I got around to reading A Scarlet Pansy for the Trans Rights Readathon and I would like to scale my HOLY SHIT up to all-caps now.
all related by the novel not as if it is lecturing the reader on the habits and conformation of the sexual invert, but as if it's spilling the tea on a crowd the reader has been flung into as gossipily and intimately as Fay herself.
Yes, it's so clearly written from an insider perspective (and full of inside jokes), with none of the protective distancing of novels which want to at least allow for the possibility that maybe the author is a sympathetic heterosexual who has been moved to write about The Plight Of The Homosexual.
Whatever the specifics of the author's identity/orientation, it really feels like a social scene they know from the inside. And also, it occurs to me, it's written for an audience who, if not also insiders, are being invited to engage with it as if we are. We're having it explained to us how to be in on the jokes.
no subject
all related by the novel not as if it is lecturing the reader on the habits and conformation of the sexual invert, but as if it's spilling the tea on a crowd the reader has been flung into as gossipily and intimately as Fay herself.
Yes, it's so clearly written from an insider perspective (and full of inside jokes), with none of the protective distancing of novels which want to at least allow for the possibility that maybe the author is a sympathetic heterosexual who has been moved to write about The Plight Of The Homosexual.
Whatever the specifics of the author's identity/orientation, it really feels like a social scene they know from the inside. And also, it occurs to me, it's written for an audience who, if not also insiders, are being invited to engage with it as if we are. We're having it explained to us how to be in on the jokes.