I feel the need to explain myself. I will make clear why later.
I believe that a major marker of the move from boyhood to adulthood for a heterosexual man is when they grow out of their “means to and end” thinking about women. It’s a theme that comes up in my writing time and time again and will continue to do so. I can think of two short stories I’ve written where this maturing process has a role to play, and most prominently this growing up provides the backbone of Jack Halloway’s emotional arc in Aetna Adrift and continues to be the backbone of his arc in The Far Bank of the Rubicon.
But when we start Aetna Jack is a misogynistic douchecanoe living in an unsustainable sexual fantasy. He’s a player, and he’s forty. (It’s a pretty long run for a player, but not so long when you consider that in the Pax Imperium universe people live to between 120 and 130, with exceptions living to 180 or more.) Jack evaluates women—all women—based upon their ability to make Jack happy. So a woman like his assistant Molly is a valuable part of the team at work because she does her job well, and in Jack’s mind it doesn’t hurt that she’s pleasant to look at, but that is as far as his thinking goes. It never occurs to Jack that Molly is a person like him with fears and desires of her own. Likewise, Anna is for Jack a confusing intrusion, a fly in the ointment of his invulnerability. He cares, although at the beginning I don’t believe Jack could articulate even that simple thought. He only knows that he likes sex better with her than he does with anyone else.
No woman dares directly challenge Jack’s point of view on the world until Chapter 5, and that challenge comes from a married woman who has a post birth mother’s body that Jack doesn’t find pleasing. And so, Jack dismisses her right from the start and sees her challenge as some kind of stress based hysteria, a position that her husband seems to support. (The Unity Corporation is a misogynistic world. That’s the point.)
All of this can combine to make the opening chapters of Aetna Adrift a very difficult read for some women. More difficult still, I wrote Aetna Adrift in close third person. I think that close third is the point of view that asks the reader to identify most closely with the point of view character.
When I read first person point of view, I can always say to myself, “That’s not me. I don’t think that way.” Also, the character is telling you a story about something that happened in the past, and they have their own point of view on that story. If the character is growing up from their misogyny that will be clear in how they tell the story. This is true in my story Eighty-Three in which the narrator tells you that he is embarrassed by his past behavior right at the beginning. This makes his journey a much easier read because we know the outcome from the start. The tension in the story lies elsewhere. I give the readers in Aetna no such luxuries.
When a reader reads a book in close third person, they experience a world in which the narrator’s voice is not quite the same as the point of view character, but it’s not quite different either. The effect is to demand that the reader identify more closely with the point of view character than either third person omniscient or in first person, both of which have distinct narrative voices. In Aetna, I ask the reader to ride along with Jack as he stumbles backward toward intimacy and love. And even at the end of the book, I wasn’t willing to tie it all up in a bow. Jack may have learned to love one woman, but as the very last scene makes clear, he’s still wrestling with seeing all women as people, and as the beginning of Far Bank makes clear, he still has a lot of work to do to learn what it means to love and support a person as an individual.
For some women being asked to identify with Jack is a bridge—or maybe several bridges—too far, and I want to say I understand. It’s okay. No one has to like Jack. Considering what so many women have to live through, it’s understandable that they won’t want to have the requisite compassion to read Jack. That’s just fine.
But I wrote it in close third on purpose. I wanted men to have to challenge their presuppositions about women. Early on I got a review back from a writer friend who said, “So are you arguing that all casual sex is an act of manipulation?” Maybe? All is a strong word, but I think manipulation is a very strong component of most if not all casual encounters. I would say this, I believe that the seduction leading to casual sex is often an act of socially acceptable manipulation. (If it’s not manipulation, why the alcohol to impair judgment?) In another instance, I had another guy tell me I made him really angry when Anna didn’t just go along with Jack’s wishes at the beginning of the second book. That made my day then and still makes me smile today. If I can challenge heterosexual guys to think a little, to look around them and see people as more than a means to an end—even a caring good end—then I will have accomplished one of my goals for Aetna.
Aetna Adrift got a one star review on Amazon this week and I’m okay with that. I don’t really tend to freak out about critical reviews. I actually tend to find them useful. But this particular type of review has happened twice with Aetna. (The first time was on a blog which has since been removed from the internet.) This particular review insinuates that the book revels in misogynistic fantasy and by implication that I do as well. It doesn’t. I don’t. It sets up an exaggerated misogynistic dystopia in order to undermine it. It seeks to end misogyny not support it.
Again, do I have compassion for someone who reads my book in that way? Yes, wholehearted and unreserved. A reader’s experience is their own, and it’s painful to ask women to identify with a misogynist who’s acting out. That alone wouldn’t lead me here to explain myself, but when the implication of the review misreads me as a person, that stings…enough that I haven’t slept well the last couple of nights. When that review is now ranked as the most helpful review on Amazon, that stings even more because it will affect sales going forward. When it’s clear that a reviewer couldn’t finish the book and still felt qualified to comment, it makes me feel powerless, as if my personal reputation is in the hands of another.
All writers, and artists, have to learn the skill of resilience, and all of them are misread at one point or another. This isn’t a career ender. It’s just another stop along the way. But it does feel necessary to set the record straight, at least here.
BY THE WAY, IF ANYONE WHO READS THIS GOES OUT AND IN ANY WAY HARASSES THE PERSON WHO WROTE THE REVIEW, I WILL PERSONALLY BECOME THEIR FIERCEST ENEMY. TO DO SO WOULD GO DIRECTLY AGAINST THE COMPASSION AETNA ADRIFT EXISTS TO CREATE. THE WHOLE POINT IS FOR HETERO MEN TO LEARN TO LISTEN TO WOMEN, TO SEE THEM AS PEOPLE, AND TO UNDERSTAND THE HORRIFIC THINGS A MISOGYNISTIC CULTURE FORCES THEM TO DO. IF YOU’RE NOT ON BOARD WITH THAT, MOVE ALONG AND FIND ANOTHER AUTHOR. I’M NOT YOUR HUCKLEBERRY.
(Whew! I feel better. Maybe I will sleep well tonight.)