Georgette Heyer and The Grand Sophy
So Georgette Heyer, it seems, is no longer an antisemite.
Of course that’s ridiculous. Georgette Heyer is exactly as antisemitic as she ever was–at least, her books are.
In The Grand Sophy (which happens to be the only Heyer book I’ve read; it was enjoyable) the moneylender is no longer swarthy, greasy, and named Goldhanger. He’s now just named Grimpstone. He still has an ingratiating leer, for whatever that’s worth.
I have mixed feelings about this. If these changes, made with the permission of her estate, mean that a new reader can float through the book without getting smacked in the face by a truly ugly, damaging, and hurtful stereotype, that seems to be a net good for society.
And yet….
When Mary Bly, a novelist and scholar, wrote an introduction to the book explaining the changes and why they’d been made, the publisher balked. Bly withdrew from the project, along with her introduction. That does bother me.
To make the changes–maybe.
To refuse to discuss or acknowledge the changes–a problem.
We gain something when hurtful stereotypes are removed. We lose something when we refuse to–or are not allowed to–acknowledge that Georgette Heyer might have been a talented writer who portrayed smart, independent women (for the time period and genre in which she wrote) and a bigot at the same time.
We lose the ability to think about books and writers and ourselves with nuance. Maybe we begin to think that the only people who harbor bias are villains as one-dimensional as Goldhanger/Grimpstone–not lively writers of light fiction who gave a lot of pleasure to the world. Not people we admire. Not people who might look a bit like us.
Read MoreToday in Maine
Today I was supposed to be talking about books and about writing nonfiction at a school in Waterville, Maine. It’s about an hour away from my home in Portland.
I’m not speaking there because–well. You know why I’m not speaking there. I can’t quite bear to articulate why schools across Maine are closed for the second day in a row.
I wish I could say I’m shocked. Astonished. Enraged. I wish I could feel those things. Instead, what fills my mind is mostly a profound, enveloping weariness, and this poem. It’s called “On Getting out of Vietnam.”
Theseus, if he did destroy the Minotaur
(It’s hard to say, that may have been myth),
Was careful not to close the labyrinth.
So After kept on looking like Before:
Back home in Athens still the elders sent
Their quota of kids to Knossos, confident
they would find something to die of, and for.
I learned this by heart when I was a teenager in a summer writing program. Howard Nemerov, the author, was a guest speaker, a visiting writer. Which is what I’m supposed to be today, but I can’t. Because today’s After looks so much like Before.
Wood Frog
I’ve been preparing a presentation for a school about nonfiction writing, based on Save the…Frogs! and it occurred to me that I have not yet posted about the wood frog.
Such a simple name, such an unassuming appearance–but this frog is amazing. It lives north of the Arctic circle and in the winter it freezes. It’s a frog-shaped lump of ice. In the spring it thaws out and hops back to a perfectly normal form of life.
How can it survive being frozen? Turns out one reason freezing is so deadly is that ice expands. Freezing a living being means that when water inside the cells freezes, it ruptures the cell’s membranes.
But the wood frog can replace most of its internal water with glucose. Glucose does not expand when frozen. So the frog freezes, thaws, and lives.
Frogs really are incredible.
A Sad Week
It’s hard to post today; when I lift my head from the work I’m doing, I’m overwhelmed with sadness and fear and a sense of the worst moments of our history repeating in front of our eyes.
I’m grateful in this moment for the books I read as I was growing up and in my adulthood that helped open my eyes and heart. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye. And many more. If more of us read books like this, would the world be better, kinder, safer? I hope so.
Banned Books Week
Alyssa Roseberg and Greg Sargent have an excellent piece in the Washington Post called “It’s Banned Books Week. Here’s How To Fight for Libraries.”
Read it.
One huge takeaway–those who want books banned are a vocal but tiny minority. Sixty percent of all book challenges in the US in 2020-2021 were filed by 11 people.
Eleven people. Fewer than a dozen. Eleven people in a country of 335 million deciding who should can have access to Stamped and George and Genderqueer and The Hill We Climb and It’s Perfectly Normal. Eleven people who think they get to decide not what they are going to read, but what we all should get to read.
Folks, that is not majority rule. That is not democracy. That is not freedom of speech, knowledge, or information.
That is not right.
Read MoreVegetable Lambs
Another delightful creature to be featured in The Griffin’s Boy: the vegetable lamb. According to legend, these lambs grew on stalks, rather like fruits, but would die if plucked–or starve if they grazed alway all the foliage in reach.
Either way, a short and difficult life for the poor little thing. Its wool was said to be exceptionally fine.
It’s possible the vegetable lamb is based on the cotton plant–which does, to be fair, produce a wooly substance that can be made into a very nice fabric.
New Book Deal!
I’m so happy to report that the book I’ve posted about a few times–full of delightful legendary creatures–will become a reality! My agent and editor are hashing out the details, but The Griffin’s Boy will be hitting the shelves in…oh…two years or so, if everything stays on track. (I know, the dizzying pace of modern publishing has you breathless.)
As well as the amphisbaena and wyvern and many others (including the ever-so-cute vegetable lambs and ferocious tiger lilies), it will feature, of course, a griffin. Can’t wait!
Sarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Thomson focuses on newfound connection, magic, and suspense to conjure a fast-paced, heartwarming mystery. Thomson’s world is populated by resourceful protagonists, fanciful creatures, and quirky supporting characters.”
—Publishers Weekly