Many of these pieces challenge my existing views. Although she describes herself as an iconoclast (put more crudely, she’s often a controversialist), Shriver is certainly no Katie Hopkins. I don’t agree with Shriver on a lot of things, but she has the intelligence and the nuanced approach to make me really think about what she’s saying and about what I believe. There is often more than a kernel of truth in what she says – about how someone saying that they “feel” hurt or bullied is often enough to kill any argument, or that no-one has the right not to be offended, for example. In my view she often takes these arguments too far, but she does so in straightforward, readable, often witty prose and with great clarity, so that when I disagree with something I know exactly what I disagree with and have to think carefully about why.
Shriver mainly avoids lazy or disingenuous arguments – but not quite always. She does sometimes employ the controversialist’s trick of representing wacky extremism as mainstream thought, for example, but she also makes some telling points about what some current trends may really mean for literature, free thinking and society in general. She is also, in my view, just wrong at times. For example, she says “Elaborate avoidance of words whose etymology has nothing to do with race, like “blackball” or “blacklist” serve [sic] no purpose beyond preening.” The point though, is not the etymology of the word, but the connotations it has acquired; that words like blackbird, which are simply descriptors of physical colour, may be harmless, but the panoply of words and phrases which use “black” as an indicator of wickedness, danger or similar most certainly are not, no matter what their origin. On the other hand, she has a point when she says that morally superior, blaming attitudes to language may eventually, and counterproductively, annoy people so much that it contributes to the rise of people like Trump. Like I said, it’s nuanced and thought-provoking, whether or not you agree with her.
I had to take these articles in fairly small doses, but I enjoyed reading them because they made me think, and also because I am glad to know what Shriver actually said, rather than hearing just the moral outrage she often provoked. I can recommend Abominations – but only if you don’t mind having your opinions challenged.
(My thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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