Diary of an Autodidact

Monday, April 20, 2026

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

Another long camping trip, another Terry Pratchett audiobook. A tradition since 2015! We have listened to quite a few of them over the years. The complete list is at the end of this post, and you can also find links in the various indexes on this site.

I love these old 1980s covers. So over-the-top.

Pyramids is the first in the “Ancient Civilizations” series, which consists of this novel, Small Gods - which is one of the best books Pratchett ever wrote - and a short story, “Death and What Comes Next.” Again, Small Gods is a brilliant, fantastic, perceptive book, and one that I think everyone should read.

Pyramids came first by a few years, and shows some of the strains of thought that Pratchett would develop far more in Small Gods, from his perceptive critiques of religion and philosophy to his ideas about the possible afterlives. As such, it is as entertaining as a Discworld book should be, and thought-provoking like all of Pratchett’s books, but perhaps not as jaw-droppingly amazing as the sequel would be. It does, however, seem relevant on multiple points today, including the ludicrousness of “preemptive” war.

As the title suggests, the book is set in the Discworld equivalent of Ancient Egypt, the ludicrously punny Djelibeybi. It too is dependent on a flooding river, and stands between two other larger countries as a buffer.

It also has a panoply of gods, who, because this is Discworld, actually exist (so long as someone believes in them), but are best kept out of everyday life, because they just muck everything up.

The hero of the story is Teppic (short for Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King), a young man coming of age. And yes, that absurd series of titles is played to great humorous effect in the book.

Not all is well in Djelibeybi. The building of pyramids is a very expensive endeavor, and it has bankrupted the kingdom.

“The only curse they could afford to put on a tomb these days was “Bugger Off.””

So, Teppic is sent off to learn a trade. His maternal uncle, Vert, convinces the royal parents to send him to train as an assassin - Discworld assassins have their own guild and university program - like his uncle.

Teppic actually finds all of this a lot more fun than sitting around Djelibeybi as a royal heir.

But, problems find him in Ankh-Morpork too. His dad, who occasionally imagines himself as a seagull, has an episode in which he attempts to fly like one, with predictable gravitational results, and Teppic finds he has a kingdom to rule.

It does not go well. The high priest, Dios, who is older than anyone can remember, believes in tradition. Which includes the tradition that Dios is the one who actually rules the country.

Let’s see, what else happens in this book that I can reveal without too many spoilers?

Oh yes. It seems pyramids are actually spacetime devices that have to occasionally flare off the excess built-up time, or things go wrong in Djelibeybi. When Teppicymon XXVII does his seagull impression, the greatest pyramid of all is constructed using mystical methods. This is done by the engineering firm of Ptaclusp. Which consists of Ptaclusp and his two sons, IIa and IIb. (And yes, in fact, this does lead to a bunch of Hamlet puns. This is Pratchett, after all…)

Anyway, the giant pyramid is too powerful, and ends up twisting spacetime by 90 degrees, separating it from the rest of Discworld, and causing all kinds of trouble. Including all of those thoroughly inconvenient gods showing up in person.

Meanwhile, Teppic finally has enough with Dios making terrible decisions on his behalf when a beautiful “handmaid” (yes, that’s a Margaret Atwood reference), Ptraci, refuses to be buried with XXVII in his pyramid, and runs afoul of Dios’ death decree.

So, he puts on his assassin’s gear, and smuggles her out of the prison.

From there, we get an extended stop in Ephebe, the Discworld equivalent of Ancient Greece, filled with philosophy, science, and general silliness. (Ephebe will play a role in Small Gods as well.) And also, the world’s greatest mathematician, who happens to be an ill-tempered camel (aren’t they all?) named You Bastard.

How will Teppic get things straightened out? Does he really have to rule this kingdom? And will XXVII ever be allowed to rest in peace?

How many jokes about Greek mythology can fit in one book? (My youngest is reading the Iliad and Odyssey right now, and snorted her way through this book.)

