05-20-2018, 11:27 AM | #46 | |
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05-20-2018, 01:27 PM | #47 |
cacoethes scribendi
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As is probably obvious, I tend to agree with AnotherCat regarding the quality of this book.
I don't mind if historical fiction that does a bit of bending of the facts here and there, or if it's selective about which parts its wants to tell. It's for the good of the story. But I have much higher expectations of a book that presents itself as non-fiction. I expect the author to make up their mind: are they telling me a story or are they telling me the facts? When you make me guess at which parts are true, as this book does, I might as well be reading fiction, at least then I might be in for a happy ending. The book is obviously well researched, we can tell that by the various quotes the author inserts in support of the embellishments, but it also appears to be so selective as to be deliberately distorting. So far the book would have me believe that almost every girl that worked in the industry is going to die as a direct result. The few paragraphs that AnotherCat quoted paint a very different picture. Having the facts doesn't stop me having sympathy, and I don't need the author to paint villains in order to understand the frustrating time these women had in getting anyone to take any notice of what was happening. Indeed, having the facts might help understand how it came to be like that. |
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05-20-2018, 06:00 PM | #48 | |
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If Moore was referring to a simple crossing of the channel perhaps she should have said so, it is hardly a journey across the sea, nor really a travel to that foreign shore, through every second of his journey. Even in 1901 it was hardly a "journey", whereas crossing the Atlantic was. This is just an example where she gets herself in trouble by over egging things for dramatic effect to meet her agenda. Last edited by AnotherCat; 05-20-2018 at 06:07 PM. |
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05-20-2018, 06:22 PM | #49 | |
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Agenda is yet another loaded term. There's no failure in conception to have the focus be on the women. |
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05-20-2018, 06:28 PM | #50 | |
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Perhaps you did not notice that I made special effort to point out about Clark's book that she is also quite expansive on the role of women and their vulnerability in work at the time. Nor perhaps are you aware that the full title and subtitle of Clark's book is Radium Girls~Women and Industrial Health Reform 1910-1935. So the book I have read, and obviously from my comments have a lot of respect for, is written by a woman with an emphasis on women in industry, yet you think I am using "a loaded term tending to be used to disparage woman writers" when referring to Moore's book. Clark does not while writing her book, however, fall into the sexist tribal hole that you may have. Last edited by AnotherCat; 05-20-2018 at 06:30 PM. |
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05-20-2018, 06:37 PM | #51 | |
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05-20-2018, 06:42 PM | #52 | |
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I think most know that there are a lot of agendas writers can have in their work, but I'm out of here because apparently one (perhaps only white males) cannot make a comment without it being distorted into the worst possible light of being sexist. My farewell comment is that I hope those with a genuine and balanced interest in the matter read Claudia Clark's book. EDIT : And there you go #51 yet again - putting the world (and me) into sexist tribes. Goodbye. Last edited by AnotherCat; 05-20-2018 at 06:51 PM. |
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05-20-2018, 06:46 PM | #53 |
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Hey, can we lighten up a bit? This is a book club, not a university tutorial.
ETA: I posted the above comment before I saw the last one from AnotherCat. I think it is for the best that he has decided to leave, as I don’t think this is the place for such combative comments. Now, back to our discussion of Moore’s book. I did appreciate the inclusion of the photographs of a number of the people of whom Moore wrote. It gave a glimpse into their lives to see them, though of course some images were of better quality than others. Last edited by Bookpossum; 05-20-2018 at 07:19 PM. |
05-20-2018, 06:55 PM | #54 |
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05-20-2018, 07:30 PM | #55 |
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All I'm saying is that it's best to avoid language with a history; it's possible to make exactly the same argument but with neutral language; the result is a more powerful argument since it's devoid of possible cultural implications. Remember that we're all pretty much agreed that the book is flawed.
"There you go again" also has unfortunate connotations for Americans of a certain age; in any case, on its own merits it's a put down. In the interest of civil discourse, it would be better to keep this impersonal. |
05-20-2018, 07:33 PM | #56 |
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If Another Cat wants to make another comment, he's welcome; otherwise, I think as Bookpossum suggested it would be best to get back to the book itself.
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05-20-2018, 11:09 PM | #57 |
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I was not bothered by what some of you have seen as "embellishments"; frankly, I'm not sure I would have consciously noticed any on my own. I did think the author sometimes tended toward purple prose, but that may have been exacerbated by the narration of the audiobook.
The book seemed to me to be firmly in the tradition of the nonfiction novel, and I don't have any significant problem with that subgenre. I didn't read The Radium Girls to understand the specific scientific, medical, or legal issues about radium and workplace safety; I read it to learn about people and how they were affected, what they endured and how they coped. My main takeaway is that women in the workplace have been and continue to be exploited. The men in their laboratories had protective gear; the women, nothing--they didn't matter. Management lied and denied and put profit above all else. (Beyond the safety issues, I was outraged that the women were being paid for piecework, not a regular hourly wage.) Last year I read a book about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (Triangle, by David Von Drehle). The bosses ignored basic safety regulations, even keeping doors locked (to prevent possible pilfering), and when fire broke out, more than a hundred women--mostly young immigrants--perished because of those locks. In court proceedings, the bosses attacked the credibility of the survivors, lied and obfuscated, avoided criminal conviction but ended up paying minimal damages in a civil suit. The specific circumstances were very different, but as I was reading about the dial painters, I kept thinking about the Triangle victims and how cheaply held were the lives of the women workers in both situations. It makes me very angry. |
05-20-2018, 11:33 PM | #58 | |
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There certainly are issues of sexism in this situation - even down to the fact that it was just women hired as dial-painters even though there was good money in it. (Quite strange that men didn't grab this lucrative opportunity for themselves.) But the book distorts the issues to such an extent that it becomes difficult to speak of it without raising those flags that so recently caused heated discussion. What happens after June 1924 (which I am still reading about) is a different matter to went before. From the time of the Drinkers' report the possible risks (if not the true probability) should have been apparent - although I suspect they were not nearly so clear or inarguable as Moore would have has believe (here she is doing herself a disservice because I am trusting what she tells me less and less). But even if the risks are only suspected some precautions would seem prudent (we get half-hearted attempts at stopping lip-pointing, but much more was indicated). Failure to act after this time is - it seems to me - negligent (although having so many people muddying the water would have made it difficult); the failure to act before this time seems quite understandable in context. Acknowledging that doesn't mean I think the the women suffered any less, and some form of aid should have been available to them (yet another aspect that hasn't changed a century later), but it should not have been necessary to establish wrong-doing as part of getting that aid. Where does this insistence that it must be someone's fault come from? Sometimes __it happens! Without the confrontational nature of blame, some of these situations would be more quickly resolved; people could cooperate rather than ducking for cover to avoid blame. |
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05-21-2018, 07:15 AM | #59 |
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@Anothercat - conversation has moved on, but all I'll say is that when I read it it was clear to me Moore was talking about a trip across the channel.
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05-21-2018, 08:04 AM | #60 | |
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Sadly, things don't change all that much - I suppose we just move them offshore from the more affluent countries to the developing ones. |
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