The Charioteer: Review (Post to maryrenaultfics by Faithfulreader)

On 12 May 2007, faithfulreader, who had just joined the maryrenaultfics LiveJournal community, made his first (and only) post, "The Charioteer: Review".The post "The Charioteer: Review" was originally at http://community.livejournal.com/maryrenaultfics/166205.html prior to its deletion. The actual review was stridently negative; and faithfulreader's responses to comments were eventually gauged to be rude enough to qualify as trolling. 
==Faithfulreader's Review==
The following is excerpted from the review posted by faithfulreader:This comprises the main introductory matter in faithfulreader's review. Omitted is a long series of specific examples (with comments) which followed the introduction. There was no summation at the end.
It should perhaps be added that one of the members of MRF, duskpeterson, wrote later in the discussion that it had been from her that faithfulreader had heard of the community:
==Moderator's Comment==
The first comment to the post was made by one of the moderators of the community:
Although the members of the community took the admonition to be aimed at them, faithfulreader assumed that he was the target, and immediately responded, "I'm familiar with the rules, thank you".Excerpted from a post made 12 May 2007 11:45 am.
==Member Response==
As the following excerpts indicate, the initial response from members was courteous, picking up specific points from faithfulreader's review for discussion. His reaction, however, was brusque dismissal.
It did not take long for members, especially those coming in late (and hence reading a sequence of replies), to begin to respond with less patience:
Eventually, at least one thread emerged that was—in its own way—perversely rude:
All in all, it was not the most edifying discussion in the history of fan criticism. Nevertheless, along the way, a number of faithfulreader's points were critiqued, with certain particular foci of discussion:
* As the examples above indicate, other members felt that The Charioteer did portray World War 2, albeit on the home front rather than the battlefield.
* There was discussion of the contention that the "gay stuff" was out of date, and what that phrase might mean in the context of a book written in 1953 about 1940. 
* There were objections to the assertion that the book lacked metaphor.It should be added that faithfulreader's insistence that there was no metaphor in the book inspired a lengthy discussion of the matter in two subsequent posts to maryrenaultfics: "Metaphor in The Charioteer", posted by greerwatson on 2 June 2007 (which opens "I recently found myself brought to think of the question of metaphor in The Charioteer."); and the follow-up "The conintuaton [sic] of the use of Metaphors in The Charioteer", posted by weavinghugo the following day.
* There were queries about faithfulreader's language preferences when reading, given that English was not his native language. 
* There was some debate over the concept of "Great Literature".
Although much of the discussion lay between faithfulreader and sundry members of the maryrenaultfics community, after a while two other—and quite distinct—threads emerged. Though neither is directly related to the more contentious portions of the post, they are not without interest, since they shed some light on the dissonance between faithfulreader's tone in discussion and that expected by other members. Both discussions stem from duskpeterson's first comment to the post, which is therefore reproduced here in full:
===Conversation between Faithfulreader and Duskpeterson===
One of the threads that stemmed from duskpeterson's post is a conversation between her and faithfulreader, mostly about Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and m/m romantic friendship. Only a portion is excerpted:
What is noteworthy about this exchange (apart from the opinions themselves) is the distinctly less contentious tone of faithfulreader's response to duskpeterson, whom he considered a friend. Similar chat between other members of maryrenaultfics is infrequent in this particular post; but it is common elsewhere, particularly in discussions of the romantic aspects of Renault's novels.
That faithfulreader is evidently capable of friendly repartee immediately throws doubt on his motivation in making his initial post: it suggests that he was not merely writing a negative review of The Charioteer, couched somewhat brusquely because of inadequacies in his English. Rather, it suggests that he wrote as he did out of a wish to arouse controversy. That would certainly explain why, even though the first members to reply did so with courtesy, faithfulreader did not respond in kind but continued in a provocative tone.
===Other Members' Discussion of The Charioteer===
The other thread that developed from duskpeterson's comment involved various members of the community who began to analyse The Charioteer as a novel of the war on the home front, before shifting to a discussion of the anachronistic importation of 'modern' sensibilities into historical novels. The following are the first few comments in the thread:These comments have been slightly reordered for clarity, since jgraeme2007's response to greerwatson, which relates directly to her comment, was made after rosinarowantree's, to which he also responded.
(Two further responses to rosinarowantree, by jgraeme2007 and greerwatson, have been omitted.)
What is most noticeable about this thread is the relative length of some of the comments that are made—commensurate, it should be noted, with those from the second chapter-by-chapter (CBC) discussion of The Charioteer that had been completed only a week earlier. In the context of faithfulreader's review, however, it is the tone of the comments that is significant: in this thread, one encounters brief, friendly chat similar to the exchange between duskpeterson and faithfulreader. Furthermore, during the CBC, even when people had disagreed in their interpretation, the arguments had always remained civil.