What I can say without risk of spoiling anything is that the journey will be fun, hilarious, but also seriously thoughtful. And that there will be a lot of terrible puns and jokes and cultural references. I mean, a book that parodies Ancient Egypt, particle physics, and philosophy? You bet!

I am availing myself once again of the interwebs to find the quotes that I can’t write down while driving.

“Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.”

Exactly right. So why do we say “acting like an animal” when humans are acting evil in a way animals never do?

“People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people.”

Yeah, that one is true too.

“The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins. They are so much brighter that they soon realized that the most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendants not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships or being patronized rigid by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don't find out about it. So they long ago plumped for a lifestyle that, in return for a certain amount of porterage and being prodded with sticks, allowed them adequate food and grooming and the chance to spit in a human's eye and get away with it.”

That’s at least plausible. And You Bastard is certainly a great character.

“It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.”

And in the United States too, if you think about it. Related is the explanation of the creed of the Assassin’s Guild:

“We do not murder," he said. It was a soft voice; the doctor never raised his voice, but he had a way of giving it the pitch and spin that could make it be heard through a hurricane.

"We do not execute. We do not massacre. We never, you may be very certain, we never torture. We have no truck with crimes of passion or hatred or pointless gain. We do not do it for a delight in inhumation, or to feed some secret inner need, or for petty advantage, or for some cause or belief; I tell you, gentlemen, that all these reasons are in the highest degree suspect.

“Look into the face of a man who will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears should catch the clink of evil’s scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language.

“No, we do it for the money.

'And, because we above all must know the value of a human life, we do it for a great deal of money.

'There can be few cleaner motives, so shorn of all pretense.

'Nil mortifi, sine lucre. Remember. No killing without payment.'

He paused for a moment.

'And always give a receipt,' he added.”

Thursday, April 16, 2026

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

Back in February, my wife and I took a long weekend out at the coast together, and, as we often do, we listened to an audiobook. Okay, most of an audiobook - we didn’t quite finish this one. I went ahead and got the physical book to read the ending.

I almost wish I hadn’t bothered. I LOATHE the ending. And indeed, this book was a disappointment.

Not all books are winners, of course. We have had a few clunkers. The Maid, for example, is a book that I believe only made it through the editing process because the author edited it herself. I’m still salty about the plot holes, pointless twists, inconsistent characterization, and the mutilation of legal procedure.

This book suffers from many of the same flaws. I find that these flaws are all too common these days in genre fiction, particularly fiction marketed toward women.

[Fair disclosure: I whine a lot more about chick lit on this blog than bro lit, mostly because I avoid bro lit like the plague, whereas chick lit sometimes slips through my filters. I assume that the only reason that bro lit wouldn’t have the same flaws is because it doesn’t bother with characterization.]

Perhaps I can give a general overview of the flaws that I see in books like this one:

1. Plot twists for the sake of plot twists.

2. Characters who, at the end of books, behave completely inconsistently with their natures as established earlier in the book.

3. Romance and sex that doesn’t do anything related to plot or characterization elsewhere.

4. Painfully obvious errors about important facts: legal procedure, science, history, etc.

5. Drama and trauma for their own sake.

I will probably think of some more, but those are the five that come to mind off the top of my head.

Let me look at each in a little more depth.

First, plot twists can be great, when done well. A true surprise, particularly in a genre that demands them, can be a thrill for the reader.

However, twist after twist after twist just results in whiplash. It makes the plot more confusing, of course; but even more than that, it serves to cover for bad planning and writing. Compare, say, Agatha Christie, where one or two big twists are carefully set up, and presented in a way that the reader can look back and see the path in retrospect.

For lesser writers, it feels like they mistake a bunch of twists and drama (see below) for an actual message - or even a coherent story. Just make a bunch of shit happen at the end, leaving the reader feeling…something.

I see this very much like the big fight scene or explosion in an action movie (and presumably bro lit): It creates an effect, but doesn’t tell you much of anything.

