For The Win
Jun. 9th, 2010 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I just consumed For The Win, Cory Doctorow's new 500-page brick, in the space of two days. Economics, online gaming, China, India, and the unionization of the working internet. It's a story of networks and masses, worldwide movement comprised of that everyday man to whom de Certeau's book is dedicated. The individual characters serve to focus the narrative, but they do not consume the story.
The book is a populist fantasy predicated on certain possible, but not probable, conditions for the near future: ever cheaper and faster internet in the poorer sectors of the globe, the establishment of a full class of games with country-size economies (i.e. the existence of a vast market for this specific addiction,) and a relatively even distribution of these games established and sustained across the Pacific Rim.
More importantly – and this is where it falls apart – though his named characters are impressively human, and complex enough to be acceptably mundane, Doctorow's crowd psychology is very elemental and very male-Anglocentric. The NPCs of his tale, so to speak, seem to be hordes of Western-mentality strawmen, mass-produced in the author's mind and shipped off to whatever setting he's chosen to churn out the next chapter. They masquerade as individual Chinese or Indian bit characters, but the [MADE IN AMERICA] stamp is so apparent it may as well be branded on their foreheads.
Factory girls call into a clandestine radio show with scripted-sounding questions, as if in a play with {CROWD:} written before the line. A frightened boy in India argues the dangers of standing up to power, in broad, philosophical, big-picture terms. Doctorow's NPCs aren't convincing as individuals because they're used as indicators for mass attitude; this may be intentional, and doesn't have to be detrimental.
The problem is, I don't believe Cory Doctorow has any idea why his own girl character in that internet cafe in Mumbai wears her hijab pinned at her neck. When he tries to have her explain, she goes for the clear terms of the classically educated, those privileged with worldwide perspective – as if equal rights for workers and equal rights for women always go clearly hand-in-hand, in anyone's mind, around the world, in philosophic purity. This is problematic because he tries to have it both ways: to cast the hijab as an individual decision, but eliminate the girl's individual voice in favor of representing a unisexed crowd. And muting the girl in favor of the whole betrays the author's male voice underneath the avatar.
The male privilege leaks again when Doctorow tries for witty banter; at one point he has his Chinese radio host pat her big tough boyfriend's arm and sassily tell him she doesn't need a protector, as if she's suddenly starring in an American action movie. No girl raised in back-country China or India is going to fit neatly into American fiction stereotype. When this happens in a text otherwise striving so obviously towards authenticity in setting, the whole thing slips. Writing exclusively in dynamic, snappy modern-fiction English is a small excuse for intercultural blinders, but not a good one.
Doctorow's clearly well-traveled. Though I can't speak firsthand to the reality of his factory-class China, his low-caste India was convincing in set and props, local power dynamic and the course of everyday habit. I believed in his Dharavi slums, the dust in the air, the backdrop description of terrible labor conditions that sounded culled from decades of independent muckraking. It's a good book with dense setting and a lucid economic philosophy.
Regarding the econ. Several object lessons in practical microeconomics are presented clearly and with great good humor. Securities fraud has never been so fun to watch. His macro is fuzzier, stretching to metaphors more suited for a stand-up comedy routine. (Please note this doesn't necessarily render them invalid.) The macro, at any rate, is less relevant to the narrative thread.
This book is worth the read solely for the insights on psychology of finance. It's almost a bonus that the thing is actually an epic tale of united masses of gamers kicking IRL ass.
It made me put down The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. I completely forgot that I hadn't finished that.
The book is a populist fantasy predicated on certain possible, but not probable, conditions for the near future: ever cheaper and faster internet in the poorer sectors of the globe, the establishment of a full class of games with country-size economies (i.e. the existence of a vast market for this specific addiction,) and a relatively even distribution of these games established and sustained across the Pacific Rim.
More importantly – and this is where it falls apart – though his named characters are impressively human, and complex enough to be acceptably mundane, Doctorow's crowd psychology is very elemental and very male-Anglocentric. The NPCs of his tale, so to speak, seem to be hordes of Western-mentality strawmen, mass-produced in the author's mind and shipped off to whatever setting he's chosen to churn out the next chapter. They masquerade as individual Chinese or Indian bit characters, but the [MADE IN AMERICA] stamp is so apparent it may as well be branded on their foreheads.
Factory girls call into a clandestine radio show with scripted-sounding questions, as if in a play with {CROWD:} written before the line. A frightened boy in India argues the dangers of standing up to power, in broad, philosophical, big-picture terms. Doctorow's NPCs aren't convincing as individuals because they're used as indicators for mass attitude; this may be intentional, and doesn't have to be detrimental.
The problem is, I don't believe Cory Doctorow has any idea why his own girl character in that internet cafe in Mumbai wears her hijab pinned at her neck. When he tries to have her explain, she goes for the clear terms of the classically educated, those privileged with worldwide perspective – as if equal rights for workers and equal rights for women always go clearly hand-in-hand, in anyone's mind, around the world, in philosophic purity. This is problematic because he tries to have it both ways: to cast the hijab as an individual decision, but eliminate the girl's individual voice in favor of representing a unisexed crowd. And muting the girl in favor of the whole betrays the author's male voice underneath the avatar.
The male privilege leaks again when Doctorow tries for witty banter; at one point he has his Chinese radio host pat her big tough boyfriend's arm and sassily tell him she doesn't need a protector, as if she's suddenly starring in an American action movie. No girl raised in back-country China or India is going to fit neatly into American fiction stereotype. When this happens in a text otherwise striving so obviously towards authenticity in setting, the whole thing slips. Writing exclusively in dynamic, snappy modern-fiction English is a small excuse for intercultural blinders, but not a good one.
Doctorow's clearly well-traveled. Though I can't speak firsthand to the reality of his factory-class China, his low-caste India was convincing in set and props, local power dynamic and the course of everyday habit. I believed in his Dharavi slums, the dust in the air, the backdrop description of terrible labor conditions that sounded culled from decades of independent muckraking. It's a good book with dense setting and a lucid economic philosophy.
Regarding the econ. Several object lessons in practical microeconomics are presented clearly and with great good humor. Securities fraud has never been so fun to watch. His macro is fuzzier, stretching to metaphors more suited for a stand-up comedy routine. (Please note this doesn't necessarily render them invalid.) The macro, at any rate, is less relevant to the narrative thread.
This book is worth the read solely for the insights on psychology of finance. It's almost a bonus that the thing is actually an epic tale of united masses of gamers kicking IRL ass.
It made me put down The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. I completely forgot that I hadn't finished that.