Okay, maybe this makes up for Glee ... a tiny smidge.

[capri0mni]

Happened to catch the second episode of Brothers to-last-night, on FOX, totally by chance. The humor was so-so... but was remarkable was that they cast a wheelchair-using actor in one of the two lead roles -- not someone in Wheelchair drag. And the wheelchair was not (repeat: not) the butt of every punchline. The character was not an object of his family's pity, either, and was the owner of a restaurant/bar.

Now, if only all the jokes that were in the script didn't revolve around belittling the elderly, and objectifying women...

But, hey. This is FOX we're talking about... As my mother used to say: "Consider the source."

Also, I got the book When the Mind Hears by Harlan Lane from the library, today. It's catigorized as straight history, but the author writes it from the single P.O.V. of the central character: Laurent Clerc. So I think, maybe, since Harlan Lane is not Laurent Clerc, this should be considered a very well researched historical novel?

I don't know... I haven't gotten beyond the foreward yet, as I don't feel like I have fortitude right now to explore man's inhumanity to man... Maybe after a good sleep, and a breakfast full of protein... and a hand to hold... (?)

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Lane is special. Not that any historians truly write from an objective viewpoint, but he seems to take more liberties than most. OTOH, he clearly labels that viewpoint.

I've read around 100 books on the murder of Jews by Nazis during the Second World War. Sometimes the "fictional" accounts do a better job of communicating the reality of what happened. While I'm willing to slog through a 600 page history, many will actually read, and therefore learn, from Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz (also known as If this is a man).

[capri0mni]

I have no problems at all with him fictionalizing his viewpoint -- as a lover and writer of fiction, I actually welcome it. And as he says in his forward (as far as I've gotten so far), all histories are stories, first.

And, as you say, at least he's up front about it, and tells you why he's doing it.

I'm just wondering why the publishers (and the librarians -- collectively, it seems, not just my local branch) have all agreed this belongs in the non-fiction section.

If it were placed with the novels (Which, in my local library at least, is better lit, with wider aisles, and it's were most of the comfy chairs and tables are), and marketed as such, maybe more people would read it, and get an expanded world view.

[jesse_the_k]

Yes, good points. I'm sad that the non-fiction section doesn't get much love in your library, though. I so love browsing non-fiction and finding similar works that I'd never have encountered another way.

OTOH, Schindler's List is often treated as history, when it's fiction...

[capri0mni]

Well, it doesn't get as much love... It's still a pretty big and varied section of the library... It's just all the way in the back...

OTOH, Schindler's List is often treated as history, when it's fiction...

... Maybe there's a whole History = Important thing going on, so if it's important enough to a large enough group of people, it gets stuck in the history section...

As long as the basic outline of the story won't lead you to give wrong answers on your ninth grade social studies test... or something.