Far better is to carefully plan and plot your story - remember, this is a story and it needs a narrative arc in most cases to fulfill its purpose - and not rely on cheap tricks at the end.

Don't just get your twists from the bargain bin at Hackney's Novel Shop.

Second, I read fiction mostly for the characters, and how they grow and change, or at least how they react to the worlds they inhabit. If I preferred plot, I could just read genre fiction all the time.

So it matters a LOT to me that characters be interesting, dynamic, and most of all consistent.

The Maid is a perfectly awful example of how not to write a protagonist - she completely changes personality in the last part of the book.

Don’t do that!

Your characters should come first, not your plot devices. I can’t remember who all has said it (I think a few good writers have used the line) but an author follows their characters around to see what they will do.

This doesn’t mean characters can’t grow and change, but they shouldn’t change completely because the plot needs them to.

Third, I have no objection to sex in books or movies. I can think of a number of really excellent sex scenes that I have read - almost entirely written by women, and many by queer authors, which I do not think is a coincidence. But in each case, the sex serves the plot and the characterization. It isn’t just fan service.

I want to learn something about the characters from a sex scene. And I want any romance element to feel organic to the plot and characters, not something added on because it is what the writer thinks the reader demands.

Also, I am pretty sure that most people - including the more interesting characters - don’t just get horny for an attractive person and go straight to bonking in short order. See above: character consistency.

Number four: oh GOD! Can people be bothered to fact check anymore? I’ll mention a few things specific to this book later, but this is a real pet peeve of mine.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that I am (as this blog attests) broadly read and educated, and know at least something about a great many things. (See: Range by David Epstein) So, I am probably more likely than the average reader to notice elementary errors.

But still: check your facts! Particularly if they are important to your plot. (Again, The Maid is an abomination.)

If you have a courtroom scene, have a lawyer check your facts. If you have a medical issue, check with someone who would know if you get it right.

And, in the case of this book, for fuck’s sake, don’t just watch The Day After Tomorrow and assume that you know all about climate change.

Finally, sure, there is plenty of room for drama and trauma in a book. Just to give an effective example of each, there is so much drama in I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. But, it is YA, and the drama of that age is real. The drama serves the needs of the plot, even if I found it a bit exhausting.

For trauma, just recently I read We Do Not Part, which is full of serious personal and national trauma for sure. But the trauma is what drives everything, so it serves the needs of the story.

If you are just putting trauma in for effect, if it doesn’t really serve the story, then it won’t work. Don’t traumatize your characters just to get an emotional response. It should mean something.

So, with that long preface, here is what the book is about:

Shearwater Island (based on Macquarie Island, south of New Zealand) is a remote island with a research base - and a seed vault.

The book opens with a mysterious woman washing up on shore, barely alive. She is discovered by the family of four who lives in the lighthouse - dad and three kids. Everyone else connected with the base has disappeared.

It turns out that the woman, Rowen, has come looking for her husband, who worked at the base and stopped communicating months ago.

So, what happened to him? And everyone else? I guess that is the mystery, which is eventually unveiled.

And also, global warming, people isolated from each other, mental illness, sexual assault, and animals. None of which ever feel like fully developed ideas.

The book is written from multiple points of view - short sections narrated by each of the five characters. This is hardly the only book written like this, and it can in fact work.

But this actually is problematic in this particular kind of book. Not because there is a mystery, but because each of the characters knows the answer to some of the questions, but they don’t let the reader know what they know.

Contrast this to the classic, The Moonstone, which likewise shifts points of view. But the reason it works is that we do get to go inside the heads of the characters, and know what they know. It is because the perspectives we get are from people who also do not know most of the facts that we get to see the mystery unfold just as they do.

In this book, instead, every character is hiding their knowledge not just from each other, but from the reader. This to me was super frustrating. And unfair. If you want to write from the first person perspective, fine. But don’t have your narrator withhold key facts.

And if you want multiple perspectives, fine. But don’t force the characters to not think about important things that they know that are relevant to the story they are telling.

