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angelreadsthings's review
3.0
This book was...interesting. There were some parts that I really just wanted to skip, and some of it confused me at first, but overall I think it was an okay book.
blackoxford's review
3.0
The Meaning of Colour
This is a strange, hastily written, ill-edited rant against American racism. Its central trope is a pill that changes a white girl’s skin from white to dark almost instantly. Its context is the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, an epoch most had thought an irreversible watershed until the emergence of Donald Trump. Alas, there is no such thing as permanent progress, at least not in terms of American race relations. So despite its literary deficiencies, Black Alice still has merit - as an incitement to political action if nothing else
As far as I can make out, Disch is exploring motives, particularly motives about racial attitude. He starts the exploration sedately: Is the driving ambition to have a respectable funeral and to be buried permanently in a pleasant spot a neurosis or a reasonably modest goal in life? That depends, of course, on one’s perspective. For someone with a ‘future’, such a focus is merely morbid. But for someone whose future promises to be identical to a disappointing and painful past, it could be quite rational. At that point the moral calculus becomes less clear.
So Black Alice is about what makes things rational, and by inference, irrational. It might seem obvious that rationality is that which furthers one’s ultimate interests, whatever those interests might be - money, position, reputation, survival, or a peaceful grave in perpetuity. But actions to promote those interests are not simply instrumental; they also are valuable, or not, relative to each other. One’s interests therefore cannot be neatly divided into ends and means. Making these visible, even to oneself, is the foundation of justice, if justice is to be at all rational.
The difficulty is that perfectly rational behaviour, like a child who is being emotionally abused talking things out with an imaginary friend, can look odd, even deranged. What is tagged as irrational can’t be distinguished from what is unperceived rationality. But substantial parts of our civilisation are based on a rejection of this possible confusion of apparently unreasonable but actually misunderstood reason. The legal system would crumble if it were recognised as a principle, for example. But then again most marital arguments could be avoided if it were accepted by both parties. And, more generally, the motivations for rather horrid attitudes, like racially motivated hatred, could be seen clearly as banal by those who have them as well as by everyone else.
I’m guessing that there is at least one human institution which has no problem integrating ends and means, and through which motivations are made entirely visible: the brothel. And not just because of the uninhibited sex. Disch’s 11 year old victim-protagonist, kidnapped and held captive in one, treats it with the reason inherent in such a place. She intuitively accepts the rational efforts, strange as they may be, of the people around her. She knows she doesn’t understand. So she uses conversation with her imaginary friend to get to the bottom of things - not just the motivations of the kidnappers but of her own family as well.
Colour has a great deal to do with making motivations visible. Colour, of course, implies light. But light isn’t colour; it only allows colour. We become, we are, a colour in the light. White is an absence of colour; but so is black because even in the light, colour can’t be distinguished within it. In Black Alice, only people of colour are people at all. Those without colour are monsters, even if they cover themselves in the coloured silk of the Klan. They have no colour because they have no motivation that can stand the light. Their reasons are irrational; they are not just inhumane, they are inhuman.
This is a strange, hastily written, ill-edited rant against American racism. Its central trope is a pill that changes a white girl’s skin from white to dark almost instantly. Its context is the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, an epoch most had thought an irreversible watershed until the emergence of Donald Trump. Alas, there is no such thing as permanent progress, at least not in terms of American race relations. So despite its literary deficiencies, Black Alice still has merit - as an incitement to political action if nothing else
As far as I can make out, Disch is exploring motives, particularly motives about racial attitude. He starts the exploration sedately: Is the driving ambition to have a respectable funeral and to be buried permanently in a pleasant spot a neurosis or a reasonably modest goal in life? That depends, of course, on one’s perspective. For someone with a ‘future’, such a focus is merely morbid. But for someone whose future promises to be identical to a disappointing and painful past, it could be quite rational. At that point the moral calculus becomes less clear.
