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Songmaster (Orson Scott Card, reread)
3+/5. Um. Yeah. My parents brought me a bunch of books from my bookshelf at their house last year, and this was one of them. It’s my favorite of Card’s early work, for what are probably obvious reasons. (Songs! Singing! A boarding school where they teach singing!)
This book made me really sad, but not (just) because of the elegiac nature of the book itself; it reminded me that Card used to be able to write, and write really well. It’s clearly work where he’s still struggling to find his feet as a novelist — this was first a novella that got expanded to novel form, and the seams are pretty clear. For example, there’s a whole huge plot thread that is introduced for shock value (it was the twist ending of the novella) and that then dangles helplessly in the wind, never actually going anywhere or (as far as I can tell) being referred to again. But much of the writing is really excellent, and it made me sad for the writer he used to be but isn’t anymore, a writer who could do subtlety and subtext and characters who weren’t just authorial voices and characters whom you loved even when they did terrible things. Oh Card, I miss you.
Now for the elephant in the room.
This is Card’s only book where the protagonist is queer (it’s not entirely clear whether he’s gay or bisexual, probably the latter), and also the only one where we see a mutually loving and respectful same-sex relationship on-screen. Interestingly, this was one of three authors I read as a kid (the others being L’Engle’s House Like a Lotus — and![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ollipop, I haven’t forgotten I owe you a post on L’Engle, and I am working on that — and Mercedes Lackey’s Arrows trilogy) that taught me that queer sexualities were perfectly normal and homophobia is wrong, which let me tell you, was not a message I was getting from real life (hello, small city in the South, conservative Korean parents, and church!)
Because of this book in particular, I’ve always given Card a lot of leeway when it comes to people ragging on him because of his stance on gay marriage. (The other reason I give him a lot of leeway is that, well, it’s really hard to explain to people who aren’t inside it what it’s like to be inside of Mormonism. I’m not really inside it in the way that Card is, either; it’s easy for me to be in favor of gay marriage, or whatever, because of that.) Because Card clearly has a lot of empathy and sympathy for Ansset, the protagonist.
However.
I think I’ve seen people who were disturbed that the gay guy (Ansset’s lover Josef) gets tortured and later commits suicide. This on the surface I’m actually fine with, because if you’ve read any Card at all, you can see that the characters he loves are the ones who get the most tortured angst (and in some cases physical torture). One character has his body literally fall apart and crumble away. Another character grows monstrously until he pretty much can’t move anymore. There’s even a short story where the protagonist — who is portrayed as misguided but fundamentally well-meaning — gets all his body parts cut off. Yeah, Card is all about torturing his protagonists. I’m cool with that.
So here’s the thing, though. This is the only Card book, as I’ve said, with a mutually loving same-sex relationship. What happens to them? One of them is rendered permanently sterile and can’t ever have sex again. The other has his genitals cut off. Now, there are reasons for this in terms of culture (the book-culture is severely homophobic) and plot (it had to be over-the-top for the next scenes to happen, and the sterility/sex thing had a plot reason as well), but… the thing is, this was back in the days when Card actually did subtext, when he knew how to do subtext. And I wouldn’t have seen this five years ago, but on this reading, and having read other things Card has to say on the subject, I find it really hard to believe that the subtextual imagery of homosexual sex being sterile and cutting oneself off from the human race isn’t intentional.
(I find Card’s take on this, which I’ve seen elsewhere, to be both objectionable and inconsistent, even within Mormonism itself. I have Mormon friends who are actually, physically sterile. Have they cut themselves off from the human race? What about those Mormons who never find a partner? Are they cut off? Well, then, can you shut up now? I don’t particularly agree with the kids-need-a-mom-and-dad schtick that I normally get at church, but at least it is marginally more consistent within the religion itself — because in the divided-spheres culture/theology of Mormonism it actually does kind of make sense that it’s better to have both a female and male parent -- than Card’s illogic.)
This subtext is contradicted at the end, of course, where Ansset does, indeed, give of himself to the entire galaxy in a way that doesn’t involve having biological children. (Which is another of Card’s Big Themes, the power of art to contribute to society. See also “Unaccompanied Sonata” and possibly parts of Folk of the Fringe.) So now I’m not really sure what to think. Was Card aware that he contradicted his own subtext within the book? (He had to be, right? I mean, MAJOR THEMES here.) Did he therefore not intend one of them? Was he trying to make a point that things can be complicated and contradictory? It’s certainly true that he himself is a contradiction in terms — a man who has written a gay protagonist, who (I was surprised to find) has at least one very close queer friend (see also Society’s Child, Janet Ian’s autobiography), and who speaks out quite a lot against gay marriage.
tl;dr : I like this book very much, and Also Music Yay, and Big Severe Issues, and Confusing Issues, and I don’t even know what to think about it.