Now, about the five problematic writing issues, as applied to this book. I probably will give spoilers, and I don’t care, because I disliked the ending enough that I want to ruin it.

First, stupid plot twists.

This book would have been far better with one-quarter of the plot twists. They weren’t necessary, and seemed thrown in at the end to give a nail-biting episode of terror at the end. Oh, and also in the middle - there are several scenes seemingly calculated to be a set piece in the inevitable movie.

And, like most situations in books or movies like this, they only happen because people do stupid things. Which, if it is a book about stupid people, might make sense. But when you have people who are supposedly highly competent making elementary errors and taking pointless risks (problem #2), it is clear that you are manufacturing plot twists for their own sake.

I will also add that some of the twists are also there for the trauma and drama (problem #5), and result from bad errors about science (problem #4), and sometimes even for the sake of romantic frisson (problem #3).

In this book, that means that you have people who somehow got selected for a remote research base - and are thus presumably sensible and competent - risking their own survival not once, but over and over and over. Inconsistent characterization.

Also on that point is the way that as each revelation takes place, the characters seem to change their opinion of other characters. And not in the “now that I know that about you” way, but things like deciding one’s husband is a narcissist after spending the entire book talking about him in completely different terms.

Related to that is the fact that the central romance seems implausible for either of the parties, given what we are shown of their personalities and situations. Maybe one could see Dominic wanting to bonk, but not Rowen.

And then there is the bad science. And it starts off right away. In the cold waters we are talking about, there is zero chance someone would make it all the way to shore without freezing. Particularly since she allegedly came off a boat that sank soon afterward that nobody seems to have seen, despite seeing Rowen in the water.

And it gets worse from there. Including the obligatory “people are going to drown” scene that I still can’t figure out the physics of.

I mean, last I checked, water seeks its own level. So if there is a vent tube on the top of a hill, and the water is rising to the top of it (because global warming or something), that water should be rising outside of the tube too, right? If sea levels fill the vent, then the end of the vent where the would-be rescuers are standing should be flooded too, right? And where would they go after they get the people out of the tube?

The whole scene makes zero sense. Sorry.

And that’s even before you get to the problem of sea level rise. Yes, global warming will - and indeed already is - making sea levels rise. But not like several feet per hour! Or, as in the book, seemingly a hundred feet in a few short minutes. That’s not how it works. (I don’t care if you saw it in the movies.)

Those are the big ones, but there are others. The seemingly sudden disintegration of infrastructure. The idea that an entire research station could go off line completely and suddenly, and nobody seems to notice or send a search party. The seeming lack of any organization or protocols for a research base.

Or, even, children living there in the first place. I mean, there are places that do this, but they aren’t just one freaking family - there are schools and provisions for socialization, careful monitoring, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It would have been so easy to look this up. And, of course, with kids involved, you BET if a station went dark, there would have been a search sent out yesterday.

We haven’t even gotten to the ending, which I already mentioned I hated.

Shall we list a few reasons?

Scientifically ludicrous. Out of character with the characters. Plot twists just to create drama and tension at the end. The old “woman sacrifices her life to save a child” trope that my wife loathed. Re-traumatized everyone who survived.

And none of this was necessary at all. Any number of endings would have been better - and would also have potentially given some form of character development, catharsis, or something. Instead we got the Deux ex Tramica. (To butcher some innocent Latin…)

I am undoubtedly missing other things that annoyed me about the book. But I can’t bring myself to care enough to try to think of them.

Perhaps what annoyed me the most, though, was just the lost opportunity. The setting was great, and some of the descriptions were evocative. One could have set a book here that took advantage of that.

One could also have explored the themes of isolation through actual nuanced writing, rather than plot twists and drama.

One could have done some research and spent more time thinking through a less sensationalist plot, and written a novel that would have had something to actually say.

This is not that book, however, and that is disappointing.

