posted
There are several threads on the book, but none that seem to have stayed on topic. Likely this one won't either. That's Hatrack for ya!
I loved it. Like Grand, I read all the "Rainbow" books of fairy tales -- and every other fairy tale and mythology book I could get my hands on. And I always enjoy a new take on the old stories.
I believed in these characters, and enjoyed them. I wasn't sure I liked the ending at first, but having thought it over . . . it works. It does.
And unlike Tom, I think a marriage built on shared goals is more likely to succeed than one built on love. Not that they need be mutually exclusive, of course.
And I will never again be able to zip down Olympic, under that bridge and past that Ralphs, without a big grin! Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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"And unlike Tom, I think a marriage built on shared goals is more likely to succeed than one built on love."
Yes. Because the line "love, honor and cherish" actually means "sleep together to get intelligence on a mutual enemy."
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
*laugh* And if I cared about the specific words in your (general you: i.e., not mine) marriage ceremonies, that argument might carry some weight with me.
I think being in love is an absolutely lousy reason to get married. Of the various things that I think make very good reasons to get married, having a shared vision of the future, with shared goals, is very high up on the list. Maybe number one. If you're also in love, great! If not, working together toward that common goal will help bring you together. As it did in Magic Street . . .
Wasn't there someone who defined love not as looking into each others' eyes, but looking together toward the future?
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posted
Depends on what you mean by "in love." If we're talking about the hormone-driven, chase-centered fascination with another person as a possible mate for breeding purposes (i.e., evolution in action), then on the male side, at least, evolution is then likely to make his eye rove to the next potential mate - which is the OPPOSITE of a good reason to marry.
But if by "in love" you mean determined to build something together - a family, a life, a single building block of a larger community, a mission ... whatever you call it - because this is the person that you TRUST and whose company you ENJOY and whose contributions to the world you ADMIRE, then that kind of "in love" is a sound basis for a marriage, provided you remain committed to the project through the times of inevitable boredom, frustration, disappointment, etc., that come to every relationship.
In other words, if you don't plan to stick with it despite inconvenience, lack of entertainment value, struggle, sacrifice, and even some serious unpleasantness from time to time, then what's the point of marriage? As with any contract, the reason you make the marriage is precisely because feelings change, but you are intending to keep this going through all the changes and make the thing work - together.
Which is why "we fell out of love" or "we grew apart" as reasons for divorce always sound to me like they're really saying "my word means nothing" or "it was just a whim after all."
As for the overpass over Olympic - I'm always irritated to find it unmarked. I want to see those words up there so badly! <grin>
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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rivka, and Tammy, I'm glad there are more people who think that's funny and applied it to their real life divine comedy like I did. Apparently, my husband did not think this scenerio was funny.. in fact, he was shocked that I still laugh over it!!!!
I know why the toothpaste is never where I put it. How my favorite dessert gets eaten-where that missing sock went, and especially this explains why I have tuperware with NO LIDS and lids that do not match my tuperware.
note to self: *write apologies to each of my children*
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Isn't how somebody looks part (though by no means all) of what makes you "enjoy" their company?
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We are at least partly creatures that exist only to promote the replication of DNA. But I've discovered over the years that people's looks change with time. Nobody is married for very long to somebody who looks like they did at the start of the marriage. So there'd better be a commitment that transcends physical attraction and physical desire; one that lets people live together and work together no matter what hard times come and no matter how many children happen to be living in the house, etc.
Meanwhile, I dread going back to Baldwin Hills to see what they've done to what once was a meadow with a tall drainpipe in the middle. Has anyone gone there yet to look at it?
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posted
I think what makes this book great, along with books like Enchantment and the Alvin series, is the perfect mix of familiar and weird. I'm now getting more and more convinced that this is what makes people love certain approaches to literature.
People who are familiar with SoCal love the fact that this takes place in a real location they're familiar with. People who know black culture love the fact that it's about them. I'm a sucker for it too - I adore Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance because it takes place at my Alma Mater.
But it's just weird enough to make you set down the book and giggle. "Heh. Dude. That helicopter is really a giant slug dragon." It's like magical realism - real life gone wacky.
And that touches our deepest humor bones, I think. We laugh at jokes because they put a twist on an expected response and shock us. We love these books because they're so dang convincing that we almost think it's the real world and then they twist on us and we end up somewhere weird. Straightforward traditional SciFi, which relies solely on the unknown environment, can never achieve this. Straightforward traditional fiction, which never takes us out of our comfortable, familiar universe, will never attract the dreamers and the crazy nutcases among us in the way that fantasy does.
