Jaimy Gordon

My brother-in-law is a racetrack jockey. My sister-in-law exercised racehorses before leaving the track to teach. I worked as a bi-lingual clinical social worker on the backstretch of the Chicago-area racetracks for 25 years. I serviced horsemen and horsewomen ranging from trainers, assistant trainers to undocumented hotwalkers and grooms. Exercise riders and agents included those I served. I found Jaimy Gordon's novel, based on her one summer working on a racetrack as teenage groom decades previously, patronizing and insulting. Those from the track I know who read her novel concur. The folks who populated her novel came across like carny side-show novelties. Those of us who worked on the track for decades are not novelties. If ever there was such a thing as cultural appropriation by an author who extracted fame and money and awards (unbelieveably, the National Book Award given to this novel) from a subculture she had almost no meaningful contact with, we have it here. The fact that the National Book Award was given to a novel both mediocre and patronzing belies the reality that too often a talent for self-promotion transcends any talent to honestly reflect reality. In war, we have called it, "Stolen Valor," claiming an undeserved heroism. The many brave and hardworking horsemen and horsewomen wherever they work in the hierarchy of the backstretch racetrack deserve far better than this condescending appropriation of their lives.… (mais)

Why do authors have to be all mystical? That's one reason I read genre fiction. It generally is pretty straight forward and you don't get paragraphs like this one

Her hands felt their way blindly along the ridges and canyons and defiles of the spine, the firm root-spread hillocks of the withers. She rolled her bony knuckles all along the fallen tree of scar tissue at the crest of the back, prying up its branches, loosening its teeth

All she's doing here is rubbing his withers. Just tell me what happens and stop with the poetry, especially if you can't do it well. Plus the whole thing is sort of written in vernacular. Even when they weren't talking.
… (mais)