Love goes up in flames during the ceremonial lighting by flaming arrow of The Love Shack, a house made of 1,000 romance novels. House by Molly Rideout, pyrotechnics by Kenji Yoshino, photography by Luke Saunders. Burned May 8 at Grin City Collective’s weekly potluck.
Watch the video of it going up in flames (with help from some diesel and lighter fluid).
When a young child asked why we were burning the house, I explained, “Out here in the country, people burn trash, which is what all of these books are. But not all books are trash. We don’t burn all books.” To which the boy answered, “I don’t have any trash books.” Then someone suggested buying him a copy of Fahrenheit 451 just in case.
I just lost all respect for them and what I thought was an awesome creation.
I have a LOT of those books, and some of them are quite well written and fun.
They just condemned an entire genre, and in the process taught a child to judge those who read it.
Shame on them.
This…yeah, my stomach’s churning just looking at these pictures. The old war between ‘literature’ and ‘genre’ books, taken to a new extreme?
You don’t have to like all of the books out there – god knows there’s a ton of them I have some incredibly strong opinions on and will happily throw a side-eye towards when I see them on the shelves of a bookstore – but you can’t write off an entire genre for what basically amounts to as the crimes of a few. I’ll be the first to admit I have some romance novels on my shelves too. You know what, they got me through some tough times in life, and are great for revisiting when I just want something fun to read.
Give me an entertaining, tightly paced, well written romance novel with sharply and clearly drawn characters (or hell, most other genre stories, mystery, action, fantasy, take your pick) over a ‘literary’ work that a small handful of people deem as ‘good’ any day.
I will happily admit that I have THOUSANDS of them. I totally enjoy them. No guilty pleasure here, because I feel no guilt. I like really well written ones, and I like the pure cheese ones.
It’s like watching movies. (Though, oddly enough, I do not care for romantic movies.) There are big, sweeping, epic movies that tell amazing tales, and that’s nice to watch. But it’s also nice to watch a silly comedy that’s got an absurd premise and is poorly written, directed, and acted. Both can bring enjoyment. And whether you (the general you) like it or not, it’s not your place to judge other people for liking it.
I thought she might have meant because they were in bad condition when she received them, the lifespan of cellulose paper used in most genre paper backs is actually quite short and they start to crumble to dust eventually. Paperbacks are essentially meant to be disposable, so it may have had nothing to do with the genre of the books and everything to do with their state when she received them.
There are ways to preserve/care for them to make them last, but either way they would have lasted longer if they hadn’t been left to “moulder” in a barn.
And I would have believed that was the reasoning if not for this comment:
“Out here in the country, people burn trash, which is what all of these books are.”
Which still MIGHT have meant that they were physically damaged and unusable/unreadable. Except for the comment immediately following:
“But not all books are trash.
Which meant it was a judgment of the content/quality of the books, not the physical condition. So they were then teaching a child to judge the books negatively, and thus those who read them. That’s especially awful to teach a boy, as he will then judge the female readers negatively.
But couldn’t she have meant “books in readable condition aren’t trash”
Did you not read her comment? Did you not read my clarification of said comment?
When a young child asked why we were burning the house, I explained, “Out here in the country, people burn trash, which is what all of these books are. But not all books are trash. We don’t burn all books.” To which the boy answered, “I don’t have any trash books.” Then someone suggested buying him a copy of Fahrenheit 451 just in case.
There is no way that was referring to the readability/condition of the books. It was absolutely (and quite clearly!) a judgment as to the quality of the CONTENT of the books. I don’t know how that can be misinterpreted.
I read your clarification, I’m still not seeing a definite reference to the genre in there. I’m very fond of your blog. And as someone who reads romance (when I can find ones with heroes I like, I have a type) I can understand being hypersensitive to cultural attitudes towards the genre, but I don’t think that she meant that, I do think she was unclear and I do think her end for the sculpture was misguided and uncomfortable but I sincerely doubt there was malice there.
The statement sounds very much like THOSE, particular, books were trash, and that other books, ones NOT those books, were not trash. Given that it was a piece of art she’d created, the idea that she considered it trash as a single item seems weird. If she made it as an ironic statement toward romance novels, which she saw with derision, that makes it a little more likely. The statement backs that up in that situation. And nothing she’s said so far has disabused me of that notion.
I’m not overly attached to things in general, despite my borderline hoarding, but I find it hard to believe that an artist who spent time to create something would choose to destroy it rather than donate or sell or give it away and allow it to live on.
She may well have tried, it’s a large piece, it wasn’t built from materials that would give it a long life span (it’s just the books and nails) and it’s a fairly derivative work, which I doubt would have attracted the attention of a collector because it’s unlikely to become valuable and most people don’t have the space to store such a large piece of work (and she did say sculpture barn, which is presumably reasonably equipped to store art)band it was already disintegrating. But “THOSE” books could also refer to the particular copies of the books that make up the piece, the ones which were disintegrating.
I think you may over estimate the ease of getting rid of art if you’re not famous and your work isn’t highly commercial. I think we have a tendency to assume the worst of people on the internet.
Okay, are you aware of what our other side-hobby is? We buy up storage units. We resell and/or donate/give away the contents. We sell whatever will get us enough money to make our time and effort worth it. The rest we post on Craigslist or give to thrift stores, schools, etc. It really is NOT hard to give things away, even big things. Weird and large things, too. Heck, we once gave away a 9′ tall, 100 lb wooden cross that was in no way otherwise religious. To just some random person, not even a church or religious group. People want weird things.
And sorry, no, I’m not just assuming the worst of people. If not for her last comment, I would not have as much of a problem. While I dislike burning books in general, I understand it is sometimes done for artistic reasons. And if she’d said, in her original post, that she had made it some sort of farewell (like she did in her follow-up post), I probably wouldn’t have commented or reblogged it at all. It was the statement that the books were “trash” that prompted me to comment. I don’t see that as assuming the worst, I see that as taking someone’s comments as face value.
Was not aware of this, though it was still too heavy to move without a forklift (significantly more than 100 lbs) and her artist’s statement on her website was what she quoted in her response. I don’t like it either, but I don’t think that it was malicious
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 