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

The Heroine With 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar

Source of book: I own this

Fairly often, my wife comes home with interesting books. She is as much of a reader as I am, and indeed married me in part because I am a reader. This book was one of them. This book is also my selection for Women's History Month this year.

A quick glance at the title reveals two things about the book. First, it is a response to Joseph Campbell’s influential book on mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Second is a reference to the Arabian Nights, specifically the framing story of Scheherazade, the female storyteller, who uses her gift to save the young women terrorized and murdered by the jealous monarch.

Although it has been over a decade since I read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, it has really stuck with me. The references in this book were familiar enough. I should also mention another book I read last year on stories that makes another part of the conversation, The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. Consider these three as connected, different perspectives on stories and their meaning.

One more bit of trivia I might add is that the author’s name is an indication of her ancestry: she is indeed a descendent of the Tatars, the Turkic speaking nomadic people who you can find referenced in history and literature whenever the eastern edge of Europe or the Asian steppes are mentioned. That fact has nothing to do with the book, per se, but I found it interesting.

For anyone who has read Campbell and Booker, it is already apparent that both of them write from a male-centered perspective. As establishment men, who lived in a patriarchal culture, and indeed a patriarchal cultural tradition, this is no surprise.

Tatar, in contrast, brings a female perspective to the discussion, examining how women understand and tell stories. The book was published in 2021, so it is quite recent, and thus tackles contemporary movements like #metoo and MAGA.

There are a lot of great passages in the book, which I will try to highlight. First, though, I want to give a bit of an overview of the ground covered.

Do not expect a sweeping examination of mythology or stories like in Campbell or Booker. This is a significantly shorter book. Instead, expect a specific conversation - and rebuttal - of some of their claims.

The first chapter looks at heroes, and the way that they have tended to be exalted while heroines have been marginalized. That’s an oversimplification, but the author does have a good point that heroines have always existed - they just haven’t gotten the attention.

The second looks at the silencing of female voices, from the endemic sexual assault to the myths about silenced women.

The third examines fairy tales - and not the Disneyfied versions, but the originals, told by women, and often containing cautions about violent and abusive men.

The fourth looks at two areas where heroines started to become mainstream: stories about female writers (Little Women was the OG) and female detectives. Through these stories, women found voices in ways that were previously denied them.

The fifth continues the idea, looking at Nancy Drew and Wonder Woman, and the 20th Century’s explosion in strong female characters.

Finally, the sixth chapter examines the trickster character - traditionally male, but now open to female versions as well.

Again, not exactly a systematic examination of the topic, but a look at specific issues.

Before I dive into my favorite lines, I want to mention that I have always loved female protagonists.

As a child, I identified more with Wendy than Peter Pan, preferred Nancy Drew to the Hardy Boys (although I read both), loved Anne of Green Gables and Harriet the Spy and a whole bunch of other female-driven books.

So, I would say that I was on the one hand a bit unusual for a boy, but also that my own life was enriched by my identification across the gender lines. I am cishet, to be clear, and don’t identify as a woman or non-binary. Instead, I see the common humanity in female characters, and see my resemblance to them as human beings. My personality is definitely more Anne than Gilbert - that’s probably the best way to explain it.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I read a lot of female authors, and a lot of books with female protagonists. This is intentional, but also a natural outgrowth of my love of the female perspective and my embrace of the feminine side of my nature.

The book opens with a few quotes. I want to highlight two of them, in conversation.

“Unhappy is the land that is in need of heroes.” ~ Bertold Brecht

“Pity the land that thinks it needs a hero, or doesn’t know it has lots and what they look like.” ~ Rebecca Solnit

Solnit is one of the badass prophets of our time - I have greatly enjoyed her writing the last several years. You can read my post about A Paradise Built in Hell, or her latest essay on the nature of power if you want an introduction.

She is right, though. Heroes are all around us, every day. They just don’t look like chest-beating masculine sorts. They are health workers like my wife, teachers, protesters, everyday people making the world a better place.