So now, all I have to do is figure out how this, the real-but-magic genre, can be historically significant. You must admit that Magic Street will lose a lot of its effect when we forget about 21st century California and when American culture becomes obsolete. How do we create a literature that's as endearing as this, and yet make it relevant across cultural and social categories?
When you figure it out, let me know. Meanwhile, I'm busy re-writing Pride and Prejudice again.
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quote: But if by "in love" you mean determined to build something together - a family, a life, a single building block of a larger community, a mission ... whatever you call it - because this is the person that you TRUST and whose company you ENJOY and whose contributions to the world you ADMIRE, then that kind of "in love" is a sound basis for a marriage, provided you remain committed to the project through the times of inevitable boredom, frustration, disappointment, etc., that come to every relationship.
And yet this is profoundly NOT the relationship that Mack had with Yo-Yo; we've established by this point that Mack does not particularly admire or trust her, and definitely doesn't love her. He finds her familiar and compelling, but his attraction to her -- in this incarnation -- basically stops there. And she even points that out and mocks his insistence on marriage precisely because they don't have that sort of relationship.
So in your book we have someone marrying someone he doesn't love and doesn't want to spend his life with just to get a temporary advantage over an enemy that could just as easily be gained by engaging in a few minutes of sex. (And let's not even point out that to obtain their sham marriage, they wind up going to the one pseudo-preacher in the world who's possessed by the enemy, thus theoretically blowing any possibility of strategic surprise.)
I submit that this is exactly the wrong sort of message to send about the importance of marriage, as it implies that marriage -- the sacred bond to which you've just devoted a gushing paragraph -- is actually considerably less important than sex.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Tom, did you consider that Yoyo remained loyal to her relationship with Oberon, to the extent of trying to save him from himself. Mack didn't know what and who he was.
Sometimes, we forget who we are in a relationship, we forget our loyality, honor, or integrity. If we're lucky, we marry a person who will keep knowing, believing and fighting at all cost to restore you to your proper realm.
Posts: 163 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Tom, did you consider that Yoyo remained loyal to her relationship with Oberon, to the extent of trying to save him from himself.
Sure did. I'm sure Yo-Yo loved him dearly; her end of it makes perfect sense.
Mack's behavior in that scene, though, is incomprehensible and alien. He's a teenage boy from SoCal who insists on marrying a woman he doesn't particularly like all that much so that he can sleep with her once, thus helping to kill her actual husband. And he's so aware that this is a meaningless exercise that he seeks out an unlicensed minister to do the ceremony, because he doesn't want a real marriage. Does that really seem perfectly normal to the rest of you?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Yeah, the behavior seemed unlikely and out of character. Alien is a good word. Though Mack never really did seem *human* to me either.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Unless you define human as the physical body rather than the soul/energy/spirit/mind (whichever word one chooses to use)
I agree, that it's a bit illogical to some degree. It's like a split of two worlds or two seperate minds.. humm.. maybe that's what it was.. hey.. I'm still justifying that scene, work with me!!! Posts: 163 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
But I am someone who believes that true commitment in marriage can make up for a lot that might be lacking elsewhere. It is one of the reasons I married Porter. His will to commit to love me was far more powerful than any "in love" feelings we had towards each other. I was deeply moved by that.
I figured that Mack, in all his alien non-humanness, was the sort of person who would commit whole heartedly to this so-called "sham marriage" even if it was only being done for the purpose of having sex. (Which, BTW, I think is a lame construct in story telling--the whole "we *have* to have sex, even if we don't like each other", thing. Even in Magic Street, it seemed awfully contrived to me. It seems so... Pierce Anthony.) I mean, really. Mack was the *embodiment* of altruism.
So while I hated the "we have to have sex" construct, the "sham marriage" didn't bother me near so much.
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Which is kind of my point. There's nothing altruistic about marrying someone so you can sleep with them; it's supremely egotistical, and completely out of character (given my understanding of the character).
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: This is not true if he doesn't want to sleep with her and is only doing it in order to help others.
Except: A) He clearly DOES want to sleep with her; he's clearly sexually attracted, despite the absence of love. He doesn't want to sleep with someone to whom he's not married, however.
