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From: PleaseCain@aol.com
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X-ASSTR-Original-Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 01:30:53 EDT
Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} Interviewing Oosh on "Pavlova" - 4/4
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 10:10:03 -0400
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(Copyright 2002 pleasecain@aol.com; excerpts from "Pavlova's Bitches"
Copyright 2001 Oosh.)
An Interview With Oosh on "Pavlova's Bitches" -- Part 4
Q: How did you determine to make PB available as an e-book? Did you attempt
to publish it conventionally? Did you investigate Internet publishers or
self-publishing? When was PB first made available on a website?
O: Originally I intended just to publish it on my website in HTML. The parts
appeared from mid-September 2001 until 6 June 2002. Subsequently, I've been
encouraged to offer it in different formats--both as an e-book in MS Reader
format (courtesy of Bradley Stoke) and for printing on paper via Acrobat
(shortly).
I have never intended to publish on paper myself, leaving it to my readers to
print out my works if they prefer to read that way. That said, I was
encouraged by one reader to approach a regular publisher back in December
2001, and this I did. My two e-mails went unacknowledged, and I don't intend
to try a third time.
Q: Have you made any money from the novel?
O: I shall never make a penny from my writing. Somehow that is important to
me. If ever money is made from my work, I should like to see it go to a good
cause.
Q: Please excuse my forwardness, but I would like to see you make a living
from your writing, so that you could devote more time to your craft and
become that much more powerful a writer. The old saw goes that even
Shakespeare wrote for cash. Would you care to elaborate on your aversion to
profiting from your art? Do you fear that your creativity might be
compromised in that process?
O: I know that this will seem strange, but I feel as if I have been given
something rather like a power of healing, and that it has been given to me
together with a very heavy responsibility. I suppose if some rich patron
wished to shower money on me, I shouldn't be too averse to that! (Who would?)
But I feel that I cannot sell what does not belong to me. Perhaps this will
make it clearer: yesterday, testing myself, I tried to read one of my poems
aloud. I tried several times, but repetition doesn't make it any easier. I
just break down. These pieces do not come out of my substance. I don't make
them. They are as far beyond me as the sky is above the sea. They come to me,
I don't know where from. I don't pay for them, and I don't feel I can charge
for them.
Q: Any idea how many eyeballs have perused your novel? How much feedback have
you received? And what ratio from women? What kind of response do you get
mostly--to what aspect do readers respond typically, i.e., to the
political/social overtones of PB, the sex, the humor, etc.? Did your work
strike the chord you'd intended?
O: Really I've no idea of how many have read the novel. It must be thousands,
but interpreting download statistics is not easy. Perhaps six people download
the complete work per day. What they do with it when they've downloaded it I
cannot guess.
I get very little feedback. Apart from those I'm regularly in touch with, PB
elicited correspondence from no more than a couple of dozen people, about
half women.
Most of the feedback indicated appreciation of the political and social
aspects. One or two of the male correspondents seemed wholly interested in
the erotic element, but then again, one or two of the women felt that I could
have gone more thoroughly into the gory sexual details. I get the impression
that most people liked the fact that it was much more than a sex story.
Q: What is your opinion about the future of e-books?
O: I believe in e-books, but it is a matter of blind faith. The majority of
writers have the problem of how to make a living from publishing in this
format. It's an important problem, very important for the future of the
genre. I would like to be more concerned with it than in fact I am, because
as I said I am resolved never to make a penny from my writing. I think that
we're still living in an ink-on-paper world, and the world of traditional
publishing probably views electronic publishing as a threat, one which it
would rather ignore. I think this is a mistake: for better-quality work, at
any rate, I am convinced that people would gladly pay for an attractively
printed book, even if they could read it free online. E-publishing will
really take off once it is promoted in the traditional press. But I doubt if
ASSTR (for example) has ever been so much as mentioned in print. Probably the
poor servers would grind to a halt if that happened!
Q: Can you offer any advice to those writers who wish to promote their work
over the Internet?
O: I think I'm the one who should be seeking advice!
Q: How and when did you find alt.sex.stories?
O: I found ASS in 1999--so long ago now that I cannot even remember how. I
was interested, out of sheer curiosity, to see how people would go about
writing a story that was intended to be erotic or pornographic. I had never
sought out such writing before, although some had come my way by chance. I'd
seen some of the most celebrated published writers in the genre, and been
left totally cold. And here were (apparently) amateurs attempting what de
Sade, the mysterious "O" of "L'Histoire d'O" and Anais Nin had attempted
before--and seemingly, with greater effectiveness. That was my impression on
first reading. For a couple of months I was mesmerized--more out of curiosity
than anything else. And then I began re-reading. It was this that taught me
something important. Almost without exception, amateurs' stories are great on
the first read, but fall flat thereafter. I somehow knew that I had it within
myself to write a story that would be better on re-reading than on the first.
That's not a matter of trickery or complicated technique: it's a matter of
bringing an idea, with total persuasive force, into the mind of the reader,
and keeping it there by means of a language style that neither distracts nor
detracts from what one is saying.
Q: Do you find much support and encouragement from that community, or what do
you get out of it?