“What about the women?” This book tries to answer the question posed by Campbell’s student in a different way, by showing that the women in the mythological and literary imagination have been more than mothers and protectors. They too have been on quests, but they have also flown under the radar, performing stealth operations and quietly seeking justice, righting wrongs, repairing the fraying edges of the social fabric, or simply struggling to survive rather than returning back home with what Campbell calls boons and elixirs. They wear curiosity as a badge of honor rather than a mark of shame, and we shall see how women’s connections to knowledge, linked to sin and transgression and often censured as prying, is in fact often symptomatic of empathy, care, and concern.

This idea that female curiosity is a virtue, rather than a vice, runs throughout the book. (And I very much have to agree with that.)

Later in the book, there is a Stephen Fry quote that I love, and I think exemplifies why fundamentalism, which is anti-intellectualism and anti-curiosity, is such an evil way of living.

“The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”

The author expands on this a bit further:

What will emerge in the pages that follow is an understanding of heroism that is driven less by empathy than by attentive care, an affect that is triggered by openness to the world, followed by curiosity and concern about those who inhabit it. Lack of curiosity becomes, then, the greatest sin, a failure to acknowledge the presence of others and to care about the circumstances and conditions of their lives. Is it possible that our new attentiveness to the value of empathy has been fueled by the heroism of women from times past, women who had themselves been marginalized and disenfranchised but still cared deeply about those who had been crushed and enslaved, beaten down and brought to heel?

In our era of MAGA with its “empathy is a sin” and “violence solves everything” and “blame those people for our own problems,” this female curiosity and care is a powerful antidote. In particular, the use of words rather than weapons is the way that those of us with less power fight for justice. As a writer, not a fighter, this is my way of being.

As I was writing this book, it only gradually dawned on me that heroines were habitually bent on social missions, trying to rescue, restore, or fix things, with words as their only weapons.

As an example of this use of words, Tatar examines the British version of the Bluebeard tale, “Mr. Fox.” In that one, the heroine, having discovered the brutality of her fiancé, uses her skill with words (and a carefully purloined severed hand…) to bring Mr. Fox to justice.

(Coincidentally, I recently read a book that makes use of the Mr. Fox legend in a striking and imaginative way, But Not Too Bold.)

This is just one of many fairy tales - again, stories told by women - with a theme of domestic violence and a female escape using her wits and words.

Another fascinating passage in this chapter is one that notes that much of what the old heroes go through seems to be family dysfunction and toxic masculinity. (My older two kids, when they were in high school, pretty much eviscerated Odysseus and the rest of the Greek heroes for this very reason.) A book from the 1930s on the hero is mentioned as:

[E]mphasizing once again less heroic struggles than family conflict (we are back in the domain of ordeals rather than adventures), always based on a troubled and troubling male developmental model, one that can quickly become emblematic of what today, in a stroke of deep irony, we no longer lionize but call toxic masculinity. Myths have been said to enact repressed wishes and have a profoundly antisocial dimension; hence the deep paradox of enshrining as cultural heroes men who have living embodiments of social pathologies.

I also noted this interesting passage about how the shift from an oral tradition to a written one allowed more subtlety in storytelling.

Shining Achilles, clever Odysseus - let us remember that these heroes, almost always described with ennobling epithets, emerged from story and song at a time when the spoken word was the only means of transmission. Heroes had to be larger than life, with stereotypical traits that made it easier to learn their stories by heart. Superhuman beings solved a problem in a sense, for they were not just larger than life, but also all action, in ways that allowed their stories to circulate with ease, to replicate, and to endure in oral-aural cultures. With the introduction of writing and printing, characters began to lead more complex, subtle, and nuanced lives in psychological terms, and interiority became the hallmark of great fiction.

In the chapter about the silencing of female voices, some of the more horrifying myths are examined: Philomena the most familiar perhaps. But even she finds a way of telling her truth: through textiles.

