“not open to a retrofuturist reading”
by Sunita
Is my new tagline.
It’s always the reader’s failing, never the book’s, never the author’s inability to successfully convert intention into practice.
But you knew that, right?
At least I have been absolved of a more general closed-mindedness toward queer narratives in romance. But that’s probably because I’m not Christian. Christians, beware: if you critique a text with a queer narrative, it will be assumed it is because of your conservative belief system.
This is why I don’t blog about substantive issues anymore. Apparently I should also be careful where and how I comment, because even academic articles (purportedly peer-reviewed, no less) will feature cherry-picked sentences in order to make a point while ignoring the larger commenting context that undermines that point.
ReaderWriterVille 
I…do not even understand that phrase. And I feel like if I type “retrofuturist” into the search box, I’ll be sorry.
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It’s not as bad as it sounds! But it was a weird (especially in context) way to interpret a reader’s experience with a book. Unconvinced, sure. But “not open” suggests closedmindedness, which is probably not something you should say about someone without solid evidence.
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I’m missing the context for this post, but just want to say I think it is a shame that bloggers are being silenced by authors and/or their fans.
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It was a specialized venue so probably not a lot of people saw it and I don’t want to beat up on the author of the piece here (the quote was part of a much larger argument). It just fed into something that I’ve been frustrated by more generally, i.e., taking a partial comment and attributing way more than is warranted (especially given the larger context of the quoted fragment).
It has become hard to talk about so many things online now without having someone swoop in and fixate on a part that may or may not be representative of the whole, or having a subset of people take over the comments. There are several non-book topics I’ve chosen not to blog about because I don’t want to attract certain zealots. I just don’t care enough about being a public writer to make it worthwhile. I think the pendulum will eventually swing back to a more reasonable place, but right now it’s not good.
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I hope you’re right about the pendulum. Social media seems polarized these days, and that doesn’t leave as much room for thoughtful conversation and listening.
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