So Black Alice is about what makes things rational, and by inference, irrational. It might seem obvious that rationality is that which furthers one’s ultimate interests, whatever those interests might be - money, position, reputation, survival, or a peaceful grave in perpetuity. But actions to promote those interests are not simply instrumental; they also are valuable, or not, relative to each other. One’s interests therefore cannot be neatly divided into ends and means. Making these visible, even to oneself, is the foundation of justice, if justice is to be at all rational.
The difficulty is that perfectly rational behaviour, like a child who is being emotionally abused talking things out with an imaginary friend, can look odd, even deranged. What is tagged as irrational can’t be distinguished from what is unperceived rationality. But substantial parts of our civilisation are based on a rejection of this possible confusion of apparently unreasonable but actually misunderstood reason. The legal system would crumble if it were recognised as a principle, for example. But then again most marital arguments could be avoided if it were accepted by both parties. And, more generally, the motivations for rather horrid attitudes, like racially motivated hatred, could be seen clearly as banal by those who have them as well as by everyone else.
I’m guessing that there is at least one human institution which has no problem integrating ends and means, and through which motivations are made entirely visible: the brothel. And not just because of the uninhibited sex. Disch’s 11 year old victim-protagonist, kidnapped and held captive in one, treats it with the reason inherent in such a place. She intuitively accepts the rational efforts, strange as they may be, of the people around her. She knows she doesn’t understand. So she uses conversation with her imaginary friend to get to the bottom of things - not just the motivations of the kidnappers but of her own family as well.
Colour has a great deal to do with making motivations visible. Colour, of course, implies light. But light isn’t colour; it only allows colour. We become, we are, a colour in the light. White is an absence of colour; but so is black because even in the light, colour can’t be distinguished within it. In Black Alice, only people of colour are people at all. Those without colour are monsters, even if they cover themselves in the coloured silk of the Klan. They have no colour because they have no motivation that can stand the light. Their reasons are irrational; they are not just inhumane, they are inhuman.
ederwin's review
5.0
I picked this up because I'm interested in all things "Alice in Wonderland" related and it is co-written by a guy (Disch) known for dark science fiction. But this is not Sci/Fi and, apart from a few obvious references, has very little to do with "Alice in Wonderland". And yet, I'm so glad I found this. I devoured it from cover to cover with no stops to go read something else. (Many people read books that way, but I rarely do.)
The basics of the story is that a privileged little white girl gets kidnapped and gets to find out what it feels like for people to think she is black, and learns that not everyone is who they seem. She has to contend with being held prisoner in a very seedy brothel, and a confrontation with the KKK. Despite being put in an absurd and dangerous situation, she is never very scared and uses her wits to escape. (Just like the other Alice.) It is really a thrilling tale.
Two strangely coincidental big stories in the news just after I finished this book were about a white woman pretending to be black; and a mass murder in a black church by a white guy.
(The original book cover is off-putting, but I doubt the authors had much to do with that.)
The basics of the story is that a privileged little white girl gets kidnapped and gets to find out what it feels like for people to think she is black, and learns that not everyone is who they seem. She has to contend with being held prisoner in a very seedy brothel, and a confrontation with the KKK. Despite being put in an absurd and dangerous situation, she is never very scared and uses her wits to escape. (Just like the other Alice.) It is really a thrilling tale.
Two strangely coincidental big stories in the news just after I finished this book were about a white woman pretending to be black; and a mass murder in a black church by a white guy.
(The original book cover is off-putting, but I doubt the authors had much to do with that.)
nigellicus's review
5.0
Terrific, mordant, satirical thriller set in the mid 60s civil-rights era about a young heiress who is kidnapped,has her skin darkened with tanning drugs and hidden in a cathouse. The villain is a supreme monster of utter selfishness, but Disch and Sladek have keen eyes for human weakness and lacerating wit and intelligence to lay it bare. A brilliant piece of work.
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