B) The issue of altruism is not whether he should sleep with her to help others, but whether a marriage to her is necessary in order to help others. Clearly, it is not -- and implying that it is cheapens marriage a great deal.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: Being sexually attracted != wanting to have sex with them
Bah. He said it himself -- he wanted to, but valued something else more. In the same way, I usually want to eat chocolate, and yet manage to occasionally refrain.
In this case, Mack apparently felt that being trapped in a loveless marriage was less horrible than having sex without marriage.
posted
So, just to be clear on this: you would rather marry a random stranger than have sex with them without marriage, assuming those were the only two options?
Man. That really devalues marriage, don't you think?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
You don't think it devalues marriage? You mean you're comfortable thinking of marriage as no more important than a single episode of sex?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Tom, more than once in this thread you have twisted or extrapolated what I said into something I would have never said, and then pretended that I claimed to believe that. I don't see what good that does anybody unless you are debating for points.
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posted
Okay, perhaps I'm confused. If you do not think that marrying someone you do not care for in order to have sex with that person so that they can more effectively kill their actual husband devalues marriage, could you explain why?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:I think being in love is an absolutely lousy reason to get married.
I think I fell in love with my wife the moment that she told me that she believed this.
quote:Originally posted by beverly:
But I am someone who believes that true commitment in marriage can make up for a lot that might be lacking elsewhere. It is one of the reasons I married Porter. His will to commit to love me was far more powerful than any "in love" feelings we had towards each other. I was deeply moved by that.
Have I mentioned lately how great I think you guys are? Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Tom, my point in saying that Mack is the embodiment of altruism is that even in a marriage that is only happening to allow his sex with YoYo to be married sex, he would take that marriage seriously and be the perfect husband. I think there is a beauty of integrity to that.
Think back to Randland (I know I ask the unpleasant of you in this) when he "accidentally" (smirk) slept with Aviendha. His immediate reaction was to pledge marriage to her. He didn't love her, he didn't even like her. But he'd slept with her. And in his mind, that meant marriage, commitment, giving all that a husband could give. You *make* it work, even when the love isn't there.
That sort of thing is so rare to be found in our culture these days. Makes me sad. Love has to be something that "happens" to you. Like people are victims of it or something. And when it releases you and the magic is gone, people feel cheated. I believe the best kind of love is the kind you make.
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posted
See, though, that's the problem I have: the assumption that sex is so vitally important that it requires that marriage be attempted, rather than the other way around. It implies that sex is in fact more important than a good marriage. What I can't understand -- and clearly this distinction matters to Porter -- is how marrying someone literally just to sleep with them does not imply that sex is somehow considerably more "sacred" than marriage.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Tom -- yet again, that was inferred by you, not implied by me.
I'm not saying that I agree with it in all extremes, I do think that there is a nobility to the idea that the commitment/conviction to never have extramarital sex is more import than the (often selfish) desire to have a marriage based on romance (which, IMO, is a marriage destined to fail unless it metamorphosizes into something more).
quote: I do think that there is a nobility to the idea that the commitment/conviction to never have extramarital sex is more import than the (often selfish) desire to have a marriage based on romance
Ah. But do you agree that, in this specific case, the marriage we see depicted in the book cheapens marriage? Because that's actually what I'm discussing, not any other hypothetical.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Ah. But do you agree that, in this specific case, the marriage we see depicted in the book cheapens marriage?
I'm not sure I agree, but I don't disagree either. I can really see your point, but the fact that Mack was already married to Yolanda in some mysitical fashion makes the thing too alien for me to really connect to reality and make a judgment.
quote:Because that's actually what I'm discussing, not any other hypothetical.
For much of this conversation, I have not been discussing any specific hypothetical. I have been discussing general ideas like "[somebody] felt that being trapped in a loveless marriage was less horrible than having sex without marriage. Which is ridiculous."
This is probably why we have been talking past each other so much.
posted
Except that I still stand by that statement: being trapped in a loveless marriage is considerably worse than having sex with someone once, and arguing otherwise is ridiculous. Now, you can argue about whether or not a given marriage is "loveless," or whether or not someone is "trapped," but I don't see how you can sensibly make any other argument without simultaneously arguing that sex is more important -- and more important to take seriously -- than marriage.
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posted
That problem is that we disagree on how important it is to not have a "loveless marriage".