How strange and yet also how logical it is that so many of our metaphors for storytelling are drawn from the discursive field of textile production. We weave plots, spin stories, fabricate tales, or tell yarns - a reminder of how the work of our hands produced social spaces that promoted the exchange of stories, first perhaps in the form of chitchat, gossip, and news, then in the shape of narratives and other dense golden nuggets of entertaining wisdom passed down from one generation to the next.

It is no surprise that the story of Scheherazade is featured in the book. She is in many ways the most classic and complete version of the female storyteller, the one who counters the brutality and stupidity of toxic masculinity with words.

What is less well known is that what most of us have read is nowhere near the complete Arabian Nights. The original has a lot of sex to go with its violence, and it was banned as obscene at various times.

The collection’s frame narrative is anything but child friendly and stands as a stark reminder that what we think of as fairy tales for the young were in fact what John Updike correctly called “the television and pornography of any earlier age.”

A Kay Nielsen illustration referenced in the book

The discussion of Wonder Woman is a good contrast. Rather than the relative passivity of female characters, she is as active as any man. Here, Campbell doesn’t come off that well, as his idea of how females are or should be is as passive being.

“Look at the images of the male. They are always doing something, they’re always representing something: they are in action,” Joseph Campbell remarked when talking about the art of the Paleolithic era. By contrast the female figures of the era are “simply standing female nudes.” “Their power is in their body,” he added, and “their being and their presence.” He worried about the “very important problems” that emerge when women believe their value lies in achievement rather than simply “being.”

Yuck. (That’s from an interview, by the way, not his book.) In another interview, with Bill Moyers (who I am not a fan of, for reasons illustrated in this conversation), he made some pretty offensive and retrogressive claims.

Both Campbell and Moyers believed that women could become true heroes by giving birth. Childbirth was the equivalent of the hero’s ordeal. “What is a woman? A woman is a vehicle of live…Woman is what it is all about - the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment.” Boys, by contrast, deprived of the opportunity to give birth, turn into “servants of something greater” once they grow up.

William Marston, who created Wonder Woman, had a better perspective:

“Not even girls want to be girls,” Marston complained, “so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power.”

You think?

This reflects a number of conversations I have had with antifeminist family and acquaintances, who bristled at the idea that women might have the right to adventures, to action, to achievement. Rather, their value resided (as Campbell claimed) in their bodies, their ability to reproduce the species, their “being.” This is, of course, not how women are, or how they have lived their lives through most of history. It is a misogynist myth. No wonder young girls want better. (See also: The Second Sex for more on this idea that women exist to make babies while only males get to transcend and become fully human.)

It should be no surprise that Hitler’s “put da wimmins back in da home” program, Kinder, Kuche, und Kirche comes into this discussion - it is the recurrent idea of all authoritarians (including MAGA) that women need to “know their place” which is in the home cranking out babies.

Wonder Woman, interestingly enough, did a lot of her best work, not through violence, but through stuff that is dismissed as “woke” these days:

Wonder Woman fights evil and injustice at all levels by organizing strikes, boycotting products, and leading political rallies. She ends the excesses of profiteering on the part of a milk trust that has been raising the price of its products and starving American children. She becomes a labor activist who works to double the salaries of underpaid clerks at Bullfinch’s Department Stores.

In other words, the kind of fighting for justice women have always done.

There is also a great discussion of the way that the story of Eve has been corrupted into a way to blame women for everything evil in the world. (This is one of my biggest beefs with Evangelical theology. It is fundamentally bigoted and dishonest.) See also: Pandora.

The book references Stephen Greenblatt’s excellent book on the Adam and Eve myth, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, which I wrote about a couple years ago. Tatar points out the way that the actual story has been twisted to mean something different from what it says. Recall that the forbidden fruit is knowledge. In light of our evolutionary history, this is a parable of humans developing sentience before we had the moral capability of managing our powers.

Recall, however, that the serpent tempts Eve with nothing but knowledge: “Your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Eve has done little more than accept the invitation to become a sentient being endowed with moral awareness and wisdom, and yet she is likened to the serpent, indeed in some cases she is the real serpent.