This book made me really sad, but not (just) because of the elegiac nature of the book itself; it reminded me that Card used to be able to write, and write really well. It’s clearly work where he’s still struggling to find his feet as a novelist — this was first a novella that got expanded to novel form, and the seams are pretty clear. For example, there’s a whole huge plot thread that is introduced for shock value (it was the twist ending of the novella) and that then dangles helplessly in the wind, never actually going anywhere or (as far as I can tell) being referred to again. But much of the writing is really excellent, and it made me sad for the writer he used to be but isn’t anymore, a writer who could do subtlety and subtext and characters who weren’t just authorial voices and characters whom you loved even when they did terrible things. Oh Card, I miss you.
Now for the elephant in the room.
This is Card’s only book where the protagonist is queer (it’s not entirely clear whether he’s gay or bisexual, probably the latter), and also the only one where we see a mutually loving and respectful same-sex relationship on-screen. Interestingly, this was one of three authors I read as a kid (the others being L’Engle’s House Like a Lotus — and
ollipop, I haven’t forgotten I owe you a post on L’Engle, and I am working on that — and Mercedes Lackey’s Arrows trilogy) that taught me that queer sexualities were perfectly normal and homophobia is wrong, which let me tell you, was not a message I was getting from real life (hello, small city in the South, conservative Korean parents, and church!)Because of this book in particular, I’ve always given Card a lot of leeway when it comes to people ragging on him because of his stance on gay marriage. (The other reason I give him a lot of leeway is that, well, it’s really hard to explain to people who aren’t inside it what it’s like to be inside of Mormonism. I’m not really inside it in the way that Card is, either; it’s easy for me to be in favor of gay marriage, or whatever, because of that.) Because Card clearly has a lot of empathy and sympathy for Ansset, the protagonist.
However.
I think I’ve seen people who were disturbed that the gay guy (Ansset’s lover Josef) gets tortured and later commits suicide. This on the surface I’m actually fine with, because if you’ve read any Card at all, you can see that the characters he loves are the ones who get the most tortured angst (and in some cases physical torture). One character has his body literally fall apart and crumble away. Another character grows monstrously until he pretty much can’t move anymore. There’s even a short story where the protagonist — who is portrayed as misguided but fundamentally well-meaning — gets all his body parts cut off. Yeah, Card is all about torturing his protagonists. I’m cool with that.
So here’s the thing, though. This is the only Card book, as I’ve said, with a mutually loving same-sex relationship. What happens to them? One of them is rendered permanently sterile and can’t ever have sex again. The other has his genitals cut off. Now, there are reasons for this in terms of culture (the book-culture is severely homophobic) and plot (it had to be over-the-top for the next scenes to happen, and the sterility/sex thing had a plot reason as well), but… the thing is, this was back in the days when Card actually did subtext, when he knew how to do subtext. And I wouldn’t have seen this five years ago, but on this reading, and having read other things Card has to say on the subject, I find it really hard to believe that the subtextual imagery of homosexual sex being sterile and cutting oneself off from the human race isn’t intentional.
(I find Card’s take on this, which I’ve seen elsewhere, to be both objectionable and inconsistent, even within Mormonism itself. I have Mormon friends who are actually, physically sterile. Have they cut themselves off from the human race? What about those Mormons who never find a partner? Are they cut off? Well, then, can you shut up now? I don’t particularly agree with the kids-need-a-mom-and-dad schtick that I normally get at church, but at least it is marginally more consistent within the religion itself — because in the divided-spheres culture/theology of Mormonism it actually does kind of make sense that it’s better to have both a female and male parent -- than Card’s illogic.)
This subtext is contradicted at the end, of course, where Ansset does, indeed, give of himself to the entire galaxy in a way that doesn’t involve having biological children. (Which is another of Card’s Big Themes, the power of art to contribute to society. See also “Unaccompanied Sonata” and possibly parts of Folk of the Fringe.) So now I’m not really sure what to think. Was Card aware that he contradicted his own subtext within the book? (He had to be, right? I mean, MAJOR THEMES here.) Did he therefore not intend one of them? Was he trying to make a point that things can be complicated and contradictory? It’s certainly true that he himself is a contradiction in terms — a man who has written a gay protagonist, who (I was surprised to find) has at least one very close queer friend (see also Society’s Child, Janet Ian’s autobiography), and who speaks out quite a lot against gay marriage.
tl;dr : I like this book very much, and Also Music Yay, and Big Severe Issues, and Confusing Issues, and I don’t even know what to think about it.