Since I don't believe that love is the foundation of marriage, a marriage that it not infused with that at the moment is seen by me as unfortunate, not a tragedy.
In my experience, most usages of the word "loveless marriage" seem to mean "a marriage not full of romance", so we might be talking past each other when it comes to definitions as well.
posted
Also, you are talking about having sex with somebody once as a small thing, while I view the commitment/conviction to never have extramarital sex as a very big and important thing.
In the absence of such a commitment/conviction, having sex once with somebody might not be that big a deal. But in the presence of it, it is.
posted
See, I think not loving the person to whom you're married is considerably "bigger" of a thing than sleeping with somebody once. But that's because I think there's an implied "don't marry anyone you don't love" which is considerably more important than any "don't sleep with anyone to whom you aren't married." Maybe my standards for marriage are higher.
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You know, there are plenty of cultures that get along just fine without marrying for love. I don't think marrying for love is a higher standard, just a different standard.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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You see, I don't view a marriage where both people are committed to making it work a "loveless" marriage. I think that love is something you do as well as something you feel. Even if the two people aren't "in love" at the moment, if they are committed to loving each other, the "in love" will come.
This is all about making marriage to be more important than sex. It's one thing to commit to someone when you are deeply infatuated with them as well as loving them. It is another thing to be willing to love someone you aren't "in love" with, trusting that the "in love" will come with time. I think the latter has nobility and beauty to it that the first doesn't.
It's like how Christ taught that the commandment to love your enemy is greater than loving your friends. He said that loving your friends is easy. But loving your enemy takes something special, noble, and higher than "natural" humanity.
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quote:I think the latter has nobility and beauty to it that the first doesn't.
Ah. That may be the problem. I don't think it's noble or beautiful at all; I find it repulsive, wrong-headed, and absolutely disgusting, and it's almost incomprehensible to me that anyone would attempt to build a life with someone else on those terms and call it "marriage."
I have to get along with my family and coworkers. I have to learn to love my enemies. But I don't marry someone unless I love 'em first. Applying any other standard makes marriage -- from my perspective, at least -- no more meaningful than consultant work.
There's no virtue in learning to love your wife; I see no value in marrying your enemies in order to learn to appreciate them. There is, however, great virtue in not marrying someone you don't love.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:There's no virtue in learning to love your wife.
When you first married your wife, did you love her as much as you ever would? Or has your love for her increased since then?
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I would submit that there should be a minimum standard. If that weren't the case, surely we'd all be better off marrying random people we found vaguely interesting; anyone single at 30 should be forced to marry some other random single person, and told "hey, learn to love him."
I'm genuinely curious as to why the LDS are chiming in so much with the "you don't have to love your spouse" bit. Is there something in the religion that teaches you to just marry the first semi-attractive person who comes along, and then hope that commitment to each other will fill in for love? What about people -- as in Mack's case -- that you actively distrust? Is there even more virtue in going the extra mile and committing for life to someone you actually dislike?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Who said anything about forcing? I think that a powerful motivator in making this kind of marriage work is not being forced into it, the will coming from within you. I also did not intend to imply that marrying your enemy is a good idea. Only that putting forth the effort to love is more noble than love that comes easy to you.
Nor do I think that everyone should purposely marry someone they aren't infatuated with. Most people need that, or feel they need that (the effect being very similar.) Most people would not do well in this situation, especially since so many people (apparently) give up on their marriages when they "fall out of love" or "fall in love" with someone else.
There should be something that draws you together. While infatuation is not necessary for marriage to work (though it is pleasant) having common goals and values and compatability are far more important.
Remember the courtship of Ender's parents? I love that story. In fact, it is one of my favorite "romances" of all time. It is a perfect example of what I am talking about here. They were talking marriage before they knew each other well enough to love. But there was chemistry, not just attraction, but chemistry in their personalities.
I think that Mack already had that with YoYo. He was *not* marrying his enemy. In fact, in this case he was marrying the wife he didn't remember being married to.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:I'm genuinely curious as to why the LDS are chiming in so much with the "you don't have to love your spouse" bit.
Actually, I think far too many LDS *don't* believe this in the least. It seems to me that so many come to the following conclusion: If I am going to have to be abstinant and then pledge everything to someone FOR EVER, they better well be my perfect dream-boat! I see young LDS passing over wonderful individuals time after time because it just isn't magical enough for them.
I think the way Porter and I view this is far in the minority.
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