Fight The Tropes!

 On Joanna Russ by Alec Pollak comes from The Paris Review, and although it dealw with LGBTQ+ themes, it is resonanted with me who is trying to figure out what he can write and should write about.

On Strike Against God was Russ’s attempt to speak the unspeakable and think the unthinkable, and she couldn’t do it alone. At Hacker’s urging, Russ decided instead on an ending that said, instead, “this is the beginning,” in which she addressed her readers directly, rallied and appealed to them, urged them to read, write, and live into reality that hopeful future that “really [hadn’t] happened” yet—urged them to do, in short, what Hacker and Russ were struggling to do themselves, in conversation with one another. If past and present models weren’t up to snuff—if neither “Great Literature” nor lesbian pulps were adequate for depicting, in fiction, queer life and desire—Russ would enlist her readers in “an appeal to the future,” positioning her novel as a jumping-off point for an as-of-yet unthought and unspoken world of possibility—as, in her words, “a kind of prayer.” Any meaningful, future-oriented appeal for change, in life or in literature, must involve other people, Russ concluded, and she told her readers so.  

After all, everyone is queer and so is every life - if we are alive.

 An anthem for those wishing to be themselves and for those artists wanting to make their art speak for themselves:

sch 6/24