O: I get a good deal of support from other writers, for which I am deeply
grateful. All are polite and candid (to say the least), and I sense a deep
fellow-feeling between us. I think we are all aware that there is something
lonely about being a writer, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. This
loneliness is at once our inspiration and spur, but also something that we
recognize as somehow necessary to what we do.
What do I get out of such companionship? A weapon against despair. Despair
has consumed three months out of this year so far, and I'd rather it consumed
less.
Q: How much feedback do you receive for posted stories? Do you interact with
other writers off-line?
O: It's difficult to say how much feedback I receive, because I don't truly
know how many read my work. My poems are the least popular. They are read
about once a day--but I don't know if it is by the same person every day, or
seven different people each week. (Some, I know, have read my work over and
over and over again, and perhaps some of the better things can bear such
intense and prolonged scrutiny.) My prose pieces are read from twice to
twenty times a day. But when a new work is posted, it might be read by up to
three thousand people in the first few days.
Now of course I have a number of very dear correspondents with whom I am in
regular contact. I will always hear from them whenever I produce anything
new. Apart from them, if a new work evokes five letters I will consider it a
roaring success!
I do correspond regularly with a number of other writers; they are amazingly
patient of me, for which I am profoundly grateful.
Q: After you won two Golden Clitorides (Best Long Story for 2001; Best Series
or Serial of 2001), did you notice more readership?
O: There was a ripple of interest, yes--perhaps a hundred people read PB as a
result. I think that the Clitorides do attract readers. They're definitely a
good thing.
Q: And other avenues of exposure, like ezines such as Katherine T's Diva
(ed., now defunct)? How effective are they in attracting readership for you?
O: Diva had a significant effect on the level of interest in my work.
Significant, but I think temporary. The eye seems to notice a moving target
rather than a still one, and I get the impression that online readers
generally respond to events (such as reposts) more than they trawl archives.
I suppose that's understandable.
Q: Were there any other themes or issues that influenced the development of
the book?
O: There are a couple of other issues in PB that people might find
interesting.
One is the unholy misalliance of Christianity with sexual repression. The
dialogue between Carter and Miller in Carter's bedroom explores the conflict
between the idea of the loving God and the prevailing Victorian prejudice
that if something was pleasant, it was bad for you. I'm alluding to a
quotation from the words of Jesus: "what father among you, if his child asked
for bread, would give him a stone?" As far as I can recall, this is the the
only explicit sexual teaching of Jesus: "anyone who looks lustfully upon a
woman has committed adultery with her in his heart." Earlier in the story,
Penrose discusses this with Carter while they are admiring the statue of the
goddess Diana in the rose garden.
Another underlying theme is the idea of the good will, and the moral value of
autonomy. Of course, there is a very tongue-in-cheek account of hedonism and
Mill's Utilitarianism, but underneath there is a serious point, which almost
takes the form of a dialogue between Shipman and Carter.
Carter's initial position represents the infantile morality of command and
obedience. Mill's Utilitarianism suggests a more adult kind of morality, in
which the individual gauges the consequences of his actions and so acts as to
maximize happiness. However, Mill's position was anathema to Kant: he saw
nothing moral in following one's inclinations, even if they coincided with
maximizing happiness. For him, true morality consisted in being prepared, if
necessary, to go against one's inclinations for the sake of one's duty. For
Kant, an agent is good not simply by virtue of a propensity to maximize
happiness, but because he is motivated by moral principle, the good will.
Now it might seem that Carter's conformism is closer to Kant's idea,
embracing as it does the idea of self-sacrifice. But Shipman sees that Carter
is wholly driven by other people's standards, other people's judgments.
Shipman embodies the idea that it is better to make one's inclinations
conform to morality, so that one embraces what is good with all the passion
of one seeking what she most desires. So she is single-minded, and sets her
own standards. In short, she is autonomous. She refines Kant's idea of the
good will by implying that there is something cold-blooded about the sense of
duty, the selfless overriding of one's own inclinations. Her kind of morality
is a matter of warm-blooded commitment. I think Nietzsche would have liked
Shipman: she goes for what (and whom) she wants, and even if she makes her
own mistakes, she is alive.
Gradually, Carter is won over to Shipman's position, though of course a large
part of her quest for autonomy is financial autonomy. She is her father's
daughter! Protected by Miss Paulson's solicitude, affirmed and empowered by
Shipman's love, Carter comes alive herself. The escape to Russia almost
symbolizes the escape from the shackles of conformity into a new life of
freedom, self-determination and self-fulfilment. And of course this is what
underlies Carter's last words in the story, which I hope my readers feel as
strongly as I do:
"I don't want to walk. Not any more . . . I want to run."
Related Links --
Pavlova's Bitches http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/oosh/www/pavlova.html
Oosh http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/oosh/www/
Hecate http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Hecate/www/Pages/hmain.htm
Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository http://www.asstr-mirror.org/
Golden Clitorides http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Rui_Favorites/www/Clitorides/
Bradley Stoke http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Bradley_Stoke/www/
Head: Stories by PleaseCain http://members.aol.com/pleasecain
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