Beauty, by Brian D’Amato; Beauty, in general; Beauty and the Beast

[rachelmanija]

In Beauty by Brian D'Amato, a creepy, pretentious, narcissistic artist/unlicensed plastic surgeon tries to create the perfectly beautiful woman. I don't think it's spoilery to say that he gets what's coming to him. A satire of American beauty culture, the 80s art scene in New York, misogyny, and the lifestyles of the idle rich, recounted by a seriously unreliable narrator.

What would Marilyn or Madonna or Cindy Crawford be without their moles? Nothing, I thought. Or a lot less. It’s interesting that moles are called “beauty marks.” What was it about them that made them so alluring? Are they like a sign that you can approach the goddess?

I spent a long time composing its position, but I finally decided the black spot would go nearly a centimeter above the left corner of her lip. A hair off to the left. The abstract element would round out her effect. It would make her unique and human and sexy and somehow pathetic. Because a mole is an intimation of death.

I am not big on social satire and much of it is now dated, but the prose style is to die for. The author is a professional artist and the technical detail is fascinating in the way of Dick Francis, though both narrator and tone are basically anti-Francis.

I do like this book but it is not my favorite book called Beauty, nor my favorite take on "Beauty and the Beast." My favorite book actually called Beauty is Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast, by Robin McKinley, and yes, I like it better than her Rose Daughter, which also retells "Beauty and the Beast." (One might argue that many and possibly all of McKinley's books are versions of "Beauty and the Beast."

My least favorite book called Beauty is Beauty: A Novel by Sheri S. Tepper, a horror novel which makes an apparently sincere case that horror fiction is evil. Tepper's books argue a lot of strange positions but that one takes the cake for the strangest.

What is your favorite/least favorite work called Beauty? What is your favorite/least favorite take on "Beauty and the Beast?"

Beauty

Comments

[rachelmanija]

LOL: Pretties. Those are fun books, and thank you - I hadn't realized a new one was out!

I disagree with literally everything in The Gate to Women's Country, but I've reread it multiple times and still like it a lot as a book. The way it's told and the emotions of the characters are very compelling to me. A lot of Tepper's storytelling appeals to me even though her biological determinist politics are not only appalling, they bother me more because we do agree on things like "rape is bad." It's just that her solution to "rape is bad" tends to be "so we should develop a test for rapists and then euthanize them as babies."

[naomikritzer]

Part of what I found fascinating about Gate was that it read like a dystopia being written by someone who thought she was writing a utopia.

Then I heard Tepper speak (she was GoH at WisCon in the late 1990s) and HOLY SHIT SHE DID THINK SHE WAS WRITING A UTOPIA.

Anyway. I need to buy a copy because I think my 15-year-old would really enjoy it; she's learned about Sparta at school and talked about how interesting it is that the women, in some ways, had vastly more freedom and respect than the women anywhere else (even if they were also stuck with a lower standard of living overall than their totally oppressed Athenian sisters) and that's clearly part of the starting place for the whole premise.

[rachelmanija]

I liked that it was a dystopia that had some positive qualities and that some people liked. People had lives and relationships and pretty things. Most dystopias are all NOTHING IS GOOD EVER and that always feels unrealistic to me. (Same with utopias - Anarres is my favorite because it has so many flaws, which is what makes it feel real.) Which... I guess that explains it!

I want to hear more about Tepper's speech! What was it like? What was she like?

Oh, yes, your daughter should give it a shot. I really do think it's an interesting and worthwhile (albeit fucking horrifying) book, and she's got the perfect background for finding it interesting. It even has the Iphigenia play!

[naomikritzer]

So, part of being the WisCon GoH is you give a fairly long speech on Sunday evening (it's Memorial Day weekend so the con is still in full swing at that point). It's a fairly big deal and most of the con shows up to listen to whatever you have to say, and the speeches are a really interestingly mixed bag.

When Sherri S. Tepper was GoH (and I'll note again this was in the late 1990s so it was a very different WisCon and Live-Tweeting was not a thing) she gave an impassioned pro-eugenics speech. Prior to this speech I'd wondered about some of the stuff in her books -- like, sometimes people read SF and think "this author is calling for TERRIBLE THINGS" and in fact it's just that the author thinks that these are interesting ideas to poke at. No, all the eugenics stuff in Gate and some of her other books? SHE 100% THOUGHT THEY WERE A GOOD IDEA. And said so in her WisCon speech.

It's been long enough I don't remember a ton of details, other than she also seemed to think teen pregnancy was a good idea because teens had more energy. (But only if they're the right sort of teens to be having babies? I don't remember all the details. I think the teens were supposed to live in communes with older women because the big problem with teen pregnancy is lack of resources and that's a solvable problem, I don't know.)

[rachelmanija]

WTFFFFFFF. Welp. That certainly explains a lot. It particularly explains the seemingly out-of-nowhere bit at the end of her D&D type series, the True Game, where everyone gets their powers taken away because they used them badly (that part is annoying but I'd seen it a lot before) except the people whose power was to see whether or not a baby was going to be a sociopath, and those babies would be euthanized. Because THAT was the one truly essential power without which society could not survive.

[lilacsigil]

Yes, I have read a number of Tepper books, and The Gate to Women's Country is the only one that sticks with me. I do think she is 100% sincere in everything she writes, and when I'm in the right mindset, that's more "super interesting" than "super horrifying", though both are still there.