Spin

[droqen]

Regarding Robert Charles Wilson's
"Spin"

[droqen]

I enjoyed the first bit of Spin but it has suddenly become quite tiresome, lacking in poetry. I'm going to keep reading but it occurs to me that I am reading for the plot and not the people. That's a terrible reason to read a book.

[droqen]

I should have seen the signs when I read The Fields of Abraham... there was something about it that nagged at me from the corner of my mind. Something about the mechanisms overriding the human emotion, the feeling. There is feeling there, but it is so easily discarded, tossed aside. I almost get this feeling that it is there only perfunctorily.

It is well-written, well conceived emotion. But I don't feel it.

[droqen]

There's something else. Or maybe it's the same thing: I've noticed a real adherence to particular gender roles, expectations, preconceptions, stereotypes. All of the main characters in Spin and The Fields of Abraham... who are they?

E.D., Jason, Tyler, The bookstore owner, The chess-playing kid: Male characters, problem-solvers, schemers
Diane, Carol, Tyler's mother, The chess-playing kid's siter: Female characters, burdened or in touch with emotion

These words don't capture it well, but it's upsetting to me, seeing it, seeing these people categorically squeezed into their boxes. I don't blame Wilson for having a particular perspective. I think it's a common perspective. But it's... disappointing. Whether it's reflective of the author's limited ability to perceive more depth in people than these sterotypes or a genuinely expressed pattern of reality that reflects real people's own inability to perceive more depth in themselves than these stereotypes...

I find it easy to meet and talk to people who effortlessly, in a single breath, break out of the boxes Wilson has so far been adhering to. Damn, the science fiction plot is cool, but the human element leaves something to be desired. That part fills me with hollowness.

[droqen]

Page 62: Yoko Ono referenced as if the only possible referent to her was her Judas-like reputation for breaking up the Beatles. When was this novel written? 2005... 2005... hmm. I think The Nature of Order was written in 2005. Ugh. Give me back Drowning Practice. Give me some good characters I can relate to in their entirety, not these flat people, confined to their boxes. Big impressive shiny boxes, but confined anyway. Maybe I'm being unfair, I don't know, but... this is the best I can do to describe what I'm feeling. The feeling is getting worse, not better. The only way out is through, let's go

[droqen]

Tyler's mom dies and we're treated to a most basic description of people having or not having emotion... No discussion or exploration of the emotions themselves or the lacks thereof... The emotion is so distant. I don't know. Explore it or why include it at all? The descriptions... ... hmm

[droqen]

I'm going to finish this book, but I don't like the characters. And I don't mean that I dislike them as people, but more that I don't believe that as people they have been done justice here. I don't believe in them. I don't believe they've been loved, and they deserve more. I don't like the way these characters are written, are used.

[droqen]

Man, I'm grouchy. What's my problem? Still identifying things I don't like—there are lots I do, of course.

P212

". . . did Wun ever discuss that with you? I mean, in the time before—"

"I know. Yes, he did, a little."

This has happened a few times that I can remember; Wilson's blatant exclusion of detail for what feels like plot/mystery purposes? It's really not to my liking. It's bait. And why?

The other thing is the transparent "oh character X is explaining thing Y to character Z." As interesting as the concepts might be, the delivery leaves a lot to be desired. I think the worst part is that the characters don't matter in these moments. At all. See the previous message about the love I don't feel.

They're just vehicles for exposition, vehicles for plot. It's sad.

[droqen]

A speculative (or not) science lesson through the mouths of whichever character happens to be handy.

I do like ideas, but I don't like people being styled as, or styling themselves as, some mouthpiece of fact. Hmm.

[droqen]

The other thing Wilson does that serves as a sort of tease is he drops the past tense and says things from a storyteller's as yet undefined present. "It's probably still there." (231)

It irks me. And if I catch myself doing it, it's a habit I want to break

[droqen]

I've returned the book to the library so I can't quote it but omg there are multiple moments that bother me where Tyler (via Wilson -- or Wilson via Tyler?) talks about hidden signals, or hidden messages, or undercurrents, to what people are saying... I don't know, it rubbed me the wrong way, maybe I'm just blind to these implications and have written them out of my perceptual life but it reminds me of talking about the 'purpose' or 'function' of a system, it's so dumbly prescriptive and author-is-alive interpretation heavy, as if when someone says something and later you discover that they meant something else that the reason was they had some secret message that you couldn't encode. No, FUCK no, that's not how it works at all, people just sometimes say what they don't totally believe in the moment and then we later may discover this incorrectness in retrospect, and we may project interpretations, but that's all these are. Interpretations.

There are undercurrents, we are all full of more than we can ever be aware of, but to simplify that down to "real message, hidden indecipherable message" is dumb as shit.

[droqen]

I'm sure it's just semantic on my part. There are indecipherable actions and words, of course. It's the idea that some interpretation would be the correct one that bothers me. There is no such thing as correct,

[droqen]

Emotional cowardice or dishonesty. There is some resignation to unknowability that I find annoying too. Tyler, Wilson, tell us what you think it means. You must have an interpretation. Maybe it's a crappy one, but anything is better than "hmm this person's actions mean something but I'm going to pretend I have no guess as to what". I want to know your wrong guess. What's the point of being inside the head of someone if he won't tell us, or if he won't tell himself, what he really thinks?

[droqen]

What he really feels?

[droqen]

Roger smiled, a little condescendingly, I thought, but I was already wondering what he meant to Robin, or Robin to him.

Strangely, this was the last straw on my Wilson journey. It's hard to describe the distaste I feel. The human parts of Wilson's work make me feel such a discomfort with uncomfortableness and overthinking emotion. It's something I can actually relate to, but his portrayal — honest and human though it may be — makes me feel such a visceral rejection. What does this say about me? I don't know yet.