. Pearce’s post “BOTH SONS OF SPAIN”: MEDIEVAL JEWS AND MUSLIMS IN THE IMAGINED NATION:

I want to let you in on the dirty little secret of my field, Medieval Studies: The Middle Ages is incredibly attractive to white supremacists. For people whose vision of a backwards-looking, great world is one with white Christian men in positions of power and the rest of us put in our places, the Middle Ages is a fertile ground for fantasy, where it seems very easy, at least superficially, to ignore the integral role of an incredibly diverse population. There are legends like King Arthur, images like the Bayeaux Tapestries, and long histories of Crusading that, on the face of it, make the Middle Ages look very white and like a world very divided neatly into categories of “us” and “them.”

Pearce’s post includes her contribution to her department’s recent teach-in at NYU in response to rising “Islamophobic and anti-Semitic vandalism on campus.”

h/t to MedievalPOC on Tumblr

Age, Abuse, Fathers & Kids in Lear

Let me talk to you a bit about King Lear. Lear puts his daughters on the spot: consider how Lear seems to spontaneously ask his daughters, in birth order, to tell him who loves him best—with that daughter earning the most/best land for her dowry. Now, many productions choose to begin with Goneril and Regan as conniving, scheming, and Machiavellian. However, what if they’re put on the spot. Keep in mind how emotionally abusive Lear acts here and how bad his parenting must have been and how manipulative this is on behalf of Lear.

Race in Bronze Age & Medieval Britain

I believe I’ve pointed here and elsewhere to The National Archives’ exhibition on Asian and Black History in Britain, which is good for getting a grounding in how diverse Britain had been in the medieval and early modern periods. I have to give kudos to twitter user @medievalpoc who’s tagline is “People of Color in European Art History: Because you wouldn’t want to be historically inaccurate.” @medievalpoc is where I came across most of this information originally. Today, @medievalpoc pointed me (and others) to Dr. Caitlin Green of Cambridge. Dr. Green has been working on these same topics as well. I just came across a collection of posts she made on twitter, which you can see via storify via this post, focusing on Bronze Age Britain and into the medieval: she also has her blog here. Dr. Green points to several research articles on these topics.

The Post about Star Trek

It’s the 50^th Anniversary of Star Trek (or it was on September 8), and I felt I’d add my contribution to the occasion.

I first encountered Star Trek with The Original Series in its syndication on a local station back in the late 1970s right before I went into kindergarten. I loved it. I wanted to be Captain Kirk. I wanted to have my own Mr. Spock best friend. I had this one red shirt that was my Scotty Shirt. I remember forming a landing party at recess in kindergarten with my friend at the time, who got to be Spock, but we had to stop pretending our fingers were phasers. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, well, I had no idea what was going on, but a slew of Star Trek toys came out.

Imaginal Politics & Culture with Laurie Penny

A wonderful talk & Q&A session by Laurie Penny for re:publica 2016: “Laurie Penny: Change the Story, Change the World”:

 

Grad School, Texas Unis, UCLA, Gun Crime, and Mental Health

The Chronicle identifies the alleged killer at UCLA as a (former) Ph.D. student who graduated in 2013 but who apparently held a grudge against three professors at the institution relating to accusations of intellectual property theft. In the UCLA case, the motivation may be very specific to Sarkar. However, the Chronicle also points to likely rhetorical uses of the crimes, or if nothing else the rhetorical opportunities that will likely arise:

A Boy Named Humiliation

An old 2013 article came across my desktop today from Slate about Puritan naming conventions:

12 of the Cruelest Puritan Names (meant to remind children of the pain of the world)

1. Humiliation. Humiliation Hynde had two sons in the 1620s; he called them both Humiliation Hynde.
2. Fly-debate
3. No-merit. NoMerit Vynall was born in Warbleton in Sussex, a fount of beautiful names.
4. Helpless
5. Reformation
6. Abstinence
7. More-triale
8. Handmaid
9. Obedience
10. Forsaken
11. Sorry-for-sin. Sorry-for-sin Coupard was another resident of Warbleton.
12. Lament

See more over at Slate.

Asher Elbein: “Enough With the Canon”

This article from The Atlantic focuses on canon from the genre fiction perspective–comics, movies, etc.–but many of its points are just as applicable with the literary canon:

It’s true that all specialized subcultures, from sports to Star Trek, practice their own varieties of gatekeeping and abuse. But the elevation of corporatized canon to scripture in geek culture is a particular issue. Snyder’s appeal to “true canon” isn’t just one seen in comment threads and message boards. When Snyder or Abrams speak about canon, they speak with the weight of Warner Brothers and Disney behind them. Their canon is a fully top-down policy, one that empowers fans as enforcers and sells an endless array of branded special knowledge. The canon is true, and cannot be questioned. Its themes cannot be wrestled with. It cannot be criticized. It must be consumed in its entirety or not at all. And if official canon chokes out casual engagement and deep engagement with stories alike, then it’s best to simply throw it away.

What’s been largely lost over the past decade is the crucial point that these stories are imaginary—they were dreamed up by people, and can be changed, distilled, or subverted by anybody at the drop of a hat.

To be fair, many unis have been embracing a far more dynamic approach to considering canon, traditionally the domain of old, dead, white men. The academy has worked to problematize the canon, to open the canon, with varying degrees of success. Of course, pop culture is not particularly different in that “canon” has often been used to reinforce the perspectives of cishet male authority while marginalizing and excluding anything other than that.

EDIT: Also, if you want to connect the problems with “works with multiple creative teams” to the literary canon, any drama winds up being a creative collaboration (especially in Shakespeare’s time).