In contrast to the misogynistic interpretation, an open-minded reading of Genesis reveals that it is in fact the men who follow up their fall with ever-escalating violence and homicide until God finally has enough and causes the Flood. It isn’t curious women, but toxic men, who choose to use sentience and moral awareness to do evil to each other.

The author also notes the obvious: just as in the Bluebeard story, God creates an obvious setup, where humans will inevitably be curious. And is that actually a bad thing? Or was it just unfortunate that humans got ahead of their ability to act in accordance with their knowledge.

It is more than likely to the credit of all humans that we have an incorrigible urge to defy orders and prohibitions issued without any explanatory context, especially when there is the added temptation of a key dangling right before our eyes.

Do not forget either that it is Bluebeard’s wife’s curiosity that ends up saving her in the end.

Next up is the cultural change that occurred during the 19th Century.

Louisa May Alcott’s books marked a shift in children’s literature, away from moral instruction on behalf of adults, and toward a view of literature as being for children.

Alcott was conspiring with children against adults, as Roald Dahl once claimed he had done while writing books for children. Alcott turned her back on a robust literary tradition that had made as its goal the spiritual uplift of children and the taming of their unruly instincts. Children’s literature, with many strokes of Alcott’s pen, turned into something for children rather than for their own good.

I previously mentioned my love of Nancy Drew as a kid. There is an extended discussion of her, and why she became incredibly popular. One thing I did not know was that the books were banned at libraries back in the day. Not my local libraries, though - I checked a bunch out! Apparently, even the New York Public Library refused to carry them until the mid-1970s. By the time I was reading, in the 80s, things had loosened up.

Moral panics are nothing new, I guess…

Agatha Christie was another author I read a lot of as a kid. So the discussion of Miss Marple and other old lady detectives was fun. I also thought the quote by Christie herself was interesting, as an example of how even one of the best-selling authors of all time still dealt with gendered expectations.

“The best time to plan a book is while you are doing the dishes.”

Female tricksters are the subject of another great discussion. Like the straight-up heroines like Wonder Woman, they too are obsessed with justice. But they are also more ambiguous in gender expression, particularly in light of culture.

Thus, as the author puts it, female tricksters reject “victimization, physical weakness, and household drudgery.” They act more “masculine,” so to speak.

Interestingly, the traditional male trickster - guys like Loki - also blurred gender lines. (In one episode, Loki finds himself pregnant - it’s an interesting story.) The common thread in male and female tricksters is a certain androgyny.

I’ll end with a couple of ideas to ponder.

Once we begin to look at the classic stories told and retold in our culture and experience them from the perspective of figures on the sidelines - slaves, concubines, sacrificial lambs, misfits, all those on the losing side of history - we are suddenly cut loose from the obligation to admire, worship, and venerate. Instead, we become radically inventive, seeing things differently and finding new ways of reading the stories and histories in which they appear.

Related to this is that I discovered a few myth retellings by women that I have added to my reading list. Stay tuned…

The book includes at the end an extended discussion of the ways in which real-life women have found their outlets. Historically, nursing has been one of them. (I am married to a nurse, so I know.)

There is a quote by Florence Nightingale that is interesting. She believed that a lack of an outlet for women would lead to madness. And, if the 1950s were any indication, this very much happens.

Instead, Nightingale believed that it was crucial for women to have a calling in which they could exercise “passion, intellect, and moral activity.”

This, perhaps, is at the crux of the issue, isn’t it?

Men are not the only humans who need this. Women do too. They need the opportunity to be the heroines, to have their quests, their ordeals, their chance to do good in the world using their passion, their intellect, and their moral fiber.

That’s what feminism is about, and why I support it. We are all human, and should have the opportunities to live as fully human.

Give this book a read. I think it is helpful to have read Campbell, but not necessary. And celebrate the heroines we all have in our lives.