Since the inception of the maryrenaultfics community, its membership had generally subscribed to a culture of courtesy, at least with respect to their interactions on the community itself. The reaction of those who participated in the discussion on this post was coloured, therefore, by their prior expectations. It is impossible to say whether faithfulreader (who had not taken active part before posting his review) had lurked on the community for any significant time prior to joining. However, duskpeterson's apology suggests that he may well have only heard of maryrenaultfics a relatively short time beforehand and would hence have been unfamiliar with community expectations.
===Faithfulreader's Command of English===
Given that faithfulreader's mother tongue is apparently Russian, one obvious point that needs to be discussed is the effect his ability in the English language might have had on both community members and faithfulreader himself.
Let us first consider faithfulreader's command of English.
In his review, he had said "[...] I started reading The Charioteer with hope that it’ll turn out to be the second Brideshead Revisited," to which rosinarowantree responded, "Why does [The Charioteer] have to be 'a second Brideshead Revisited? Wasn't one enough?" As well, faithfulreader said in his review, "the gay stuff is dramatically out of date," to which she responded in the same comment, "I can assure that that [sic] when I read it in the early 1960s it was not at all out of date - it was still possible to be sent to prison for homosexual activity."
The reply to this was:
Now, faithfulreader clearly has a good comprehension of English and writes with a fair competence. Nevertheless, in his response to each point, he betrays the limitations of his fluency. 
First, to a native speaker, it is clear, not only that rosinarowantree recognizes that his reference to Brideshead Revisited was metaphoric, but that her question, "Wasn't one enough?" was both rhetorical and ironic. While faithfulreader (who had himself referred elsewhere to rhetorical questions) may have recognized that aspect of her response, her irony seems to have escaped him. 
Second, his response to rosinarowantree's description of the position of homosexuals in the 1960s is worded obscurely, even obtusely. One might expect such a response as, "Well, I'd hardly expect the book to be out of date only ten years after its publication"—which may, indeed, be what he intends to say. He leaves the impression, though, that he may have interpreted the phrase "not at all out of date" to mean the exact opposite.
His difficulty in parsing complex English structures also emerges in the discussion of his reading preferences, as the following sequence of excerpts demonstrate:
Note the difference between the questions posed by hulamoth and greerwatson: "Why not?" receives a very sensible (and, it should be noted, courteous) response from faithfulreader; but the more syntactically complex query from greerwatson is simply misunderstood. Whereas he seems to feel that he is contradicting her suggestion, his response indicates that he is, in fact, agreeing with what she has said: authenticity would, indeed, seem to be the reason he prefers to read about English characters in the English language.
This was promptly picked up in the further exchange, which examined the implications:
From which exchange one may conclude that faithfulreader feels unwontedly confident in his ability to understand English.
A similar point was made more briefly by jgraeme2007:
If nothing else, these exchanges indicate that members of the community were aware that faithfulreader was writing in a language not his own, whether or not they made sufficient allowance for the fact in their own responses.
==Moderator Response (Part One)==
It is important to note that, at the time this post was made, maryrenaultfics had open membership: anyone could join the community, with full posting privileges as soon as they became a member. It was therefore only after the post was up that the moderators began to look into faithfulreader's LiveJournal profile and posting history. What they found (including interests in Cassandra Claire and trolls, and a history of rude, tendentious posts in other fora) simply provided support for their next move.
Early on the morning of 13 May, they rescinded faithfulreader's membership of maryrenaultfics:
 
As indicated, faithfulreader remained able to post comments; and discussion therefore continued throughout the day. However, at some point on 13 May 2007, the moderators may have frozen some or all of the existing threads, since this is referenced in faithfulreader's final post. 
==Final Posts==
The final member comment was made by nikhos, another new member of maryrenaultfics who was also not a native English speaker. 
In his reply, faithfulreader (among other things) referred rudely to nikhos's command of English.
==Moderator Response (Part Two)==
Shortly thereafter, the entire post was deleted by the moderators.
On 14 May, the moderators posted an apology to the community:
==Contrary Perspectives==
Although the moderators certainly explicitly considered faithfulreader to be trolling the community, it is also true that maryrenaultfics was run as a markedly civil place—subscribing, one might say, to the "cult of nice". After the fact, there was some discussion, therefore, as to whether the term "troll" was actually appropriate.
The question was raised by greenlady2, who was a new member who had missed the kerfuffle. Among the responses were the following:
Nevertheless, there were those who disagreed.
In particular, duskpeterson (who had introduced faithfulreader to maryrenaultfics) disagreed with his identification as a troll.
In this context, it is perhaps useful to quote faithfulreader's response to the moderators when they told him they were rescinding his membership of the community:
Who but a troll, after all, joins a community for the admitted purpose of making one and only one post, simply in which to slag off a book dearly beloved by so many of the other members?
==Consequences==
On 26 May 2007, in a further admin post ("members post"), the moderators announced that, for the foreseeable future, MRF would go to moderated membership:
Some member responses referred directly to the recent trolling:
==References==
Category:Maryrenaultfics LiveJournal Community
Category:Fanworks
Category:Fandom Wars
Category:2007 Events
Category:2007 Fanworks